This is something that I often have to defend in my own life, to my ongoing frustration. There's a certain degree to which many non-religious people I know assume all religious people are biblical literalists (...I think a big part of that is the pervasiveness of Evangelical Christian theology in American politics right now, but I digress).
What I'm trying to say is, I wish there were a way to get people to understand more easily that beardy-man-in-the-cloud-chair is not the default way of thinking for every faithful person. I feel like no matter how many times I explain that to some folks, their past experience with the literalists is always the prevailing narrative of religion in their minds, and it hurts when I feel like people I'm close with are putting out energy that feels like a head pat towards my religious observance. Even when they're generally respectful about it, it can still feel like the underlying message is still, "that's nice, but you're crazy and uncritical for buying this stuff."
I do understand that if you're, say, a queer person who has been burned by a particular kind of religious person in your life, it makes sense that your default is caution/skepticism/dislike of all religion generally. But I wish there were a way to change the default narrative from a fundamentalist one to this more curious one.
PS: Rabbi, can I just take a minute to thank you, again, for doing this? The last couple weeks, I've been marveling at and appreciating your ability to come at us with such deep thinking twice a week. I always feel like I want to participate in every comment thread, but sometimes I can't think of anything to say, even in response to others, and then I stand (well, sit) in awe of the fact that you can hit such resonant notes every time.
Yeah, it's so hard, especially for people who have a lot of personal damage/trauma around religion in their lives, to be open to understanding that there are thousands of years of nuanced theology in EVERY religious tradition (including their own). And even for people without personal damage, our culture has done such a good job of telling the story that religious = fundamentalist that it's hard to get any other narrative out there. But it's there. In Judaism, in Christianity, in Islam, in Buddhism, in Hinduism, across the map, everywhere. And it's harder to communicate. "God is mad at you/you're going to Hell!" is a lot better soundbite than, "Let's discuss a nuanced approach to the human relationship to the Interconnectedness of all things and our moral imperatives that flow from it!" It's just harder to sell. (This is also why the flip side, the capitalist spirituality, Buy This Book And Do Ten Simple Steps To Never Feeling Any Suffering Or Pain Again, is also so tempting--easy, slogans, quick answers. Also false, doomed to fail (so you buy the sequel! Also devoid of moral responsibility to others and engagement with larger systems.)
I'm sure it's the the literalists, too. But among many secular Jews who went to reform or conservative Hebrew school in the suburb (me! my cohort!), the problem is contrasting an elementary school arts-and-crafts kit Judaism with the sophisticated systems of thought they may have encountered in college and behind. Most of us didn't learn anything beyond some cultural symbols.
I just reminded myself of what my daughter said after she'd taken a college-level class in Jewish thinking, "When someone says they don't believe in G-d, you first have to ask what G-d they don't believe in." That strikes me as a very Jewish question.
It's interesting how many literalist Evangelicals will spiritualize admonitions throughout the bible to care for the poor. The vast majority of literalists aren't taking those parts of the bible they're not so keen on literally.
There's a line somewhere in the Talmud, on the principles of Biblical exegesis, that says if two verses appear to contradict each other, the third will come and reconcile them. That's the phrasing: not "you must find a third" but "the third will come."
On matters of practical halacha it can be a real problem if there appears to be a contradiction, because how are we supposed to know what to do? But on matters of theology or cosmology or narrative, I'm inclined to read that phrasing as a subtle hint: we don't have to wear ourselves out _searching_ for a reconciling verse that makes sense out of the contradiction. It'll come. Maybe when we aren't expecting it, and maybe not when we want it, so in the meantime maybe what we should do is sit with it and get comfortable with not having the answer.
(There's a song someone wrote called "The Word of God," which made me think about this concept on another level entirely; I want to come back to this when I have time to write all that out.)
The refrain is variations on the line "Humans wrote the Bible, God wrote the rocks." Which, when I first heard this song, struck me as very powerful and simultaneously troubling, because where does that leave those of us who believe that the Bible (or at least the Torah) _was_ written by God?
And it wasn't until some years later that it occurred to me: if one believes that God both wrote the Torah _and_ wrote the world, then the principles of exegesis can be properly applied to both. Which means that if something in the book appears to contradict something in the world, _it doesn't have to mean that either of them is false_.
Maybe we're reading one of them wrong, and it doesn't mean what we think it does. Maybe one of them is true in a way that's different from the way the other one is true -- allegory and metaphor, as you say. Maybe we just need to sit with the apparent contradiction and get comfortable with not having an easy way to understand both, until the third text comes and reconciles them.
Oh I love all of this. And there's also the essence of time, of comprehension- maybe we're just missing the third one for now, or bringing our own biases and making a contradiction where there isn't one. Or maybe there's new ones as translation and our understanding of words have gotten further from the original written intent- we don't have tone in written word, after all, maybe we're missing some kind of emotion that is meant to be there and changes things.
The truth is still there, the foundation is strong, but... we have to figure out building it up ourselves, yeah?
Thank you for today's post. Realizing that I could (should) treat the Tanakh as poetry rather than journalism made it so much more possible and fulfilling to make a place for it in my adult life.
For example, the imagery around the Israelites departure from Egypt is powerful and resonant AS IMAGERY, and contains a ton of truth about releasing oneself from oppression and finding freedom (going from constriction to openness; having to cross a threshold or having some rite of passage that makes backsliding difficult or impossible; needing time in the "wilderness" to burn away the oppressor in your head before you can be free...), that can be useful in so many personal and political and historical contexts.....but not if the conversation is all about whether or not it "really happened," and if so, when, and how can you prove it, and so on.
I was raised as a Methodist. I went away in my teens and tried numerous spiritual ideas on and off for a long time and came back as a Lutheran.
The way that christians often seem to weaponize the language of 2 Tim. v16-17 (about all of the bible being the inspired word of G!d) into an unquestioning non-critical acceptance of the literal (often mis/poorly translated) English they read or have read to them has always troubled me.
In many congregations, it's hard to question - well - anything, but it always seemed to me that questions had to be continually asked. The prophets all asked and so did Christ, but we aren't supposed to ask? It has never sat well with me.
This line of study is a breath of fresh air and I remain grateful for it, Rabbi.
Is there a way to upload images into comments here? I tried just cutting and pasting but it didn't work. There's a meme that floats around Jewish social media that I thought y'all might find some delight in - it's the one that shares an image of the Shema and translates the opening line (usually "Hear O Israel") as "Listen-up God-Wrestlers". :) :)
Linking to an image on another website seems to the only way to share in Substack comments at this time. Unfortunately the only way to “edit” comments is to Delete the comment and enter it again. I have found that composing comments in a text editor program, and then cutting and pasting them into the Comments box is a really useful practice. I learned the hard way that composing anything longer than one sentence, where it isn’t being saved, can be very frustrating. I’d like to see the meme too! Here is a related source https://opensiddur.org/prayers/solilunar/everyday/shema/shema-by-rabbi-arthur-waskow/
Rabbi, you just drive me wild. I wish I had grown up with this brand of Judaism, of theology, from the get-go. And am so grateful now to be exposed to this. May the turning continue. Thank you.
So here's my puzzle: I grew up convinced that talking about my personal experience of God was not a Jewish thing to do. I associated it with Christians "witnessing" at me and trying to convert me. Also, I was very aware that one person's honest experience might not be the same as another's (even standing at Sinai!), and that some people made up a God in their own image. Talking about God in the text was and is something I adored doing, but talking about God in my experience felt like telling secrets about my wife and me in the bedroom to people she doesn't know. It just felt icky, and perhaps immoral.
Yet I am seeing more and more that people who don't hear about Jews having a personal experience of God think that there is no such thing in Judaism, and some of them go looking for it elsewhere. And that makes me sad.
I wonder if anyone truly has to 'square this circle'?
In my introduction, I shared that my friend Thom had discovered his mother had kept secret that she was Jewish and adopted Catholicism for the purpose of safety. As he began his exploration of Judaism, we talked about how unlike Christians, Jews don't proselytize. For both of us the act of proselytizing felt as you mentioned "icky" and unnatural. Maybe because I believe that everyone is on their own journey, and I didn't want to influence that path based on my experiences, and vice versa.
For me, some of my G-d experiences are deeply personal, and others are daily occurrences as I experience the holiness in the world around us. Maybe I just assume that others see this in their everyday lives. If I talk about anything, it's more specifically about abounding blessings that I find in everyday things and especially in challenging experiences. While some are more difficult to discern than others, there's always a blessing to be found and an inexhaustive list of his love and engagement in our lives.
“Maybe because I believe that everyone is on their own journey, and I didn't want to influence that path based on my experiences, and vice versa.” I agree that everyone is on their own journey. I have never been comfortable with proselytizing even before I converted to Judaism. But I do believe we all influence the people we come in contact with, based on our own experiences, whether we mean to or not. I like the summary of Torah attributed to Hillel. https://www.sefaria.org/Shabbat.31a.6?with=all&lang=bi , but I also recognize that the influence of the Schools of Shammai and Hillel are both necessary parts of Jewish thought.
There's no 100% way to avoid *ever* coming across like you're trying to convert someone, but it's like all things- context is important. If it's important to you, and you mention that something like a sunset makes you feel closer to God while you're hiking with friends? They'll recognize that's you opening up and sharing something with them- and know that you're just sharing, not trying to push.
Which is much different from someone trying to talk about their experience at church to random people in a food court (which I have seen before).
At the same time, if your relationship to God feels private and intimate... you don't have to talk about it, if it makes you uncomfortable to do so. Instead, in relevant contexts like here or a study group or if your friends are just having, idk, a Philosophy Night, you can talk about your relationship to faith at large, or bring up more personal things like poems or songs that resonated with you, and see where the conversation goes from there?
Idk! It's all very dependent, but I'm glad you're here and seeking perspective about it.
Amy, this is placed in the thread as if it were supposed to be a response to my question. Did you intend it that way? Because as interesting as I find what you have to say here, I don't see it as a response.
It's sometimes easier for me to see it through a comparison to more modern literature. There's a guy I talk about on my cemetery tours named Matt Sorto. He was blinded while trying to rob a grocery store as a teenager, and ended up sharing a cell with Nathan Leopold, the famous murderer, who learned braille just to teach it to him. He became a voracious reader and spent his later years writing long commentaries on "the secret language of the poet," the divine revelation that so many classical writers were trying to describe. If there was some sort of divine revelation, Sorto only saw it second-hand through art, and most of his writings are just dense rambles. But it's a similar idea - artists trying to describe a glimpse of something bigger - Shakespeare's "dream that hath no bottom," Dylan's "vague traces of skipping reels of rhyme." It's sometimes easiest for me to think of Torah as a human record and attempt to make sense of a glimpse of something even less comprehensible than what the poets were trying to describe.
(His last name was Rizzo; Scorto was his alter ego in writing; need that edit button!) You see it a lot in literature; artists trying to describe something sublime that can’t really be described. I wouldn’t say it helps me per se; it’s just a lens through which to view things that’s easier for me to relate to than older scriptures.
To expand, the Torah was written in a language I don't speak (though I'm learning!) by people whose lived a life in a world vastly different from mine. "Mr Tambourine Man" is written in my language, and came from a time close to my own. Then again, though I like "Blowin' in the Wind," I can't really understand why it struck such a chord in 1963 that radio stations played it hourly and every singer was recording it. I can read up on the cultural and political situation and see on paper that it makes sense, but I think you sort of had to be there to really get it. Ancient scriptures can feel like that to a factor of ten. But in a way, those songs are asking questions that can't be answered and seeking to describe something that can't be described, something bigger than we can comprehend, and thinking of scriptures as doing the same thing is a way for me to approach them. Certainly not the only way, but a way I can get my head around.
I mentioned being ok with not understanding. Came across this beautiful post on Instagram on @blackliturgies (it’s not for everyone but don’t throw the baby away with the bath water -there is some mind blowing stuff there)They speak about ‘it’s ok not to know. Mystery is a liberation’
“G-d of all mystery,
It is liberating to be with a G-d who seems more interested in our presence and attunement to the spiritual, than the precise articulation of it. The demand for certainty is exhausting and alienating. Help those of us inclined toward intellectual exploration to do so not out of idolatry or superiority but out of sacred curiosity-that curiosity which is capable of reason without being enslaved to it. And protect those of us whose encounter with the Divine cannot be met with words or precise language. Let us stand strong in mystery, without pressure to to name every sacred thing. Help those in bondage to certainty, turn toward these voices and spiritual expressions as a beautiful guide. And as we make space for the mysterious, let us expand into our liberated selves.”
I'm having a thought about the 70 faces of Torah and how Kabbalah teaches there are 70(?) names of G!d, but I'm at work and I can't figure out where I wanted to go with this.
Hey Reb. So when you were studying did you have moments when you're reading all these clergy, theologians, sages, past & present and think "Fuck! that's what I've always been saying, and now I'm reading it being said better than I ever could!"? It happens with the work of many people I admire, past and present. It feels like the wind going out of my sails. It feels like, "why bother trying to say my thing? I'll never top that!" I want to be one of those clergy/theologian-writer-types one day, but this feeling keeps getting me down and it makes it all far less fun than it should be.
At the risk of excommunication, ;) Isn't some of this a lot like what Spinoza was trying to teach us? Any Spinoza scholars out there who might be able to weigh in on the history and philosophic/theological implications?
I really appreciate this question and Richard’s thoughtful answer. It also reminded me of when I used to lead religious discussions for an Adult Sunday School. I reminded those participating that people had been put to death by their co-religionists for having nuanced discussions with theological implications, let alone people who followed other religious traditions. The discussions were always grounded in respect for the way other people think about theological and other religious questions. So I may take some ideas from Spinoza, the Kabbalists of Safed, the Vilna Gaon, the Baal Shem Tov, the Haskalah, many of The Rabbis and Sages of Judaism, Issac Mayer Wise, W. Gunther Plaut, Rabbi Ruttenberg, and many others. So keep asking the questions Sarah, even if it feels a bit risky;).
I am a philosopher with actual degrees and such. I'm no Spinoza scholar but have read him and grasp the basics of what he was about as a metaphysician. His teaching is entirely different than that of the Kabbalists, such as the quote from Moshe Cordovero (the RAMAK) was discussing.
The difference is this:
Metaphysically, Spinoza was a *pantheist*. He believed G-d was coextensive with the universe; THIS universe and all things within it. The universe and its processes ARE G-d and can be known by this new way of knowledge - natural philosophy; which we now call "science." And science just means "knowledge." What kind of knowledge? The only sort you'll ever have or need to have -- especially if it is directly examining and explaining the Deity itself. And if that smells a bit like Maimonides' discussion of idolatry, well, it is exactly that from most Jewish perspectives I am familiar with and more at home within.
The Kabbalists, such as Moshe Cordovero and the school at Safed, and Jewish mystics in general, were not panthesists. They can be described as *panentheists*: The Creator is distinct from the creation yet "breathes" within all of creation. The creation is contained within the Creator, permeated by the Creator, and yet the Creator remains infinitely more than any and all of creation... and, in fact, the Creator did not need to create, the existence of the creation is on loan - so to speak, and could end at any moment should the Creator will it. And the Divinity would not be diminished at all by the subsequent non-existence of any creation.
So, G-d is beyond the creation or any created thing or the whole of creation. Yet God is immanent in each created thing and all of creation and loans it life and being... while, simultaneously, transcending any and all creation.
To say "G-d is in the rock because G-d sustains it in being, speaks it into being each moment, grants it being" does NOT mean "G-d is a rock" or that "G-d is the collection of all these things around us, including all of us." Only that G-d creates all of this at each moment, speaks it creatively at each moment, and grants us life and light and beauty and choice to share or hoard during our brief moment.
Relative to G-d, though, all of this - including us - are unnecessary in metaphysical terms. We and the universe itself are "unsubstantial." We are a sort of dream, a shadow, or fiction maintained by the Creator for as long as the Creator wills... and no longer. Our value and importance is on loan from the Creator; relative to one another and this universe, we are each of great importance because G-d chose to create US and not something or someone else or no one else. And each of us has our mission here within this story - the reason why we were sent and created, our mysterious and unique fragmentary portion of the Tikkun Olam.
Spinoza missed all of that - or the creative possibilities of imagining and thinking in that way - by reducing Divinity to nothing except this universe and expanding the importance of this universe to being that of G-d "Itself."
I hope that helps a little and isn't too far off the mark.
This helps a lot and is exactly the sort of thing I was hoping to hear more about. I need to take some more time when I am more fed and rested to go back through this, but for now with just a skimming I have nothing but thanks for adding this perspective and clarification of the differences. Thanks so much for taking the time to expand on this for me. I have a cursory knowledge of Spinoza and this is a really great starting point for digging deeper into what I'm smelling (using your metaphor) vs what is really there. Thank you again. *hearts*
I'll add that some Spinoza scholars would argue my classification of him as a pantheist is heavy-handed and in some passages he seems to lean towards being a panentheist.
Problem is, when philosophers talk about G-d, it isn't religious talk. The "G-d" philosophy can talk about is already not a G-d we can prove even cares about "Its" creations, including you and me. Philosophy's "G-d" is already an abstraction, an idea OF G-d, not a direct encounter with the Holy.
Which is why many philosophers who cannot stop wrestling with G-d have to go beyond the rational limits of philosophy to religious experience of some sort. Eventually, a philosopher has to come back around to being a living human and admit none of us has "the" answer and go back on the search... hopefully with real, not feigned, humility.
I hope what I wrote was more a help than a hinderance, a starting place with pantheism vs. panentheism. I'm searching and struggling and learning just as you are. Thank you and keep asking those questions.
I'd add one thing: Spinoza's formulation should smell a lot like what Maimonides was warning about being a sort of subtle idolatry. Spinoza's theory is a prime example of exactly what idolatry in the modern world looks and sounds like -- reductionism; in this case, the complete reduction of Creator to the rationally "knowable" creature. An easily dealt-with G-d, indeed, as all idols turn out to be.
When I was younger, I spent some time dating someone who was an Evangelical Christian. That was a perplexing experience for both of us. I later dated someone else who had grown up in a fundamentalist Anglican church, and we discussed that prior relationship of mine. I remember distinctly how completely mutually baffled we were about the other person’s take on the matter — I was shocked and frankly appalled by the literalism both of them brought to their idea of the Divine, and the latter person couldn’t believe that I thought that metaphor was somehow more powerful than a hyperliteral interpretation. It was an astoundingly profound, deep chasm of difference in understanding and perspective and belief.
I have (& continue to!) really appreciated your perspective on God and literalism and allegory; I feel like it has really helped me to better be able to communicate something I have deeply felt but sometimes struggled to articulate in the face of complete incomprehension from someone else.
Love this!! I had written a looooong comment and the page refreshed!! Maybe it was nonsense. So I’ll try and keep this short.
I read somewhere that the Bible isn’t necessarily contradictory-just that as God breathed it is, it was still written by imperfect human beings. They could have added and subtracted as they saw fit or according to their inclinations(surely G-d doesn’t really mean that). When we look at the books of Kings and Chronicles we can see this somewhat.
It wasn’t until much later in life I was taught that the there is poetry, history, etc in the Bible. So Job was very much a literal book for me in my childhood. I still struggle with what to take literally and what not to which I think is neither here nor there actually.
I also think we as creation need to be ok with not fully understanding the Creator. How do we even begin to wrap our heads, our imagination, around the concept of G-d and His character? What’s important to me is that He reveals the aspect of character that I deeply need at the time I need it. When I’m lacking in whatever, He is Jehovah Yireh. When I’m distressed, He shows up as Jehovah Shalom. When my spirit, mind or body is broken, He turns up as Jehovah Rapha. Most important He turns up as Yahweh. I AM. And at a very literal/base level He is whatever I’m needing at that time (I understand there’s
No it was your thought and we are glad you shared it. Every thread each one of us weaves into the lace of our knowledge increases it and the beauty of it.
I understood what you were saying and I appreciate it.
Do not take away from yourself or your contribution.
So, Maimonides almost certainly doesn't mean (in "Those who believe that God is One and that God [also] has many attributes declare the unity with their lips and assume the plurality in their thoughts.”) what it seems to me that these words mean, and I'm puzzled.
On first (and second, and third) reading this sentence seems to assert that if God is One then God is simple and has only one attribute/characteristic/trait. Plurality seems to stand in opposition to complexity here as much as to unity.
It just seems so unlikely that this is what's intended. But I don't know how to read it otherwise.
(And none of this perplexity is getting in the way of me following along the rest of this essay--just me, getting distracted in the details and tangents.)
God is one, God is the Big Bigness, any attempt to describe God as one kind of thing presumes that God is not something else--you say God is X, you imply that God is not Y, but God is also Y because God is unity, not a bunch of things cut up --(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apophatic_theology)
I don't know whether this is the case in the original Hebrew (someone help us out please!) but my guess is that the word "many" carries implications of "countable" and "finite." Having specifically defined attributes means there must be some things god is *not,* and maybe that's the problem.
I learned somewhere that God is beyond any particular set of traits we can attribute to God, so that reducing God to one who is merciful, gracious, just, zealous, powerful, knowing, etc.,is so far from understanding God as to be idolatry. Maybe that’s what Maimonides means?
I had a Pastor who used to say, " You cannot put God in a box. There is too much to contain. You can't understand all of it (G!d) and that's why you need Faith.
My guess would be that he's specifically talking about concepts like the Trinity, a single deity with multiple personas, and asserting that it does not count as monotheism. (A position that many share and many do not.)
"Aspects" might be a better translation than "attributes", if that's the case.
I do feel a bit off-put by thinking that taking the emotional moments as literal is a form of idolatry. It might just be me, but if we are made in God's image, but God is Too Much for it to be the physicality, then that really just leaves the emotional, doesn't it? Especially also considering that what we do or say or feel reflects to God, that God changes as humanity does... I can't quite remember if that was a conversation that happened here, or in my Daf Yomi group (or both!) but it's something that really resonated with me, and maybe people will think I'm overstepping, but I'd be willing to fight Maimonides about it, ha.
I can see it becoming a kind of idolatry if we try to say God is *just* a specific emotional thing- an angry God, a jealous God, even something positive like a caring God- because that's limiting, but isn't it just as limiting to say that God cannot have angry moments, jealous moments, caring moments? To me, along with the historical things, scripture is about teaching us to treat others as full people, and a lot of times it seems like God needs to learn that too- or make us learn it so that God can reflect it? Idk, metaphysics and such are hard.
All the rest of this is very resonant, I just wanted to pick that out as something sticking at me.
This is something that I often have to defend in my own life, to my ongoing frustration. There's a certain degree to which many non-religious people I know assume all religious people are biblical literalists (...I think a big part of that is the pervasiveness of Evangelical Christian theology in American politics right now, but I digress).
What I'm trying to say is, I wish there were a way to get people to understand more easily that beardy-man-in-the-cloud-chair is not the default way of thinking for every faithful person. I feel like no matter how many times I explain that to some folks, their past experience with the literalists is always the prevailing narrative of religion in their minds, and it hurts when I feel like people I'm close with are putting out energy that feels like a head pat towards my religious observance. Even when they're generally respectful about it, it can still feel like the underlying message is still, "that's nice, but you're crazy and uncritical for buying this stuff."
I do understand that if you're, say, a queer person who has been burned by a particular kind of religious person in your life, it makes sense that your default is caution/skepticism/dislike of all religion generally. But I wish there were a way to change the default narrative from a fundamentalist one to this more curious one.
PS: Rabbi, can I just take a minute to thank you, again, for doing this? The last couple weeks, I've been marveling at and appreciating your ability to come at us with such deep thinking twice a week. I always feel like I want to participate in every comment thread, but sometimes I can't think of anything to say, even in response to others, and then I stand (well, sit) in awe of the fact that you can hit such resonant notes every time.
Yeah, it's so hard, especially for people who have a lot of personal damage/trauma around religion in their lives, to be open to understanding that there are thousands of years of nuanced theology in EVERY religious tradition (including their own). And even for people without personal damage, our culture has done such a good job of telling the story that religious = fundamentalist that it's hard to get any other narrative out there. But it's there. In Judaism, in Christianity, in Islam, in Buddhism, in Hinduism, across the map, everywhere. And it's harder to communicate. "God is mad at you/you're going to Hell!" is a lot better soundbite than, "Let's discuss a nuanced approach to the human relationship to the Interconnectedness of all things and our moral imperatives that flow from it!" It's just harder to sell. (This is also why the flip side, the capitalist spirituality, Buy This Book And Do Ten Simple Steps To Never Feeling Any Suffering Or Pain Again, is also so tempting--easy, slogans, quick answers. Also false, doomed to fail (so you buy the sequel! Also devoid of moral responsibility to others and engagement with larger systems.)
I'm sure it's the the literalists, too. But among many secular Jews who went to reform or conservative Hebrew school in the suburb (me! my cohort!), the problem is contrasting an elementary school arts-and-crafts kit Judaism with the sophisticated systems of thought they may have encountered in college and behind. Most of us didn't learn anything beyond some cultural symbols.
I just reminded myself of what my daughter said after she'd taken a college-level class in Jewish thinking, "When someone says they don't believe in G-d, you first have to ask what G-d they don't believe in." That strikes me as a very Jewish question.
It's interesting how many literalist Evangelicals will spiritualize admonitions throughout the bible to care for the poor. The vast majority of literalists aren't taking those parts of the bible they're not so keen on literally.
Thank you for this comment as it sits so well with what I’ve been thinking. And I second the thanks, Rabbi!! Exactly what Zach said!! ❤️
There's a line somewhere in the Talmud, on the principles of Biblical exegesis, that says if two verses appear to contradict each other, the third will come and reconcile them. That's the phrasing: not "you must find a third" but "the third will come."
On matters of practical halacha it can be a real problem if there appears to be a contradiction, because how are we supposed to know what to do? But on matters of theology or cosmology or narrative, I'm inclined to read that phrasing as a subtle hint: we don't have to wear ourselves out _searching_ for a reconciling verse that makes sense out of the contradiction. It'll come. Maybe when we aren't expecting it, and maybe not when we want it, so in the meantime maybe what we should do is sit with it and get comfortable with not having the answer.
(There's a song someone wrote called "The Word of God," which made me think about this concept on another level entirely; I want to come back to this when I have time to write all that out.)
"Humans wrote the Bible, Gd wrote the rocks."
Oh, love that.
“The word of god” by Cat Faber.
That's the one. And yes, specifically that line.
So yes, about that song. Lyrics and a recording are available here (https://echoschildren.bandcamp.com/track/the-word-of-god) if you're interested; I thoroughly recommend it.
The refrain is variations on the line "Humans wrote the Bible, God wrote the rocks." Which, when I first heard this song, struck me as very powerful and simultaneously troubling, because where does that leave those of us who believe that the Bible (or at least the Torah) _was_ written by God?
And it wasn't until some years later that it occurred to me: if one believes that God both wrote the Torah _and_ wrote the world, then the principles of exegesis can be properly applied to both. Which means that if something in the book appears to contradict something in the world, _it doesn't have to mean that either of them is false_.
Maybe we're reading one of them wrong, and it doesn't mean what we think it does. Maybe one of them is true in a way that's different from the way the other one is true -- allegory and metaphor, as you say. Maybe we just need to sit with the apparent contradiction and get comfortable with not having an easy way to understand both, until the third text comes and reconciles them.
Oh I love all of this. And there's also the essence of time, of comprehension- maybe we're just missing the third one for now, or bringing our own biases and making a contradiction where there isn't one. Or maybe there's new ones as translation and our understanding of words have gotten further from the original written intent- we don't have tone in written word, after all, maybe we're missing some kind of emotion that is meant to be there and changes things.
The truth is still there, the foundation is strong, but... we have to figure out building it up ourselves, yeah?
Thank you for today's post. Realizing that I could (should) treat the Tanakh as poetry rather than journalism made it so much more possible and fulfilling to make a place for it in my adult life.
For example, the imagery around the Israelites departure from Egypt is powerful and resonant AS IMAGERY, and contains a ton of truth about releasing oneself from oppression and finding freedom (going from constriction to openness; having to cross a threshold or having some rite of passage that makes backsliding difficult or impossible; needing time in the "wilderness" to burn away the oppressor in your head before you can be free...), that can be useful in so many personal and political and historical contexts.....but not if the conversation is all about whether or not it "really happened," and if so, when, and how can you prove it, and so on.
I was raised as a Methodist. I went away in my teens and tried numerous spiritual ideas on and off for a long time and came back as a Lutheran.
The way that christians often seem to weaponize the language of 2 Tim. v16-17 (about all of the bible being the inspired word of G!d) into an unquestioning non-critical acceptance of the literal (often mis/poorly translated) English they read or have read to them has always troubled me.
In many congregations, it's hard to question - well - anything, but it always seemed to me that questions had to be continually asked. The prophets all asked and so did Christ, but we aren't supposed to ask? It has never sat well with me.
This line of study is a breath of fresh air and I remain grateful for it, Rabbi.
So - Tech Help needed:
Is there a way to upload images into comments here? I tried just cutting and pasting but it didn't work. There's a meme that floats around Jewish social media that I thought y'all might find some delight in - it's the one that shares an image of the Shema and translates the opening line (usually "Hear O Israel") as "Listen-up God-Wrestlers". :) :)
I don't think so? If you figure it out, let us know. They also need an edit button for comments!!
Linking to an image on another website seems to the only way to share in Substack comments at this time. Unfortunately the only way to “edit” comments is to Delete the comment and enter it again. I have found that composing comments in a text editor program, and then cutting and pasting them into the Comments box is a really useful practice. I learned the hard way that composing anything longer than one sentence, where it isn’t being saved, can be very frustrating. I’d like to see the meme too! Here is a related source https://opensiddur.org/prayers/solilunar/everyday/shema/shema-by-rabbi-arthur-waskow/
Rabbi, you just drive me wild. I wish I had grown up with this brand of Judaism, of theology, from the get-go. And am so grateful now to be exposed to this. May the turning continue. Thank you.
So here's my puzzle: I grew up convinced that talking about my personal experience of God was not a Jewish thing to do. I associated it with Christians "witnessing" at me and trying to convert me. Also, I was very aware that one person's honest experience might not be the same as another's (even standing at Sinai!), and that some people made up a God in their own image. Talking about God in the text was and is something I adored doing, but talking about God in my experience felt like telling secrets about my wife and me in the bedroom to people she doesn't know. It just felt icky, and perhaps immoral.
Yet I am seeing more and more that people who don't hear about Jews having a personal experience of God think that there is no such thing in Judaism, and some of them go looking for it elsewhere. And that makes me sad.
How do I square this circle?
I wonder if anyone truly has to 'square this circle'?
In my introduction, I shared that my friend Thom had discovered his mother had kept secret that she was Jewish and adopted Catholicism for the purpose of safety. As he began his exploration of Judaism, we talked about how unlike Christians, Jews don't proselytize. For both of us the act of proselytizing felt as you mentioned "icky" and unnatural. Maybe because I believe that everyone is on their own journey, and I didn't want to influence that path based on my experiences, and vice versa.
For me, some of my G-d experiences are deeply personal, and others are daily occurrences as I experience the holiness in the world around us. Maybe I just assume that others see this in their everyday lives. If I talk about anything, it's more specifically about abounding blessings that I find in everyday things and especially in challenging experiences. While some are more difficult to discern than others, there's always a blessing to be found and an inexhaustive list of his love and engagement in our lives.
“Maybe because I believe that everyone is on their own journey, and I didn't want to influence that path based on my experiences, and vice versa.” I agree that everyone is on their own journey. I have never been comfortable with proselytizing even before I converted to Judaism. But I do believe we all influence the people we come in contact with, based on our own experiences, whether we mean to or not. I like the summary of Torah attributed to Hillel. https://www.sefaria.org/Shabbat.31a.6?with=all&lang=bi , but I also recognize that the influence of the Schools of Shammai and Hillel are both necessary parts of Jewish thought.
There's no 100% way to avoid *ever* coming across like you're trying to convert someone, but it's like all things- context is important. If it's important to you, and you mention that something like a sunset makes you feel closer to God while you're hiking with friends? They'll recognize that's you opening up and sharing something with them- and know that you're just sharing, not trying to push.
Which is much different from someone trying to talk about their experience at church to random people in a food court (which I have seen before).
At the same time, if your relationship to God feels private and intimate... you don't have to talk about it, if it makes you uncomfortable to do so. Instead, in relevant contexts like here or a study group or if your friends are just having, idk, a Philosophy Night, you can talk about your relationship to faith at large, or bring up more personal things like poems or songs that resonated with you, and see where the conversation goes from there?
Idk! It's all very dependent, but I'm glad you're here and seeking perspective about it.
Amy, this is placed in the thread as if it were supposed to be a response to my question. Did you intend it that way? Because as interesting as I find what you have to say here, I don't see it as a response.
It's sometimes easier for me to see it through a comparison to more modern literature. There's a guy I talk about on my cemetery tours named Matt Sorto. He was blinded while trying to rob a grocery store as a teenager, and ended up sharing a cell with Nathan Leopold, the famous murderer, who learned braille just to teach it to him. He became a voracious reader and spent his later years writing long commentaries on "the secret language of the poet," the divine revelation that so many classical writers were trying to describe. If there was some sort of divine revelation, Sorto only saw it second-hand through art, and most of his writings are just dense rambles. But it's a similar idea - artists trying to describe a glimpse of something bigger - Shakespeare's "dream that hath no bottom," Dylan's "vague traces of skipping reels of rhyme." It's sometimes easiest for me to think of Torah as a human record and attempt to make sense of a glimpse of something even less comprehensible than what the poets were trying to describe.
(His last name was Rizzo; Scorto was his alter ego in writing; need that edit button!) You see it a lot in literature; artists trying to describe something sublime that can’t really be described. I wouldn’t say it helps me per se; it’s just a lens through which to view things that’s easier for me to relate to than older scriptures.
To expand, the Torah was written in a language I don't speak (though I'm learning!) by people whose lived a life in a world vastly different from mine. "Mr Tambourine Man" is written in my language, and came from a time close to my own. Then again, though I like "Blowin' in the Wind," I can't really understand why it struck such a chord in 1963 that radio stations played it hourly and every singer was recording it. I can read up on the cultural and political situation and see on paper that it makes sense, but I think you sort of had to be there to really get it. Ancient scriptures can feel like that to a factor of ten. But in a way, those songs are asking questions that can't be answered and seeking to describe something that can't be described, something bigger than we can comprehend, and thinking of scriptures as doing the same thing is a way for me to approach them. Certainly not the only way, but a way I can get my head around.
I mentioned being ok with not understanding. Came across this beautiful post on Instagram on @blackliturgies (it’s not for everyone but don’t throw the baby away with the bath water -there is some mind blowing stuff there)They speak about ‘it’s ok not to know. Mystery is a liberation’
“G-d of all mystery,
It is liberating to be with a G-d who seems more interested in our presence and attunement to the spiritual, than the precise articulation of it. The demand for certainty is exhausting and alienating. Help those of us inclined toward intellectual exploration to do so not out of idolatry or superiority but out of sacred curiosity-that curiosity which is capable of reason without being enslaved to it. And protect those of us whose encounter with the Divine cannot be met with words or precise language. Let us stand strong in mystery, without pressure to to name every sacred thing. Help those in bondage to certainty, turn toward these voices and spiritual expressions as a beautiful guide. And as we make space for the mysterious, let us expand into our liberated selves.”
I'm having a thought about the 70 faces of Torah and how Kabbalah teaches there are 70(?) names of G!d, but I'm at work and I can't figure out where I wanted to go with this.
Hey Reb. So when you were studying did you have moments when you're reading all these clergy, theologians, sages, past & present and think "Fuck! that's what I've always been saying, and now I'm reading it being said better than I ever could!"? It happens with the work of many people I admire, past and present. It feels like the wind going out of my sails. It feels like, "why bother trying to say my thing? I'll never top that!" I want to be one of those clergy/theologian-writer-types one day, but this feeling keeps getting me down and it makes it all far less fun than it should be.
At the risk of excommunication, ;) Isn't some of this a lot like what Spinoza was trying to teach us? Any Spinoza scholars out there who might be able to weigh in on the history and philosophic/theological implications?
I really appreciate this question and Richard’s thoughtful answer. It also reminded me of when I used to lead religious discussions for an Adult Sunday School. I reminded those participating that people had been put to death by their co-religionists for having nuanced discussions with theological implications, let alone people who followed other religious traditions. The discussions were always grounded in respect for the way other people think about theological and other religious questions. So I may take some ideas from Spinoza, the Kabbalists of Safed, the Vilna Gaon, the Baal Shem Tov, the Haskalah, many of The Rabbis and Sages of Judaism, Issac Mayer Wise, W. Gunther Plaut, Rabbi Ruttenberg, and many others. So keep asking the questions Sarah, even if it feels a bit risky;).
Hi, Sarah.
I am a philosopher with actual degrees and such. I'm no Spinoza scholar but have read him and grasp the basics of what he was about as a metaphysician. His teaching is entirely different than that of the Kabbalists, such as the quote from Moshe Cordovero (the RAMAK) was discussing.
The difference is this:
Metaphysically, Spinoza was a *pantheist*. He believed G-d was coextensive with the universe; THIS universe and all things within it. The universe and its processes ARE G-d and can be known by this new way of knowledge - natural philosophy; which we now call "science." And science just means "knowledge." What kind of knowledge? The only sort you'll ever have or need to have -- especially if it is directly examining and explaining the Deity itself. And if that smells a bit like Maimonides' discussion of idolatry, well, it is exactly that from most Jewish perspectives I am familiar with and more at home within.
The Kabbalists, such as Moshe Cordovero and the school at Safed, and Jewish mystics in general, were not panthesists. They can be described as *panentheists*: The Creator is distinct from the creation yet "breathes" within all of creation. The creation is contained within the Creator, permeated by the Creator, and yet the Creator remains infinitely more than any and all of creation... and, in fact, the Creator did not need to create, the existence of the creation is on loan - so to speak, and could end at any moment should the Creator will it. And the Divinity would not be diminished at all by the subsequent non-existence of any creation.
So, G-d is beyond the creation or any created thing or the whole of creation. Yet God is immanent in each created thing and all of creation and loans it life and being... while, simultaneously, transcending any and all creation.
To say "G-d is in the rock because G-d sustains it in being, speaks it into being each moment, grants it being" does NOT mean "G-d is a rock" or that "G-d is the collection of all these things around us, including all of us." Only that G-d creates all of this at each moment, speaks it creatively at each moment, and grants us life and light and beauty and choice to share or hoard during our brief moment.
Relative to G-d, though, all of this - including us - are unnecessary in metaphysical terms. We and the universe itself are "unsubstantial." We are a sort of dream, a shadow, or fiction maintained by the Creator for as long as the Creator wills... and no longer. Our value and importance is on loan from the Creator; relative to one another and this universe, we are each of great importance because G-d chose to create US and not something or someone else or no one else. And each of us has our mission here within this story - the reason why we were sent and created, our mysterious and unique fragmentary portion of the Tikkun Olam.
Spinoza missed all of that - or the creative possibilities of imagining and thinking in that way - by reducing Divinity to nothing except this universe and expanding the importance of this universe to being that of G-d "Itself."
I hope that helps a little and isn't too far off the mark.
This helps a lot and is exactly the sort of thing I was hoping to hear more about. I need to take some more time when I am more fed and rested to go back through this, but for now with just a skimming I have nothing but thanks for adding this perspective and clarification of the differences. Thanks so much for taking the time to expand on this for me. I have a cursory knowledge of Spinoza and this is a really great starting point for digging deeper into what I'm smelling (using your metaphor) vs what is really there. Thank you again. *hearts*
Sarah,
Sometimes we just get the scent trail.
I'll add that some Spinoza scholars would argue my classification of him as a pantheist is heavy-handed and in some passages he seems to lean towards being a panentheist.
Problem is, when philosophers talk about G-d, it isn't religious talk. The "G-d" philosophy can talk about is already not a G-d we can prove even cares about "Its" creations, including you and me. Philosophy's "G-d" is already an abstraction, an idea OF G-d, not a direct encounter with the Holy.
Which is why many philosophers who cannot stop wrestling with G-d have to go beyond the rational limits of philosophy to religious experience of some sort. Eventually, a philosopher has to come back around to being a living human and admit none of us has "the" answer and go back on the search... hopefully with real, not feigned, humility.
I hope what I wrote was more a help than a hinderance, a starting place with pantheism vs. panentheism. I'm searching and struggling and learning just as you are. Thank you and keep asking those questions.
I'd add one thing: Spinoza's formulation should smell a lot like what Maimonides was warning about being a sort of subtle idolatry. Spinoza's theory is a prime example of exactly what idolatry in the modern world looks and sounds like -- reductionism; in this case, the complete reduction of Creator to the rationally "knowable" creature. An easily dealt-with G-d, indeed, as all idols turn out to be.
When I was younger, I spent some time dating someone who was an Evangelical Christian. That was a perplexing experience for both of us. I later dated someone else who had grown up in a fundamentalist Anglican church, and we discussed that prior relationship of mine. I remember distinctly how completely mutually baffled we were about the other person’s take on the matter — I was shocked and frankly appalled by the literalism both of them brought to their idea of the Divine, and the latter person couldn’t believe that I thought that metaphor was somehow more powerful than a hyperliteral interpretation. It was an astoundingly profound, deep chasm of difference in understanding and perspective and belief.
I have (& continue to!) really appreciated your perspective on God and literalism and allegory; I feel like it has really helped me to better be able to communicate something I have deeply felt but sometimes struggled to articulate in the face of complete incomprehension from someone else.
Love this!! I had written a looooong comment and the page refreshed!! Maybe it was nonsense. So I’ll try and keep this short.
I read somewhere that the Bible isn’t necessarily contradictory-just that as God breathed it is, it was still written by imperfect human beings. They could have added and subtracted as they saw fit or according to their inclinations(surely G-d doesn’t really mean that). When we look at the books of Kings and Chronicles we can see this somewhat.
It wasn’t until much later in life I was taught that the there is poetry, history, etc in the Bible. So Job was very much a literal book for me in my childhood. I still struggle with what to take literally and what not to which I think is neither here nor there actually.
I also think we as creation need to be ok with not fully understanding the Creator. How do we even begin to wrap our heads, our imagination, around the concept of G-d and His character? What’s important to me is that He reveals the aspect of character that I deeply need at the time I need it. When I’m lacking in whatever, He is Jehovah Yireh. When I’m distressed, He shows up as Jehovah Shalom. When my spirit, mind or body is broken, He turns up as Jehovah Rapha. Most important He turns up as Yahweh. I AM. And at a very literal/base level He is whatever I’m needing at that time (I understand there’s
more to it in Jewish text) Hope I’m making sense.
That was still long :-\
No it was your thought and we are glad you shared it. Every thread each one of us weaves into the lace of our knowledge increases it and the beauty of it.
I understood what you were saying and I appreciate it.
Do not take away from yourself or your contribution.
Thank you Kevin. I really appreciate this
So, Maimonides almost certainly doesn't mean (in "Those who believe that God is One and that God [also] has many attributes declare the unity with their lips and assume the plurality in their thoughts.”) what it seems to me that these words mean, and I'm puzzled.
On first (and second, and third) reading this sentence seems to assert that if God is One then God is simple and has only one attribute/characteristic/trait. Plurality seems to stand in opposition to complexity here as much as to unity.
It just seems so unlikely that this is what's intended. But I don't know how to read it otherwise.
(And none of this perplexity is getting in the way of me following along the rest of this essay--just me, getting distracted in the details and tangents.)
God is one, God is the Big Bigness, any attempt to describe God as one kind of thing presumes that God is not something else--you say God is X, you imply that God is not Y, but God is also Y because God is unity, not a bunch of things cut up --(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apophatic_theology)
Yeah, that's what I was clumsily getting at!
Not clumsy at all!!
The unity is perhaps bigger and grander than we can conceive, and the plurality is our attempt to capture more of it.
I don't know whether this is the case in the original Hebrew (someone help us out please!) but my guess is that the word "many" carries implications of "countable" and "finite." Having specifically defined attributes means there must be some things god is *not,* and maybe that's the problem.
I learned somewhere that God is beyond any particular set of traits we can attribute to God, so that reducing God to one who is merciful, gracious, just, zealous, powerful, knowing, etc.,is so far from understanding God as to be idolatry. Maybe that’s what Maimonides means?
I had a Pastor who used to say, " You cannot put God in a box. There is too much to contain. You can't understand all of it (G!d) and that's why you need Faith.
My guess would be that he's specifically talking about concepts like the Trinity, a single deity with multiple personas, and asserting that it does not count as monotheism. (A position that many share and many do not.)
"Aspects" might be a better translation than "attributes", if that's the case.
I do feel a bit off-put by thinking that taking the emotional moments as literal is a form of idolatry. It might just be me, but if we are made in God's image, but God is Too Much for it to be the physicality, then that really just leaves the emotional, doesn't it? Especially also considering that what we do or say or feel reflects to God, that God changes as humanity does... I can't quite remember if that was a conversation that happened here, or in my Daf Yomi group (or both!) but it's something that really resonated with me, and maybe people will think I'm overstepping, but I'd be willing to fight Maimonides about it, ha.
I can see it becoming a kind of idolatry if we try to say God is *just* a specific emotional thing- an angry God, a jealous God, even something positive like a caring God- because that's limiting, but isn't it just as limiting to say that God cannot have angry moments, jealous moments, caring moments? To me, along with the historical things, scripture is about teaching us to treat others as full people, and a lot of times it seems like God needs to learn that too- or make us learn it so that God can reflect it? Idk, metaphysics and such are hard.
All the rest of this is very resonant, I just wanted to pick that out as something sticking at me.