Designs of Faith - Mark McGinnis

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Judaism began in the early part of the nineteenth century as a reaction to these new political circumstances. Jews believing that major reconstruction of the faith was necessary made changes in liturgy, dress, food, and purity to accommodate modern times. They accepted the moral laws of the Torah and the messianic message of a kingdom to come, but no longer saw Jews as a nation but as a religious community. In the mid nineteenth century the Orthodox movement began as a reaction to Reform Judaism. Its followers attempted to maintain more of the original teachings of the Dual Torah: trying to maintain as much of the law as possible while entering into the mainstream society for their livelihood. A third movement arouse, Conservative Judaism, that tried to take a middle path between Reform and Orthodoxy. It embraced keeping as much of the Torah as possible while also accepting many of the Reform Judaism’s positions on integrating into society (Neusner I, 13).

      The great body of Jewish scriptures and commentaries are not static. Especially the Talmud and Midrash writings encourage active and ongoing debate and reinterpretation. The heritage of study and debate has produced formidable sages in each period, people who took the vast religious and philosophical heritage of the Israelites and made it live for their own time and for ages after. One of the most famous is Maimonides of the 12th Century. The following are two famous quotes by the master:

      Do not imagine that character is determined at birth. We have been given free will. Any person can become as righteous as Moses or as wicked as Jereboam. We ourselves decide whether to make ourselves learned or ignorant, compassionate or cruel, generous or miserly. No one forces us, no one decides for us, no one drags us along one path or the other; we ourselves, by our own volition, choose our own way (Gates 8).

      With regard to all human traits, the middle of the road is the right path. For example: Do not be hot-tempered, easily angered. Nor, on the other hand, should you be unfeeling like a corpse. Rather, take the middle of the road: keep an even disposition, reserving your anger for occasions when it is truly warranted. Similarly, do not cultivate a desire for luxuries; keep your eyes fixed on only genuine necessities. In giving to others, do not hold back what you can afford, but do not give so lavishly that you yourself will be impoverished. Avoid both hysterical gaiety and somber dejection, and instead be calmly joyful always showing a cheerful continence. Act similarly with regard to all the dispositions. This is the path followed by the wise (Gates 8).

      The first quote is an eloquent statement of self-determinism, and the second could have as easily been made by the Buddha or Confucius. This tradition of wisdom is not a relic of the past. A 20th century example is the great scholar and teacher Abraham Joshua Heschel. Heschel left Poland in 1939 to teach in the United States, thereby avoiding the pogrom. He eventually settled at the Jewish Theological Seminary of America in New York City where he taught until his death in 1972. His writings bring to life the concepts of the Torah in vivid, meaningful imagery for the contemporary mind. He takes Biblical concepts such as grandeur, the sublime, wonder, mystery, and awe and makes them reverberate with his intelligence and faith. The following is a sample:

       The sublime may be sensed in things of beauty as well as in acts of goodness and in the search for the truth. The perception of beauty may be the beginnings of the experience of the sublime. The sublime is that which we see and are unable to convey. It is the silent allusion of things to a meaning greater than themselves…. It is that which our words, our forms, our categories can never reach. This is why the sense of the sublime must be regarded as the root of man’s creative activities in the arts, thought, and noble living. Just as no flora has ever fully displayed the hidden vitality of the earth, so has no work of art, no system of philosophy, no theory of science, ever brought to expression the depth of meaning, the sublimity of reality in the sight of which the souls of saints, artists, and philosophers live.

       The sublime, furthermore, is not necessarily related to the vast and overwhelming in size. It may be sensed in every grain of sand, in every drop of water. Every flower in the summer, every snowflake in the winter, may arouse in us the sense of wonder that is our response to the sublime….

       The sublime is not simply there. It is not a thing, a quality, but rather a happening, the act of God, a marvel. Thus even a mountain is not regarded as a thing. What seems to be a stone is a drama; what seems to be natural is wondrous. There are no sublime facts; there are only divine acts. (Heschel 38)

      Heschel had the power to confront questions of faith and contemporary doubt head on and with clarity and conviction:

       Since the days of the Deists, the idea of man’s self-sufficiency has been used as an argument to discredit the belief in revelation. The certainty of man’s capacity to find peace, perfection, and the meaning of existence, gained increasing momentum with the advancement of technology. Man’s fate, we were told, depended solely upon the development of his social awareness and the utilization of his own power. The course of history was regarded as a perpetual progress in cooperation, an increasing harmonization of interests. Man is too good to be in need of supernatural guidance.

      The idea of man’s self-sufficiency, man’s exaggerated consciousness of himself, was based upon a generalization; from the fact that technology could solve some problems it was deduced that technology could solve all problems. This proved to be a fallacy. Social reforms, it was thought, would cure all ills and eliminate all evils from our world. Yet we have finally discovered what the prophets and saints have always known: bread and power alone will not save humanity. There is a passion and drive for cruel deeds which only the awe and fear of God can soothe; there is a suffocating selfishness in man which only holiness can ventilate. (Heschel 74)

      He can challenge some of the most revered ideas of the late 20th century, such as the new worship of nature, with such precision as to make one seriously question deeply held beliefs:

      It is suspiciously easier to feel one with nature than to feel one with every man: with the savage, with the leper, with the slave. Those who know that to be one with the whole means to be for the sake of every part of the whole will seek to love not only humanity but also the individual man, to regard any man as if he were all men. Once we decide to serve here and now, we discover that the vision of abstract unity goes out of sight like lightning, and what remains is the gloom of a drizzly night, where we must in toil and tears strike the darkness to beget a gleam, to light a torch…. The norms of spiritual living are a challenge to nature, not a part of nature. There is a discrepancy between being and spirit, between facts and norms, between that which is and that which ought to be. Nature shows little regard for spiritual norms and is often callous, if not hostile to our moral endeavors.

      Man is more than reason. Man is life. In facing the all-embracing question, he faces that which is more than a principle, more than a theoretical problem. … Yet, to refer to the supreme law of nature as God or to say the world came into being by virtue of its own energy is to beg the question. For the cardinal question is not what is the law that would explain the interaction of phenomena in the universe, but why there is a law, a universe at all. (Heschel 100)

      Heschel explores the fundamentals of Judaism with such insight as to seem to be a man in the dark with a flashlight illuminating concepts as he approaches them. He describes mitzvot, commandments, as, “spiritual ends, points of eternity in the flux of the temporality.” He describes life as a concern, “A man entirely unconcerned with his self is dead: and man exclusively concerned with his self is a beast.” He regards needs as natural to humans but, “He who sets out to employ the realities of life for satisfying his own desires will soon forfeit his freedom and be degraded to a mere tool. Acquiring things, he becomes enslaved to them; in subduing others, he loses his soul.” Heschel regards the ultimate need not one of ours but the need of God for man. Man is needed. Life is a partnership with God - a commitment - a covenant. Heschel does not look to God in heaven but believes the true dwelling place of God is in the heart of everyone willing to let God in. He believes that law of the Torah is what holds the world together but it is the love of the Torah that will bring the world forward.

      Abraham Joshua Heschel had deep compassion in interpreting a Judaism of constructive love and law; but he also looked

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