Judaism is not a religion of particularly transcendental death. It is a religion that prizes life and survival above all things, and it should come as no surprise that this Vernal equinox holiday is not about spiritual renewal, but about the survival of the Jewish people.
But why do we survive? What purpose is there to life? What meaning is there to the trials we pass, the difficulties we undergo, the tests we have to take? I don't think I'm alone in thinking that Judaism, on this score, is a little inadequate. Judaism, above all other things, is a religion of ethics. It distracts us so busily with concerns about our conduct in the here and now that the purpose of such good conduct seems almost secondary.
The closest thing we have to an answer is in the Book of the Bible that directly follows Esther. The Book of Job, or Iyov in Hebrew, is the book that faces up to the fact that as a religion, we're not much concerned with the purpose of life. Judaism, a religion that has an answer handy for every ethical and legal question under the sun, has no ready answer to the question of 'why.' Christians and Muslims alike can bask in the smile of salvation's grace, but the afterlife is of such negligible concern to Jewish texts that who can blame us for getting a reputation as a depressed people? In the Torah alone, we have 613 laws, and we have thousands of years of commentary upon them which explain everything about how we are to comport ourselves to the world, but as to why we should comport ourselves this way, the Sages, the Prophets, Yahweh himself, is almost completely silent.
On Yom Kippur, there is a part of the service known as the martyrology, in which a medeival German-Jewish poem recounts how the Romans killed the great Rabbis at the end of the Bar-Kochba era (138 AD... ok... CE...) in ways that would curdle the blood of even the most saintly Christian martyrs - claiming that the Emperor Hadrian decided to kill Judaism's greatest ten rabbis as punishment for the ten older brothers of Joseph having sold him into slavery. At the end of the poem, the angels cry out "Is this the reward of Torah?"
In the siddur I grew up with, the translation told us that God responded "The road to justice is often filled with affliction and pain." When you learn what it really says, you realize that this is a hilarious and deliberate mistranslation. What God actually says is "This is my decree. Accept it or else." Or else what? He'll kill the angels too? He'll destroy the world? Our Yahweh is, as always, sublimely touchy about people questioning his quixotic judgement.
But it can't be denied, this is the cry that Jews have had to make from time immemorial. In every age, there is a cry such as the angels made, and a cry such as Iyov makes to God in Chapter 3 of his Book.
3 After this opened Job his mouth, and cursed his day.
2 And Job spake, and said,
3 Let the day perish wherein I was born, and the night in which it was said, There is a man child conceived.
4 Let that day be darkness; let not God regard it from above, neither let the light shine upon it.
5 Let darkness and the shadow of death stain it; let a cloud dwell upon it; let the blackness of the day terrify it.
6 As for that night, let darkness seize upon it; let it not be joined unto the days of the year, let it not come into the number of the months.
7 Lo, let that night be solitary, let no joyful voice come therein.
8 Let them curse it that curse the day, who are ready to raise up their mourning.
9 Let the stars of the twilight thereof be dark; let it look for light, but have none; neither let it see the dawning of the day:
10 Because it shut not up the doors of my mother's womb, nor hid sorrow from mine eyes.
11 Why died I not from the womb? why did I not give up the ghost when I came out of the belly?
12 Why did the knees prevent me? or why the breasts that I should suck?
13 For now should I have lain still and been quiet, I should have slept: then had I been at rest,
14 With kings and counsellors of the earth, which build desolate places for themselves;
15 Or with princes that had gold, who filled their houses with silver:
16 Or as an hidden untimely birth I had not been; as infants which never saw light.
17 There the wicked cease from troubling; and there the weary be at rest.
18 There the prisoners rest together; they hear not the voice of the oppressor.
19 The small and great are there; and the servant is free from his master.
20 Wherefore is light given to him that is in misery, and life unto the bitter in soul;
21 Which long for death, but it cometh not; and dig for it more than for hid treasures;
22 Which rejoice exceedingly, and are glad, when they can find the grave?
23 Why is light given to a man whose way is hid, and whom God hath hedged in?
24 For my sighing cometh before I eat, and my roarings are poured out like the waters.
25 For the thing which I greatly feared is come upon me, and that which I was afraid of is come unto me.
26 I was not in safety, neither had I rest, neither was I quiet; yet trouble came.
The Bible is about people like me: little people, outsiders, weirdos. It's about how people far too isolated to ever appear in a Shakespeare play can still find their voice and place in the world. Even if I disagree with an enormous amount of what's in the Bible, I still 'get' its concerns much more than I get Shakespeare.
What's extraordinary about the Book of Iyov is not Iyov's suffering, which, let's face it, the Bible obviously distributes to its characters as though it costs God nothing but a penny to make his subjects writhe. What's extraordinary is its acknowledgement that doubt is completely natural to have, and its acknowledgement that God may be at best indifferent to our suffering, and at worst, we may be His plaything.
There is no true explanation in Judaism of why the world is the way it is. There is only the reality that the world is what it is. At no point does God defend His conduct, He simply says after the manner of a celestial hipster: "You wouldn't understand it." As is an omnipotent being's prerogative, he dodges the question with some of the world's most sublime poetry that would not feel out of place in Walt Whitman or Herman Melville. This is just the last quarter of it when God fixates on the Leviathan - a whale-like creature whose presence is peppered throughout the Bible as a metaphor for the incomprehensible enormity of the divine:
41 Canst thou draw out leviathan with an hook? or his tongue with a cord which thou lettest down?
2 Canst thou put an hook into his nose? or bore his jaw through with a thorn?
3 Will he make many supplications unto thee? will he speak soft words unto thee?
4 Will he make a covenant with thee? wilt thou take him for a servant for ever?
5 Wilt thou play with him as with a bird? or wilt thou bind him for thy maidens?
6 Shall the companions make a banquet of him? shall they part him among the merchants?
7 Canst thou fill his skin with barbed irons? or his head with fish spears?
8 Lay thine hand upon him, remember the battle, do no more.
9 Behold, the hope of him is in vain: shall not one be cast down even at the sight of him?
10 None is so fierce that dare stir him up: who then is able to stand before me?
11 Who hath prevented me, that I should repay him? whatsoever is under the whole heaven is mine.
12 I will not conceal his parts, nor his power, nor his comely proportion.
13 Who can discover the face of his garment? or who can come to him with his double bridle?
14 Who can open the doors of his face? his teeth are terrible round about.
15 His scales are his pride, shut up together as with a close seal.
16 One is so near to another, that no air can come between them.
17 They are joined one to another, they stick together, that they cannot be sundered.
18 By his neesings a light doth shine, and his eyes are like the eyelids of the morning.
19 Out of his mouth go burning lamps, and sparks of fire leap out.
20 Out of his nostrils goeth smoke, as out of a seething pot or caldron.
21 His breath kindleth coals, and a flame goeth out of his mouth.
22 In his neck remaineth strength, and sorrow is turned into joy before him.
23 The flakes of his flesh are joined together: they are firm in themselves; they cannot be moved.
24 His heart is as firm as a stone; yea, as hard as a piece of the nether millstone.
25 When he raiseth up himself, the mighty are afraid: by reason of breakings they purify themselves.
26 The sword of him that layeth at him cannot hold: the spear, the dart, nor the habergeon.
27 He esteemeth iron as straw, and brass as rotten wood.
28 The arrow cannot make him flee: slingstones are turned with him into stubble.
29 Darts are counted as stubble: he laugheth at the shaking of a spear.
30 Sharp stones are under him: he spreadeth sharp pointed things upon the mire.
31 He maketh the deep to boil like a pot: he maketh the sea like a pot of ointment.
32 He maketh a path to shine after him; one would think the deep to be hoary.
33 Upon earth there is not his like, who is made without fear.
34 He beholdeth all high things: he is a king over all the children of pride.
The identification which so many millions for 2,700 years have had with Iyov is not simply because of the idea that virtue will not be rewarded, but that in the eyes of many, suffering is indicative of vice. Islam implies exactly that very strongly - often stating in the Koran that suffering is a result of not sufficiently submitting ( the word 'Islam' itself means submission) to the will of Allah. In Christianity on the other hand, suffering is so paramount that suffering is a virtue in of itself.
But whether Christianity or Islam hold the more correct interpretation of suffering, it can't be denied that the human brain is far more hard-wired to believe something like the Islamic interpretation. So many millions in the world, of so many different beliefs, equate virtue with heroism - the strong are virtuous not because of deeds but because they are strong. We see extremely modern incarnations of this idea in everything from Donald Trump and Ted Cruz to Bernie Sanders and Jeremy Corbyn - the strong do not equivocate and need not humility, they neither admit to weaknesses nor need they search for them. Excepting perhaps Odysseus, every ancient epic hero from Achilles to Beowulf to Aeneas to Siegfried to Gilgamesh seems to equate strength with moral uprightness. In the same way, evil is automatically equated with weakness, with duplicity, with misfortune itself. Evolutionarily, this is surely explicable considering how difficult survival was for the vast majority of human pre-history. But in an agricultural and literate era, when there was more time for contemplation, when virtue was not related to the glamor of the hunt, perhaps we required new rules for what constituted good and evil.
The presence of Iyov, much more than Odysseus, shows a new kind of human consciousness. Evil and misfortune are not necessarily equated with each other. We do not necessarily deserve whatever suffering we experience, but whether our lives are owed to God or natural phenomena, we cannot comprehend the cosmic plan that makes us live as we do. Even if I find Islam's interpretation of suffering to be heartless, and find in Christianity's interpretation a convenient excuse for exploitation, at least those religions have explanations. Judaism remains completely janus-faced in the face of suffering. The closest it comes to an explanation of suffering is in Iyov, and its explanation is not only Miltonic in its anger at God - but positively Bergmanesque at its agony at God's silence. And when we get to chapter 23, Job seems to speak for us all, wanting a justification for the ways of God to Man, but never getting one. It may be Biblical, but it thoroughly, utterly, essentially in all senses, modern:
1 Then Job answered and said, 2 Even to day is my complaint bitter: my stroke is heavier than my groaning.* 3 Oh that I knew where I might find him! that I might come even to his seat! 4 I would order my cause before him, and fill my mouth with arguments. 5 I would know the words which he would answer me, and understand what he would say unto me. 6 Will he plead against me with his great power? No; but he would put strength in me. 7 There the righteous might dispute with him; so should I be delivered for ever from my judge.
8 Behold, I go forward, but he is not there; and backward, but I cannot perceive him: 9 On the left hand, where he doth work, but I cannot behold him: he hideth himself on the right hand, that I cannot see him: 10 But he knoweth the way that I take: when he hath tried me, I shall come forth as gold.† 11 My foot hath held his steps, his way have I kept, and not declined. 12 Neither have I gone back from the commandment of his lips; I have esteemed the words of his mouth more than my necessary food.‡§
13 But he is in one mind, and who can turn him? and what his soul desireth, even that he doeth. 14 For he performeth the thing that isappointed for me: and many such things are with him. 15 Therefore am I troubled at his presence: when I consider, I am afraid of him. 16 For God maketh my heart soft, and the Almighty troubleth me: 17 Because I was not cut off before the darkness, neither hath he covered the darkness from my face.
No comments:
Post a Comment