Rosenzweig on the essence of Judaism/Christianity

The context of the following statements is Rosenzweig's critique (yet round-about affirmation) of Mendelssohn's translation of the tetragrammaton as "Das ewige Wesen." As a Christian, I appreciate the way in which he draws the Trinity into the orbit of the Biblical understanding of God, critiquing Maimonides' "Aristotelianism" in the process. I think he is right to say that the essence of Christianity - in its better moments - is at one with both Judaism and Scripture. At the same time, I'm not sure how it is that he can still (implicitly, at least, if I read him right) maintain the validity of the idea that God is יָחִיד, which is more than saying that he is אֶחַד. How is the "pagan/Aristotelian" concept of unitarianism (as Rosenzweig calls it!) still a necessary pre-condition - albeit a limited one - for affirming that the Creator is also the historical Redeemer? Rosenzweig actually says that this formulation was against the impulse do Jewish tradition. What other ways does Judaism provide of conceiving God's transcendence and immanence? In a course with Rabbi Dan Cohen-Sherbok I learnt that Jewish mysticism always stood in tension - even outright conflict - with the philosophical strand in Judaism. Does the doctrine of the sephirot, do a better job of conceiving this? Can it be reconciled with Maimonides' unitariansism? And, as far as questions of "Jewishness" are concerned, when does one cross the boundary thus find oneself outside the fold? 

Mendelssohn hat also die Entscheidung falsch getroffen, beeinflußt durch den Vorgang Calvins und einflußempfänglich geworden durch den rationalistisch-klassizistischen Geist des von Jugend auf verehrten, doch eben hier wie so oft aristotelisch beeinflußten Maimonides gegen den sicheren Instinkt der jüdischen Tradition verbündete. ... Der biblische "Monotheismus" besteht ja nicht in der Erkenntnis einer Einheit des göttlichen Wesens; wäre er das, so ermangelte er jeder Besonderheit: es gibt kein "Heidentum", das nicht ... seinen "Polytheismus" ... in der Einheit eines "Religiösen" überhaupt ... zusammenfaßte. Sondern das Eigetümliche des biblischen Gottesglaubes besteht darin, daß er diese "heidnische" Einheit - mit dem Kusari zu reden: den Gott des Aristoteles - zwar voraussetzt, aber diesen Gott in seinem Einssein mit dem persönlichst und unmittelbarst erfahren - wieder mit dem Kusari gesprochen: dem Gott Abrahams - erkennt. Die "heidnische Einheit" ist dabei nicht etwa nebensächlich; ein teilgebliebener Gott (etwa ein Gruppengott), der beanspruchte, "der Ganze" zu sein, wäre ein Götze und unfähig, in die Ineinssetzung mit dem "Gott Abrahams" einzugehen ... ; aber ihre, sozusagen, monotheistische Pointe erhält jene heidnische Einheit erst durch diese jüdische Ineinssetzung des fernen mit dem nahen, des "ganzen" mit dem "eigenen" Gott. Diese Ineinssetzung erst ist das "Wesen des Judentums" und durch das trinitarische Dogma, wie sehr auch gebrochen und in Gefahr des Rückfalls in die vor- und außerjüdische Spaltung, auch das Wesen des Christentums (den Ernst und die Aktualität deser Gefahr zeigen in der Gegenwart wieder Barth und Gogarten). Und diese Ineinssetzung ist der Offenbarungskern der Bibel und das, was sie zur jüdischen Bibel macht; der Unterscheid der jüdischen Bibel vom "Alten Testament" liegt darin, daß vom Neuen Testament aus allzu leicht der Gtt des "Alten" dem "Vater Jesu Christi" gegenüber weider gewissermaßen auf den "Gott des Aristoteles" reduziert wird. Und eben diese Ineinssetzung ist es, die mit ihrer aus dem ICH BIN DA-Ruf vom brennenden Dorn hervorschlagenden Glut in den Gottesnamen die ganze Bibel in eins schmiedet, indem sie überall die Gleichung des Gottes der Schöpfung mit dem mir, dir, jedem Gegenwärtigen vollzieht, - diese Gleichung, deren Feuer am heißesten brennt an den Stellen, wo der Gottesname und das Wort für Gott aufeinander prallen, wie in den Paradieskapiteln der Genesis oder in dem Einheitsruf des "Hör, Jisrael", überhaupt den Stellen, wo Mendelssohn "der Ewige" nicht genügt und er duch "das ewige Wesen" das Bezogenwerden auf die Namensoffenbarung des Exodus in seiner Weise ganz sicherzustellen sucht."

F. Rosenzweig, "'Der Ewige.' Mendelssohn und der Gottesnahme," in Reinhold and Annemarie Mayer, eds. Zweistromland: Kleinere Schriften zu Glauben und Denken (Dordrecht: Martinus Nijhoff Publischers, 1984), 109-110.

The literal vs Messianic Torah: Quote of the Day

Regarding the Torah in its literality, which is the Torah of the mundane world, it is worthless when compared to the Messianic Torah and the Torah of the world to come … Regarding the Mishnah, there can be no doubt that the Mishnah’s literal aspects are but veils, shells and outer wrappings when compared to the hidden mysteries which are inherent and insinuated in its inner aspects (i.e. Kabbalah). [*]

[*] Hayim Vital, Etz-Hayyim [Warsaw, 1891; Jerusalem, 1910], ‘Introduction to the Gate of Introductions’, p. 2. Cited in Elior, R. (1997). "Not All is in the Hands of Heaven: Eschatology and Kabbalah." In H. Graf Reventlow (Ed.), Eschatology in the Bible and in Jewish and Christian tradition (H. Graf Reventlow, Ed.) (58). Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press.

A further (Jewish) critical thought on the Oxford Psalms Conference

In my last post I shared some critical thoughts about the recent Oxford Psalms conference. Given that I'm a Christian and one of my issues with the logic of the conference had to do with that fact, I'm delighted that a Jewish friend of mine shared her critical thoughts on the matter in response to the post. She wasn't present for various reasons, but one of them will become clear in her comments (which I post with permission):

I'd like to add my own pesky little issue here which has less to do with the content (although ultimately it most likely does) but rather the organization of the conference. If it was the intention of the organizers to foster a dialogue between communities I do wonder what prompted them to schedule the conference exactly on one of the important Jewish festivals, i.e. Sukkot? By this scheduling blunder they effectively excluded and silenced one particular segment of the Jewish academic and clerical community (namely the Orthodox). I do realize that there were some Jewish participants; however these would not represent, speak for and from that particular segment which is also part of the larger Jewish group. This is interesting because it is exactly that absent group that takes the Psalter (or they would prefer Sefer Tehillim) very seriously as a living tradition, both in liturgy as well as in individual petionary prayer. So, as far as the organizers are concerned – for the umpteenth time in comparable circumstances: it’s their loss. Sad thing though is, they probably don’t even realize that they did suffer a loss and will whisk it away as an irrelevant irritant….

This fact was pointed out at the conference, for which the organizers apologized. I'm not sure of the reasoning, but I think there were organizational complications that couldn't be avoided. However, given that the explicit agenda of the conference was to encourage a mutual "moving beyond" differences in Christian and Jewish exegesis, the absence of an incredibly significant segment of the Jewish population - a segment which stands in most continuity with the traditions that define Judaism - seriously limits the conference's capacity to make progress on its stated goals.

If the Messiah came, why do evil and death remain?

That's a question Paul was forced to asked, being steeped in the Rabbinic theology of his day. Here is his answer, according to Bartholomew and Goheen (see also my two other posts: Disappointment with Jesus (I) and Why is Jesus taking so long? (II).):

But if the old has passed away [the 'olam hazeh in the crucifixion] and the new has come [the 'olam haba', in the resurrection], why do evil and death remain in the world? Paul’s letters are charged with the same tension between the “already” and “not yet” aspects of the kingdom of God that we have seen in Jesus’ own teachings, but with some differences in emphasis. For Paul, the kingdom is here already in that Jesus’ death brings an end to the old and his resurrectioinaugurates the new. The Spirit is described as a deposit (or down payment) on the coming kingdom (2 Corinthians 1:22; 5:5; Ephesians 1:14). A deposit is not merely an IOU or promise for the future; instead, it is a real payment given now as a guarantee that in the future the rest will be paid. The Spirit is also pictured as firstfruits, the first part of the harvest, ready to be enjoyed now, and tangible evidence that the remainder of the harvest will also come (Romans 8:23).

The kingdom has not yet arrived for us in its fullness. We remain in a world that has not yet been fully delivered from the influence of evil, demonic power (2 Corinthians 4:4). We are still surrounded by the darkness of sin and rebellion against God (Ephesians 2:2–3), even while we anticipate the full revelation of God’s kingdom in which those things shall be no more. Thus, in Paul’s thought there is no clearly marked threshold between “the present age” and “the age to come.” We live in the “in-between” time, in which the two ages overlap. Paul goes on to explain that these two ages are allowed to coexist within God’s plan so that the church’s work of mission—the gathering of the nations to the God of Israel—can be accomplished before the final revelation of the kingdom. In fact, God gives this in-between time to the church as its own, to fulfill its calling as his witness to the coming of the kingdom.[*]

[*]Bartholomew, C. G., & Goheen, M. W. (2004). The drama of Scripture: Finding our place in the biblical story (190). Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic [footnotes have been removed]

Jonathan Sacks on "witness" and "substance"

I recently posted Brevard Childs' suggestion concerning the way forward for a Christian multiple-level interpretation of Scripture. John Hobbins of Ancient Hebrew Poetry gave his own two-part summary in the comments:

What Childs seeks to do is to keep together what others drive asunder. The traditional exegesis of the church, whenever it has proposed a meta-sense of the text as a replacement of one of its more foundational senses, has ultimately done a disservice to the church's witness to the Gospel.

Modern, historical-critical exegesis, whenever it has proposed a foundational sense in replacement of the meta-sense a text has within Judaism and/or Christianity, has severed the text from its own "Nachleben," a self-defeating operation.

An Orthodox Jewish friend of mine asked via e-mail what John was talking about. I tried to clarify both the content of my post as well as John's comments in terms of Rabbi Jonathan Sack's interesting introduction to the newly published Koren Siddur (John warmly recommends it here, and so do I, though I can't comment on ArtScroll]). My concern is simply to argue that, theologically speaking, one ought to go beyond plain sense of the text to a "deeper meaning", and then back again, in a dialectical movement.

Here it is:

In his introduction to the Koren Siddur, Sacks states that the whole of the Siddur, despite all it's diverse sources, creates a "calibrated symphony." The implication is that beyond the diversity of the parts, there is an inner harmony, a harmony that is not particularly visible when one just reads one of those parts. One needs the whole in order to grasp the full implications of the part, one needs to read the canon (of Scripture and of Tradition) in relation to itself (which for a Jew includes Scripture's liturgical use, and the oral torah, both of which constitute the Bible's Nachleben, to use Hobbin's phrase). Reading the part in light of the whole helps us grasp something of the transcendent beyond. As Sacks says:

The Jewish people ... have ... been singled out for the most exalted mission ever entrusted to mankind: to be witnesses, in ourselves, to something beyond ourselves: to be God's "signal of transcendence" in a world in which his presence is often hidden (p. xxiv).

Part of this Jewish witness is in the body of tradition it has handed down to us. Again, Sacks puts it thus:

The siddur is ... the book of Jewish faith. Scholars of Judaism, noting that it contains little systematic theology, have sometimes concluded that it is a religion of deeds not creeds, acts not beliefs. They were wrong because they were looking in the wrong place. They were looking for a library of works like Moses Maimonides' Guide for the Perplexed. They should have looked instead at the siddur. The home of Jewish belief is the siddur.

So, it would seem (to me at least, do correct!), that in order to grasp something of this theological reality, one has to immerse oneself, not only in an exegesis of the particular texts of the Bible, but in the whole of the tradition which it has spawned. Only then is our vision adjusted to be able to "perceive the mystery" (as the Eastern Orthodox theologican Andrew Louth put it) that is hidden within the fragmented parts.

This assumption only works, of course, if we believe that God has been guiding the Jewish people through their history. Again, Sacks not only has this assumption, he also draws hermeneutical implications from it. In regard to the composition of the siddur he says:

The siddur as it exists today is the result of some forty centuries of Jewish history. Yet the result is not mere bricolage, a patchwork of random additions. It is as if the composition of the prayer book has been shaped by an "invisible hand," a Divine inspiration that transcends the intentions of any particular author. Specifically, form mirrors substance. The shape of the prayers reveals the basic shape of the Jewish spirit as it has been molded by its encounter with God (p. xxii).

He then goes on to discuss some of the structural features of the prayers (where, again, he points out that "form mirrors substance.")

As far as I can see, the conclusion one must draw from this is the following: God wishes the world to know him, and to this end he has elected for himself a people who must witness to him. Scripture and siddur are the literary products of this people, borne out of an active relationship with this God, and their function is to point beyond themselves to their substance, which is God himself (as the prayers themselves plead: "make the words of Your Torah sweet in our mouths ... so that we ... may all know your name ... " (check out this post on the goal of God's self-revelation). Yet, getting to know this "substance," the God of the text, involves being part of the community, in it's life and practice, and not just being a Biblical scholar. The sum of the Bible is greater than its parts.

There are only two differences here between what Sack's is saying and what Hobbins is saying: the substance of the Scripture is the Gospel, and the elected witnesses are the church (mysteriously grafted into Israel, not replacing it ... though I still need to work on understanding the relation). Sack's "symphony" is Hobbin's "traditional exegesis of the church"/Nachleben; Sack's "substance" is Hobbins' "gospel" or "meta-sense."

Hobbins adds, however, an extra element that I don't see in Sacks or even in Judaism (though I remember from past conversations that I may be wrong here). For Hobbins, the plain sense of the text not only functions as a witness to the substance (it's "spiritual sense," if you will), it also functions as a critical norm over against church tradition. In other words, if the church does too much allegorizing it runs the risk of drowning out the voice of Scripture and subjecting it to foreign ideology. There has to be a constant tension, or dialectic: on the one hand, the plain sense of the text has to be understood in relation to our broader understanding of the substance; on the other hand, our understanding of the substance has to be mediated by the plain sense of the Scriptural witness. The community of faith (church or synagogue) is not allowed to make the text say what it wants it to say, and so must always be willing to critique itself in light of the text.

As for historical criticism, it's main problem is ideological. Though it pretends to objectivity, in reality it has its own presuppositions concerning the nature of the "substance" of the text (I've also made similar comments in a post here on clarfiying the Bible's subject matter. Also, cf. my post of Medieval allegory and historical criticism). By jettisoning Christian tradition, it has adopted another one (modernism, for example).

I'd appreciate any feed back pointing out where I'm misrepresenting either Christianity or Judaism, or simply not thinking logically enough!

Update: Tzvee, of Tvee's Talmudic Blog, has a number of interesting and critical posts, gathered here, on Sack's understanding of the Siddur. Of particular relevance to this post is his post Welcome to the great Jewish assembly.

Buber's "canonical theory"

I was surprised to read the following thoughts from Martin Buber, written in 1964 and yet inspired by a Bible course he had held in Germany between 1934 and 1935. They seem to pretty well prepare the way for Childs' canonical approach:

Biblische text sind als Texte der Bibel zu behandeln, das heißt: einer Einheit, die, wenn auch geworden, aus vielen und vielfältigen, ganzen und fragmentarischen Elementen zusammengewachsen, doch eine echte organische Einheit und nur als solche wahrhaft zu begreifen ist. Das bibelstiftende Bewußtsein, das aus der Fülle eines vermutlich weit größeren Schrifttums das aufnahm, was sich in die Einheit fügte, und in den Fassungen, die dieser Genüge taten, ist nicht erst mit der eigentlichen Zusammenstellung des Kanons, sondern schon lange voher, in allmählichem Zusammenschluß des Zusammengehörigen, wirksam gewesen. Die Kompositionsarbeit war bereits "biblisch", ehe die erste Vorstellung einer bibelartigen Struktur erwachte; sie ging auf eine jeweilige Zusammenschau der verschiedenen Teile aus, sie stiftete Bezüge zwischen Abschnitt und Abschnitt, zwischen Buch und Buh, sie ließ den tragenden Begriff durch Stelle um Stelle klären, ließ die heimliche Bedeutung eines Vorgangs, die sich in der einen Erzählung nur eben leicht auftat, in einer andern sich voll erschließen, ließ Bild durch Bild und Symbol durch Symbol erleuchten. Manches von dem, was man "Midrasch" nennt, ist schon in der Bibel selbst, in diesen Zeugnissen einer zur biblischen Einheit strebenden Auslese- und Koordinationsarbeit zu finden, deren stärkstes Werkzeug eine diskret folgerichtige Verwendung von Wiederholungen, Motivworten, Assonanzen war. Wir stehen hier erst am Anfang einer methodischen Erkenntnis. Es gilt den Blick für diese Entsprechungen und Verknüpfungen und überhaupt für die Einheitsfunktion in der Bibel zu schärfen. Dann ergeben sich uns ganz andre Gebilde als die der "Quellenschriften", auf die die alttestamentliche Wissenschaft der letzten Jahrhunderte den Bau der Schrift zurückzuführen sucht; es ergibt sich größere Verschiedenheit und größere Gemeinsamkeit und das in seiner Dynamik erkennbare Werden dieser aus jener. Damit soll nicht gesagt sein, daß man sich nicht mit den Thesen der modernen Wissenschaft vertraut machen solle. Man soll es tun; man soll nur auch wissen, was es ist, das man durch sie erfährt. Thesen kommen und gehen; die Texte bleiben. [*]

It could do with a bit of refinement, but it's a great start. I'd love to know where he got these ideas from ...

[*]M. Buber, "Ein Hinweis für Bibelkurse," in Werke: zweite Band: Schriften zur Bibel (Kösel-Verlang, Munich), 1964, pp. 1185-1186.

Fighting for Torah

Here is one of my favourite lines from Chaim Potok's The Promise. The context seems to be a typical motif in Potok's work: the tension created within the Jewish community by the clash of modern, rationalistic, critical approaches to Bible, Talmud and spirituality with older, traditional certainties and modes of being. For a great quote on "those crazy Hasidim," go here. In this instance, the fiery and almost tragic figure of Rav Kalman embodies something of the latter approach (he's also a holocaust survivor). His counterpart and seeming nemesis is the intelligent, educated, and open-minded rabbinical student, Reuven. Reuven took his rabbinical exam with Kalman and refused to budge on his commitment to the validity of form criticism for Talmudic study. Yet, despite this seeming heresy, Kalman could not get over the intense love Reuven has for his subject matter: the holy Torah. He grants Reuven a position on the yeshiva faculty. Here's what he says to him afterwards:

I will be able to keep my eyes on you here," he said. "I could not have influenced your father. But you I can influence. Why should I give you to Gordon when I can keep you here? I have lost too many students. Too many ... I will take a chance on you, Reuven. I have given you my smicha and will keep my eyes on you to watch how you teach. We will have many fights. But they will be for the sake of Torah (1997: 340).

I love that.

P.S. For a series of quotes from this book, go here.

Those Hasidim ...

"He is a remarkable man," my father murmured. "They are remarkable people. There is so much about them that is distasteful to me. But they are remarkable people."

"I wish they weren't so afraid of new ideas."

"You want a great deal, Reuven. The Messiah has not yet come. Will new ideas enable them to go on singing and dancing?"

"We can't ignore the truth, abba."

"No," he said. "We cannot ignore the truth. At the same time, we cannot quite sing and dance as they do." He was silent a moment. "That is the dilemma of our time, Reuven. I do not know what the answer is."

Chaim Potok, The Promise (Anchor Books, 1969; 1997), 312.

A Jewish and Christian homily on Psalm 24

The Jewish one is by Rav Kook, the first Ashkenazi Rabbi of British Mandate Palestine. He asks the following questions:

What exactly are these gates and 'entrances of the world' that refuse to open? Why is the request repeated? And why does the psalm describe God first as a mighty warrior in battle, and later as the 'God of Hosts'?

The Christian sermon is by Protestant systematic theologian Eberhard Jüngel (1968), currently head of the Tübingen theological faculty (I believe).

I find it interesting to compare the two sermons. It is clear that the assumptions involved in how one actualizes a text for the community of faith have massive interpretative implications. Jüngel seems to be reading the literal sense of the text while trying to extend that meaning metaphorically in terms of the Psalm's own literary presentation, as it stands on the page (ableit within an existentialistic framework). Rav Kook, on the other hand, is reading the Psalm section (vv. 7-10; there's no reference to the rest of the Psalm as a hermeneutical framework) within the context of Talmudic midrash. The two entities - Scripture and Interpretation - are moulded into one and become the object of another interpretation.

It seems to me that what is at stake here are differing understandings of the substance of Scripture, the reality to which it points and within which it participates. Getting to grips with that may help the two faith groups to understand better where the other is coming from.

(I should add there in addition to Jüngel's interpretation, there are a host of very different Patristic interpretations of the Psalm, which I've summarized here. I intend to soon post on interpretations of Psalm 24 in Jewish tradition. Kook's version above seems to take a different tack to what I've read about the Talmudic interpretation ... ).

From Jewish conversos to mixed marriages: a question of split identity?

Miriam Shaviv of Haaretz reviews a fascinating study by Yirmiyahu Yovl in her article "Jewish by candlelight - from Spanish converso to modern mixed marriage." Here are the opening paragraphs:

Diego Arias was born a Jew in 15th-century Spain, but his parents converted him to Catholicism following a wave of anti-Jewish persecution. Later in life, as royal chief financier of Castile, and one of the most powerful figures in the land, he enjoyed chanting Jewish prayers; ate hamin, a stew in the style of a traditional Sabbath cholent, on Saturdays, and was once seen treating a Christian saint's effigy with disrespect. Yet he did not consider himself the least bit Jewish, and - just to complicate matters further - occasionally expressed skepticism about all religions.

So, was Arias a Jew, a Christian or an atheist? In "The Other Within," Yirmiyahu Yovel, founder and chairman of the Jerusalem Spinoza Institute, tries to make sense of the religious identity of such Marranos ? the Jews of Spain and Portugal who were coerced into converting to Christianity in the14th and 15th centuries - and their descendants.

A prayer by Elie Wiesel

In response to my recent post A Christian response to an image by Elie Wiesel?, I was informed in the comments that Wiesel is not, in fact, an atheist. I repent in dust an ashes (though I should point out that is was not really relevant to the point of the post, which was about the image he used) and have been inspired to seek out more material by this profound man.

I was given a helping hand in this direction by a kind commentator who contacted me offline and shared this prayer, written by Wiesel in 1997 in an op-ed piece in the New York Times at the time of the High Holidays. [She informs me she got it from the blog Mystical Politics, the author of which also provides the closing comments below]. I love it, and hope you will too.

What about my faith in you, Master of the Universe?

I now realize I never lost it, not even over there, during the darkest hours of my life. I don't know why I kept on whispering my daily prayers, and those one reserves for the Sabbath, and for the holidays, but I did recite them, often with my father and, on Rosh ha-Shanah eve, with hundreds of inmates at Auschwitz. Was it because the prayers remained a link to the vanished world of my childhood?

But my faith was no longer pure. How could it be? It was filled with anguish rather than fervor, with perplexity more than piety. In the kingdom of eternal night, on the Days of Awe, which are the Days of Judgment, my traditional prayers were directed to you as well as against you, Master of the Universe. What hurt me more: your absence or your silence?

In my testimony I have written harsh words, burning words about your role in our tragedy. I would not repeat them today. But I felt them then. I felt them in every cell of my being. Why did you allow if not enable the killer day after day, night after night to torment, kill and annihilate tens of thousands of Jewish children? Why were they abandoned by your Creation? These thoughts were in no way destined to diminish the guilt of the guilty. Their established culpability is irrelevant to my "problem" with you, Master of the Universe. In my childhood I did not expect much from human beings. But I expected everything from you.

Where were you, God of kindness, in Auschwitz? What was going on in heaven, at the celestial tribunal, while your children were marked for humiliation, isolation and death only because they were Jewish?

These questions have been haunting me for more than five decades. You have vocal defenders, you know. Many theological answers were given me, such as: "God is God. He alone knows what He is doing. One has no right to question Him or His ways." Or: "Auschwitz was a punishment for European Jewry's sins of assimilation and/or Zionism." And: "Isn't Israel the solution? Without Auschwitz, there would have been no Israel."

I reject all these answers. Auschwitz must and will forever remain a question mark only: it can be conceived neither with God nor without God. At one point, I began wondering whether I was not unfair with you. After all, Auschwitz was not something that came down ready-made from heaven. It was conceived by men, implemented by men, staffed by men. And their aim was to destroy not only us but you as well. Ought we not to think of your pain, too? Watching your children suffer at the hands of your other children, haven't you also suffered?

The author of Mystical Politics comments on this prayer:

With this essay, Wiesel was rethinking what he wrote in Night. I think we need to consider seriously what he has written - both originally, and in his rethinking fifty years later.

Amen.

For another prayer of his, equally moving, go here.

For a Times article on the man, go here.

A Christian response to an image by Elie Wiesel?

I don't mean response in the sense of a thought out intellectual argument (though that would be nice), but in the the psychological sense of, "What do you think, see, feel, etc. when you read the quote I am about to post below?" It's a gut reaction kind of thing. I'm only asking for a gut reaction (though secretly I want a profound theological answer), because I think the subject matter of this quote is so utterly profound that anyone who presumes to be able to have grasped it is making a bold claim indeed. There are some things, it seems to me, that will remain a mystery and maybe ought to. Even though all of us are just yearning to know the answer. I am - so if there really is a thought out intellectual response to this then please let me know. I would really like to know.

Here's Wiesel's quote, which I garnered from John's list of holocaust survivor quotes. I've not read Wiesel before, but eruptions from the soul such such as these point to a man who is worth it.

Wiesel (located in the photo above) describes one of the worst days of his life in Buchenwald concentration camp. It was the hanging of a young boy. Read the details in the second quote from top here. The quote concludes with the following:

His tongue was still read, his eyes were not yet glazed. Behind me, I heard the same man asking: 'Where is God now?' and I heard a voice within me answer him: 'Where is He? Here He is--He is hanging here on this gallows . . . '

On the basis of his comments in the quotes mentioned, Wiesel would seem to be an atheist (he eloquently describes his death of God experience in the first quote here, though see the comments to this thread which refute this). But should a statement like this lead one to think so? That's the crazy thing ... when I first read this my gut reaction was, "Oh, he's a Christian." Of course, I soon readjusted my interpretative lens and figured out that he meant something else. God did die, in some sense, on that noose.

But that that is exactly what Christians believe, isn't it? The King of Glory, the Creator of the Universe ... hung on an instrument of death and torture, died, and went to Hell.

This event meant something profound for Wiesel; as far as I understand, he's spent much of his life trying to process it. As for me, I'm still trying to figure it out, though in my own, odd, Christian way. This is one moment where I realize that true theology is always faith seeking understanding. I believe it, but I don't understand it (and I oddly find it comforting at the same time).

Do you? Please explain.

[p.s. J.K. Gayle has linked to an interesting article on Wiesel by Time Magazine: "Author, Teacher Witness"].

[p.p.s. here are some other relevant quotes, Lenten ones in German]

Holocaust quotes

I'm coming at this a bit late, as Holocaust Day was a few days ago (April 21, 2009; Nissan 5769). John Anderson of Hesed we'emet has posted some powerful quotes from holocaust survivors. Here they are:

"Never shall I forget that night, the first night in camp, which turned my life into one long night, seven times cursed and seven times sealed. Never shall I forget that smoke. Never shall I forget the little faces of the children, whose bodies I saw turned into wreaths of smoke beneath a silent blue sky. Never shall I forget those flames which consumed my faith forever. Never shall I forget that nocturnal silence which deprived me, for all eternity, of the desire to live. Never shall I forget those moments which murdered my God and my soul and turned my dreams to dust. Never shall I forget these things, even if I am condemned to live as long as God Himself. Never."
---Elie Wiesel, Night, 32

"I witnessed other hangings. I never saw a single one of the victims weep. For a long time those dried-up bodies had forgotten the bitter taste of tears. Except once [ . . . ] One day when we came back from work, we saw three gallows rearing up in the assembly place, three black crows. Roll call. SS all round us, machine guns trained: the traditional ceremony. Three victims in chains--and one of them, the little servant, the sad-eyed angel. The SS seemed more preoccupied, more disturbed than usual. To hang a young boy in front of thousands of spectators was no light matter. The head of the camp read the verdict. All eyes were on the child. He was lividly pale, almost calm, biting his lips. The gallows threw its shadow over him. [ . . . ] The three necks were placed at the same moment within the nooses. 'Long live liberty!' cried the two adults. But the child was silent. 'Where is God? Where is He?' someone behind me asked. At a sign from the head of the camp, the three chairs tipped over. Total silence throughout the camp. On the horizon, the sun was setting. 'Bare your heads!' yelled the head of the camp. His voice was raucous. We were weeping. 'Cover your heads!' Then the march past began. The two adults were no longer alive. their tongues hung swollen, blue-tinged. But the third rope was still moving, being so light, the child was still alive. . . . For more than half an hour he stayed there, struggling between life and death, dying in slow agony under our eyes. And we had to look him full in the face. He was still alive when I passed in front of him. His tongue was still read, his eyes were not yet glazed. Behind me, I heard the same man asking: 'Where is God now?' and I heard a voice within me answer him: 'Where is He? Here He is--He is hanging here on this gallows . . . ' That night the soup tasted of corpses."
---Elie Wiesel, Night, 60-62

"Their life is short, but their number is endless; they, the muselmanner, the drowned, form the backbone of the camp, an anonymous mass, continually renewed and always identical, of non-men who march and labour in silence, the divine spark dead within them, already too empty to really suffer. One hesitates to call them living: one hesitates to call their death death, in the face of which they have no fear, as they are too tired to understand. They crowd my memory with their faceless presences, and if I could enclose all the evil of our time in one image, I would choose this image which is familiar to me: an emaciated man, with head dropped and shoulders curved, on whose face and in whose eyes not a trace of a thought is to be seen. If the drowned have no story, and single and broad is the path to perdition, the paths to salvation are many, difficult and improbable."
---Primo Levi, Survival in Auschwitz, 90

"I'm not alive. People believe memories grow vague, are erased by time, since nothing endures against the passage of time. That's the difference; time does not pass over me, over us. It doesn't erase anything, doesn't undo it. I'm not a live. I died in Auschwitz but no one knows it."
---Charlotte Delbo, Auschwitz and After, 267

And while he was never a prisoner in the camps, the words of Rabbi Irving Greenberg are as true today as when he first uttered them. It is an important caution of which we must all be aware:

"No statement, theological or otherwise, should be made that would not be credible in the presence of burning children."

In my opinion (Phil, not John), the best documentary on the Holocaust is the nine hour masterpiece by Claude Lanzmann Shoah.

Masorah vs Logos

According to the Masorah of Psalm 24: 3, the phrase בְהַר־יְהוָה occurs three times in the Bible: in our verse here and in Genesis 22:14 and Isaiah 30: 29. No matter how I type this phrase into my Logos word search, however (i.e. with or without vowels and accents), I only get two results: Ps 24: 3 and Isaiah 30: 29.

How is that possible? The only difference between Ge 22:14 and the other verses (apart from the accents) is that it doesn't have a maqqef. If I speed search the highlighted text in Gen 22: 14, I only get one hit.

Am I doing something wrong or were the Masoretes really inspired?

Update:

As I've written on the side bar of this blog, I'm a technological numpty. I've figured out the problem. Gen 22:14 does turn up in the morphological search, as long as all the settings are right! Nevertheless, I thought it would be interesting to post the differences between Logos and the Masorah in the rest of Psalm 24. All the references, in fact, are completely accurate appart from two:

• 1) v. 2: According to the Masorah: יְכוֹנְנֶהָ occurs 4 times, though Mm doesn't say where (I think this means that this reference wasn't in the Leningrad codex ...). My Logos search only produces 3 results (Psalm 24:2; Psalm 48:9; Psalm 87:5). Someone has suggested offline that the missing fourth could be Ps 7:13, which has a waw: ויכוננה. I think this would be odd though, as waws were significant for the Masoretes and were either counted as a separate form or at least remarked upon.

• v. 5:Masorah says that יִשָּׂא occurs 37 times. Logos has produes 39 hits. The note is "Mp sub loco," so I don't know which verses the Masoretes had in mind.

Israel's Catholic Jews

I've hardly posted of late due to time pressure. I hope to be posting more regularly in the future. In the meantime, a fascinating article from Haaretz on Israel's Catholic Jews. It raises the tricky question of Jewish identity (the law states Aliyah is denied to Jews who convert to other religions, whereas in reality it only applies to Christianity; see my post Why aren't messianic Jews Jewish?) and the relationships between church and synagogue (for a related post, see my The Judge of Church and Synagogue). I especially appreciated the biographical information. Here it is:

For Jerusalem's Hebrew-speaking Catholics, Jewish identity is cardinal

By Donald Snyder, The Forward

The traditional Jewish blessings over wine and bread, the Kiddush and the Motzi, echoed through the sanctuary at 10 HaRav Kook Street in Jerusalem. It was a room of striking simplicity - with just one small cross in brown wood.

Four Catholic priests wearing white robes and green stoles stood at the altar, as one of them recited these blessings. But unlike the blessings at a festive Jewish meal, these were blessings of consecration, transforming the bread and the wine into the body and blood of Christ. Just before taking Communion, church members exchanged the greetings of Pax Christi, Peace of Christ, saying to one another, "Shalom HaMashiach."

At the Church of Sts. Simeon & Anna, all the prayers are in Hebrew, as was this Evening Mass for the community known as the Hebrew-speaking Catholic community of Israel.
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This is not a messianic Christian gathering, but neither is it just another Catholic Church serving the country's 22,000 Roman Catholics, most of whom are Arab.

Active since 1955, the Hebrew-speaking Catholic Vicariate, also known as the Association of St. James, was founded mainly to serve European-Catholic immigrants to the new Jewish state - many of whom are married to Jews - shortly after its founding in 1948. With branches in Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, Haifa and Beersheba, the association is fully welcomed by the same society that bristles at the missionizing of Jews for Jesus. But in some ways, the backgrounds of several of its most prominent members are no less provocative.

They include strongly identified Jews - including several Holocaust survivors - who converted to Catholicism and view themselves as a philosemitic redoubt of advocacy for love of Jews and Israel within the church.

"We see ourselves rooted in Israeli society with a real respect for Jews as they see themselves, and we follow the Jewish liturgical calendar and observe many of their holidays, like Sukkot and Hanukkah," explained the Rev. David Mark Neuhaus, the vicar for the Hebrew Speaking Community in the Latin Patriarchate of Jerusalem. Neuhaus also gives lectures about Judaism and the Bible to Palestinian and Jordanian Arabs training for the priesthood at Beit Jala Seminary and Bethlehem University.

The primary objective of the Hebrew-speaking Catholic community, he explained, is to sharpen the church's awareness of its Jewish origins and the Jewish identity of Jesus and his apostles.

The association's population peaked at several thousand in the 1950s and '60s. Today it has about 400 members. Many left to get better Catholic educations for their children. But despite dwindling numbers, this Roman Catholic community shows a robust spiritual commitment.

Most of the immigrants come from mixed Catholic-Jewish marriages in which the wife is a practicing Catholic and the husband a non-observant Jew. Children of these mixed marriages are often raised as Catholics. Some of the original members were Jews who had been baptized to survive the Holocaust and wanted to remain Catholic after settling in Israel.

One of the early Jewish members of the Hebrew-speaking Catholic community was Brother Daniel, whose status as a Hebrew-speaking, Jewish-born Zionist Catholic priest created legal history in Israel when he sought citizenship there under the country's Law of Return, the statute guaranteeing citizenship on request to virtually all Jews who enter Israel.

Born Oswald Rufeisen into an Orthodox Jewish family in the Polish town of Oswiecim - known in Yiddish as Auschwitz - the future priest was a member of the Zionist Bnei Akiva youth group during his teenage years. Rufeisen fled Poland eastward when Germany invaded in 1939, but he ended up as a slave laborer for the Nazis in Lithuania. Escaping again, he used his language skills to obtain a false identity and employment as a translator for the police in the town of Mir in what is today Belarus. There, he is credited with having saved several hundred Jews by warning them of the Nazis' impending plan to liquidate the Mir ghetto and helping engineer their escape. He himself hid out for the remainder of the war in a local convent, during which time he decided to convert to Catholicism.

On his arrival in Israel in 1959, Rufeisen, by then a Carmelite monk, requested citizenship under the Law of Return. Amid great controversy, the government denied his application, narrowing the Law of Return to apply only to Jews who had not embraced another religion. Rufeisen's case went to the Supreme Court, which ruled 4-1 against the priest. Instead, Rufeisen became an Israeli citizen through naturalization, and lived there, a key member of the Hebrew-Catholic community?s Haifa branch, until his death in 1998.

Due to the Brother Daniel ruling, the Rev. Gregorcz Pawlowski did not even try to come to Israel under the Law of Return. Born Zvi Griner to an observant Jewish family, Pawlowski, now 78, was an 11-year-old boy in Zamosc, Poland, when the German army arrived and slaughtered his parents and his younger sisters. He managed to escape, and survived the war with a forged Catholic baptismal certificate, begging local peasants for food and shelter. He was near death from disease and starvation when the Russians drove the Germans from Poland in late 1944.

Pawlowski was placed in a Catholic orphanage, where he attended a school run by nuns. He became a priest after surviving the Holocaust. A longtime member of the Hebrew-speaking Catholic Vicariate, he also ministers to a Polish-Catholic community in Jaffa. Nevertheless, he plans to be buried in the Jewish cemetery in Izbica, Poland, where his mother and sisters were murdered. The slightly built, white-haired priest has asked Rabbi Michael Schudrich, Poland's chief rabbi, to recite the Kaddish, the Jewish prayer for the dead, at his funeral. He also fasts on Yom Kippur.

His simply furnished apartment at 4 Ben Zvi Street has two names on the door: Gregorcz Pawlowski in Latin letters, and beneath it, in Hebrew, Zvi Griner - two different names for a man of seemingly incompatible religious identities.

Speaking in Polish through an interpreter, Pawlowski told his story to this reporter in a monotone, his face expressionless. The trauma of his boyhood appeared to drain all emotion from his lengthy narration. He never smiled.

Neuhaus, the community's vicar, is a 46-year-old Jesuit priest raised as a Jew in South Africa. His path to Catholicism began when his parents sent him to study in a yeshiva in Jerusalem as a teenager.

Neuhaus told of how in Jerusalem, he met a Russian-Orthodox nun related to the family of the last tsar of Russia, Nicholas II. "I was 15, and she was 89," Neuhaus carefully explained. "She had an incredible influence over me from a spiritual standpoint. She radiated the presence of God. Her influence raised many spiritual questions about my faith."

Neuhaus promised his parents that he would discuss his religious direction with them and wait 10 years before making a final decision. He did as he promised, converting and becoming ordained at the age of 26.

"I attend a Reform synagogue regularly," said Neuhaus. "I go to the synagogue as an expression of who I am historically, socially and, to a certain extent, spiritually. The melodies of the synagogue are much closer to my heart than the chants in a Benedictine monastery, because I grew up with those melodies. Many of our members attend synagogue as an act of solidarity."

Neuhaus points out that Israel is the only society where Jews constitute a majority. The Jewish religion, history and culture establish the rhythm of life for the Catholic community, he said.

"For us, the universal Catholic reflection on the Jewish identity of Jesus and the Jewish roots of our faith is not just one element in our renewal after the Second Vatican Council," Neuhaus said in an interview with Zenit, the Catholic news service that covers the Vatican. "It is also part of our daily existence."

In an interview at the Pontifical Bible Institute, Neuhaus said that some members of the Hebrew-speaking Catholic community helped formulate the reforms of the Second Vatican Council, which repudiated charges of deicide against the Jews, denounced anti-Semitism and ruled that Mass may be offered in the vernacular. These reforms were contained in the founding charter of the Hebrew-speaking Catholic community 10 years before Vatican II convened, Neuhaus said.

Neuhaus views his community as one that led the way for Catholics to see Jews as brothers, not as evil people determined to subvert Christianity. Its members live according to the words spoken by Pope John Paul II when he visited the Great Synagogue of Rome on April 13, 1986: "You are our dear brothers or, we might say, our elder brothers."

A rabbi learns from a pope

The chief rabbi of Poland wrote a beautiful article for Ha'aretz recently: What I learned from Jean Paul II.

Here is a touching extract:

The end of Pope John Paul II's life, on April 2, 2005, was a very difficult time in Poland. The funeral was held on a Friday. My synagogue in Warsaw announced a memorial prayer for him at the start of Shabbat. As I approached the synagogue, I was shocked.

The line of those waiting to get inside was huge. Over 1,000 people attended - a few hundred were local Polish Jews, but the rest were Polish Catholics. Just think about it - hundreds of Catholics accepting that it was normal to share a prayer for the Pope in a synagogue in Poland! In that moment, I saw before my very eyes how Pope John Paul II had changed the world. How so much of what he practiced during his own life had truly inspired others to act similarly. For me, this is the ultimate tribute to the teachings and life of Pope John Paul II.

Outrage in the West Bank

Can somebody please justify this to me.


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Jewish radicalism in the IDF

I posted a while back on Hamas, an organization which I consider to be terrorist and therefore illegitimate. The Palestinian journalist Laila links to an Israeli newspaper article in Ha'aretz detailing examples of Jewish extremism within the ranks of the IDF: IDF Rabbinate Publication during Gaza war. I'm no fan of the Baruch Goldsteins of this world. Nevertheless, the challenge - for me at least - is to critically evaluate the information within the context of the "big picture." The big picture, however, seems to be a fairly amorphous concept, as each particular construal involves assumptions that go beyond the "mere" facts on the ground.

Read Laila's post for excerpts. She has also posted a list of ideas for how to support the Palestinians practically and spiritually.

For a Christian organisation whith humanitarian links to Gaza, go to the Mennonite Central Committee website. One of the suggestions they make is to fast for the Palestians. I actually did that in the middle of the conflict, using the Lutheran version of the Liturgy of the Hours as a template. I didn't know what to say, so I prayed the Psalms and texts as if I were there (watching videos like this or this helped). My idea was to pray "vicariously," letting the Psalmist's "Lord open my lips, and I shall proclaim your praise" become potentially that of a Palestinian believer, the Psalmist's praise, lament, and supplication become that of those living in the midst of destruction. I don't know if such kinds of prayer "work" with God, i.e. lead him to strengthen his people, but they certainly opened the texts up for me in a completely new dimension.

[HT for the link goes to Halden. In fact, his latest post - Morally Based Political Action - speaks to my last comments on prayer. He says: " the most morally basic political action is prayer–or more comprehensively, doxology."

The Middle East's forgotten Jewish refugees

For those who wish have a bit of perspective on the international plight of Jews worldwide, especially at the hands of seemingly relentless Muslim persecution, I highly recommend the informative blog Point of No Return: Information and Links about the Middle East's forgotten Jewish refugees. The author doesn't write polemics, he or she simply serves as a distributor of information. The latest article concerns the immanent relocation of Yemeni Jews.

And here's a fascinating looking video on the same subject. It's 40 minutes long, so I'll probably give it a look tomorrow (Sunday) if I find time. Here's the blurb:

In 1945 there were up to one million Jews living in the Middle East and North Africa outside the Palestine Mandate - many living in communities dating back more than three millennia. Today, there are several thousand. Who are these Jews? What precipitated their mass-exodus in the 20th century? Where did they go? And why don't we know their stories?

Oh, and on this issue, see Bernard Lewis' relevant article.

Levenson on Brueggemann and Childs

In the comments thread on his excellent post critiquing Brueggemann's Old Testament Theology, Stephen Cook posts the following quotes from Jewish scholar Jon Levenson's brilliant article, "Is Brueggemann Really a Pluralist?", Harvard Theological Review 93/3 (2000), pp. 265-294.

p. 279) Defending Childs, Levenson writes: "Unlike Brueggemann's, Childs's respect for Judaism is rooted in his Christian faith and not in some hypothetical vantagepoint that is neutral as between the two traditions and therefore able to pronounce them of equal worth. By forthrightly owning his particularism as a Christian, Childs is able to respect and learn from the particular tradition that is Judaism."

p. 282) Defending himself against B.'s charge that his biblical theology is too Jewish, Levenson repeates his long-held position: "'the pulverizing effects of the historical-critical method do not respect the boundaries of religions: the method dismembers all midrashic systems, reversing tradition.' Those are hardly the words of an uncritical traditionalist of any sort, and they are light years away from that of which Brueggemann erroneously accuses me: 'preemption of the text for Jewish reading.'"

p. 294) In the conclusion, re "The Limits of Commonality," Levenson writes, "Whatever the validity of Jewish, Christian, and historical-critical modes of reading, and whatever the degree and the value of the overlap among them, at their deepest levels they are irreducibly different. Critiquing Brevard Childs and me, Walter Brueggemann speaks of "the odd triangle of interpretation in which we find ourselves concerning Jewish, Christian and critical perspectives." A genuine pluralism accepts and attends to "the odd triangle" and does not seek to minimize or dissipate diversity by appeal to commonalties, real or imagined."