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A Human Religion
Translated from Hebrew by S.
NAthan
l'ilui nishmat Esther bat mordechai
Religion is perceived on the one
hand as a system of laws whose purpose is the enforcement of arbitrary
rules of behavior. These rules have no relation to the utilitarian
agenda of resolving the problems of one's existence. Religion is
perceived as the deliberate ignoring of existence’s needs, in favor of
another world’s needs.
Religion is a deliberate
deviation – away from the narrow system of the existential survival
instincts, and toward an axis of confrontation with survival which
diverges from the narrow cycle of here and now. Religion serves the
human need to break out of the stranglehold of space and time toward the
wide open spaces of infinity. The rules of the game of religion are
characterized by a movement from the tangible to the abstract. From
the clear and exact to the vague and undefined – to the mystical.
From logic and common sense to the absurd – to that which cannot be judged
by utilitarian criteria, or by any other criteria belonging to a fixed
monitoring system.
On the other hand, religion
serves to bypass the compelling distresses of reality, guiding one toward
an escape from the need to confront it, turning one away from a reality in
which effort invested and successful results stand in direct correlation
to one another, to look toward a reality in which effort invested stands
in direct correlation to nothing at all in this world.
Along comes the Torah with the
latest intelligence. “These are things man eats the dividends from, in
this world, while the capital is kept for him for the next world.”
He eats here, and there as well. His needs are not arbitrarily
pushed aside. He is not required to sacrifice his existence for the
sake of an abstract value. He is not required to uproot himself from
his real and tangible situation for the sake of a vague and misty
subjective experience that reduces the fullness of objective existential
experience.
There is no spirituality without
expression of values. There are no values that are not attached to
human morality. There is no generality without particulars.
There is no “ahm Yisrael” without Reb Yisrael – without the
individual Jew. There is no society without private individuals,
just as there is no private individual who does not belong to a
group. “Do not separate yourself from the public,” insists the
Torah. There is a symbiotic connection between the group and the
private human being.
This is the meaningful
content of Sefer Devarim, which is called Mishneh Torah, meaning
the entire Torah on one foot. “Love your friend as yourself – this
is a great rule of the Torah.” “What is hateful to you, to your
friend do not do.” Sefer Devarim brings the Torah down, as it were,
from the lofty heights of the mountain to the human dimension. Sefer
Devarim bends the laws of creation and fits them to human behavioral
quality. “And the days that we walked from Kadesh Barnea until the
time we crossed Zared River were thirty eight years, until the
termination of that whole generation of warriors, from the midst of the
camp.” Hazal comment on this pasuk: “When they left Egypt, they
crossed a great sea in one night by the sheer force of their faith.
And the faith-lacking generation of the desert were halted by a river
whose dimensions were one zeret’s length by one zeret’s width, and they
could not cross it for thirty eight years – until the termination of that
entire faith-lacking generation.”
We see here that objective
reality does not determine success. Control of reality is
transferred from natural law to human qualitative power, and it is this
latter which determines the extent of existential
success.
Thus the right to the promised
land is not dependent upon the physical might of the seven nations who
dwell upon it, but rather upon their declining qualitative level, and upon
the soaring qualitative level of ahm Yisrael.
A new state of affairs has come
about in the creation that expresses its Creator. The individual
Jewish person is now the water line that runs between the universe and its
Creator. From now on, the Creator broadcasts messages to the
universe by way of the individual person.
It is important to note that
man’s function as a broadcasting station is not a passive role. This
obligation and this duty are a function of man’s ability to determine the
rules of the game in the agreement between the Creator and His universe,
that agreement which took on flesh to become a covenant, between man – who
became the bearer of the burden of responsibility for the world upon his
weak shoulder – and his Creator.
How is it possible to place a
burden so heavy upon the shoulder of a creature so limited? The key
to this mystery is to be found in the other side of the equation: Man
bears upon his second shoulder a burden much heavier than the burden of
the universe. Simultaneously with the burden of the universe, man is
given the title of nezer habria, “crown of creation”.
This is not merely a title appended onto a prior entity. It
transforms man into new and different stuff: He turns into Godly
Presence, as nezer habria, as in “all the nations of the land [and
also all the other creants] will see that the Name of God is called upon
you, and they will fear you.” As Godly Presence, he is capable of
bearing the responsibility for the universe, for the simple reason that
creation has been ordered to obey him.
Man thus wears three crowns: The
crown of one formed in God’s image, the crown of one controlling one’s own
existence, and the crown of one controlling the creation. Man wears
these three crowns within the three concentric circles that surround him:
The first circle is the personal circle that encompasses “I”, one’s
own uniquely original quality. Within this circle, sustenance is
drawn in a direct flow – from the image of God within one’s soul to one’s
Godly source.
The second circle encompasses
one’s personal expression, which is directed toward one’s immediate
environment. This is an expression of one’s Godly Presence, through
creativity, through actualizing one’s unique qualitative potential, thus
carving its personal stamp upon one’s environment – an environment that
provides the raw materials for expressing one’s moral, value-based
uniqueness.
The third circle encompasses the
reality that is not directly included within one’s existence’s needs or
within one’s direct sphere of influence. This circle contains the
universe that is indirectly subject to one’s Godly will, that obeys one’s
value-based expectations of actualization, dedicated to actualizing the
causes of justice, goodness, and truth. The laws of nature are
transformed, as soon as they are included in this circle – into laws of
morality. They become the law of the good and the righteous.
“Justice shall you pursue” becomes a law of nature.
“Halila. It would be a desecration for the Creator of the
universe to cause the death of a tsadik together with a rasha.
” The prophets’ demand, as their natural right, that justice be
clear and visible. They refused to be satisfied with hidden justice,
with justice which, while congruent with the long-term Divine Plan,
appears to short-term superficially-perceiving human eyes as though “for
the tsadik, all goes badly. For the rasha, all goes
well.”
This circle too – though it
appears unconnected and inaccessible to man – joins with the second circle
to become an intimate reality directly reflecting Moral Man, who has
absorbed Spiritual Man who deals with the worlds above and beyond the
horizons of human existence. When Spiritual Man is absorbed by Moral
Man, then wonder of wonders, the spiritual becomes the spirit of
life. It revives existence’s dry bones, turning them into its raw
materials, turning it into the robot who hurries too (though he is
mechanical and though he is perhaps compelled against his wishes) to join
the animated and ecstatic circle, to dance with a Hasid’s devotion and
dvaikut, to turn the parched eastern wind into a heart’s joyous
song.
In the wake of this vast cosmic
revolution, man finds himself entangled in unexpected difficulties.
The promised land that he has anticipated, by force of the Divine promise,
and that he has assumed to be surely and unequivocally safe in his pocket,
now becomes his heart’s desire, his soul’s yearning. It absorbs him
entirely, requiring of him self-sacrifice, devotion, endless investment of
effort, and standing up to sublime moral expectations. What once
seemed like a comfortably owned property and a good deal turns into a test
of one’s very existence, of one’s quality, which renews itself constantly
in the face of trials and temptations that contradict his very
nature.
Quality’s test has pushed natural
survival’s test aside. It is not as an existential right that one
receives the promised land but as a tool for the expression of one’s Godly
Presence, as the tool for one’s service of one’s Creator. Upon the
dweller of the land is placed a mission upon which all of creation
depends: To cultivate the place of encounter which connects heaven and
earth. A place which the cultivation thereof causes union between
opposites that contradict one another and threaten the wholeness and the
stability of the universe. Makom HaMikdash, the place of the
Sanctuary, the place in which spirit receives its tangible actualization,
and the tangible receives its spiritual quality.
One must not, God forbid, fail in
one’s mission, and this is no reference to technical failure – to a
failure in the “doing”, in the fulfillment of the ritual commandments or
the service of the korbanot – but rather to failure in the human
realm, in “being” whole in one’s moral perfection. Upon the
interpersonal sphere ben adam la’havero rests the interspiritual
sphere, the ben adam laMakom, the connection between man and
God. The moral burden is immeasurably heavier than any objective
mission.
It happens suddenly, without
prior warning, and despite God’s promise to our forefathers, despite “see,
I have given...the land that God promised to your forefathers.”
Suddenly the Divine promise is insufficient. A personal
difficulty unexpectedly appears: “I cannot bear you by
myself.” “How can I bear it all alone?” “Your tiresome
nuisance...your quarrels.” “This teaches that they were nuisances,
teaches that they were heretics, and teaches that they were quarrelsome.”
(Rashi)
It was not that Israel had
deteriorated. Rather the new personal role in avodat Hashem
had had the effect of highlighting every personal deficiency in stark
relief, a condition which could impede their chances for success at
inheriting the land, whereas at an earlier stage, the land had been freely
given to them, it had lain in their pockets as paht b’salo, ‘the
loaf of bread that lies already in one’s basket’, by virtue of God’s
promise to their forefathers.
Suddenly a new need is felt – the
need for morally/personally qualitative people. “Get you wise and
insightful people...” “Also I was snubbed by God, because of you...”
since the onset of the new methodology. Even I lost the power that
had been vested in me by virtue of my position. Matters no longer
depend on my direct connection with the Creator of the universe, which
connection I created by my own merit. From here on, it all depends
upon you, upon a system comprised of normative, average human beings and
of each one’s own individual human quality.
Gone are the supermen. No
more is the sublime super-tsadik. The land will be built upon the
toil of midot, upon the devotion of all its inhabitants, upon their
success at creating a model of behavioral perfection, a wondrous ideal for
all the world to behold and emulate: How to build a society that is “a
regal province of priests and a sacred people.”
How simple human beings can and
must create unity by together actualizing an ideal, by actualizing
moral values and applying them at the level of conventional, normative
behavior. By resolving ancient feuds without using force as far as
that is possible, while advancing peaceful suggestions. It is only
when the hand outstretched for peace is returned empty – then and only
then are you permitted, and obligated to make war: “See I have given Sihon
and his country into your hand. Begin to inherit, and provoke him to
war.”
Why? Because a forceful
posture in this instance indicates faith in the ideal, in the Godly
imperative. It does not come from faith in one’s own power, in one’s
own strong arm, but rather as an expression of faith and devotion to the
Godly imperative – as a demonstration of Who the ba’al habayit, the
real Landlord is. “Today I shall begin placing a dread of you
and a fear of you over the face of the nations under the entire
heavens.”
There is force that does not draw
from the power of force itself but rather expresses the will of the
Creator. Only force that takes its imperatives from the power of
mitsva, from the Creator of the universe, can be called kosher
force.
Milhemet mitsva, the war of
mitsva. One who dodges this draft evades his Godly task. He
shirks the Divine imperative: “Do not fear them, for it is God Who is
fighting for you.”
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