[First posted in 2014.  Some of the time, in a post where the same topic has been written about by Sinaites or Jewish websites, we refer the reader to those posts; we are never sure if readers do bother to check them out.  So occasionally, we simply feature those posts in a separate article.

This one is a MUST READ, published in one of our links Jewish World Review. It answers the question in our title — why indeed does the Torah-Giver choose to address thousands of this mixed multitude of Israelites and non-Israelites in ‘no man’s land’? The answer is right there: because it is ‘no man’s land’ and all its implications.

Can we hear God amidst the noise of our society today where He has to compete with real and virtual voices in our digital toys and appliances? “Be still and know that I am God” — is that possible in concrete jungles of today’s modern society? How does one find solitude in our artificial world of man-designed, man-built cities?  Actually the only voice God has to compete with in being ‘heard’ and ‘obeyed’ is the voice of the ‘I’ in I-dolatry that is I-centered, whether in the city or the dessert.

When we get stumped by a question that needs a better answer than the obvious, we check out Jewish teaching, they’ve been studying the Torah for four millennia and are way ahead of us; we do keep in mind that Jews write for Jews and we’re outsiders looking in.

Here, Rabbi Nathan Lopes Cardozo explains “Why the giving of the document that would permanently change the world could only be done in desolation . . . “

A side comment: “At Shavous, in which Jews recreate the Revelation at Sinai, a world-renowned philosopher offers a meditation on religion abuse.”

JWR contributor Rabbi Rabbi Nathan Lopes Cardozo is a world-renowned lecturer and ambassador for Judaism, the Jewish people, the State of Israel and Sephardic Heritage.

Reformatting and highlights added.—Admin 1.]

poe-desert shot POST

http://www.JewishWorldReview.com | A desert is a lonely place, completely forsaken. There is neither food, nor water, nor any other form of sustaining substance. There is only the unbearable sun and its heat. There is no grass, and there are no trees. There are only deadly snakes and scorpions. In a desert, death stares you in the face. It is a dangerous place, unlivable and outrageous.

But the desert is also a magnificent place, filled with grandeur and full of life. It is a place where many things can happen which are not possible in any other location.

• First and foremost, it is a place of authenticity. Because it is a place where a sound, a Voice, can travel as in no other place. It has all the sound options that a musician can dream of. It can reach the deepest of its meanings and the highest of its dreams. In a desert a sound can travel to the end of the world. There are no obstacles standing in its way. In a desert a Voice can turn in any direction it desires and take on any dimension with no fear of corruption.

In a desert there are no walls by which the sound will be cut short. It is, above all, a place where a sound will not be disturbed or troubled by other sounds that may overwhelm it or even silence it.

Why? Because a desert is a place of devastating silence. There are no distractions; there is no clash of voices. No “voice competition”.

If there is ever to be an authentic Voice to be heard, it is here in the desert. It can’t be undermined and falsified, using it for selfish purposes. It is because of the desert’s thundering silence that it is possible to hear a “still voice” with no obstruction. It cannot bear mediocrity, even when it is original and thought of as novel. Instead, it seeks singular excellence even when most men cannot recognize it as such. It protests against those who are appeased when they can find something old in the new, whereas it is clear that this old could not have given birth to this new.

The Egyptian French poet, Edward Jabes, noted the relationship between the Hebrew words “dabar“, word, and “midbar“, desert. This, he claims, goes to the core of what a Jew is all about:

“With exemplary regularity the Jew chooses to set out for the desert, to go toward a renewed word that has become his origin… A wandering word is the word of God. It has for its echo the word of wandering people. No oasis for it, no shadow, no peace. Only the immense, thirsty desert, only the book of his thirst….” (From The Book to the Book, Wesleyan University Press, 1991, pp 166-7)

 

Here, in the emptiness and silence of the desert, the authentic Word can be heard. A Word stripped of all distractions. Naked, without any excuse.

• But it can only be heard by a people of the wilderness;
  • a people who are not rooted in a substance of physical limitations and borders;
  • a people who are not entirely fixed by an earthly point, even while living in a homeland.
  • Their spirit reaches far beyond the borders of any restricted place.
  • They are particularistic so as to be universalistic.
  • They are never satisfied with their spiritual conditions and are therefore always on the road, looking for more.
  • A wandering people carried by a wandering Word which can never permanently land because the runway is too narrow and they cannot fit into any end destination.
  • A people who always experience unrest because they carry the Word which doesn’t fit anywhere and wanders in the existential condition of an unlimited desert.

A Word which unnerves because it is rooted in the desert where, if not properly handled, it becomes deadly

• It needs a people who received the Word before having received their land.
• More than that, a people to whom the Word itself gave birth.
• The Word is the mother of the people.
• A people who can make their land into a portable homeland, carrying it to any corner of the earth because their land is a Word.
• It is the land which depends on the Word and not the Word which depends on the land.
• Here the Word is the author of the people; the people are not the author of the Word.
• The homeland is the “Text”- the Word. (George Steiner) They dwell in the Word and become real, because the Word is the father of its readers and not vice versa.

A desert is even more. It is a place where nothing can be achieved. In a desert man cannot prove himself, at least not in the conventional sense of the word. It doesn’t offer jobs that people can fight over and compete for. It has no factories, offices or department stores. There are no bosses to order us around and no fellow workers with whom we are in competition. It is “prestige deprived”. In a desert there is no “kavod/honor” to be obtained. It doesn’t have cities, homes, fences. Once it has these, it is no longer a desert. Human achievements will end its desert status and will undermine and destroy the grandeur of its might and beauty.

Man can only “be” but never “have” anything in a desert.

There is no food to be eaten but the manna, the soul food, and one can easily walk in the same shoes for 40 years because authenticity does not wear out. Men’s garments grow with them and do not need changing or cleaning because they are as pure as can be. And that which is pure continues to grow and stays clean.

The desert is therefore a state of mind.

It removes the walls in our subconscious, and even in our conscious way of thinking. It is an “out of the box” realm. In a desert one can think unlimitedly. As such, one is open to the “impossible” and hears murmurs of another world which one can never hear in the city or on a job. The desert allows for authentic thinking, without obstacles, and therefore it is able to break through and remove from us any artificial thoughts which do not identify with our deeper souls. Nothing spiritual gets lost in us, because the fences of our thoughts become neutralized and no longer bar the way to our inner life. It is ultimate liberty. It teaches us that openness does not mean surrender to what is most “in”, or powerful. Nor does it consist of vulgar successes made into a principle.

This is the reason why the Torah could only have been given in a desert – Midbar.

Why did the Divine not give the Torah in a civilized place? Had He given it on Wall Street, He would have had to decide who would sit on the Board of Investors. He would have had to deal with the “politics of friendships” and personal agendas of how much interest to give and where to invest.

The Divine didn’t want shareholders or agendas to pollute His words and make them “user friendly” in ways which would compromise His very Word. So He chose the desert. A place without any personal motives.

The ideal place to fall in love because there is no competition. And because love is the irresistible desire to be desired irresistibly (Louis Ginsberg), only a Midbar can become the home of lovers – the Giver of the Word and the receivers of the Voice to be married under the canopy of authenticity.

“Anyone who does not make himself open to all (“hefker”, ownerless), like a wilderness, cannot gain wisdom and Torah”—-(Bamidbar Rabbah, 1:7)— say the Sages.

With this statement the Sages introduce a most important insight concerning the Almighty, the nature of Torah and the desert. They cannot bear artificial, unauthentic ideas which are sold in the superficiality of this world.

In a Midbar one can hear an authentic Voice and immediately distinguish it from the artificial word, because the authentic Voice will protest without delay. It has no place to hide, so it will run up against a wall and instead of being silenced will become nearly violent and unrelenting. The wall will start to shake and will ultimately collapse because it is not really rooted in a desert

The “authentic” is perhaps not to be found when deliberately pursued, but there is no missing it when it is present. As such, it will become a “commanding voice” which can make us nervous since it becomes disturbing and unbearable. It becomes a deadly, poisonous snake for those who have not shaped themselves as desert people.

A desert is still more. It is also a place where the word cannot be caught and locked up. In can’t be framed and manipulated. Yes, to activate the world and make an imprint on it, it has to come down and respond to the “here and now”. It must allow for fences and limitations whenever needed. Limitations can be great emancipators. But it must always carry the “tomorrow and over there”.

To have any effect, it must borrow from the world of man and his language. But it needs to have an escape. It must be like a fishnet which captures its mundane needs, but with holes so that the ongoing flow of water will not get caught up in the net itself. It must be a thoroughfare for all genuine thoughts, always looking for a new destination.

The only quality which can save us from the snakes in this desert is the awe of Heaven. Only this quality can save us from falling into the hands of the serpent. But it can be done and therefore it must be done so as to reveal the Word given in the desert and to allow it all the space it deserves.

Abraham found the Divine in the desert and so the people of Israel received the Torah in a place of ultimate authenticity: The Desert of devastating conditions and great opportunities. It is a dangerous place, but a desert it must be.

Whoever thinks that the Divine Word is commonplace and easily lived by, has never been in the Ultimate desert of his life.

Image from azquotes.com

[This was originally accidentally post ed in May 2017.  It caught my attention when a reader recently clicked it, so I reviewed it since I thought I had trashed it and wondered how it got posted without my noticing it.   After reviewing, I realized that I had completely left out the title and author of the book, so it never landed on our MUST READ category.   I’m thinking, was it THAT BAD that I even forgot that most important detail?

 Here’s the original introduction:

 This book was in the back burner for a year; we’ve been reluctant to feature it, you’ll understand why.  The hypothetical title should be enough to pique anyone’s curiosity to either invest or waste money in buying it.  Human nature being naturally curious, our added negative comment, instead of discouraging,  probably further strengthens the ‘come on’.  Remember,  Eve was drawn to the one ‘NO-NO’ tree in the garden of Eden in such a way she simply had to satisfy her urge to ‘know’ why it’s forbidden . . . and that’s the conundrum:  ‘know the NONO’ becomes a KNOW-Why-NO!  It is only humanly natural to want to know what is ‘behind curtain number 2’, what’s in a gift box, a package, a closed door, Pandora’s box, in short, the UNKNOWN.  That’s how and where scientific discoveries begin:  square one; ‘don’t know’. . . but will soon find out regardless of the cost, for good or ill.  That’s how all religions begin, the human urge to know an UNKNOWN INVISIBLE GOD that one senses or rationalizes EXISTS.  

We will be curious how many of you, our readers, did succumb just like Eve, to this non-recommendation; remember, it’s not a prohibition.  What is your inclination? If you did not heed our suggestion on the title “Need NOT Read”, please let us know by leaving a comment on the box below or by writing us at sinai6000@gmail.com.  Now if you really care to know if we invested or wasted money on this book, if you have gained a sense of what Sinai6000 is all about by reading through our over 1000 articles, you need not wonder, right?

I bet just like me, you looked for it in amazon.com and did not find it.  Now, aren’t we all really, really curious . . . just as I am now? Because after re-reading my non-recommendation, I realized this book is right along ‘our’ alley, that of Sinai 6000, a renegade non-religious ex-Christians continuing to journey toward the Sinai revelation and the God who gave it to Israel and the ‘mixed’ Gentiles among them.  After being closed-minded or tunnel-visioned as former Christ-worshippers tend to be because . . . well, our truth is THE truth or so we believe . . . .we’re just the opposite!   We’re so open-minded now, enough to listen to other open-minded searchers of God and Truth, such as the author of this book seems to be!  If any of you, readers, find this book, please drop us a line and thank you in advance!—Admin1.]

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BOOK SUMMARY

What did God do before he created?

A book as you have wished for long time! – A book which will simply blow you away.

A book for all people of good will who have for a long time searched for a coherent world view which is not at loggerheads with our previous knowledge like the numerous big and small religions.

Not suited for esoteric dreamers, no playground for mystical apparitions, but an upright clarity which is truly enlightening.

No snag, no double moral standards, no association, no sect, no guru, no membership fee.

The Bible of the new millennium which outlines in which direction humanity shall evolve itself in the coming time in order to be finally able to get out of the current absolutely poor form.

The author defies all those who stand in the way of this target, from the established religions via the financial sharks to the truly mighty ones on this planet – not the politicians as puppets but the powerful ones in the background.

A sweeping attack which nevertheless hits each bull’s eye. A genuine revelation which originates from an ordinary boy and was transformed by Martin Weise into a fiery speech or a technician’s factual description.

Not everything contained in this book is destined for everyone, but everyone will find everything which he always wanted to know. A fantastic and unique but on the other hand captivatingly simple, coherent and logical world view. Quantum leaps in your database of knowledge are consequently not excluded. The creation as a real thought experiment of the one who always existed, with all the possibilities and meanders which still await their implementation.  A God who is not absolutely flawless and who is heading for perfection by gaining experiences.

With plenty of divine humour the author explains the actual state and the target and does not forget to emphasize that he cannot prove anything and that you consequently do not have to believe him. The same applies to the Medicine of God where you do not have to believe anything because it can be proven in the next best case and therefore you may question everything as long as you can substantiate at least to some point that you are clearly more right.

This book answers many open questions which have been answered by hardly anyone in such a comprehensible and clear way. Moreover, it spares you the reading of 20 specialist books; it is thus a book not for scholars but for people like you and me.

The approaches concerning God and his creation are logically comprehensible but rather unconventional. There are many things which had not yet been written about in this way. The few genuine esoterics who can remember former reincarnations or even the stages between them confirm what Martin Weise has learned from his paranormal foster child Theo.

Even if your breath might be taken away sometimes as soon as your previous religions convictions are getting caught in the cross fire: do not believe this book but accept it as a hypothesis and afterwards test – slowly, step by step and very carefully. Then you might ask yourself what seems more probable to you:

Our current and rather distorted image of the past or the bright future of a new era.

A new book – unprecedented – provocative – unique – brilliant.

The second edition which is published mainly as an e-book complements the discoveries which are meanwhile five years old, with recent scientific findings and specifies them in a few points:

Two physicists have dared to carry out a backward calculation behind the big bang and, lo and behold, there existed (at least) one preceding universe which they had calculated with the help of the spatial structure in the fourth dimension. Many esoterics are unmasked as ignorant persons who are unable to cope with life and who try to veil their incapacity with plenty of nice sounding words.

Crop circle pictures liven up the whole book even though the latest dual crop circle with the face on the Shroud of Turin from August 2010 is unfortunately not contained in it. In exchange, the book describes in detail how the Vatican falsified the facts in order to keep its power structure further alive. That the church which is currently led by the Pope who is reigned by the forbidden high financial lodge P2 and the grand lodge of the Opus Dei is driven into the ground or into the abyss is a different kettle of fish. The motto “If you want to build a new temple, you need to demolish the old one first” applies here as well.

It has already been well known that the present nutrition sciences lead directly to illnesses. A novelty in this book is the representation of the entire climate hysteria. From the ozone hole which is allegedly caused by the CFCs, via the so called ecological cleaning – a drastic step backward! – or the substances which are on account of manipulated laboratory tests demonized as cancer-producing the global warming lie finally escalates into the CO2 hysteria.

These are nothing but lies and deception because carbon dioxide is heavier than air and only a share of three per mil exists in the earth atmosphere. Without carbon dioxide there would be no life on this planet and the reduction of carbon dioxide which costs several billions of Dollars is nothing but an enormous suicide programme.

If one views the predicted flooding disasters more closely from a scientific standpoint, they also would melt away like the icebergs which float around in the sea. Moreover, science has in the meantime discovered a “climate seesaw” which ensures a long term balance between north and south. After the real estate bubble and the banking crisis the climate bubble which has for a long time been overheated has now also burst when one dared to approach it armed with the truth.

Of course only a part of the readers will be interested to find out that the Bible of the Old Testament – as many had assumed long before – was retroactively written, rewritten or complemented accordingly a few centuries after the events described in it so that it actually only represents merely a book of poems for which the following statement applies: “Even if it is not the truth, it has at least been well thought out.”

Due to this back projection of beliefs over the millennia the Jews have succeeded in converting JHWH, a small provincial God including his wife, the Canaanite mother goddess Asherah, into the Almighty God, the creator of heaven and earth. And to such a dubious history is the chosen people referring.

In chapter 6 extensive space is devoted to the moral component of our monetary economy and the question of the compound interest curve. A separate subchapter 19 “The crash and the monetary system of the future” describes in detail how things shall continue after the crash that still inundates us in waves, so that humanity will in the truest sense be put back on the path to a promising future.

Everyone knows how things do not work but no one has yet revealed to us how things could work in a reasonable way. This book ventures an attempt to explain how the insights of Silvio Gesell about the nature of money could be put into the reality of a future monetary economy on the computer. It goes without saying that the powerful self-proclaimed world elite will put up a fierce struggle against this and that not a stone will be left standing. However, the idea that a “Golden Age” will rain down on us like April showers without this creative destruction is just some clueless esoterics’ illusion.

[First posted 2012; one of 40 essays written by Abraham Joshua Heschel (AJH) circa 1953, in a collection edited by his daughter Susannah Heschel, titled:  Moral Grandeur and Spiritual Audacity;  another excellent MUST READ/MUST OWN for serious students of the “Bible”.

What AJH calls “the Bible” is only the TNK, the Hebrew Scriptures, not the Christian Bible, and not even its “Old Testament”.  Consider that as a Jewish philosopher, he addresses primarily the people he proudly belongs to, though gentiles have much to learn and absorb from his wisdom and unique understanding of what happened on Sinai. In fact, this is the other book that was instrumental in our decision to connect with the Revelator on Sinai and choose the revelation there (Torah) not only as the main source of spiritual illumination and redirection of our way of life, but as the only source for “the very words of God”, at least the One we recognize as God—YHWH.

Where does an ex-Christian go when you don’t want to join Judaism, but still be focused on the Hebrew Scriptures, particularly the Torah of YHWH? Our chosen recourse?  Sinai, a neutral place chosen by the Creator to reveal Himself to a ‘mixed multitude’. Think of yourself among the ‘mix’, the gentile among Israelites, the odd-man out, but represented nevertheless on that crucial moment in biblical-historical time. Non-Israelite slaves took advantage and joined the exodus, leaving the place of bondage and idolatry to wander in the wilderness toward a Liberator who gives instructions on how to live in the world He created. The Covenant was with Israel, but the prescribed Way of life is for all nations. Gentiles represented the ‘stranger among you’ in Numbers 9:

 “There shall be one law for you,

whether stranger or citizen of the country.”

The excerpts have been reformatted and highlighted for this post; consider it as though you’re reading through a Sinaite’s notes from a lecture. [EF] is Everett Fox, translator of our choice, The Five Books of Moses.—Admin1.]

Image from www.kingjamesbibleonline.org

The Bible reflects its divine as well as its human authorship;

• expressed in the language of a particular age, it addresses itself to all ages;
• disclosed in particular acts, its content is everlasting.  

The word of God is in time and in eternity.  

• It preceded the creation of the world, the beginning of time,
• and is given to us in the setting of time.
•  It is therefore continually in need of new understanding.

The Bible is not a system of abstract ideas but a record of happenings in history.  Indeed, some of the biblical maxims and principles may be found or could have been conceived elsewhere.

•  Without parallel in the world are the events it tells about and the fact of taking these events as the points where God and man meet.
•  Events rather than abstractions of the mind are the basic categories by which the biblical man lives; they are to his existence what axioms are to measuring and weighing.  Man does not steal because of a timeless imperative but because he was told by God not to steal; the Sabbath is kept not because it is of timeless value—because it is good to rest—but because God commanded us to rest.

————————————

The God of the philosopher is a concept derived from abstract ideas; the God of the prophets is derived from acts and events.  

————————————–

The root of Jewish faith is, therefore, not a comprehension of abstract principles but an inner attachment to those events;  to believe is to remember, not merely to accept the truth of a set of dogmas.  

Our attachment is expressed—

• by our way of celebrating them,
• by the weekly reading of the Pentateuch rather than by the recital of a creed.  

To ignore these events and to pay attention only to what Israel was taught in these events is like tearing out a piece of flesh from a living body.

AN AESTHETIC experience leaves behind the memory of a perception and enjoyment; a prophetic experience leaves behind the memory of a commitment, not only of a perception.  

• Revelation was not an act of enjoyment.  God spoke and man not only perceived but also accepted the will of God.  Revelation lasts a moment, acceptance continues.
• Biblical revelation must be understood as an event, not as a process.   What is the difference between process and event?
  • A process happens regularly, following a relatively permanent pattern; an event is extraordinary, irregular.
  • A process may be continuous, steady, uniform; events happen, intermittently, occasionally.  The term “continuous revelation” is as logical as the term “a round square.”
  • Processes are typical; events are unique.
  • A process follows a law; events create a precedent.
  • Nature is made up of processes—organic life, for example, may be described as consisting of the processes of birth, growth, and decay; history consists primarily of events . . . .
• The term “event” is a pseudonym for “mystery.”  
  • An event is a happening that cannot be reduced to a part of a process.
  • It is something we can neither predict nor fully explain.  
  • To speak of events is to imply that there are happenings in the world that are beyond the reach of our explanations.  
  • What the consciousness of events implies, the belief in revelation claims explicitly, namely, that there is a voice of God in the world—not in heaven or in any unknown sphere—that pleads with man to do His will.
• What do we mean by “the world”?
  • If we mean an ultimate, closed, fixed, and self-sufficient system of phenomena behaving in accord with the laws known to us, then such a concept would exclude the possibility of admitting any super-mundane intervention or penetration by a voice not accounted for by these laws.  Indeed, if the world as described by natural science is regarded as the ultimate, then there is no sense in searching for the divine which is by definition the ultimate.  How could there be one ultimate within the other?

The claim of the Bible is absurd, unless we are ready to comprehend that the world as scrutinized and depicted by science is but a thin surface of undisclosed depths.  Order is only one of the aspects of nature; its reality is a mystery given but not known.  Countless relations that determine our life in history are neither known nor predictable.  What history does with the laws of nature cannot be expressed by a law of nature.

Revelation is not an act of interfering with the normal course of natural events but the act of instilling a new creative moment into the course of natural events.

• An event . . .  retains its significance even after it has passed;  it remains important because and regardless of its effects.   Great events, just like great works of art, are significant in themselves.  Our interest in them endures long after they are gone.
• The decisive event in the spiritual history of our people was the act that occurred at Sinai.  It had a two-fold significance.
  • One in opening up a new relationship of God with man, in engaging Him intimately to the people of Israel,
  • and second in Israel’s accepting that relationship, that engagement to God.
• It is an event in which both God and Israel were partners.  
  • God gave His word to the people, and the people gave its word of honor to God.
  • That word of honor was not given by one generation alone.
  • All generations of Israel were present at Sinai.
  •  It was an event that happened at a particular time and also one that happened for all time.

“Not is it with you only that I make this sworn covenant, but with him who is not here with us this day as well as with him who stands here with us this day before the Lord our God” (Deuteronomy 29:13-14).

[EF]:  “Not with you-alone

do I cut this covenant and this oath,

but with the one that is here, standing with us today

before the presence of YHWH our God,

and (also) with the one that is not here with us today. 

•  It was an act of transcending the present, history in reverse: thinking of the future in the present tense.  
• It was a prophetic foresight, for to be a prophet is to be ahead of other people’s time, is to speak of the future in the present tense.

The contemporaries of Moses succeeded in transcending the present and committed subsequent generations to follow the word of God, because of their ability to think of life in terms of time.  

• They had no space,
• they had no land,
• all they had was time
• and the promise of a land.

Their future depended upon God’s loyalty to His own promise, and their loyalty to the prophetic events was the essence of their future. . . .

The Bible teaches that life without a commitment is not worth living, that thinking without roots will bear flowers but no fruit.  Our commitment is to God, and our roots are in the prophetic events of Israel.

• In the light of the Bible, history, then, is not a mere succession of faits accomplis, things done and no longer worth arguing against.
• In the eyes of God nothing is ever lost; the past is always present.
• Though events do not run according to a predestined plan, and though the ultimate goal can never be expressed in one word or in words at all, we believe that history as a whole has a meaning that transcends that of its parts.

We must remember that God is involved in our doings, that meaning is given here and now.  Great are man’s possibilities. For time is but a little lower than eternity, and history is a drama in which both man and God have a stake.  In its happenings we hear the voice as well as the silence of God.

What is the spirit of the Bible?

•  Its concern is not with the abstract concept of disembodied values, detached from concrete existence.  
• Its concern is with man and his relation to the will of God.  
• The Bible  is the quest for the righteous man, for a righteous people.  

“The Lord looks down from heaven upon the children of man, to see if there are any that act wisely, that seek after God.  They have all gone astray, they are all alike corrupt; there is none that does good, no, not one” (Psalms 14:2-3).

• To the discerning eye the incidents recorded in the Bible are episodes of one great drama:
  • the quest of God for man,
  • His search of man,
  • and man’s flight from Him.

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Judaism is a way of thinking, not only a way of living.  And this is one of its cardinal premises:  

The source of truth is found not in “a process forever unfolded in the heart of man” but in unique events that happened at a particular moment in history.  

There are no substitutes for revelation, for prophetic events.

 Jewish thought is not guided by abstract ideas, by a generalized morality.

At Sinai we have learned that spiritual values are not only aspirations in us but a response to a transcendent appeal addressed to us.  Greek philosophy is concerned with values; Jewish thought dwells on mitzvot.

The movement of revelation must not be separated from the content of revelation.  Loyalty to what was uttered in the event is as essential as the belief in the reality of the event.  The event must be fulfilled, not only believed in.  

Revelation is the beginning,

our deeds must continue,

our lives must fulfill it. 

Yet we must not idolize the moment or the event.  The will of God is eternal, transcending all moments, all events, including acts of revelation.  

The significance of time depends upon what is done in time in relation to His will.  

The moment at Sinai depends for its fulfillment upon this present moment, upon all moments.  

 The

tablets 

are

broken

whenever 

the

Golden

Calf

is

called

 into

being. 

We believe that every hour is endowed with the power to lend meaning to or withhold meaning from all other hours.  No moment is as a moment able to bestow ultimate meaning upon all other moments.  No moment is the absolute center of history.

Time is a circle whose center is everywhere and whose periphery is nowhere.

Abraham Joshua Heschel

1953

[First posted December 9, 2014:

Continuing the discussion on world religions, specifically monotheisms that trace their roots to Abrahamic faith, this is from chapter 6 of MUST READ/MUST OWN Who are the REAL Chosen People? – by Reuven Firestone.  The chapter’s title:  Chosenness and Covenant in Rabbinic Literature.  Reformatted and highlighted for this post.—Admin1]

Image from www.threefaithsonegod.com

The claim for continuity

As mentioned previously, rabbinic Judaism represents a new expression of biblical religion, but unlike either Christianity or Islam, it never claimed that status. Its position, rather, was that it was biblical religion , but with some adjustments after the Roman destruction of its Temple in Jerusalem, and therefore, the forced termination of its ancient mode of worshiping God through animal sacrifice. Rather than claim a new dispensation as did Christianity, or a correction of the errors of the old as did Islam, rabbinic Judaism claimed continuity with the original and authentic monotheism represented by Abraham and the biblical patriarchs, Moses at Mount Sinai, David and Solomon, who built up Jerusalem and  established God’s Temple  there, and the great prophets of Israel.

Judaism, therefore, was not static but continued to evolve, and its evolution included the emergence of a body of literature in the Talmud that was so deeply linked with the scripture of the Bible that it developed a scriptural status itself. The emergence of the Talmud took centuries. Its earliest parts date from a century or more before Jesus, and its end-date was in the period shortly before the Arab Muslim conquest of the seventh century. The Talmud is so thoroughly integrated with the Hebrew Bible that the biblical subtext of any passage is usually included as part of the text itself. This can be observed quite clearly in the passages that treat chosenness.

The following section from the Talmud (Avodah Zarah 2a-b) is fully caught up in the argument over who best merits God’s love for living out the divine will, and who best merits God’s reward for doing so:

In times to come the Holy One will bring a Torah scroll, embrace it to His chest and say,“Whoever has been occupied with this come forth and receive its reward!“ Immediately, all the idolaters will gather together in confusion, as it is said (Isaiah 43:9), All the nations gathered together. The Holy One will say to hem, “Do not gather before Me in confusion. Let each nation enter separately with its scribes, as it is said (in the continuation of Isaiah 43:9), and let the peoples be gathered together. . . The Holy One will say to [the Romans who come first], “How have you been occupying yourselves?” They will answer, “Lord of the Universe, we have established many marketplaces, we have built many baths, we have accumulated much gold and silver. We did this only [to support the Jews] so that they could devote themselves to the study of Torah.” The Holy One will reply, “You fools! All that you did was only for your own sake. You have established marketplaces to provide whores, baths to revel with them, and as for the silver and gold, it is Mine, as it is written (Hag. 2:8), The silver and the gold are Mine, says the Lord of Hosts.

Then the Persians step forward and make the case for carrying out God’s design by supporting the Jews so that they can live out God’s will. But they, too, are chastised for being selfish and thinking only of themselves. All the nations do likewise and all are invalidated for not personally taking responsibility for engaging in Torah as did the Jews. The nations then argue a different position to God. “But [the Gentiles] will argue, ‘How can You blame us for not carrying out the Torah when we never agreed to accept it?’ The response that follows is, ‘Then why did you not accept it?’”

The passage then goes on to state that the other nations took on the responsibility to observe a much reduced version of the Torah that the Talmud refers to as “the Seven Commandments given to Noah,” but even these they failed to obey. The chosen status of the Jews is thus proven through the invalidation of all other communities.

This is an interesting passage for a number of reasons.

• First, it serves as a consolation to the Jews, who had suffered the destruction of the Temple, dispersion into exile, and insult and mistreatment after the ascendance of Christianity. How could they continue to see themselves as God’s favored people when they are in such straits and their competitors the Christians seem to bask in the light of God after the Christianization of the Roman Empire in the fourth century?
• Christianity is not openly condemned in this passage, but it was dangerous for a despised and powerless minority to criticize the religion of the empire. Rome, therefore, became a code word for “Christianity” in rabbinic literature because the Roman Empire did Christianize.
• It should also be noted that after Christianity became the religion of the empire, Jews had to self-censure their criticism of Christians to protect themselves.

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Chosenness as Consolation

Many Talmudic passages that treat Israel’s chosenness are forms of consolation. The following coveys two reassuring messages about the important role of the Jews for the world’s well-being:

• Resh Lakish said, Why is there an additional letter “hey” in It was evening and then morning, the sixth day (Gen. 1:31)? This teaches that the Holy One stipulated with works of Creation by saying to them, “If Israel accepts the Torah, you will exist, but if not I will turn you back into emptiness and formlessness.” (Shabbat 88a)

The first message is to the Jews—

• and it tells them to hold fast to their religion, despite their humiliation,
• for God is willing to keep the world in existence only on account of Israel’s loyalty to God
• through observing the Torah.
• That is to say, Israel is still God’s chosen despite the Jews’ current degradation.

The second message is directed to the entire world, including those who are in superior political and social position to the Jews.  That message asserts that the very existence of those who degrade the Jews is ironically dependent upon the Jews whom they despise.

Of course, that audience is not reading this text anyway, so the message is really directed internally. It provides Jews hope for a day in which God will redeem them from their unhappy state.

It should be noted that rabbinic literature in the Talmud and related literatures is a large collection of tradition. Various positions and opinions are presented in ways that are not intended to be absolutely consistent, so anyone reading through the material will observe differing positions and many issues and variant interpretations of biblical verses.

In one series of biblical interpretations, it is maintained that God loves Israel even more than God loves the divine angels. A rabbinic midrash (exposition) from the eighth century cities many cases from the Bible where the same word refers to Israel and to God’s angels. With poetic symmetry, the work sets out to prove that the ways in which those words are used shows that God loves his chosen people Israel more than his angelic servants: 

Israel is called “servants,” as it is said, For to Me Israel are servants (Lev. 25:55), and the ministering angels are called servants, as it is said, And if He cannot trust His own servants (and casts reproach on his angels) (Job 4:18). How do you know who is more beloved? [God] says, They are my servants whom I freed from the land of Egypt (Lev. 25:55). Israel, you are more beloved to Me than the ministering angels. 

Israel is called “children,” as it is said, You are children of the Lord your God (Deut. 14:1), and the ministering angels are called “children,” as it is said, The children of divined beings came to God (Job 1:6). How do you know who is more beloved? [God] says, Israel is My firstborn son (Exod. 4:22). Israel, you are more beloved to Me than the ministering angels.

Israel is called “kings” …and ministering angels are called “kings” …Israel, you are more honored by Me than the ministering angels.

Israel is called “hosts” and the ministering angels are called “host”…Israel, you are greater to Me than the ministering angels. 

Israel is called “holy” and the ministering angels are called “holy” …Israel, you are more holy to Me than the ministering angels. 

This exegesis sets out to show how God could not possibly have stopped loving Israel. Israel is more beloved to God even than the ministering angels, thus showing God’s love for the Jews as unique and everlasting. This consolation takes on particular meaning as we observe how the positions of Jews and Christians were reversed in the fourth century. Judaism had been favored by the pagan Roman Empire early on, while Christianity was brutally persecuted. Subsequently, both Jews and Christians represented threats to the empire and both were persecuted. But when the empire Christianized, the tables were completely turned. With that change, Christianity represented the establishment religion, after which Judaism was depicted by Christians as a despised religion. 

Rabbi Elazar Ben Azaria … said, You have affirmed this day that the Lord is your God … and the Lord had affirmed this day that you are, as He promised you, His treasured people (Deut. 26:17-18). The Holy One said to Israel, “You have made Me the sole object of your love, as it is written, Hear O Israel, the Lord our God is One (Deut. 6:4). And I will make you the sole object of love, as it is said, Who is like Your people, Israel, a unique nation on earth (1 Chron. 17:21). (Talmud, Hag. 3a-b)

In the rabbinic model, therefore, despite the profound decline of the Jews with the destruction of the beloved Jerusalem Temple and their persecution by the pagan Roman Empire, their institutionalized discrimination by the Christianized Roman Empire of Byzantium, and the dispersion of Jews throughout the Mediterranean world and beyond, God never rejected His “chosen people.”

The Jews never lost their exceptional status. Although they may continue to suffer, their suffering is a suffering of love (yisurey ahavah) that would end in some unknown future when the true messiah will come to redeem Israel, and through that redemption, redeem the entire world.