Great Things Jewish Come Out of a Crisis: Abraham to Medieval Times

Introduction to Judaism RS#210

Dr. Menachem Feuer

October 19, 2010

Great Things Jewish Come Out of a Crisis:

Abraham to Medieval Times

            The faith of the Jewish people has survived, indeed thrived at times, for centuries despite being faced by one crisis or another. Be it a pivotal personal crisis based upon obedience to God, societal enslavement, a function of conquest and exile, or the overshadowing effects of new religions the dynamic and resilient nature of Judaism has allowed great things Jewish to be born out of adversity. Selected specific crises will be examined showing how they arose, how the crisis was dealt with and the concomitant ‘great thing Jewish’ that resulted.

            That Judaism has had a significant, if not profound and formative impact, on and around the world can almost be a given understanding. But while the statement “great things Jewish [can] come out of a crisis” (Feuer 5 Oct.) obviously points to great things for the Jews, it can also be taken to mean that those great things Jewish from some of those very same crises have significantly influenced the non-Judaic world as well. Indeed, Thomas Cahill tends to sum up the influence of the Jews upon the world when he states:

The Jews started it all – and by “it” I mean so many of the things we care about, the underlying values that make all of us, Jew and gentile, believer and atheist, tick. Without the Jews, we would see the world through different eyes, hear with different ears, even feel with different feelings. [T]here is simply no one else remotely like them (Cahill 3).

Abraham

Throughout the early part of Genesis, God makes several promises to Abram including a significant covenant with him in Chapter 17 regarding Abram and Sarai’s name changes, their ancestorship of nations, the everlasting covenantal sign of circumcision, and the inclusion of their son Isaac within this same covenant. In Chapter 22 of Genesis, Abraham faces an incredible crisis when he is put through a personal test of honour and obedience by God. Abraham is instructed by God to sacrifice Isaac but is stopped by an angel of the Lord at the last moment before harming Isaac. Abraham’s ‘passing’ of the test of sacrifice affirmed his honour and obedience to God and likewise God, through His angel, re-affirmed His promise to “give [Abraham] as many descendants as there are stars in the sky or grains of sand along the seashore” (Good 22).

            Obviously, Abraham could have taken the dishonourable way out of his obedience to God to save Isaac in the first place. However, the fact that he forged ahead and triumphed over this very significant and traumatic crisis head on meant that not only would he secure the position of Patriarch of the great Jewish faith that lay ahead, but eventually he would also be known as the Patriarch of the other two major Abrahamic religions of Islam and Christianity.

Exodus, the Torah and God’s Chosen People

            With the passage of time, Abraham’s descendants – the Hebrews, migrated due to famine to Egypt where they prospered and unfortunately ended up being held captive. “Here was the deepest crisis of all: The children of Abraham were in bondage, with the God of their fathers and the covenant with Abraham forgotten” (Ludwig 97). It is during this major crisis that the prominence of Moses as a leader of his people and as a prophet is established. Led by Moses, and with the assistance of God, the Hebrews escaped from captivity in Egypt and wandered in the wilderness being led by signs and wonders from God (Ludwig 98) who finally brought them to the holy mountain of Sinai. “There they miraculously beheld God and received His law. It was this event that, according to Israelite tradition, consecrated the Israelites to be God’s chosen people and imposed upon them the duty of obeying His special commands” (Scheindlin 7).

After fleeing their captivity and upon receiving the Mosaic Torah, we start to observe the coalescence of the Hebrews into the people of Israel. “Thus, God spoke to Moses, and through Moses to the people of Israel, the whole Torah, the laws and commandments that would form the basis of life for ‘am yisrael, the people of Israel” (Ludwig 98). With the combinations of the exodus from captivity, the gift from God of the Law, and His covenant with His chosen people, we see the resolve of this deepest of crises being the creation of a great thing Jewish: the formation of a Torah based “dialogical link between God and Man” (Feuer 14 Sept.). As with several great things Jewish, the Law, in the form of the Ten Commandments, would eventually be shared with many other future ‘non-Jewish’ nations to form the basis of their respective ‘Judeo-Christian’ legal infrastructure and societies.

Babylonian Exile

            Upon the demise of the golden Davidic age, scorn and suffering was heaped upon the Kingdom of Judah with the destruction of the Temple in 587 B.C.E. by Nebuchadnezzar. Jerusalem was razed and the majority of the people were exiled to Babylon. The “Israelite religion came to an end, for the Kingdom of Israel was no more, and the Kingdom of Judah was destroyed […]”. (Ludwig 103) It would be natural to think that this crisis, the conquest and dispersal of the inhabitants of Judah to Babylon would mean the end of the Jewish story. But that was not in God’s plan. It was in Babylon, without the Temple, that the displaced Judeans set to work on keeping and maintaining their connection to their far removed geographical and religious roots. To this end, the Jewish leaders of the Babylonian community “promulgated [the Torah] anew and made its study and the observance of its laws the people’s chief religious duty” (Scheindlin 30). The Jews “met at the abode of religious leaders on the Sabbath, and there they read the Torah, studied it, and applied it to their lives. [In fact i]t is from these kinds of meetings that over the course of the next centuries the important institution of the synagogue stemmed” (Ludwig 104). The scribes that did the reading, interpreting, and application of the Torah in the synagogues later became known as rabbis (104). It is interesting to understand that in Babylon, the Judean elders utilised the Torah, essentially an “official [compendium of] national history and codification of laws, customs, and religious practices… to reorganize the national identity around religious behaviour and to some extent to turn the national identity itself into a religion. These changes have left their stamp on Jewish identity and on the Jewish religion to this very day” (Scheindlin 30, 31). Eventually, it is during exile in Babylon that “the Temple becomes a memory palace, located for this remembering community [of Jews] in the pages of its Talmud” (Ezrahi 9).

An additional unique early by-product of the Babylonian exile was the facilitation of Ezra’s return to Jerusalem by Cyrus of Persia, whereupon Ezra ensured that the Torah he carried with him was studied and read publicly solidifying the transformation of Judaism “into a religion centered on the study of the Torah” (Ludwig 104). Ezra was the precursor of the age of anonymous scribes, the period known in Jewish history as the era of the Knesset Gedolah (the Great Assembly)” (Steinsalz 39, 40). Thus through the continuing efforts of the Babylonian Jews and Ezra’s, the geographical scope and influence of the fledgling Jewish faith was enhanced. Once again the resiliency and dynamic nature of the Jewish people, even while in exile, turned a perilous crisis into a major and positive Jewish recovery.

The Destruction of the Temple in 70 C.E. and Rabbinic Judaism

            The next crisis that was overcome and adapted to by the Jews was the destruction of the Temple in 70 C.E. and the associated dispersal (Great Diaspora) of the Jews by the Romans. While the Essenes, Zealots and Sadducees were for the most part ‘disposed’ of, the “Pharisees scattered to other places, taking their scrolls with them, setting up synagogues and schools to [continue] to study the Torah. [It was the Pharisees] who continued the religion of Judaism in Palestine and beyond, structuring it as we know it today” (Ludwig 105). Again, as we saw with Ezra, it was the portability of the Torah, that permitted the Jewish community, though they were scattered to the wind and once again without the Temple, the ability to adapt and improvise to their newest circumstances and continue “keeping the Torah… [thus] fulfilling all the hopes and dreams of Israel, the people of God” (106). It was through to this end, keeping the Torah, that the study of the Torah was classified and compiled into the Mishnah. This rabbinic material thus became available for use in the creation of the Babylonian and Palestinian Talmuds.

The destruction of the temple in 70 C.E. and the potentially devastating crisis of the Great Diaspora helped cause the compilation of the ‘Oral Torah’ which when used as the “interpretation of the written Torah, lays out the complete Jewish way of life” (106). It starts to become clearly understood at this junction of the Jewish timeline that “the text, [the Torah], is [becoming] the substitute for the land” (Feuer on Ezrahi 28 Sept. 2010).

The Challenge of the Karaites

            The Karaites, a sect of 8^th – 10^th century Jews who accepted only the Written Law, rejected the legitimacy and authority of rabbinic institutions and the Jewish Talmudic tradition (Ezrahi 34). The Karaites organized their own communities and established a "tradition" of their own in competition to the more established Talmudic tradition. During the time of Rabbi Saadia they had become quite numerous and influential and posed a serious threat to the traditional Rabbanite Judaism (Scheindlin 82).

The challenge of the karaites was met by … Saadia … who provided an Arabic translation of the Hebrew Bible. [As a philosopher Saadia,] was able to assure Jews there was no conflict [as the Karaites contended] between revelation and the kind of reasoning used by rabbis. Saadia’s counterattack [against the Karaites’ threat] was successful [and] the Talmudic tradition held sway (Ludwig 107).

Notwithstanding the onslaught brought on by the Karaites, in combination with a rapidly expanding Muslim influence, the flexibility, innovation and resourcefulness of the Rabbanite leaders of the day met and overcame this crisis to once again ensure the continued longevity of rabbinic Judaism.

Muslim and Christian Influence

            Judaism was caught up in a constant struggle between and amongst the Muslim and Christian tug of war and their respective influences as the medieval ages came about. Notwithstanding persistent chaos due to persecution, massacres and forced conversions to one religion and another, Judaism was pushed to address any semblance of a staid, unmoving singular religious notion based entirely upon strict conservative values. It was during the tumultuous medieval times that “Jewish thinkers struggled with the problem of faith and reason: Is truth acquired by one’s own reason and judgment, or simply from the authoritative revelation of the Torah?” (Ludwig 107). As well, Judaism was coming head to head with the rapid advancement of Islam and Christianity during this time. Perhaps in fear of being completely overshadowed and/or just from the substantial osmotic influence of Arab philosophical schools, Judah Halevi (1075 – 1145), “used his considerable literary powers to provide a lyrical defense of traditional Jewish piety” (Ludwig 107) and to oppose the encroachment of Aristotelian philosophy into Judaism (107). In contrast, Maimonides (1135 – 1204) met the challenge of moving Judaism onward and upward into 12^th century with his two best known works: a code of Jewish law written in Hebrew and a philosophical treatise, The Guide for the Perplexed, written in Arabic and which contained his famous 13 Principles of Faith (Scheindlin 88). All in all, Judaism seemed to be taking the pressures of assimilation in stride with great scholars and thinkers continuing to produce religious works in Hebrew and in Arabic. While small and large adaptations and innovations seemed to address external pressures, there seemed to be something else that was building from within instead of without around this time – Mysticism (Ludwig 108).

Mysticism

As Jews of the medieval period yearned to learn and experience “a deeper understanding of the traditional forms and conceptions of Judaism” [they took to formulating the Kabbalah] the tradition of things divine” (Scholem 1). Scholem further highlights that “the more sordid, pitiful, and cruel the fragment of historical reality allotted to the Jew amid the storms of exile, the deeper and more precise the symbolic meaning it assumed, and the more radiant became the Messianic hope which burst through it and transfigured it” (2). The vision and concepts of Kabbalah fascinated Jewish mystics and their collective works “dealt with the same issues as the philosophers: the nature of God, creation, exile and restoration, good and evil. Their vision had a wide appeal, and they stimulated expectation of the restoration through the messiah, providing meaning and hope to many [Jews] who lived in difficult circumstances” (Ludwig 109).

By the early 16^th century the Jews had been expelled from Spain and most of Western Europe, they were entirely marginalized in Persia, and once again the future of Judaism looked bleak if not bordering on hopeless. “But the rise of the Ottomans [Empire] would provide the opportunity for the [next] new flowering of Jews in the newly ascendant world of Islam” (Scheindlin 95).

So it would seem that hope springs eternal, (if not lamentations), for the Jews. Over hundreds of centuries, as one door of a crisis closed another one of innovation, hope and revival would open for them. It is incredible that the Jewish people even got ‘started’ (i.e. successful test of Abraham) let alone survived captivity without being totally assimilated in Egypt, various expulsions, intense persecution, internal revolt and marginalisations during their vast geographical and spiritual wanderings. And all this occurred just up to medieval times. But survive, emerge and prosper they did through the heteronomous relationship with the supreme ‘Other” (Feuer on Levinas 21 Sept. 2010). While the events of the next 400 years would toggle between European emancipation and participation in the Enlightenment (Ludwig 111) and the horrors of the Shoah, the extremely adept ‘People of the Torah’ would survive each subsequent crisis as well. It is amazing how this tiny population, in relative terms of the billions of people in the world, have overcome crisis after crisis and have contributed so much in terms of religiosity, culture and history to almost every other major western religion and society. Indeed, they could even be seen booking passage on their continuing journey to the modern state of Israel in pursuit of their homecoming (Ezrahi 33).

Works Cited

Cahill, Thomas. The Gifts of the Jews: How a Tribe of Desert Nomads Changed the Way Everyone Thinks and Feels. Toronto: Random House of Canada, 1999.

Ezrahi, Sidra DeKoven. Booking Passage: Exile and Homecoming in the Modern Jewish Imagination. Berkeley: University of California P, 2000.

Feuer, Menachem. RS #210- Introduction to Judaism Lecture. The University of Waterloo. 14 Sept. 2010.

Feuer, Menachem. RS #210- Introduction to Judaism Lecture. The University of Waterloo. 21 Sept. 2010.

Feuer, Menachem. RS #210- Introduction to Judaism Lecture. The University of Waterloo. 28 Sept. 2010.

Feuer, Menachem. RS #210- Introduction to Judaism Lecture. The University of Waterloo. 5 Oct. 2010.

Good News Bible: Today’s English Version. Swindon, England: The Bible Societies, 1978.

Ludwig, Theodore M. The Sacred Paths of the West – 3^rd Edition. Upper Saddle River, New Jersey: Pearson Prentice Hall, 2006.

Scheindlin, Raymond P. A Short History of the Jewish People: From Legendary Times to Modern Statehood. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1998.

Scholem, Gershom. On the Kabbalah and its Symbolism. RS #210- Introduction to Judaism – Handout. 12 Oct. 2010.

Steinsalz, Adin. The Essential Talmud – 30^th Edition. New York: Basic Books, 2006. Google Books. Web. 15 Oct. 2010.