Radical Judaism_ Rethinking God and Tradition - Arthur Green [101]
31. I have in mind here the rabbinic discussions of the distinction between Sabbath and festival holiness. The festival is hallowed by the words meqaddesh yisra'el veha-zemanim (“who sanctifies Israel and the seasons”) because humans, through reporting the new moon, have participated in declaring which day is to be holy. So it is with the commandments as a whole. The divine voice calls on us to remember and to celebrate; the forms come about through us and evolve throughout our history.
32. The mem of place or location is joined to the Aramaic word tsavta, “together,” rather than to the Hebrew stem tsaveh, “command.”
33. I agree with Mordecai Kaplan that the notion of ‘averah (“transgression”), the counterpoint of mitzvah, should be removed from the ritual sphere. But I think this can be done without the reduction of mitzvah to the status of “folkway.” A mitzvah not done is an opportunity not taken; this need not be understood as “sinful.”
34. I am thus quite far from much that is said by and in the name of Emanuel Levinas, so widely revered by many thoughtful Jews in our time. Levinas would deny the value of mystical insight as a basis for moral living, since it refuses to see the ultimacy of “otherness.” I firmly refuse to accept this premise. My neo-Hasidic ethos is based on the reality and truth of ultimate Oneness, a sense that we are all limbs of the same cosmic body (Adam Kadmon, or, to the Christian, Corpus Christi), our minds and hearts but free-willed outlets of the single universal Mind and Heart. I believe this forms a strong basis for ethical behavior, a system in which we recognize the distinctiveness of the other as we interact in this world, but also our underlying oneness as we ask the more ultimate question of who we are. The writings of Hillel Zeitlin, which I am currently preparing for an English edition, will I hope provide an interesting counterweight to Levinas. This juxtaposition is, perhaps unsurprisingly, a continuation of the hasid/mitnagged debate, particularly that between Shneur Zalman of Liadi and Hayyim of Volozhyn, in the late eighteenth century.
35. The Hebrew yehi, of course, is nothing but a conjugating (the Anglophone Kabbalist might say “conjuring”) of the divine name Y-H-W-H, drawing it forth into created existence.
36. See Hayyim Nahman Bialik, “Gilluy ve-Kissuy ba-Lashon,” as well as the wonderful “Gemara” created around it at the Oranim Institute, edited by Eli Elon and Yariv Ben-Aharon, published as vol. 8 of the journal Shedemot (1997). This is the lead essay in Bialik's Revealment and Concealment: Five Essays (Jerusalem: Ibis, 2000).
37. Mishnah Avot 5:1 and T. B. Rosh Hashanah 32a.
38. I am aware of the possible degeneration of a neo-mystical Judaism, especially in a post-halakhic mode, into neopaganism, by which I mean an uncritical and irresponsible celebration of nature. I trust the reader will understand that the sense of human responsibility, both individual and collective, out of which I write, places this book at a considerable distance from such a move. Meanwhile, we could do well with a religious life that allows for a little more celebration of nature and its glory.
39. Psalms 104 and 148 would be good starting points for awareness of this consciousness. If you can't appreciate them in the Hebrew, read them in the unsurpassed early English translation of Sir Phillip Sidney and the Countess of Pembroke.
40. Among the sources for this link are Zohar 2:93b and the discussion by R. Moshe Cordovero in Pardes Rimonim 2:3. It is later taken up by various Hasidic authors, including the Sefat