Radical Judaism_ Rethinking God and Tradition - Arthur Green [27]
The royal metaphor was also a favorite bugaboo of my youth. God as King, I would claim, may be read two ways in our day. Shall we choose England or Saudi Arabia? If God is king of England, He has no real power. We (the party in power) run the world, and that is what we essentially believe. But once a year, on Coronation Day (call it Rosh Hashanah, if you will), we dress Him up in all His finery and parade Him through the streets. A little pageantry is good for the soul, after all. On the other hand, if God is king as in Saudi Arabia, we're in really big trouble. Who of us is free enough from sin not to wind up on the gallows of such a ruler?
The image of God as King was “redeemed” for me by a famous Talmudic story.19 Rabbi Yohanan ben Zakkai, the great master of the generation when the second Temple was destroyed, had a son who fell terribly ill. The rabbi sent a message to his disciple Hanina ben Dosa, well known as a miracle worker, asking him to pray for the lad. Hanina went upstairs in his home and prayed. He came down and told the messenger to return, because the lad was healed. When the messenger arrived, he found that the boy's crisis had passed just at the moment when Hanina had come downstairs. The only person not satisfied with this solution was Mrs. Ben Zakkai. “You are the great rabbi of the age,” she said to her husband, “and you need this disciple to pray for you?” Rabbi Yohanan took her aside and explained it thus: “When I come before the King,” he said, “I am like an ambassador from another land. We need to make an appointment as befits a state occasion. When Hanina comes in,” he said, “he is like a servant in the throne room. Anything he wants to tell the King he can say right there.” The little guy who dusts off the throne may have an easier time getting the King's ear.
What did this story do for me? It made me realize that the exaggeration of royal imagery may serve as a dramatic foil to emphasize intimacy, even with One who is none other than the mighty King of Kings, the blessed Holy One, Master of the Universe. When those awesome-sounding terms are used by pious Jews, I came to understand, they are spoken as though they were terms of intimacy and endearment. This single early rabbinic story is in fact one of hundreds in which the King weeps with His children, longs for their return when they go astray, and acts in every other way like a projected embodiment of loving grandfatherly humanity, rather than as a brutal ruler.20
At the same time, the potential for what may feel to us like brutality is never far away. Life can be that way (and the metaphor means that God can act that way). When it is, we have naught left but to appeal to mystery. We do not understand. Each time the ram's horn is blown in our New Year service, we respond to it with the following words: “We come before You either as children or as servants. If we come as Your children, be compassionate with us as a father is with his children. But if we come as servants, our eyes are turned to You.” “Our eyes are turned to You” means that we recognize the ultimacy and the final arbitrariness of Your power. “All we can do is beg” is the thrust of the prayer. What can be seen as cold and arbitrary, evidence of total divine indifference, is reframed here as the mysterious decree of an inscrutable but loving King. “Our eyes are turned to You” because You ultimately are the One we trust at the same time that You are the One we fear.21
Historical Transformations
As the biblical images of God evolved into that which we call Judaism, the changes surely reflect both the history of Israel and some broader themes in the development of civilization. Although the tribal God became more consistently the universal Creator, His special love for Israel was something the rabbis needed constantly to reiterate and underscore. This was an especially important message in the face of Jewish historical defeat and powerlessness. Jews were subject to the constant pressures