Radical Judaism_ Rethinking God and Tradition - Arthur Green [72]
I hesitate to use the word “soul,” because it is so widely thought of as a “thing” or an entity that exists (or does not exist) “somewhere” within the person, and as an entity that survives (or does not survive) after the person is dead. But “soul” as I understand it is precisely not an entity, any more than “God” is an entity. Just as Y-H-W-H is not a “thing,” but refers to the transcendent wholeness of Being that both surpasses and embraces all beings, so is the soul to be seen as the transcendent wholeness of the person, a mysterious essence that is more than the sum of all the characteristics of that person that we could ever name.21 As the “breath of God” that exists within the person, neshamah or soul represents the link between our individual self and the great Self of being. It is the aspect of us that was not separated from our Source, that has never let go of its divine root in the long process of individuation and alienation that constitutes human life. The soul is that “holy being” within us that remembers the One and seeks to “re-member” us to it, to re-join us to our Source.22 Difficult as it is to find that place of inner connection to the cosmos and all that is, I believe that it is present within each of us.
The quest for that aspect of ourselves is one way of depicting the core of the religious journey. We sense within us a “place” that joins us to the force of life itself, or to the Being that unites us with all other creatures. That part of us has been covered over, hidden from us, by the “grime” created by our fast-paced and high-risk ways of living.23 Being the most sensitive and vulnerable part of us, it is covered with layers of self-protective gear that we develop over the course of our lives. Our fragile inner core, that of which we say each day “My God, the soul You placed within me is pure,” is surrounded by a hard shell.24 For many of us, that protective layer keeps the innermost self hidden, even from ourselves. Various things that happen to us in life—especially in childhood—cause us so to harden our shell that it becomes nearly impossible to break through it. The “journey” to God is thus nothing other than a return to our deepest self, a reclaiming of our own soul. Our task is to seek out that innermost reality, to find it, and to reshape the rest of our lives around that journey homeward.
As for the “immortality” of the soul, I can only affirm that the breath of God never dies. As we breathe out, for the final time, that which the One has breathed into us, the divine breath is already busy entering new life-forms, new human babies, new saplings, flowers, birds, and bees all over the world. I know nothing much about rebirth or reincarnation, only that the divine breath is eternal. The real religious question for me has always been: “Is there life before death?” As to the other question, surrender to the mystery of existence is the only truth I know. Among the many teachings I associate with reciting the daily shema’ is its ordering of divine names. “Y-H-W-H eloheynu [our God] Y-H-W-H” means that endless Being was there before each and all of us came into existence. It is our God for the brief instant we flash across life's screen. But then we let go, and it is Y-H-W-H, endless Being, once again.25
Species and Tribe
The paradox of Jewish existence is that this universal message is borne by a very particular people, one that has been struggling to preserve its own existence, often not an easy task, for the past two thousand years. We exist in order to teach and bear witness to our primary values, the oneness of Y-H-W-H and the creation of each