Radical Judaism_ Rethinking God and Tradition - Arthur Green [85]
What do I mean by this tale? I am claiming that we were somehow meant to be scattered through the world, to deny its easy truths, to raise unpopular questions. We created a contrarian religion, one filled with harsh rebellion against the reigning idolatry of its day. “Eyes have they, but they see not; ears have they, but they hear not” (Ps. 115:5-6) was a revolutionary broadside, not a little ditty to be sung on holidays. Our long centuries of living as a minority kept us in the role of contrarians throughout history. That experience was formative of the Jewish mentality. Even though we have become terribly regimented and conventional in our own set ways, something buried deep within us still remembers Israel's role as the great contrarians of history. We still long to smash idols. It was that contrary mind, after all, that got us to leave Egypt, that created the Torah, that brought God out of silence, and that broke the tablets.
Because of the Bible's great influence in shaping Western culture, the ancient history of Israel, from Abraham down through destruction and exile, is known throughout the world, teaching and inspiring millions who have never met a living Jew. But the second half of Jewish history, that of our wandering, persecution, and refusal to disappear, surely also has something to teach the world. If there are sparks of light to be raised from the later history of Israel, it is primarily our survival and uplifting of diaspora that we have to share with others. How and why did we survive so many centuries of oppression? Was it just our dogged stubbornness, a refusal to accept that we had been superseded by the more universalizing messages of Christianity and Islam, and finally by modernity? Was it the longing for renewal and return to our homeland, so much emphasized in our prayers, that kept us going? If so, we now have a chance to return to that homeland. Or was it a sense that all this dispersion and suffering itself had meaning, that we still had something important to give to the world through which we were scattered? That something must have to do with our ongoing role as contrarians, as questioners and challengers of our societies’ grand assumptions and systems of values, as smashers of idols.
To be a committed diaspora Jew is to affirm that we have something of value to offer, a message that still needs to be heard. We have to ask ourselves what the world needs of us, what we can offer at this critical time in the history of human civilization. When put this way, it is clear that we need to put forth the loudest possible proclamation of our most essential truth: Being is One, and each person is God's unique image. There are plenty of idols still to be smashed in our world. The degradation of human lives has not lessened as we have “progressed” into the nuclear and cybernetic ages. Genocide, so-called ethnic cleansing, and other horrors characterize human life today. The use of religion as a weapon to divide humans from one another and to justify the most horrible — and clearly sacrilegious — acts of violence is especially disturbing. The new fundamentalisms—most violent in Islam but present in all the religions, including our own—express their fear and rage against modernity with the most horrible distortions of religion, using its great power to generate hate rather than love. Here “religion” itself has become the idol. Our witness is urgently needed. “Why was the human created singly? So that no man may say: ‘My father was greater than yours.’ “ We need to be there, whether out there in the world or here in the American power center (today's “great city of Rome” of the Talmud), using our influence to proclaim that truth. Where is our voice today?
It is clear that a contemporary version of Ben Azzai's message will have to be expanded to recognize the holiness of earth, air, and water as well as that of human body and spirit, demanding that we care for the survival of other species alongside our devotion to humanity. Mitzvah