The Marriage Plot - Jeffrey Eugenides [71]
“Watch out, Claire,” Larry said. “Mitchell was a religious studies major.”
Claire grimaced and said, “Oh, my God.”
“I’ll tell you what I learned in religious studies,” Mitchell said with a slight smile. “If you read any of the mystics, or any decent theology—Catholic, Protestant, kabbalistic—the one thing they all agree on is that God is beyond any human concept or category. That’s why Moses can’t look at Yahweh. That’s why, in Judaism, you can’t even spell out God’s name. The human mind can’t conceive what God is. God doesn’t have a sex or anything else.”
“Then why is he a man with a long white beard on the Sistine Chapel?”
“Because that’s what the masses like.”
“The masses?”
“Some people need a picture. Any great religion has to be inclusive. And to be inclusive you have to accommodate different levels of sophistication.”
“You sound just like my father. Whenever I tell him how sexist Judaism is, he tells me it’s tradition. Because it’s tradition, that means it’s good. You have to live with it.”
“I’m not saying that. I’m saying that for some people, tradition is good. For others, it’s not so important. Some people think that God reveals Himself through history, others that revelation is progressive, that maybe the rules or interpretation changes over time.”
“The whole idea of revelation is teleological and bogus.”
Back in Scarsdale, facing down her father in their Chagall-lined living room, Claire had no doubt stood just as she was standing now: feet planted apart, hands on hips, torso leaning slightly forward. Despite being irritated by her, Mitchell was also impressed—as Mr. Schwartz must also have been impressed during their arguments—with the force of Claire’s will.
He realized she was waiting for him to respond and so he said, “Bogus how?”
“The whole idea of God’s revealing ‘Himself’ through history is silly. The Jews build the temple. Then the temple gets destroyed. So the Jews have to build it again so that the Messiah shows up? The idea that God is waiting around for stuff to happen—like, if there was such a thing as God, he would even care what people are doing—is totally anthropocentric and so totally, totally male! Before the patriarchal religions were created, people worshipped the Goddess. The Babylonians did, the Etruscans did. The religion of the Goddess was organic and environmental—it was about the cycle of nature—as opposed to Judaism and Christianity, which are just about imposing the law and raping the land.”
Mitchell glanced at Larry to see that he was nodding in agreement. Mitchell might have nodded, too, if he were going out with Claire, but Larry looked sincerely interested in the Goddess of the Babylonians.
“If you dislike a conception of God as masculine,” Mitchell said to Claire, “why replace it with one that’s feminine? Why not get rid of the whole idea of a gendered divinity?”
“Because it is gendered. It is. Already. Do you know what a mikva is?” She turned to Larry. “Does he know what a mikva is?”
“I know what a mikva is,” Mitchell said.
“O.K., so my mom goes to a mikva every month after her period, right? To cleanse herself. To cleanse herself from what? From the power to give birth? To create life? They turn the greatest power a woman has into something they should be ashamed about.”
“I agree with you, that’s absurd.”
“But it’s not about the mikva. The whole institutionalized form of Western religion is all about telling women they’re inferior, unclean, and subordinate to men. And if you actually believe in any of that stuff, I don’t know what to say.”
“You’re not having your period right now, are you?” Mitchell said.
Claire’s expressive face went blank. “I can’t believe you just said that,” she said.
“I was just kidding,” Mitchell said. His face was suddenly hot.
“What a total sexist thing to say.”
“I was kidding,” he repeated, his voice tight.
“You have to get to know Mitchell,” Larry said. “He’s an acquired taste.”
“I’m in agreement with you!” Mitchell