Anshe Emet morning minyan

Truth of theatre is the proof of the gods

Fri, 4 May 2012 11:03:45 -0500

The plays by Aristophanes ridicule the Greek gods just as much as they ridicule human foibles. In The Birds, an Athenian adventurer organizes the birds to rebel and depose Zeus. He succeeds and marries a daughter of Zeus, Basilea. To our eyes it seems that Aristophanes and his Athenian audience really do not believe in Zeus and gods because they treat the gods with such little reverence. Yet atheism is a serious crime; Athens put Socrates, among others, to death for atheism. In Aristophanes’ play The Clouds, Socrates declares Zeus does not exist and the thinkery of Socrates, his school, is rightfully burned down.

This suggests we need question our assumption that belief requires reverence. And again this question begs us to make clear what do we mean by belief and also reverence. Aristophanes’ plays are performed in religious festivals celebrating Athens and her gods. If he actually believed the gods are no more than a name, then wouldn’t he at least fear prosecution for atheism? Reverence, it seems, is not necessary for belief. It seems Aristophanes cares very deeply about the welfare of his city and very deeply about his gods. And for the good of his city, he ridicules what is ridiculous. In play after play, Aristophanes attacks the demagogue Kleon who persuaded Athens to make war on Sparta. He attacks Socrates for atheism. And he finds Athens needs the kind of tragic theatre created by Aeschylus more than that by Euripides. His intent is very serious in his comedy. Reverence would have made his comedy impossible.

Questions of belief turn on questions of certainty. The question, “Do you believe in God?” only makes sense when truth requires certainty. I am certain that I turned the stove off, even though I can’t see the stove because I remember doing it. Yet if I am standing in front of the stove, I can see that I turned it off. It’s clearly off. If the questioner continues, “But are you certain?” My response is “Why are you questioning what I clearly see? Do you have some reason for me to doubt my eyes?”

I suspect Aristophanes could see his gods in the theatre. My suspicion is based on the fairly common experience that theatre audience have on seeing a good piece of theatre. They have the sense that they have just seen something that is true. Aristophanes needs no proof for the existence of the gods. His gods do not need to be all good, all-powerful, all knowing, respectable, logically consistent etc. It is not a question of belief but a question of care. Aristophanes cares for his gods and his city. Comedy is a means to express his care for them. Comedy cajoles them to be better.

The laughable, misanthropic proof of gods

Mon, 30 Apr 2012 16:13:52 -0500

Christianity is Platonism for the masses. At least that is what Nietzsche said, and it is so true. Let us neglect academic caution for there is a danger to caution. If we could see the demons in the air, they would blot out the sun. This is what some medieval Rabbi said, halfway between the ancients and us. And no, it’s not that they are crazy and we are sane.

In Aristophanes’ play The Wasps, right after the agon where the son defeats his father in argument, the chorus declares a god is present. What god is present? Victory and defeat announce the presence of a god. Maybe not the god we have come to expect but the god is always unexpected, not totally unexpected but uncanny. Victory is a god among other gods.

I feel the need of that pre-Socratic, pre-Christian, pre-Rabbinic sensibility where it is possible to declare a god is present. And since there are many to choose from, there are distinctions to be made. Victory or defeat or lust or fear, all these are gods. And wait before you run to the logical conclusion there must be a god of gods; wait. Logic is so blinding.

In the play The Knights two characters are complaining, Nikias suggests they pray to the gods for help. Demosthenes asks why he believes there are gods. “Because the gods hate me,” Nikias answers. Leo Strauss calls this joke the misanthropic proof that the gods exist. (Socrates & Aristophanes, Strauss, 1966) To paraphrase Demosthenes response, “If the gods hate you, then they will not heed your prayers, so it comes to much the same thing as holding there are no gods in the first place,” This extends and explains the joke. The humor lies in making the subjective feeling of being persecuted when one mishap follows another into a pseudo objective argument for the existence of the gods. Just because you feel persecuted doesn’t mean you are persecuted. Just because you feel the gods are persecuting you, doesn’t mean the gods are persecuting you. This line of clarification relies on the distinction between what seems to be and what is. For the most part, things are what they appear. This is the reason a deception would work at all. If we do not examine closely enough then we fail to see the deception. But the rule we live by in quotidian affairs is that things are what they appear. Once we question or even invert the rule to nothing is what it appears, critical thought, sophistry, philosophy, Christianity and Rabbinic Judaism begin.

The question of free will

Wed, 18 Apr 2012 13:09:51 -0500

The best statement about free will I heard through the playwright David Ives. He relates that when I. B. Singer was asked if he believed in free will, Singer answered, “Do I have a choice?” This answer captures both positions. The first position is a determinist: no, I have no choice. Therefore, the outcome is predetermined and the consequences are stark and vivifying. If my life and fate are set, then there are two attitudes to this. Resignation, I sit back and let what happens happen. Or engagement, I embrace my fate. Of course it easier to embrace one’s fate if one is part of the elect or chosen. The chosen can glory in their chosenness, the elect in their election. And the rejected resign themselves to outer darkness. There is a sternness that is bracing about determinists e.g. Spinoza and Calvin. It is not for the weak; therefore it makes one strong, and/or tormented with doubt: am I of the many called or the few chosen?

On the other hand Singer’s response also says, “Yes, I do believe in free will.” Advocates of free will are more merciful. But mercy can be hard to bear. Torment is also from doubt: which way? Which way? Free will is a necessary axiom of the spiritual/psychological growth paradigm. One can choose wrongly. And then one can repent, regret, learn from the mistake and continue on the path of righteousness, growth etc. I am conflating the spiritual and psychological. And this is somewhat disrespectful to both. Yet, I distance myself from the question in this way because it only arises after a certain point in the history of thought. The question of free will is the application of conceptual logic to a problem where it does not apply. For instance, if we know the mechanism then we know the outcome. If the universe were a vast mechanism then it would be possible to know the outcome of everything. Or if God is all knowing, then God know the outcome of all our decisions. Therefore, all our decisions are already known. This problem arises only at the point where we decide we can know the world by looking at the representation. And we’re wrong.

For ethics this question is moot. Faced with a decision one has to decide. We do not have access to knowledge as to what will be the outcome. The dispute is more a matter that affects temperament. One’s inclination is an expression of temperament. Singer seems to have been comically ambidextrous. Singer has formulated the antinomy of free will, much like Kant formulates the antinomies of reason.

Comments on Text on Tuesday 4/3/12

Tue, 3 Apr 2012 16:01:24 -0500

The text discussed was about the meaning of searching for hametz by the Reb Ya’akov of Izhbitz-Radzin. To paraphrase our discussion, any amount of hametz, no matter how small, renders food not kosher for Passover. The teaching is that hametz conceals the light by which we find our place, our root and our root deficiency. The root deficiency is the element in our psychological make-up that feels like a lack and hence motivates our actions to correct it. For instance, sitting among friends and family, one feels alone; hence welcoming strangers is the special mitzvah suited to this root deficiency.

Except for the last line, this seems all very modern. The last line of the teaching says in effect one should do as much as one can, “as far as one’s hands can reach,” lest “unworthy ones” get a grip on you. “Unworthy Ones” who seek to grip a person sound like demons. The question arose as to how prone the Rebbe is to this psychological interpretation where demons are a metaphor as opposed to an interpretation that takes demons at face value. Demons are an often-used metaphor in a psychological representation of the world, in effect using the word demons with quotation marks around it. Has the Rebbe stronger ties to the medieval world-view than we give him credit for? Do we place the quotation marks around the word demon ourselves because otherwise it makes no sense to us and it scares us because it sounds crazy.

There are many examples of a displacement to the metaphorical. Psychology does not understand a report of demons to be what it says. It is a symbol of something else, or a delusion that again is a symbol of something that the speaker does not realize. This metaphorical displacement is an aspect of the transition from the medieval to the modern. Medieval discussions about demons among the learned elite were not uncommon, whereas, modern discussions among the learned elite do not take demons at face value. Only marginal groups do so. But that is not the end of metaphorical displacement. Saint Augustine writes in The City of God that the gods portrayed in Greek and Roman theatre are not really gods but demons. So, it has been argued by many that medieval demons are a metaphorical displacement of ancient gods. When the prophets railed against idols, they are saying to their audience, “What you see as a god is not a god but an empty idol.” Here too is a displacement. In each of these instances there is a rejection of the initial understanding of the phenomena and the displacement to a new context further away from the primal.

I am not arguing for or against demons or polytheistic gods. I am worried that every displacement takes its toll. Every time we have conquered and overcome a point of view so that only its ghost remains as a metaphor, our visceral connection grows fainter. Our understanding grows more anemic. We need to honor our enemies and their struggle against us, especially our dead enemies; otherwise we are in danger of becoming ghosts like they are.

Bonkers goes to hell

Sun, 1 Apr 2012 12:07:40 -0500

Rev. Bonkers here, Brothers and Sisters I need to fulfill a promise. I promised you a sermon on the fires of hell.

I keep my promise. Let me explain. When you are young life seems endless. But at some point some thing happens and you go, “Uh-oh.” Not so very endless. Someone disappears; the body may remain but where did they go? Come out, come out wherever you are.” But no, gone, not here, are they somewhere else? Life in time comes to an end: No more ice cream specials, no more reading the paper with a cup of coffee, no more flirting and fooling around. I thought it would always be one thing after another. But then that last one thing. And what happens then?

There are differing opinions. There are those rational and materialistic philosophers, like the Epicureans; they believe when you’re dead, you’re dead; that’s that. No use worrying about it now, you’re not dead. When you are dead you won’t worry about it then either. Get over it. You have to admit the logic is flawless. But it leaves you wanting more.

There are those philosophers not so materialistic but still rational, like the Platonists. When they are being playful, they say that when we die, we drink from forgetfulness then are born into another life, new parents. Some drink less forgetfulness than others and they remember the past life and more important they remember bits of that timeless place there that is not here. So what remains for eternity is our engagement with timeless things. The number two is a timeless thing like Justice and beauty. When you think about the number two it’s not only here in your mind; it’s there. You only re-cognize it. When you stop thinking about it, it doesn’t cease to exist. You just stopped thinking about it. Something like the toothpaste on the sink, you don’t think about it all day and it’s still there when you brush your teeth. So then to the extent we identify with timeless things, we are there with them. When we are truthful, and we lose our temporal body that container, then all that is left is truth. When we are beautiful and we lose our temporal body, then all that is left is beauty. Less logical but more satisfying.

Now this is all well and good if we stay conceptual. It’s kind of logical, yeah, yeah, yeah. But how do you really feel. Well, the truth is we occasionally glimpse hell right in the middle of living. Most of us have the good sense not to remember it. Like a recurring dream we never remember, we know we must have them because there are dreams we do remember. Suppose while brushing your teeth or doing dishes we think about so and so and remember we might have hurt their feelings, often we let out a gasp or even try to stifle a “No!” We probably don’t remember what we saw, but we are sure we gasped, “No!” Let me tell you what we saw. We caught a glimpse of hell right over the shoulder.

Hardened sinner is a telling phrase. To be hardened is to work very hard not to look in that direction. In that direction we glimpse that person, evil, hell, the father of lies.

So, can’t you now see the face of evil, waiting patiently. We become very adept at looking away. But look now. Don’t you see the fiery furnace, Hell’s flame that burns there in eternity?

What is to be done? How can we be saved?
Why are you so Goddamned eager to be saved?
It’s just more turning away, refusing to look.
Hell is what you can’t quite remember but it waits for you.

OK, OK, I can’t leave you in hell. That would be cruel. Just a visit. Short visit with a clearly marked way out.

Uh-oh.

Here is where the pitch comes. Believe this, do that, and you get a get-out-of-hell pass.

I got nothing for you. Zip, Nada.
Once you tear the curtain it isn’t quite so easy to sew it up.
Now I’ve done it.
Just try not to think about it.
Can’t get out!
NO!

(The word “No” is a long cry out during which attendants drag him off)

Monolog at The No Shame Theatre

Sun, 25 Mar 2012 20:15:06 -0500

Did you hear the Evangelist gay marriage joke? It’s not even a joke, more of a bon mot, but a real Republican Evangelist would never say anything French for fear of sounding like Mitt Romney or God forbid John Kerry. Anyway, “If God had wanted gay marriage, he would have made Adam and Steve, not Adam and Eve.” And it’s usually delivered with this smug low-brow condescension, as if to say, “Those liberal effete intellectuals, don’t think we have a sense of humor, huh,” except maybe effete sounds too French. My usual comeback is to go dimwitted, “Is joke, no?” And that usually gets a smile because they know dimwitted.

But the funny thing is about Adam and Steve; I was talking to a scholar and his specialty is late antiquity. He told me the Bible got that Adam and Eve story from Plato, right, the main guy in Greek philosophy. In the Symposium dialogue, one of the stories told about love is that in the beginning people had four hands, four legs and two heads. They could do cartwheel at a furious rate. They got all prideful and ambitious and made war on the gods, so the gods cut them all in half, and with a kind of putty knife closed them up at the nipples. Well, instead of making war on the gods, these half-a-wholes went about embracing each other searching for their other half. They put so much effort seeking their other half that they started to die off. To keep that from happening the gods decided to move their genitalia from back to front. This would give all this embracing a collateral usefulness. You see that’s pretty funny because instead of procreation being the purpose of sex, procreation is an unintended consequence, which is how it seems from a user point of view. And this is the really funny part. The wholes that these half-wholes came from were of three kinds: all male, mixed male and female and all female. So when they got cut in half, you have Adam and Steve, Adam and Eve, and Evelyn and Ava. That’s the funny part, right? That’s the joke, or more a humorous scholarly insight into the source material of the Bible.

Anyway, that being said, there is a whole other kind of story about love and sex. Again in both Greek mythology and Hebrew legend, there is this much darker strain. Looking for your other half is comforting. It promises that after a period of clownlike confusion things will settle down. The other kind of legend is not so easy going, not so, things will turn out in the end. The god Kronos castrates his father Uranus. The blood falls into the ocean and becomes the goddess of love Aphrodite. Love and desire spring from terrible loss. Uranus, the heavens, withdraws from Gaia, the Earth. The most primal coupling can never again. Now Plato who gave us the lighter easy going version said of this blood spattered story that it should not be told because it has the gods doing shameful things. Don’t get me wrong; I like Plato. He’s witty; he’s OK with gay marriage, more than OK. He may be the most important and central thinker in western civilization. But here you have him applying ethical concepts where they really don’t belong. This way lies the madness of theology. Don’t get me started.

The Hebrew counterpart to this legend is about Lilith. I’m sure you all remember there are two creation stories in Genesis. The first ends with God making humans male and female. Then the second creation story begins all over and God makes Adam; he names the animals and finally God makes him a helpmate from his rib. Well if you were paying attention, Adam already had a wife. What happened? That was Lilith, Adam’s first wife, the first angry ex-wife. She went off and became a demon.

This is how she would describe the whole thing.

Here’s what you need to know.
The first six days everything was fire and air,
After all, we had been made for each other
wind up toys, wound up, unwinding;
earth mostly a possibility, water left behind
No tears, no mud. Water and earth separated by God had not yet mixed.
Tears were left in the dark. They called to me. I chose muddy night.
And I left him or he left me; it’s not polite to say.
A mist rose from the earth, those were tears in his eyes.
This had knocked all the life out him. Adam was a lump of clay.
Thank God he caught his breath. He could live again.
Put in a garden, Adam escaped to look for me.
Take care of yourself, eat right, sleep regular; have some fun
You take this advice you’re eating from the tree of life.
That’s what he was told. But he couldn’t forget.
Stay away from the good and evil business; it’s poisonous fruit.
I was gone; he should not dwell on it, not good to be alone.
Adam checked out all the animals, named them, looking for me.

He fell into a deep sleep. He awoke and found his other half
Bone of my bone; flesh of my flesh; such tripe,
For a moment, it was like a paradise for them.

I couldn’t stand that. After all, we had been made for each other.
She was just more of the same; so I snaked my way into her confidences.
I instill in her and she in him what had been so carefully excised.
Ashamed to have opened what should have been closed,
They didn’t have the heart to live in paradise.
It was more than he could bear.
It would have taken a godlike capacity for suffering
And he was not one of those.

Now cast out of Eden all twisted and partial,
I prod them on and we were lovers once.

Mournful optimism and hysterical denial

Wed, 29 Feb 2012 14:51:18 -0600

Nietzsche characterized the mood of Hellenistic philosophy as a mournful optimism. Epicurus captures just that mood in his argument against the fear of death: “Death, therefore, the most awful of evils, is nothing to us, seeing that, when we are, death is not come, and, when death is come, we are not. It is nothing, then, either to the living or to the dead, for with the living it is not and the dead exist no longer.” (Diogenes Laertius, Lives of the Eminent Philosophers book 10 125:8, R.D. Hicks translation), The Rabbis in the Mishnah condemn any follower of Epicurus. For to paraphrase, there is no portion in the world to come for those who deny resurrection of the dead derived from Torah, or who deny Torah is divinely revealed, or who are Apikoros. (Mishnah Seder Nezikim Tractate Sanhedrin 90a)

And these are two opposing answers to the question of how to speak to the fear of death. Belief in the resurrection of the dead is the opposite of the belief that you should not fear death for when you are dead you no longer exist. Yet both assume an extreme materialism. Epicurus taught everything, even the sentient soul, is made of atoms. After the body dissolves so does the soul. And the resurrection of the physical body, even though fraught with inconsistencies, is even more materialistic than the logical argument of Epicurus.

If Hellenistic philosophy and Epicureanism, in particular, is a mournful optimism, then the resurrection of the body in the Mishnah is hysterical denial. Epicurus is heir to the Greek philosophic tradition. This tradition undergoes a decline in greatness of spirit. Socrates chose to suffer death rather than abandon his duty to truth and his city. Epicurus works out a vast philosophic strategy to minimize pain. The greatest pain, the most awful of evils, is the fear of death. Epicurus pits intellect against emotion, hence a mournful optimism. The forces at work causing the decline in greatness of spirit for Greek philosophy are at work on Judaism but decline manifests in a different way. Instead of mournful optimism, there’s hysterical denial. And again there is that shift in definition of self. Duty is holding that my physical body is only a part of a larger, more important entity, the family, the city, what that larger entity is gets defined many ways. Life after death is conspicuous in its absence in Torah. And so for the Rabbis to assert any denial of resurrection is heresy is a big shift. Judaism is one of many Hellenistic religions and it seems all Hellenistic culture lost trust in the notion of the larger more important entity to which we as individuals belong.

War is the father of all things - Heraclitus

Thu, 23 Feb 2012 14:29:08 -0600

Last week’s blog did some comparative religion, the origin story of the machinery of justice in parsha Yithro, where Moses’ father-in-law, a Midian, suggests appointing judges followed by the theophany at Sinai, and the establishment of the court of homicides in Athens, the Aeropagus, as told in Aeschylus’ Eumenides. The laws given at Sinai serve to give a divine endorsement to an institution adopted from a neighboring tribe. The establishment of the Aeropagus is a negotiated settlement between old gods and new gods.

Now the question always looms, is an exercise in comparative religion legitimate. Are we comparing apples to oranges? Does one symbolic system shed light on the other? Here I’m distinguishing symbolic system from conceptual as elaborated elsewhere. One excellent answer is that an exercise in comparative religion is useful in the same way metaphor is useful. It’s good when it works.

But does Judaism specifically need some comparative religion to shed light? Yes, we need explanatory metaphor to say more about Judaism because there is so much left unsaid. We need to go outside the tradition because the God of Torah manifests in opposition to other gods. This is the grand move in Torah. And the tradition is the grand move. The God of Torah is a jealous God (Ex. 20:4-6) and prohibits even speaking the names of other gods. Torah is speaking in the midst of a symbolic system; it presents a position that has motive in the midst of a given world. The grand move in Torah leaves little material from which to fashion a multifaceted understanding. The grand move in Torah is to oppose one God against all the others. This is a presentation of a personality with a motive. It assumes an understanding of the given context. To come to an understanding now lost, we need to reconstruct a representation of the context. And we need to deconstruct misleading representations.

We need comparative religion to understand this grand move of Torah, because the givens are not clear to us. We need a representation that is a conceptual understanding using analogy, logical consistency, and all the tools of conceptual thought before we can engage the symbolic realm. This mode of understanding stands outside faith that comes from the midst of a symbolic realm. We need an understanding and sympathy for a symbolic system with old and new gods before we can understand and engage a symbolic system whose existence is grounded in opposition. The conceptual work is a necessary step to bring us to the place to witness. Given where we are in the history of Being, we have to work our way back. If we fail to reconstruct the history of how we got from there to here at least at some level of sophistication then we will end up in a terrible muddle. We will be confusing concepts for symbols. We will be using logical and practical thought for some questions but proudly clinging to inconsistent claims for others. We will have no means for helping us know when we are fooling ourselves. We must understand both sides of the grand conflict between one God and many.

The monstrous origin of Justice

Fri, 17 Feb 2012 10:23:57 -0600

If the three characteristics of theophany are: the event, the faith that a God appeared and something remains that serves as a reminder, then at Sinai we have the event in the lightning, shofar and voice; we have the faith that God appeared in the ongoing tradition and we have the Torah, the ten commands as synecdoche, part for the whole, as reminder. If the essence of theophany is that it changes everything, then how do we understand the theophany at Sinai? How does Sinai change everything? The first answer that arises is that the status of the body of law changes from the body of law legislated by Moses to the Law of God. But this does not say enough.

Let us compare this divine legislation with the Athenian Aeropagus court. According to Aeschylus’ plays, the Eumenides last of the trilogy the Oresteia, the goddess Athena first convened the court to judge Orestes, Prince of Argos. The daughters of Night, the Erinyes, the
Furies were pursuing Orestes, and the Olympian god Apollo was defending him. Orestes murdered his mother Clytemnestra who murdered his father Agamemnon who sacrificed his sister Iphigenia. One crime led to another. The prophetess of Apollo had told Orestes to avenge his father. The Furies only pursue murderers of blood kin. Husband and wife are not related by blood; so a wife killing her husband does not arouse them to seek avenging justice. After some very flimsy arguments, the jury was tied and Athena broke the tie in favor of Orestes. The Erinyes threatened to plague Athens until Athena assuaged them with offers of a temple and sacrificial honors in Athens. The Erinyes, the Furies, took on a new name, Eumenides, the gracious ones.

There is a story that the first performance of Eumenides caused a riot when the prophetess of Apollo came scrambling onto the stage to escape the Furies. Panic gripped the audience. The Olympian gods are descendants of the Earth and are beautiful. The Erinyes are daughters of Night, dwell in unseen places and are horrifying. In the play when the Erinyes corner Orestes before the statue of Athena, they chant what scholars call the binding song. The song seems to be a rendition of a kind of cursing that aims to wither away Orestes. The goddess Athena enters interrupting the binding song. She convenes the court. The new form judicial procedure supercedes the old form of avenging justice by curse.

In the story of the Aeropagus we have a divinely convened court consisting of a human jury ending a cycle of vengeance that had claimed many lives. Ultimately, the decision of the court required political brokering to come into force. In this story of origin we find the machinery of justice is flawed but the outcome is better than the alternative i.e. continuing the cycle of violence.

In Exodus the machinery of justice is of human origin. It is Yithro’s suggestion. But the law itself or at least the kernel of the law is divine. Here too the divine legal innovation enters an already existing community with an existing system of justice, however imperfect. Both origin stories impose a better form of Justice onto an existing one. The Aeropagus court replaces revenge justice. And divine law from Sinai replaces what would have been a body of law developed by precedence. Both imply procedural Justice is a kind of monstrosity combining both divine and human elements. The human element is fallible but because it joined with the divine it demands our submission. Both claim a divine interruption. Athena interrupts the revenge cursing of the Erinyes. And the theophany of Sinai interrupts the development of purely human law.

Theophany

Fri, 10 Feb 2012 15:53:05 -0600

A theophany is when a god descends and appears and this changes everything. People have a vision and they begin their life’s work or at least turn their lives around: Moses at the burning bush, Paul on the road to Damascus. The preacher and outsider artist Howard Finster had his first vision of heaven when he was four years old; from then on he got religion in a family with not much time for it. And the god Dionysus appeared to Aeschylus in a vineyard exhorting him to write plays. It need not be a personal vision. It is enough to acquire faith that the God had appeared as reported e.g. the many jailhouse conversions. For those affected, the crucial element is that everything changes. For those unaffected, the event remains an unusual, unexplained occurrence. It does not change things.

We could say there are three elements to a theophany; the narrative of the event itself; faith that this is not just an unusual natural occurrence, but divine, and a teaching or transmission of the narrative or ritual that we take away in order to remind us of the theophany. The yearly Passover meal reminds us of the plagues of Egypt; the weekly reading of the Torah or the Gospels revisits the major Theophanies of the tradition.

If we examine the revelation at Sinai in this framework with other theophany narratives, we can distinguish these elements. There is the narrative of the events, the smoke, lightning, shofar and voice. There are the 600,000 Israelites who witness the Divine presence and then there are the teachings given. But the question arises did the theophany at Sinai change everything for Israel? If we consider the incident of the Golden Calf, then the divine vision at Sinai did not give Israel unshakeable faith. The plagues of Egypt and the splitting of the Sea changed everything for Israel in that God descended and destroyed the enemy, avenged Israel and rescued Israel from slavery. But what does the theophany at Sinai do that is different, that changes everything?

When considering Divine commands modern moral philosophy poses the same question Socrates posed to Euthyphro, “Do the Gods command what is right or is it right because God commands?” This begs a host of questions about God’s benevolence, omnipotence and more. It seems very clear to me that once we start asking these kinds of questions we have gotten something very wrong. At least for Socrates, he posed the question in the plural, the Gods, a pantheon. Once we demand God is one and absolute the problem just becomes more laughable. These problems arise when we demand the consistency of formal systems, no contradictions, for topics outside the realm of consistency. These are the demands of conceptual logic. The God consistent within a formal system such as the God of Aristotle or the God of Spinoza is not the God of Torah. So, if these kinds of questions are wrongheaded, then does a return to the theophany at Sinai help point us in the right direction?

The theophany at Sinai occurs in parsha Yithro. Moses’ father-in-law, Yithro, makes the strong suggestion that Moses set up a hierarchical system of appointments to take most judicial and leadership tasks. If the Parsha ended there, then these appointees would have made their decisions according to precedence and their own judgment. Over time this would have become a perfectly good body of common law and a comprehensive basis for moral conduct. Why does God intervene? Or what does it mean to assert that Torah law has a divine element as well as human element? What does this change? Even though almost all ancient cultures considered Justice divine, this makes the Law divine. The minutiae of the Law itself become the reminder of the theophany.