Yeshiva University - Masmid Yearbook (New York, NY)

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MASMID service of NaiLirc. Tlic greatest cmancipaiion of mankinil, tliat is, from Nature, is the work ol the Jews. Ill jiiil.iisin, m,m r.iiscs liiinstll .iliove Nature. In tliis .iiilip.illiy Id .ill siipcrslilidns, ilitic lies ,111 .iin.uliiin iiii vi will 111. liiil.iiMii li.is never ilcniiJ llii.s w ' dilcl. We niiisl hiikiiiIhi iIi.iI in the story of uciiidii, ilun ' appr.ii .it;.iin .iiul .iL;.iin the words, Ami CoJ s.iw ili.ii ii ,i.s ijddii. ' ' I li. world is Clod ' s ,md is L;ood. I he Jewish toncep tion is opiiinistli. Another great conception of the world, tin. Indian, is pessimistic, and hiindreils of millions of people believe in ii implicitly. In the eyes of this part of Inimanity, the world is e il, the world connotes suffering. With each thing we do we only entangle ourselves more and more in this suflering. The highest goal of man is knowledge. This knowledge consists in realizing that all existence is devoid of meaning. The highest goal is the extinction of the world, and that can be attained only by ever greater de- tachment from the vi ' orld, by asceticism. This is the exact opposite of the optimistic Jewish inter- pretation of the world. This pessimistic conception is not limited to India alone. Great philosophers have shared it. Even Christianity holds that the completion of man lies in the Beyond. Philosophers like Schopenhauer teach that the wotld is evil, and that there is no higher goal than the extinction of this world. This attitude, in turn, influenced great artists, as, for example, Richard Wagner. His Tristan is based on the philosophy of Schopenhauer. The Jewish conception, on the other hand, demands the glorification of the world Jewish philosophy differs very strongly from mysticism. Mysticism demands the fusion of man with God. The great goal of the mystic is an intense desire to become at one with God. This view Jewish philosophy sharply rejects. When Moses asked God, Show me Thy glory, God answered, Thou c.inst not see my face: for no man shall see me and live, But God shows Moses His attributes, and tliese attributes of God are ethical attributes. Thus God directs Moses to the world. Moses is not to look upon God, but upon the world, upon the world as it rcflcxts the light of Ciod. He sees the world as it is constructed according to the order of God. The will of the Jews is c|uitc definitely liirecied towards the bet- terment of this world. That is why the Jewish teachings do not speak of a Beyond , but of the ' coming world. This udiid is fundamentally good. The cv ' il in the world comes from the disorder which man has caused, and this disorder is rooted in the fact that man was free, Man was created as a free being. He might accept or reject the order which he found. If man did not have this freedom, he would not be a man. He would then be nothing but a perfect machine. He would be dead. The meaning of Judaism is the constant re- establishment of the original meaning of Creation. To carry the truth of the very beginning of things through all times and not to allow it.self to be misled, is the purpose of the Jewish religion. This basic truth must be brought to life anew in all times. A great opportunity for a revivification of Judaism lies in t he fact that it is no ascetic doctrine. Judaism does not teach flight from the world. On the contrary, it commands that the responsibility for the world be assumed. There is perhaps no religion of mankind which em- phasizes as strongly iis Jewish wisdom the element of Joy. Joy is not only allowed, it is demanded. Thus there is a command to eat and drink with pleasure. To abstain from pleasure is a sin. This teaching is entirely positive. It conquers death not only by the hope of a continuation of personal existence beyond the grave: it conquers death by a basic extirpation of the roots of death. Death is rooted in the disorder of the world. The connection between God and man is broken and must be remade. The Jewish teaching has created the splendid conception of Schechina. This is the presence of God in the world. God wishes this world to be his residence. The Jewish con- ception of God h.is nothing to do with the pale abstractions of philosophers and theologians. It is an immeasurablv reali.stic conception. This EJet ' en

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MASMID We wish to avoid any misunderstanding. We do not say that there are not countless things which have worth. Nay more, Judaism teaches that everything has its worth. There is no one too insignificant or too wicked or too worthless to find consideration. Everyone has a claim to his place in the world. Indeed Judaism goes so far as to ascribe a worth to inanimate things. Thus we find that it is wrong to destroy articles which may have utility. A lovely maxim of the Cabbala says: In all things lie locked sparks of the lost original light. And these sparks await their liberation. Everything contained in the world has a right to its own place, and to partake some day in reality. But nothing has reality in itself. Nothing can therefore be an object of worship or of adoration, not even Nature. There is no more dangetous delusion than the belief that Nature is eternal and Godlike. The conception which we have outlined har- monizes completely with modern science. It is only obsolete science that assumes that there has always been absolute matter, that the world is a mechanism which consists of absolute forces. In modern physics, in Einstein ' s physics, everything has be- come relative. The entire process of nature is dissolved into a system of extremely complicated mathematical equations; really, therefore, into a complicated system of relations. But no substances remain. These disappear completely. Even the concept of natural forces has vanished from modern physics, as has the concept of eternal laws. The latest researches have done away with the concept of natural law. Even in logic and mathematics the concept of compulsion has been pushed further and further back; or it is shown that this compulsion has quite different roots. It is more a form of our thought, as Kant claimed. The modern interpretation of Nature comes much nearer the conception which the Jews have always had, namely the idea of creatio ex nihilo. Cre- ation and Creation out of nothing are in fact, both the same thing. If something had already existed out of which God could have first created the world, it would not have been a real creation. A recent Jewish thinker, Steinheim, says, The idea of ' creation out of nothing ' is the vety standard of the Jewish synagogue. This idea of creatio ex nihilo therefore very emphatically rules out all superstition. For what is superstition if not the consideration of the phenomena which surround us as reality, or the belief that behind these phenomena beings are hidden. All mytho- logies, all beliefs in gods, in demons, in good and bad spirits, arise from the same motive, namely the belief that behind these occurrences there are mysterious beings. Judaism strongly opposed this. Judaism rejects all mythologies, all realms of gods, all dark worlds. However, even such conceptions as those of natural forces are only refined forms of super.nition. Such words also as electricity or gravity are only pictorial ex- pressions, which are in no way better than the old conceptions of gods and spirits. Therefore the Jewish doctrine forbids man to make himself an image. This fundamental law, Thou shalt not make unto thyself any graven image, is one of the greatest visions ever conceived on earth. This vision separates man from the superstitious and haunted worlds of prehistoric times. It locks up the worlds of mythology and magic. This vision raises man out of a fairy realm and brings him into the world of reality. Without this command- ment there could be no historical life of man. Man would remain ensnared in a child ' s world, in a passive world, in a dream world. He would never break through to reality and co responsi- bility. The cardinal principle of Judaism which we have discussed is, therefore, the guaranty of a clear, responsible human life in reality, in this world, and not in a world populated by super- stitious entities, in which there is no ethical re- sponsibility. The premise of the Oneness of God opens wide the door to science. The exodus from Egypt can also be regarded as the exodus from the house of slavery, the house of mytho- logy. The gods of Egypt with their hawk and ram heads, or the cult of the bull, show man still deeply imbedded in Nature, in the slavery of the Ten

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MASMID worldliness and realism of the Jews is as magni- ficent as it is modern. It is a realism which is far in advance of all realistic conceptions of out times. God, the world, and man are sharply separated from one another in Judaism. In the tension between these three poles lies true reality. In M other interpretations, these three merge into one another. Either the world becomes submerged once more in God or else God becomes submerged in the world. God is then nothing but the whole world. That is pantheism. Or else, man sinks mystically into God. Then God is made a man, and the idea of God is destroyed. This has been the development of Christian theology. However, it is also wrong for man to become submerged in the world. That is a false teaching, grown out of the soil of a science which is today obsolete. In it, man is only a piece of nature. Man is only a part of Nature, a by-product of Nature. This is also contradictory to modern conceptions. The modern world is coming to believe, more and more, that man is a creature apart from Nature. The existence of man is f indamentally different from the existence of animals or plants. The existence of man is not the same as the existence of a stone. There is no general existence, ' shared in equally by all creatures. It is not true that stones and plants and animals and man all exist uniformly. The existence of man is of a higher sort than that of all Nature. Man is the keystone of Nature, the key to Nature. Modern bio- logy has worked out a strong case for the theory that man is a kind of blue-print, underlying all of organic Nature, just as a blue-print underlies an edifice. The edifice is constructed only by means of the blue-print. Man is the blue-print of Nature. One of the most modern of debates centers about the question as to whether man is a blind-alley of Nature. Modern science is very disposed to deny this. It approaches the biblical interpretation, which has the development of Nature culminate in man. Man must not be interpreted from his animal side, from his zoological side, from the point of view of race or blood. Man is interpreted as a historical creature, a being that lives in a society, as a fellow -creature. To everj ' man there belongs a You. No I can be understood without a You. The most profound characteristic of man is that he possesses speech, that he is addressed and answers. Speech is the highest phenomenon to be found on earth. The historical and socio- logical interpretation of man, the masterpiece of modern times, is Jewish through and through. This leads us to the third main point, the emphasis of society today. Our times have turned away from the isolation of the individual. We are trying to understand the individual in a new way, to bring him into a relation with his fellow- creatures. The individual has his rights; and these rights, unfortunately, are being more and more forgotten today. The over-emphasis of the individual has been followed by its opposite, the over-emphasis of society. Here Judaism is un- questionably faced with great struggles. What is the position of the individual with respea to the whole? The Jewish teachings stress the responsi- bility of the totality for each and every individual. The individual, on the other hand must also answer for the totality. It is important to remem- ber that the majority of the Jewish prayers are worded in the first person plural, we. The highest demand which Judaism makes, the demand of holiness, is not directed only to the individual, but to the people as a whole. It is said, Ye shall be holy — a kingdom of priests — a holy people. Many commandments are directed towards the in- dividual; for example, Thou shalt not kill. This highest of all demands, the one of holiness, how- ever is directed preferably to the totality. But what is it that binds the totality? What is a people? Here we must bring out a fundamental element of Judaism. The Jewish people is a founded people. It is not a nation in the manner of other nations. It was one of the greatest mistakes of Jewish history when the people chose a king for the first time, and said, We also may be like all the nations. Ever} ' conception of the Jewish Twelve