Bearing public witness isn’t Jewish custom. We confess our collective sins corporately on the Day of Atonement. But an editorship at First Things is not a seat on a Wall Street trading floor, or a teaching gig at a conservatory of music; it is a position of public trust, and I owed the readers of First Things an accounting of a path to faith that was unusual, to put it mildly. I put this on our website this morning under the title, “Confessions of a Coward.”
That probably was autobiography enough for one decade, but I can’t help adding a thought about fear. An extra review copy of the late Rav Joseph Soloveitchik’s book And From There Shall You Seekhappened to be around the office, and I made the mistake of taking it along to read over dinner one night. Written more than six decades ago in Hebrew, it was not published in the original Hebrew until the 1970s and not translated until just now. Reading the Rav’s discussion of the Song of Songs I had something close to a panic attack—no exaggeration. It hadn’t really dawned on me until Soloveitchik spelled it out that the Song of Songs was not only about the beauties of divine love, but also about its terrors. The “Good God/Bad God” apposition that naïve writers posit between Old and New Testaments is not only wrong, but it is drooling idiocy. God’s love is what is terrifying, for it consumes the individual ego and annihilates the human sense of self. If you don’t believe the Rav, go read St. Teresa of Avila.
To approach the sacred is dangerous. The people of Israel are kept back from Mt. Sinai; Aaron’s sons die after bringing “strange fire” into the Tabernacle; one of David’s men bearing the Ark into Jerusalem dies after touching it. These are not the arbitrary punishments of a vengeful God; it is we who are vessels too weak to hold the infinite and terrible longing of God’s love. That, I think, is why none of us ever is entirely free of idolatry: we find ways of worshipping that which we are capable of approaching. I tried to capture this idea in a “Spengler” essay entitled, “The gods are stupid.”
Those who oppose love and fear of God miss the point. God self-reveals through love, and we come to know God through love – but to know the passionate God, the Bridegroom of Israel, is also to fear Him. I’m plenty scared. But I’ve stopped running.
May 6th, 2009 |
David, God bless you.
I grew up in a largely Jewish community and witnessed the inner conflict you describe.
Not being Jewish, I was unable to feel the crisis, to give it a name. But, however vaguely, I knew it was there.
And I had a hunch that it lay at the heart of the attraction the left has for so many Jews, in spite of what was obviously a level of intelligence and education that should preclude such a flirtation.
And no one ever spoke of it, at least to me. Until you.
Thanks for helping me understand, and especially, thanks for your brave admission of past foolishness and selfishness.
Yes, you should feel ashamed, as should we all for our weakness and cowardice.
And yes, you should feel very proud for stepping up to the plate and taking that terrible chance of looking like a fool for all the world to see.
I don’t think you’re a fool. I think you’re a brave and tough Jew who has much to offer me and thousands of others like me searching for the light as God gives us the ability to see.
May 6th, 2009 |
Terry,
In Jewish tradition, God isn’t particularly charitable toward Jews who run from the fact that they are Jewish. That’s desertion. There’s even a commentary somewhere saying that Moses wasn’t allowed to cross the Jordan into Canaan because he allowed Jethro and his daughters to believe that he was an Egyptian rather than a Hebrew (Exodus 2:19). What can I say, except better late than never?
May 6th, 2009 |
David, thanks for your response.
Know that I and many others are following your spiritual journey with great interest.
It is our journey too.
May 6th, 2009 |
The tendency to be a religious coward in the largely secular West is overwhelming, especially among those among the utopian Left or right. Personally, I found at Groton and Harvard, schools with an ostensibly Christian background, that serious Christians were regarded as oddballs. One simply didn’t talk about religion other than to denigrate it. I went with this flow until I encountered a professor of Greek philosophy who argued that Plato and Aristotle essentially confirmed what the Judeo-Christian Bible revealed. I, also, had the good fortune to attend a lecture by Reinhold Neibuhr and subsequently read his two volume Nature and Destiny of Man. and later Aquinas’s Summa Theologica, which is the ne plus ultra of Christian theology, as it combines an appreciation of both Athens and Jerusalem.
The thing that most interested me about Spengler in his Asian Times articles was the sophistication of his political and economic as well as religious views. Following him, I read and half understood Rosenzweig’s Star of Redemption. I look forward on this blog to a greater understanding and appreciation of the Judeo part of the Judeo Christian religion.
May 6th, 2009 |
Peter, Terry, many thanks. That was indeed good fortune to have a philosophy professor who argued that Plato and Aristotle confirmed revelation — even if it’s not true, working through the question of whether it’s true or not is an intellectual exercise of huge importance. And you still get different opinions about religion and philosophy (Thomas vs Bonaventure, Maimonides vs Halevi).
I had a few excellent teachers as an undergraduate, of whom the Germanist Ernst Theodor Voss was the most important. But the only real academic mentor I had was my revered teacher of music theory, Car Schachter at City University. It was because of Schachter that I have served on the board of the Mannes Conservatory for the past ten years.
May 6th, 2009 |
A few odds and ends.
Your daily blog post is genuinely searing in its intensity and honesty.
Let the searing be a cauterizing for any wounds that you might have felt, or might still feel.
Regarding “desertion” it’s more complicated than G-d not being charitable. Jonah ran away, was brought back, and learned much more from a teaching G-d than he had known before.
In the 2nd chapter of Ezekiel, the elders of Israel confronted the prophet in the Babylonian Exile, and broached the subject that now that the Temple had been destroyed, maybe the Covenant was shattered as well, and the Jews would become a nation just like any other.
Ezekiel replied rather sharply, saying essentially, “No matter how normal and free of the Covenant you want to be, it is still in force and will last forever, and you cannot escape it.”
The path back can be easy or hard, instant or spread over many generations, but G-d never gives up on any one of us.
Regarding Rav Soloveitchik’s book. It is extremely, extremely difficult. If not his most difficult to date, then certainly one of them. You are quite accurate that it portrays both the love relationship with G-d, and the danger and terror inextricably involved as well.
2 brief comments. First the incense offering in the Tabernacle and the Temple reflects this duality as well. On the one hand, it symbolizes one’s total dedication to a fulfilling spiritual relationship of love with G-d (since unlike other offerings, it is almost totally without physical substance). On the other hand, as Nachmanides points out in his Commentary on the Torah, it serves as a shield to protect the High Priest on Yom Kippur from G-d’s overpowering (and lethal) Presence.
Moses wanted to see G-d’s “Face”. G-d refused, instead showing Moses His “Back”, saying chillingly “No man can see my ‘Face’ and live”.
Welcome back. We are not just delighted to have you with us, but enriched by what you bring to us.
Rabbi Chaim Frazer
May 6th, 2009 |
Addendum.
Ezekiel 2 touches on these issues, but the fuller discussion is is Ezekiel 20.
Rabbi Chaim Frazer
May 7th, 2009 |
You were brave when writing about your years with Lyndon LaRouche. What is needed is that more people step up as you do!
Greetings!
/T (former member 1988 to 2004)
PS
My blog where I write about my time as a member, and where I expose the cult of Lyndon LaRouche can be found here: http://american-lycurgus.blogspot.com/
May 8th, 2009 |
David,
“Confessions of a Coward” was a beautiful post.
It brought to mind the talmudic lesson, “sometimes the ba’al teshuvah can stand in a greater place than the tzadik”.
If I may say so, you have done an incredible thing in overcoming the disadvantages of high intelligence combined with an affluent, secular upbringing to become a powerful voice for our side. I think you will be even more effective as “David” because you are now adding complete honesty, humility and a little “tamm” to erudition and wisdom.
I only pray that the other 78% of American Jewry could/would follow in your footsteps.
Welcome back to the mispocha.
v/r,
Marc Hess
P.S. Thank you for your kind words about my modest service in Iraq in your comment to an earlier post. My only regret is that it looks like we won’t use the position for which our soldiers paid in blood to fulfill “Spengler’s” forecasts and frustrate the ambitions of the Mullahs.
Shabbat Shalom
May 8th, 2009 |
Marc,
I’m no Tzaddik — trust me. But thanks for the encouragement.
May 9th, 2009 |
Maimonide’s definition of tzadik is “One whose merit surpasses his iniquity is a tzadik.”
My guess is that David is right in his assessment.
Spengler cum now David has won not a few points of merit.
May 10th, 2009 |
Actually I see you more as the ba’al teshuvah (a Jewish penitent. It’s a classic BT story.
May 11th, 2009 |
MarCH,
This is a complex issue, but I will give it the sixty-second version: as I wrote, my sense of the sacred was associated with classical music. Western classical music is a Christian art form, and my religious sensibilities were in fact more Christian than Jewish when I stumbled onto Paul Gerhardt’s text for a chorale in Bach’s St. Matthew Passion in 1985. Not that I ever came close to acknowledging the divinity of Jesus of Nazareth — but a kind of Christian sensibility nonetheless. It took me years to disentangle the sense of the sacred I derived from music from the God of Israel and to begin to learn how to pray. In that sense, I am a convert back to Judaism from a strange, quasi-Christian sense of the Transcendent rooted in Christian art.
May 11th, 2009 |
“In that sense, I am a convert back to Judaism from a strange, quasi-Christian sense of the Transcendent rooted in Christian art.”
This statement describes the situation in which I think almost all Jews find themselves, who were raised in Christendom and outside of an encompassing traditional Jewish community. Christian notions and feelings permeate almost all of Western culture, and it is very difficult, sometimes, to disentangle an authentically Jewish sensibility from the prevailing ethos.
May 11th, 2009 |
Punditarian, this is true in general, but it is emphatically true for the arts and for classicla music in particular. I tried to write about this some years ago:
http://www.jcrelations.net/en/?id=934
May 11th, 2009 |
Yes, I was thinking of literature and the plastic arts in addition to music. Some of the well-springs of the Christian sensibility antedate Christianity itself, of course. There are aspects of Jewish culture embedded within Christian culture, but also aspects inherited from the other cultures in which Christianity developed. I am thinking in particular of the Mysteries.
In terms of music, I am wondering about the development of Jewish liturgicla music and practice in Christendom and the Ummah. What about the musical traditions of Islam? And what would a Jewish liturgy sound like in the context of Dravidian music?
May 11th, 2009 |
Traditional Jewish liturgical music is quite different in the Arab world than in Europe. Despite my background in music theory, I am out of my depth on this issue. My field is Western classical music starting with the Renaissance. This is more a musicology than a theory question. I intend to look into it when time permits.
May 11th, 2009 |
I look forward to learning from your thoughts. Incidentally, what about Salomone Rossi?
May 17th, 2009 |
Spengler,
My wife has been teaching a bible study the past few weeks related to the practice of “Godliness” in which she spent some time on the idea of the “fear of God,” which she rather forcefully argued has to be in balance with the idea of the “love of God.” In reading aloud this post to the beloved she said, “We approach God on His terms, not ours.”
Re: poor Moses not being allowed to enter the Promised Land, the beloved said, from one Christian perspective, that it was because he struck the stone with a rod instead of speaking to it as God had commanded. The stone, she iterates, was the Christ!
I, too, at this stage of my life, am growing more and more fearful and called by this “love of God,” and in experiencing the phenomenon realize how unworthy I am. Yet, this is true existence in the Platonic metaxy, where “…man is faced with the choice of denying his self and the devil or denying Jesus and the Unknown God.”
Thanks Spengler!
June 5th, 2009 |
Very belatedly: for a fine musical setting of verses from the Song of Songs, one that captures the longing for God and the joy of finding Him, I suggest Dietrich Buxtehude’s cantata “Ich suche des Nachts.” It’s a duet for tenor and bass, both singers representing the maiden; that may seem absurd, but Buxtehude makes it work. Buxtehude at his best can surpass even Bach at portraying sheer rapture; the bittersweet joy of the ending here is perhaps less impressive, but still deeply moving.
June 8th, 2009 |
Mr. Gooley, thanks for the reference — I’m embarrassed to say I don’t remember the piece, but will look it up. My favorite musical response to Song of Songs is not a setting but a parody: the haunting pastorale that opens Bach’s Matthew Passion (Kommt Ihr Toechter, Helft mir klagen).
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