Abstract
‘For there is one God, and also one mediator between God and men, Christ Jesus, himself man, who sacrificed himself to win freedom for all mankind’ (first letter of Paul to Timothy, 2:5). In the Jewish Apocrypha, the concept of mediation before God is also present; in the Book of Tobit, Raphael, one of ‘the seven holy angels’ in Jewish angelology, is said to ‘bear upwards the prayers of the saints and (to) have access to the glory of the Holy One’ (Tobit, 12:15; see also 3:16–17; 12:12).1 The liturgical poetry of Eleazar Kalir used midrashic themes to the same effect. But many sages condemned these works and, on the whole, Jewish thinking overwhelmingly rejects the desirability, let alone the possibility, of mediation or of any mediator between man and God. R. Jacob Anatoli, in his discussion of the second commandment, held that it was forbidden to entreat the angels of mercy — ‘this custom is not healthy, and your actions will bring you close (to God) not angels and not others like them; it is needful to disdain them that you should not accept them as a god’.2 If even the angels may not serve as media tors, how much less so a man. It is the struggle against idolatry that governs this rejection, I hope to prove.
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Notes
This theme is discussed in L. H. Brockington, Introduction to the Apocrypha, London, Duckworth, 1961, pp. 152–3.
R. Jacob Anatoli, Malmad Ha-Talmidim, Lyck, 1866, p.68a; see also L. Zunz, Ha-Drashot be-Yisrael, Heb. trans., ed. H. Albeck, Jerusalem, 1947, p.546, fn. 100; Joseph Heinemann in his Prayer in the Talmud (Engl. trans., Berlin/New York, De Gruyter, 1977, p.249) writes: ‘It is a well-known fact that there are no prayers from the Talmudic period which are addressed to intermediaries of any sort — neither to angels, nor to saints or Patriarchs. “When troubles befall a man, let him not cry out to Michael nor to Gabriel — but let him cry out to Me and I shall answer him immediately, as it is written, and it shall come to pass that whoever calls on the name of the Lord will be delivered (Joel 3:5) (J. Berakot, IX, 13a)”’; for rabbinic aversion to angels, see R. Elior, ‘Mysticism, magic and angelology’, Jewish Studies Quarterly, I, No.1 (1993/1994), pp.3–53
P. Hayman, ‘Monotheism — a misused word in Jewish Studies’, Journal of Jewish Studies, Vol.XLII, No.1 (Spring, 1991), pp.1–16, esp. pp.6ff.
E. Lévinas, Au-delà du verset, Paris, Editions de Minuit, 1982, p.174
See A. Halkin and D. Hartman (eds), Epistles of Maimonides, Philadelphia, Jewish Publication Society of America, 1985, p.103
H. Künzl, ‘Zur künstlerischen Gestaltung des portugiesisch-jüdischen Friedhofs in Hamburg-Altona’, in Festschrift Julius Carlebach, Carl Winter, Heidelberg, 1992, pp. 165–74.
S. Lieberman, Hellenism in Jewish Palestine, New York, Jewish Theological Seminary of America, 1962, p.126.
E. Rosenzweig, Briefe und Tagebücher, II, The Hague, Nijhoff, 1979, 770–1.
See also J. Faur, Iyyunim be-Mishneh Torah le-ha-Rambam, Jerusalem, Mossad ha-Rav Kuk, 1978, pp.222 ff.
H. Cohen, Ästhetik des reinen Gefühls, 2 vols., Berlin, Bruno Cassirer, 1912, I, pp.185–6.
P. Tillich, Systematic theology, London, Scm Press, 1978, I, p.241.
See A. J. Heschel, Man’s quest for God, New York, Scribners, 1954, pp. 121–136
A. L. Mackler, ‘Heschel’s rejection of a Tillichian understanding of religious symbols’, Judaism, vol.40, no.2, 1991, pp.290–300.
See U. Berner, ‘Der Symbolbegriff in der Religionswissenschaft’, in M. Lurker (ed.), Beiträge zur Symbolforschung, Baden-Baden, Koerner, 1982, pp.17–27.
E. R. Goodenough, Jewish symbols in the Greco-Roman period, IV, Princeton, UP, 1954, ch.3. The arguments and conclusions of this work have been much disputed: see, for example, J. Neusner, Method and Meaning in Ancient Judaism, 3rd series, Brown University, 1981, ch.9; and Morton Smith, ‘Goodenough’s “Jewish Symbols” in Retrospect’, Journal of Biblical Literature, Vol.86, Pt.I, March 1967, pp.53–67.
G. Tsarfati, ‘Luhot ha-Brit ke-semel ha-Yahadut’, Tarbitz, vol.29, no.4 (July 1960), pp.371–393, esp. pp.384 ff.
See J. Stern, ‘Modes of reference in the rituals of Judaism’, Religious Studies, vol.23 (1987), pp. 109–28.
S. L. Goldman, ‘On the interpretation of symbols and the Christian origin of modern science’, Journal of Religion, vol.62, no.1 (1982), pp.1–20, here p.18.
For examples, see M. Bar-Ilan, ‘The hand of God — a chapter in rabbinic anthropomorphism’, in G. Sed-Rajna (ed.), Rashi 1040–1990, Paris, Editions du Cerf 1993, pp.321–335.
See A. Steinsalz, ‘The imagery concept in Jewish thought’, Shefa, I, no.3, 1978, pp.56–62.
See also S. B. Finesinger, ‘The Shofar’, Hebrew Union College Annual, VIII–IX, 1931–32, pp.193–228
E. Cassirer, The Philosophy of Symbolic Forms, II, Eng. trans. (slightly modified), Yale UP, 1955, p.245.
There is some convergence between this argument and that informing A. Eisen’s ‘Divine Legislation as ‘Ceremonial script’: Mendelssohn on the Commandments’ (AJS Review, XV, No.2, Fall 1990, pp.239–267
M. Mendelssohn, Über das Erhabene und Naive in den schönen Wissenschaften, Gesammelte Schriften, Berlin, 1929, I, pp.456–7.
All the above is based on M. Mendelssohn, Jerusalem, Engl. trans., University Press of New England, 1983, pp.102 ff. Judah Halevi underlines the superiority of teaching by oral means, quoting the adage, ‘from the mouths of scholars, but not from the mouth of books’ (Kitab al Kharizi, II:72); see also Judah Messer Leon, Sefer Nofet Tsufim — The book of the honeycomb’s flow, ed. and trans. Isaac Rabinowitz, Cornell UP, 1983, p.131; see generally B. Gerhardsson, Memory and manuscript, Uppsala, 1961, pp.157 ff. For the presentation of Mendelssohn’s argument in the eighteenth century context, especially with reference to the contemporary interest in Egyptian hieroglyphs, see A. Funkenstein, Perceptions of Jewish history, Californian UP, 1993, pp.226-7. There is also the likelihood of influence from Rousseau whose second Discours Mendelssohn had earlier translated into German (see A. Altmann, Moses Mendelssohn, London, Routledge, 1973, pp.544–545).
For all the above, see Hirsch, Horeb, I, pp.62, 170–1; and S. R. Hirsch, Judaism Eternal, ed. and trans. Dayan Dr Grunfeld, London, Soncino, 1956, I, p.111.
S. R. Hirsch, Timeless Torah, ed. and trans. J. Breuer, New York, Feldheim, 1969, p.316.
H. Cohen, Jüdische Schriften, I, Berlin, Schwetschke, 1924, p.301
See E. Berkovitz, Major themes in modern philosophies of Judaism, New York, Ktav, 1974, pp.8 ff.
A. Altmann, H. Cohens Begriff der Korrelation, in H. Tramer (ed.), In zwei Welten, Tel Aviv, Verlag Bitaon, 1962, pp.377–399.
T. Herzl, Tagebücher 1895–1904, I, Berlin, Jüdischer Verlag, 1922, pp.33, 165.
T. Herzl, The Jews’ State, Engl. trans., London, Rita Searl, 1946, p.72.
See E. Don Yehiya and C. Liebman, ‘The symbol system of Zionist socialism’, Modern Judaism, I, no.2 (1981), pp.121–48
A. Ravitsky, Ha-ketz ha-meguleh u-medinat ha-yehudim, Tel Aviv, Am Oved, 1993.
See I. Leibowitz, Sihot im Michael Shashar, Jerusalem, Keter, 1988, pp. 26 ff.
See S. Weitman, ‘National flags’, Semiotica, 8, 1973, pp.328–367
A. Hill, ‘Hitler’s flag: a case study’, ibid., 38, 1982, pp.127–137
E. Durkheim, The elementary forms of the religious life, Engl. trans., 4th imp., London, Allen and Unwin, 1957, pp.228–9.
For a cogent criticism of Durkheim in this respect, see Z. Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, Cambridge, Polity Press, 1989, pp.170 ff.
L. Finkelstein, ‘Judaism as a system of symbols’, in M. Davis (ed.), Mordecai Kaplan Jubilee Volume, New York, Jewish Theological Seminary of America 1953, Engl. Sec., pp.225–44
Sefer Ha-Hinukh, ed. R. Hayyim Dov Chavel, Jerusalem, Mossad ha-Rav Kuk, 1977, p.73
see also, G. Appel, A philosophy of Mitzvot, New York, Ktav, 1973, pp.87 ff.
I. Heinemann, Ta’amei Ha-Mitzvot II, Jerusalem, Jewish Agency, 1956, pp.134 ff.
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© 1997 Lionel Kochan
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Kochan, L. (1997). Symbolism in Action. In: Beyond the Graven Image. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-25545-0_4
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