Abstract
This chapter provides a phenomenological theology of command. Within the complex and diverse ecosystem of the halakha, the beating heart that sends the pulse of life to its farthest parts is the Divine. Working with two concepts central to the rabbinic concept of devotion, yir’ah (awe) and love, Wiener Dow illuminates how each offers a path to—and from—the command. While yir’ah seems eminently compatible with a commanding voice, love, too, finds its rightful place in the experience of commandedness, offering the “underbelly of the life of command.” The halakha’s uncompromising insistence that the individual drag the private experience of the Divine into the daylight of intersubjective (and intercommunal) reality reveals it to be a praxis that points at possibilities of authentic religious existence beyond its borders.
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Notes
- 1.
See Pesikta deRav Kahana 12 [Hebrew ].
- 2.
Psalms 65:2.
- 3.
Maimonides argues that “It is … impossible that [God ] should have affirmative attributes” (Maimonides, Guide, Volume 1, 135, corresponding to Part I Chapter 58). Addressing the person seeking to understand the Divine , he writes: “[I]n every case in which the demonstration that a certain thing should be negated in reference to Him becomes clear to you, you become more perfect, and that in every case in which you affirm of Him an additional thing, you become one who likens him to other things and you get further away from the knowledge of His true reality” (Ibid., 139, corresponding to Part I Chapter 59).
- 4.
Rosenzweig in Franz Rosenzweig: His Life and Thought, 243.
- 5.
Gabriel Marcel, Creative Fidelity, translated by Robert Rosthal (New York: Cross Publishing, 1982), 36.
- 6.
Rosenzweig , The Star of Redemption, 186–188.
- 7.
Ibid., 167, 190, 201–202.
- 8.
“And YHVH God created all of the beasts of the field and all of the fowl of the heavens out of the earth, and brought them to Adam to see what Adam would call them; and whatever Adam called that living creature – that was its name. And Adam issued names to each cattle and to the fowl of the heavens and to all of the beasts of the field; but there was nowhere to be found a helper to challenge Adam” (Genesis 2: 19–20). See also Genesis Rabba 17:4.
- 9.
B.T. Bava Mezia 59b.
- 10.
See Mishna Yoma 6:2; see also Ari Elon, Yah BiShevat (Bina: Tel Aviv, 1999) [Hebrew ], 7–9.
- 11.
Mishna Brakhot 2:8.
- 12.
B.T. Brakhot 33b.
- 13.
Levinas , Totality and Infinity , 48–52.
- 14.
Rabbi Naḥman of Breslau , Likkutei Moharan, Part II, 48.
- 15.
Barukh HaLevy Epstein, Barukh She’Amar, Tefillot Hashanah, 277–278 [Hebrew ].
- 16.
Zohar, Parashat Teruma, 135a–135b.
- 17.
Isaiah 6:3. It is also part of the Shabbat morning liturgy: “And one called unto another and said: Holy, holy, holy is the God of hosts; the whole earth is fully of His glory.”
- 18.
II Samuel 7:23. It is also part of the Shabbat afternoon liturgy: “You are one and your name is one, and who is like your people Israel , one nation on this earth.”
- 19.
Pesikta deRav Kahana 12:6.
- 20.
B.T. Megillah 13a: “Rabbi Yoḥanan said … [that] anyone who repudiates idolatry is called Yehudi (a Jew).” See also Maimonides , Mishneh Torah, Laws of Idolatry, especially Chapter Two; Yeshayuhu Leibowitz , Judaism, Human Values, and the Jewish State, 86–87; and the excellent study of Moshe Halbertal and Avishai Margalit, Idolatry (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1992).
- 21.
The charge to engage in works of social justice often finds its conceptual root in the idea of תיקון עולם [tikkun olam], which appears as a meta-halakhic principle in Mishna Gittin Chapter Four. See also B.T. Gittin, 32a ff.
- 22.
Rooted in the Biblical verses which indicate that the Divine created the human being in the image of the Divine (Genesis 1: 26–27), the idea that the human being contains infinite worth develops a kind of independence from its theological origin. See also Mishna Sanhedrin 4:5 and Yair Lorberbaum’s acclaimed study In God’s Image: Myth, Theology (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2015).
- 23.
“Rabbi Huna and Rabbi Jeremiah said in the name of Rabbi Ḥiyya b. Abba: It is written, They have forsaken Me and have not kept My law (Jeremiah 16:2) – i.e., Would that they had forsaken Me but kept My law, since by occupying themselves therewith, the light which it contains would have led them back to the right path.” Midrash Rabbah: Lamentations, trans. A Cohen, ed. H. Freedman (New York: Soncino, 1983), 2–3.
- 24.
Rabbi Simḥa Bunam of Peshischa, Kol Simḥa, Parashat VaYetze.
- 25.
Yeshayahu Leibowitz , Judaism, Human Values, and the Jewish State, 28.
- 26.
David Hartman , A Heart of Many Rooms: Celebrating the Many Voices within Judaism (Woodstock, Vermont: Jewish Lights, 1999), xxiii.
- 27.
Emmanuel Levinas , Difficult Freedom (Baltimore, Johns Hopkins University Press, 1990), 6.
- 28.
Zohar, Parashat Terumah, 135a–135b.
- 29.
Zekharia 14:9.
- 30.
Mishna Shabbat 1:1.
- 31.
B.T. Shabbat 118–119.
- 32.
B.T. Shabbat 88a.
- 33.
B.T. Brakhot 33b.
- 34.
“Rabba bar Rav Huna said: Any person who has Torah in him but does not have fear of Heaven is like a treasurer to whom they gave keys to the inner doors of the treasury but they did not give keys to the outer door. With what key will he enter?” (B.T. Shabbat 31b).
- 35.
Hartman, The God Who Hates Lies, 37.
- 36.
Sifrei Devarim, Parashat Va’Etḥanan 32.
- 37.
Jerusalem Talmud, Sotah 5.
- 38.
B.T. Kiddushin 39b.
- 39.
It is not insignificant that the Hebrew word for acceptance is קבלה, the same term used for the Jewish mystical tradition.
- 40.
Erich Fromm, The Art of Loving (New York: Harper, 2006), 26, Buber , I and Thou, trans. Walter Kaufman (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1970), 66.
- 41.
Emmanuel Levinas , Totality and Infinity , 212 ff.
- 42.
Franz Rosenzweig : His Life and Thought, 243.
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Wiener Dow, L. (2017). The Ineffable. In: The Going. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-68831-2_4
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