Tree of Souls Page 9
And, of course, there is the ultimate paradigm of liberation from exile, that of the Exodus. This myth presents in archetypal fashion all stages of the quest to liberate the people Israel from Egyptian bondage, to fashion them as a people through 40 years of wandering, to bestow on them the greatest treasure, God’s own teachings, dictated by God to Moses at Mount Sinai, and to lead them back to the Holy Land. This monumental exile thoroughly reshaped the people of Israel and resulted in a sacred text, the Torah, that would sustain the Jewish people for the next 3,000 years.93
After the Exodus, the best-known Jewish myth of exile is probably that of the Ten Lost Tribes.94 The Assyrian conquest of the northern Kingdom of Israel in 722 BCE dispersed the ten tribes who lived there, leaving only the tribes of Judah and Benjamin, who constituted the southern Kingdom of Judah. The mystery of the fate of those lost tribes gave birth to a multitude of legends about them, as well as accounts of visitors who claimed to have reached them, including Eldad ha-Dani, Benjamin of Tudela and David Re’uveni. In most of these legends these tribes are described as being exceedingly pious and observant. In some folktales, however, they are described as “little red Jews from the other side of the river Sambatyon.” In order to explain why the lost tribes could not rejoin their brethren, they were said to be trapped on the other side of this pious river, which threw up rocks as high as a house six days a week and was therefore impassable, and only rested on the Sabbath. But the pious lost tribes could not cross then either, since no work is permitted on the Sabbath. This myth of the Ten Lost Tribes has given birth to farfetched efforts to identify where they went. Ethiopian Jews identify themselves as descendants of the tribe of Dan, and there are many far-flung, unlikely peoples, including the Japanese, the Celts, and Native Americans, who have been identified as among the lost tribes.
In general, then, exile serves as God’s punishment, as clearly stated in Midrash haNe’elam in Zohar Hadash 23c: “Every time the Jewish people were sent into exile, God set a limit to the exile, and they were always aroused to repentance. But this final exile has no set limit, and everything depends upon repentance.” However, beginning in the sixteenth century, the belief arose that the dispersion of the Jewish people had a special purpose other than punishment, to enable them to serve as a guide to humanity.95 Alternately, the Jewish people were viewed as serving a mystical function in raising up holy sparks that had been scattered around the world, as portrayed in the Lurianic kabbalah.96 Thus, for the Ari, Rabbi Isaac Luria, the purpose of the many exiles of the Jews was to extricate the imprisoned sparks that were lodged in foreign lands. He believed that by living in Egypt the Israelites took all the holy sparks out of Egypt, defeating the forces of impurity that abounded in the desert. Rabbi Hayim Tirer of Chernovitz describes this process: “When the Jews left Egypt, all the holy sparks of Egypt flocked to them and departed with them.” (Be’er Mayim Hayim, Noah 162). This mythic interpretation turned a punishment into a blessing, where God depended on His people, Israel, as much as they depended on Him. It clearly demonstrates that the theme of exile can be viewed from two perspectives. B. Berakhot 3a describes it as a painful exile: “Alas for the children who have been exiled from their Father’s table.” But, according to Exodus Rabbah 2:4, “It was in the wilderness that Israel received the manna, the quail, Miriam’s well, the Torah, the Tabernacle, the Shekhinah, priesthood, kingship, and the Clouds of Glory.”
The other side of the coin of exile is return, and the theme of return is also exceptionally powerful in Judaism. There is the constant longing to return to the Holy Land. The final words of the Passover Seder, recounting the Exodus, are “Next Year in Jerusalem!”97 So too is the theme of return the underlying motif in the wide array of messianic myths in Judaism. The arrival of the Messiah, it is believed, will transform all existence, and all Jews will miraculously travel to the Holy Land. This, the initiation of the messianic era, will be the ultimate return.98
10. Myths of the Messiah
Myths of exile are naturally linked to myths of redemption, as exile leads a people to dream of redemption. While redemption takes many forms, its primary focus in Judaism is on the transforming role of the Messiah, a divine figure who, it is said, will descend to this world and initiate the End of Days. The longing for the Messiah is a direct result of the hardship and exile within Jewish history. Since the time of the prophet Isaiah, no one idea has obsessed the Jews more than this: When will the coming of the Messiah take place? Every Jew hoped it would be in his lifetime. Some Hasidim kept their staffs and white robes by the door, ready to answer the Messiah’s call on the shortest notice. Even today many observant Jews still anxiously await the arrival of the Messiah, which is expected to initiate a heaven on earth, known as the End of Days. Of course, the requirements to be the Messiah are steep, and there are three: raising the dead, restoring the exiles to the Land of Israel, and rebuilding the Temple in Jerusalem.99
What follows the coming of the Messiah might be described as heaven on earth, a new incarnation of the Garden of Eden, making the cycle that started with the expulsion from Eden complete. The first era of history will be over, and a new era will begin. At the same time, the coming of the Messiah will bring about the repair of the rent in heaven that resulted from the separation of God from His Bride. For only the rebuilding of the Temple in Jerusalem, the Shekhinah’s home in this world, can restore God’s Bride to Him, and the rebuilding will not take place until the Messiah comes.100 Thus the fate of everything hangs on the Messiah, for the messianic era will bring about a cosmic healing both in heaven and on earth.
In this new era, the righteous among the sons and daughters of Israel will receive a heavenly reward that includes not only studying Torah with the Messiah, the patriarchs, and the sages, but even Torah classes taught by God. At the same time, the punishments of the souls of sinners in Gehenna will come to an end, and they too will be brought into Paradise. All this will follow the coming of the Messiah.
The cycle of messianic myths is quite complete. It starts with the creation of the Messiah, and includes the birth of the Messiah, the events that will initiate the End of Days, and accounts of the messianic era that will follow.
It quickly becomes evident that there are two basic concepts of the Messiah: one, a heavenly figure of supernatural origin who makes his home in a heavenly palace; the other, a human Messiah, an exceptionally righteous man who takes on the mantle of the Messiah and initiates the End of Days. In time, these two separate motifs were combined into a single myth in a clever manner: there were said to be two Messiahs, whose fates were linked.101 One is identified as Messiah the son of Joseph (Messiah ben Joseph) and the other is the heavenly Messiah, Messiah the son of David (Messiah ben David).102 According to this combined myth, Messiah ben Joseph, the human Messiah, will be a warrior who will go to war against the evil forces of Gog and Magog103 and die in the process. He will be followed by Messiah ben David, the heavenly Messiah, who will defeat the evil empire and initiate the End of Days. In some versions of this myth, Messiah ben David will prove he is the real Messiah by resurrecting Messiah ben Joseph.104
In the myths of the heavenly Messiah, he is described as a supernatural figure living in his own heavenly palace, known as the Bird’s Nest, waiting to be called upon to initiate the End of Days.105 Some versions of this myth emphasize his suffering,106 while others describe the Messiah as being held captive in heaven or in hell.107
All of these variants of the myth have in common the portrayal of a supernatural, heavenly figure who is forced to wait impatiently until the circumstances are such that it becomes possible for him to fulfill his messianic destiny. But the portrayal of the earthly Messiah is quite a bit different. In one famous talmudic version, he is described as a leprous beggar waiting outside the gates of Rome, who takes off and puts on his bandages one at a time, so that he will not be delayed if he is suddenly called.108 But in general the human Messiah is described as the Tzaddik ha-Dor, the greatest sage of his generation, wh
o will step into the role of Messiah if all the circumstances happen to be right. Naturally, there are many failures, due to one mistake or another. These are recounted in a series of myths about why the Messiah has not yet come. There are enough accounts of these failures to fill a book. There are even stories about some rabbis, such as Joseph della Reina, who sought to force the coming of the Messiah.109
All sorts of signs and warnings are expected to precede the coming of the Messiah, great upheavals known as the Pangs of the Messiah. Historical turmoil has often been identified with these mythic wars, and has inevitably precipitated messianic expectations. At the time that the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan, three rabbis in Mea Sha’arim, the ultra-Orthodox section of Jerusalem, were reported to have dreamed, on the same night, that the coming of the Messiah was imminent. This rumor spread among the entire community, all of whom waited on pins and needles for the footsteps of the Messiah to be heard. This demonstrates that the longing and expectations for the coming of the Messiah are as intense as ever in these communities.
The Jewish mythology concerning the End of Days is just as elaborate as that found in the Book of Revelation, whose portrayal of the Apocalypse is surely drawn from contemporary Jewish eschatology. The messianic era will be heralded by great upheaval and an epic war known as the War of Gog and Magog. Finally, the new era will be announced by the prophet Elijah, blowing a horn from the ram that Abraham sacrificed on Mount Moriah (the other horn was blown at Mount Sinai). The righteous dead will be resurrected, and all the exiles will be gathered into the Holy Land, where the Temple will be supernaturally rebuilt. In heaven, God will be reunited with His Bride, from whom He was separated at the time the Temple was destroyed. At that time the Messiah will address all of Israel, and the blessed days of the Messiah will begin. The messianic hope, with its promise that He will destroy death forever (Isa. 25:8), has been fervently longed for since the days of Isaiah. Maimonides codified this hope in his Thirteen Principles of Faith, in which the twelfth principle is belief in the coming of the Messiah, which entered the popular domain as the statement, “I believe with perfect faith in the coming of the Messiah. No matter how long he may tarry, I will await his coming every day.”
What about the belief in the Messiah in the modern era? Does it still have the power to compel widespread belief and expectation? For those who still firmly believe that God dictated the Torah to Moses on Mount Sinai, the certainty of the coming of the Messiah is not viewed as myth but as truth, as codified by Maimonides. However, not all Orthodox Jews are equally impassioned about the coming of the Messiah. The Lubavitch Hasidim, in particular, await His coming. Many of them expect their deceased Rebbe, Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneersohn, to return to life and serve as the Messiah.110
As for non-Orthodox Jews, who make up the majority of modern Jews, most do not regard the Torah as the literal word of God. This view makes it possible to incorporate modern views into their practice of an ancient religion. Just as it seems unlikely to most of these Jews that the waters of the Red Sea really split apart, or that the sun stood still for Joshua, the coming of the Messiah is no longer expected. Even were the Messiah to arrive, it is highly unlikely that he would be recognized by those who were not expecting him. Instead, this tradition, like many others, has acquired the status of a myth, even if it has not been acknowledged as such.
III. Mythic Parallels
If there is a mythology in Judaism, what model does it follow—that of pagan mythology, where there is a pantheon of gods, usually ruled by a divine pair? Does it follow a dualistic model, where more than one god is involved in ruling the world? Or does it work within the monotheistic model, where there is but a single God who both created the world and rules it? While it might appear at first that only the monotheistic model was relevant, in fact, there is evidence of all three models in Jewish tradition.
That some kind of God or gods exist, most humans have had no doubt. How else could the world have come into being? Thus the primary purpose of Western religion is to answer two elementary questions: “Who created the world?” and “Who rules it?”111 Among the religions of the ancient Near East, Judaism answered this question by insisting that there is but one God, whose name is YHVH, generally rendered in English as Yahweh. This principle is stated in the Shema, the central proclamation of Jewish belief: Hear O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is One (Deut. 6:4). That is the essence of Jewish monotheism. The great philosopher Maimonides always upheld monotheistic principles, writing, for example, that “There is one God who created everything and who guides the celestial spheres.”112 In this view, the same God who created the world rules it.
In contrast, some dualistic systems propose the existence of two gods. In Gnosticism, an evil god, known as the demiurge, created and rules this world, and the only hope of salvation comes from a higher, benevolent Deity. While the doctrine of a good god and an evil one is not found in Judaism, there are numerous instances where God shares his ruling powers with other divine figures, such as Metatron, or the one God is described as bearing contradictory qualities of judgment and mercy.113
Polytheism, in the form of the Greek, Canaanite, and Egyptian religions, offered multiple gods and a divine pantheon. Here, too, the original gods were usually not the ruling gods: Kronos is the father of the Greek gods, while Zeus is the ruling god; and it is the Canaanite god El, who wrested power from his father Samen (Heaven), who is supposed to be the ruling god, while actually it is Ba’al, El’s son, who is the dominant ruler.
These three models—the monotheistic model of the Jews (and later Christians and Muslims), the dualistic model of the Gnostics, and the pagan model of the Greeks and Canaanites—would seem mutually exclusive. For example, we would not expect to find myths about a dualistic divinity in Judaism, since there is only one God. But we do. Despite the inviolable principle of monotheism, there are many Jewish texts that have strongly gnostic characteristics and portray a second divine figure who plays an active role in the ruling of the world. Gershom Scholem identified these texts as examples of Jewish Gnosticism.114
At first it may be difficult to see how monotheism can include a second divine figure. By definition, monotheism is an assertion that there is only one God. Yet there are two models of monotheism in Judaism: one in which there is one god and no other divine figures higher than the rank of angels, and a second model, in which other divine figures are acknowledged to exist, but they are subject to God, who is the king of the gods. This second type of monotheism is known as “monolatry,” where worship of only one God/god is allowed, but the existence of other gods is acknowledged, at least tacitly.115 In Judaism, it is defined as a stage in the religion of ancient Israel when the existence of gods other than Yahweh was admitted, but their worship was strictly forbidden.116 That there was worship of some forbidden gods by the ancient Israelites has been demonstrated by archaeological discoveries, as well as by the tirades of the biblical prophets against such worship, such as the women weeping over Tammuz (Ezek. 8:14), or the people defending their worshipping the Queen of Heaven (Jer. 44:17-19). There is also evidence of the awareness of other gods in several biblical verses, such as Who is like You among the gods (ba-elim), O Lord? (Exod. 15:11).117 Also, in Psalm 82, God stands in the divine assembly; among the divine beings (Elohim) He pronounces judgment (Ps. 82:1).
The concept of monolatry goes a long way toward explaining the parallel development of folk religion in Judaism beyond the official kind, especially in the popular culture. Although monolatry refers to the religion of ancient Israel, that does not mean that the kind of folk religion indicated by monolatry disappeared after the biblical period. Instead, it continued to evolve in its own way, far more open to mythological motifs than rabbinic Judaism.118 By the time of the rabbinic period, the pagan religions against which the official religion was polemicizing no longer existed. Therefore the rabbis permitted these mythological motifs from the folk religion, which had elements of the ancient Near Eastern mythologies, to su
rface in a form that was then acceptable within the confines of rabbinic thought. This suggests that a great many rabbinic myths, as found in the midrashim, are not new creations of the rabbis, as might appear to be the case.119 Rather, they are simply the writing down of an oral tradition that was kept alive by the people, when there was no need to suppress it any longer.
A close examination of the Jewish mythic tradition reveals that its origins are found in Near Eastern mythology. Umberto Cassuto says of these mythic parallels: “These Israelite myths of the Bible are derived from similar myths current among the neighboring peoples concerning the war waged by one of the great gods against the deity of the sea. The famous Babylonian story about the war of Marduk against Tiamat is but one example of an entire series of similar narratives. Among the Israelites… the traditional material that was current in the lands of the East was given by Israel an aspect more in accord with their ethos, to wit, the aspect of the revolt by the sea against his Creator.”120