We know that there are many different opinions and ideologies within the "broad church" of the Jewish people. But Jewish Law, Halacha, does act as a sort of constitution that describes the development of the behavioral tradition, certainly for two millennia and probably for three. However, the same clear structure does not apply to theological issues. Since Medieval times there have been various lists of beliefs that Jews must adhere to. The most famous is Maimonides' Thirteen Principles of Faith. This has become so universally accepted that it finds expression in most prayer books both in itself and in the lyrical poem "Yigdal".

In fact these lists of Creeds were direct responses to Christian and Islamic attacks on Judaism. It was felt necessary at the time to counter the charges that Judaism was not a "proper" religion. Although in the Talmud there are examples of "required belief" there is no actual list of defining beliefs. It is not until the end of the first millennium that these Jewish Creeds begin to emerge. The trouble is that Maimonides wrote and thought within a Greek Philosophical framework. He regarded himself as a follower of the Aristotelian school. Many elements of the philosophy that Maimonides took for granted, no longer help many of us in our philosophical thinking. Yet his list of what Jews are expected to believe is taken for granted.

These chapters are written to examine most of these theological assumptions, and other ones, to see what it really is that we are expected to believe and exactly how we can reconcile traditional beliefs with critical thinking in the scientific and rational world in which we live.

2

The formative years of the Bible were long before Greek philosophy made its appearance. If the golden age of Socrates is approximately two and a half thousand years ago, King David pre-dates this by about 500 years. And many of the biblical texts are earlier than this by several hundred years at least. The Bible does not speak in rational, scientific terms. Its language is predominantly what we would call poetic. This should not be confused with the way we regard poetry as meaning something fanciful, imaginative and therefore not based in reality. But rather that the style of writing has to be understood on more than the surface value. There is a music to the language that conveys as much as the actual words. But one has to be able to listen and to understand the music. A scientific experiment uses language in a very different way. It is strictly descriptive and is terse and precise. The language is the servant of the experiment. Poetry uses language much more creatively. The language is used both to describe something but also to create a mood, an impression. In both, the words are symbols but they have different functions.

The language of the Bible is very different to every day language the way we or indeed the way Greek philosophers used it. It is designed to bring a spiritual dimension of existence into everyday life so that there is an immediate connection between human life and, let us call it Divine life. This connection is prescribed through narrative, through instruction and through song. It has a strong folk force designed to reinforce the identity of a small group of believers in an alien world. Its agenda is clearly a spiritual one. It is pre-rational. It is not rational. This does not mean that it is illogical, just that its parameters are different parameters to the ones we in The West have been conditioned with for so long. So for the first thousand years of Jewish existence, the relationship with God was not conducted on a philosophical basis. The language used to describe God and human beings communicating was not a language of scientific accuracy, of philosophical logic but rather of poetry. The Jews of that period were not called upon to bring philosophical proofs of their beliefs nor were they expected to submit their feelings to rational analysis. Does this mean that they were not "good" Jews? I think not!

For the next phase of Jewish history, the Second Temple and the Talmudic period, Jews lived under different and alien cultural influences. The language and ideograms of their discourse were heavily influenced by a way of thinking that was Greek, Roman or Christian. The rabbis strongly objected not just to the cultural baggage of Greece but also to the very rational, almost exclusively rational approach of its great philosophers. They objected because they felt that logic was an incomplete way of looking at the world. So did the Greeks themselves in a way. That was why their antidote was their strange collection of gods cavorting with humans and fighting amongst themselves. The monotheism of Judaism found this offensive and ridiculous. This is one of the reasons that the Rabbis encouraged the mystical tradition and it developed so strongly as a counter balance to the rational.

The clearest example of this conflict between the logical and the mystical is the episode that Talmud records concerning Elisha Ben Abuya who became an apostate and was thenceforth called Acher, Someone Else, The Unmentionable. Four major second century rabbinic leaders are described as entering the Orchard. The Orchard, Pardes, in this context, is a code word for the mystical experience of God. "Four entered into the orchard. They were Ben Azai, Ben Zoma, Acher and Rabbi Akiva. Rabbi Akiva said to them, 'When you reach the stones of pure marble do not say 'Water, Water' because it says, 'Whoever speaks lies cannot survive in My Presence' (Psalms 101)."

Ben Azai dies; Ben Zoma goes mad; Acher "cuts away at the roots", cannot accept the traditional structure, and only Rabbi Akiva comes out "in peace". Of course there are different ways of understanding this incident. The context is the chapter in the Mishna that starts by limiting general inquiry into Maaseh Bereishit, how the world was created, and Maaseh Mercava, Elijah's Chariot, a code for what we call mysticism, a connection with God that transcends normal physical limitations in the way that the prophet Elijah was taken up to God in a chariot of fire. The Mishna suggests that not everyone is equipped for these lines of investigation and that they required learning, experience and a good guide.

According to the Mishna, these esoteric subjects should be studied only with expert teachers and only after one has acquired a solid basis in "revealed" Torah before turning to "the Hidden" Torah. In the course of the discussion in the Gemara, this episode is recounted. Rabbi Akiva warns his friends not to take their experiences at face value. Just because something looks like water that does no necessarily men that it is water. He is arguing against a rational, material way of observation in the context of spiritual experience. For whatever reasons, the first two had such a profound experience that it changed them in a destructive way and Acher simply had no patience for or interest in the mystical experience and he abandons Rabbi Akiva's religion for Greek Philosophy, for pure reason.

Later on in the same chapter the Gemara records an exchange in which Elisha Ben Abuya is quoted as wondering whether there are two Divine forces at work in this world. This is pure Greek. Plato, in his Republic, suggests that as God is good, He cannot be the source of evil. Evil must come from another power. The link between Acher and Greek thought is clear. This is the same Acher who disputes the rabbinical concept of the After Life as the place where humans are rewarded or punished for their behavior.

Rabbi Yaakov describes a situation in which a father sends his son up a tower to send away the mother bird before taking her fledglings. These are two actions that the Bible says will bring long life (Exodus 20.12. and Deuteronomy 22.6.). Nevertheless the child falls and dies. In response to the question of where the long life is, the rabbis reply that the real long life is the eternal life after death. According to tradition (and the MAHARSHA commenting on the incident) it was this incident that led to Elisha Ben Abuya's apostasy.

Elisha stands for the rational school and Rabbi Akiva stands for the mystical school. Rabbi Akiva is known to us as the supporter of Bar Cochba in his nationalist rebellion against Rome. Indeed, Rabbi Akiva thought that Bar Cochba was the Messiah for a while and there are in various collections today coins that Bar Cochba minted describing himself as the Messiah. Extreme nationalism is often associated with a metaphysical attachment to land and abstractions of nationhood. So Rabbi Akiva's association with Bar Cochba says something about Rabbi Akiva's political ideology. But Rabbi Akiva also asserted that The Song Of Songs was the holiest book of the Bible. Now the Song of Songs is a beautiful flow of passionate poetry. Its holiness derives from the understanding that the real "lovers" are God and Israel. The metaphor is that passion is the way to experience God rather than intellect. So that when Rabbi Akiva says that the Song of Songs is so fundamental to Jewish life, he is asserting the primacy of emotion and poetry as the way of really drawing closer to God. And Rabbi Akiva is following an established idea that runs through the prophetic tradition of the Bible.

Isaiah describes the relationship between Israel and God as one of husband and wife and goes on to describe the pleasure of the relationship in marital terms. The prophet Hosea makes the analogy of Israel as a faithless wife the central theme of his message and sees the reconciliation as one in which the relationship is not one of domination but "pleasurable co-existence". The pre-Greek Jewish way of expressing closeness to God is the very antithesis of a philosophical approach.

3

Opposition to the Greek language and wisdom recurs in the Talmud. But this opposition came not just from rabbis who disapproved of pagan manifestations of Greek culture such as the theaters and circuses for their emphasis on the physical. They were also opposed because of the political hegemony that the successors of Alexander imposed on the Jews. But, just as important, they opposed the strictly rational intellectual approach to life. Many of the debates recorded in the Talmud between rabbis and one roman general or emperor or another are indeed paradigms of the rational-non-rational divide. Issues such as Resurrection in the last chapter of Talmud Bavli Sanhedrin are challenged by non-Jews on a rational basis and defended by the rabbis non-rationally. Rabbinic approval of high ranking families teaching their children Greek was excused as being necessary for affairs of State. But certainly the emotional antagonism was profound even if economic necessity required some interaction as indeed is the case today.

Just as the Stoic and the Epicurean approaches to life find resonance in Jewish thought, so too do rationalism and mysticism. Both co-existed in Judaism. But two thousand years of living under alien theological systems resulted in two things. Those Jews who explored their religious thinking in a systematic way inevitably used rational, philosophical systems and tools. The tools they used were those of the philosophical world, the non-Jewish world and the Greek philosophical tradition that both the Early Church Fathers and then the Arabic Mutakallimun theologians used. And these imposed an artificial restriction on mental processes. They led for example to the assumption that one needed proofs, proofs of the existence of God in the same way that one would seek proofs of mathematical formulae. But proofs are very limited things. Descartes, the great French philosopher, realized it was almost all but impossible to prove ones existence and his solution Cogito Ergo Sum, I Think Therefore I Am, is no proof of anything other than, perhaps, that there is a thought. So that when philosophical proofs came to be challenged, the bottom fell out of their justifications.

On the other hand, the mystics went to the other extreme and spoke in exciting symbols and metaphors that precisely because they rejected any kind of rational scrutiny, opened the way for magic, hocus pocus and trivialization. Even attempts to bring some logic into Chassidism failed to get beyond the banal because of the fundamentalist atmosphere in which the attempt was born. But we should not be caught up in to only one or other of these two great traditions. We should be able to draw both on the logical and the mystical in our modern attempt to understand the complete person. We should be able to draw on a whole range of mental tools and experiences in order to get as complete a picture of our world and its many levels of being and experience. I want to try and span the two conflicting ways of thinking, the logical and the mystical.

We currently live in a society that increasingly seeks to meld the rational and the mystical, in thought, spirit and medicine. And this combination seems to me to be the most appropriate way to lay bare the essentials of Jewish belief.

For the most creative period of post biblical Jewish thought, the Midrash rather than Theology was the vehicle for expression. The Midrashic approach of the rabbis is indeed not a philosophic one. It is syncretic rather than systematic. It brings lots of different ways of thinking, imagining and talking, together. It is certainly pre-philosophical and was more the precursor of a mystical approach to God than a rational one. One can only understand rabbinic thought through this earlier framework. Midrash is usually a way of using a biblical verse to convey, directly or indirectly a religious idea. More often than not this was done orally, in private study or in a public sermon. Many of the ideas were hyperbolic and some cases manifestly contrary to the accepted Halacha. Often Midrashim are introduced with the statement' He saw that his audience was dozing and so he said' clearly something that would wake them up for its controversy. A typical example is the statement in that it is better to put out a human life than to put out a light on Shabbat. But such a system, allowing for flexibility is a wonderful way of seeing the range of rabbinic ideas. And this why there is no attempt to come to conclusions or to decide on a single accepted position in Midrashic thought. And this is why, to understand the essence of Jewish theology one must turn not to philosophy but to Midrash.

4

The idea, or the experience of God, is the fundamental principle on which the life of Judaism is based. The Torah talks about loving God and knowing God, but nowhere talks about proving the existence of God. If behavioral commands are phrased as ' Say to the Children of Israel that they must or should ', no such phraseology is used with regard to the abstract aspects of the Torah. 'No Speak to the Children of Israel and say to them, this is what you must believe'. The Torah contains no actual command to believe that is phrased as a command as opposed to actions that are commanded. The first of the Ten Commandments which is usually taken to refer to a belief in God does not say, "You must believe that there is God." There is nowhere else in the Torah a formulation that we would recognize as a Categorical, Theological Imperative. This is not to say that ideas play no part or indeed that the theological importance of God can be underestimated. But it is to emphasize that whereas the Torah specifically commands actions and actions are the criteria for testing Jewish eligibility both civilly and religiously, there is no detailed description of what a person is expected to believe in. Even the last chapter of the Talmudic folio of Sanhedrin that talks about who has no part in the world to come does not deprive a Jew of his or identity for a theological incapacity. All we are told is that "Middah Keneged Middah", you are paid back "Measure for Measure". If you don't believe in an after life, you don't get one! And this similarly applies to the other issues mentioned there.

So whereas halachically there is an elaborate structure of authority; a clear demarcation of hierarchy; a clear statement of what constitutes rebellion against authority, no such defined position exists on what we might call theological issues. Whereas Rambam (Maimonides) in the eleventh century is accepted as an absolutely crucial voice as a Rishon (a major "first wave" post-Talmudic authority) in the halachic process and any disagreement falls within defined parameters, no such respect is accorded to his Aristotelian Philosophic system. And if his Thirteen Principles have come now to be accepted as a handy guide or menu of Jewish thinking (despite the theoretical opposition of giants like Crescas and Albo), there is no obligation to accept an Aristotelian description of what constitutes a Perfect Unity as opposed to a Platonic or indeed (anachronistically) a Wittgenstinian one. Maimonides thought of perfect unities the way a Greek did. If I use the phrase "God is a perfect unity" it does not mean anything to me at all. I do not understand what a perfect unity is. I think I know what Aristotle or Maimonides meant, but I cannot be sure.

If God is the paramount feature of a religious life, then in what way does the Torah seek to convey His importance? Not, as others do, by insisting on a statement of belief. This does not mean that God is any less essential or fundamental, just that there are different ways of relating.

5

The whole of the Torah is an encounter with God. From Adam and Eve, through Cain and Abel, on to Enosh, Enoch and Noah, the search for the appropriate relationship underlies the narrative. Adam and Eve have no relationship with God. They are given instructions and punished for their disobedience. Cain is the first to try to relate in an act of devotion by bringing the first sacrifice. Perhaps his method was inadequate. Abel's offering was accepted. Enosh calls on God, perhaps an attempt at verbal contact rather than sacrificial. Enoch walks with God and is taken away. There is clearly something wrong with his relationship otherwise he might have been chosen before Noah. It is not before Avram that we see the example of the correct relationship between God and man. Avram, Yitschak and Yaakov, all of them are shown engaging in different ways with God and humans, but they are all manifestly preoccupied with and dominated by their relationship with God.

From Moses onwards this relationship is bifurcated into a personal and a national experience. The nation is made up of different people on different levels. Debate and uncertainty enter the situation. The existence of God is not challenged. What is asked for is a description, a name or reassurance, as after the Golden Calf episode. One might even say that the Torah is God, so dominant is His presence. We look back and seeing it through modern eyes can only wonder that a people which had experienced Divine intervention at first hand, could, nevertheless, on occasion rebel or act as though it had not had much effect. But the Torah talks about the people's experiences, not its state of mind except immediately after crossing the Red Sea when it says that, "They believed in God and in Moses His servant". But, of course, this puts belief in God on the same footing as belief in Moses. Clearly the word "belief" functions very differently in the Biblical mind from the way we, in a post-Christian world, regard it.

6

The Hebrew word EMuNa, normally translated "belief", a way of thinking about the absolute, means something very different in the Torah. There it means "To be convinced of something." It is the same distinction we make in English between ' I believe in God' and ' I believe in you'. To "believe that" something is the case and to "believe in" something or a person are two different sorts of statements. To "believe that" is usually a statement about material facts, scientific or even ethical. And it usually requires some evidence to support it. If I believe it will rain tomorrow, or that base metal can be turned into gold, or that good people are rewarded for their deeds then I need some sort of factual information to support these beliefs. On the other hand if I "believe in" you, I am saying that I have come to be convinced of your friendship or reliability. I base this as much on feeling as I do on evidence. Of course many people remain convinced that someone loves them long after the evidence shows that they do not. But "belief in" is far more a matter of feeling than "belief that". "I believe that you are my father" is only likely to be said if someone has challenged the paternity in the first place and there is some doubt. Otherwise a person simply says, "I am your father," which is precisely how God addresses us in the opening verse of the Ten Commandments. Look at way the word "believe" is used in Torah.

Sarah asks, "Is it really the case (UMNam) that I will give birth?" Joseph threatens his brothers, "We will see if what you say can be verified (VaYeaMNu divreichem)." Jacob does not believe (HeEMiN) his sons when they tell him that Joseph is alive. We can see that we are talking about conviction, certainty, trust. When Moses has to keep his arms high while Joshua fought Amalek, he needed Aharon and Chur to hold his hands up. With their support, the hands of Moses remained up until sunset. His hands were EMuNa, firm. When a woman suspected of adultery appears before the priest he makes a declaration to which she has to assent. Her agreement is described as her affirming "AMeN, AMeN". So we have a word that connotes firmness, agreement. It is not a word that connotes theological or philosophical proof.

A fascinating use of the root of the word for belief is the word for a nurse. God will care for Israel as a "nurse cares (OMeN) for a child". At the end of Deuteronomy Moses describes the Jewish people as backsliding and a 'people with no credibility, trust' Children with no EMuN. Of course there are plenty of quotes that emphasize the faith or lack of faith that the people had in God and in Moses. But the meaning of this faith is not an abstract or an intellectual affirmation. Rather it is a statement of trust, conviction. God is described as being NeEMaN, "reliable", in just the same way as Moses is described as NeEMaN. This is important because conviction and certainty, certainly with regard to people, often comes about as a result of intangible or emotional responses. It is feeling that decides certainty just as much if not more than theory.

We can apply a similar analysis the word for Truth. In our culture truth is usually an absolute. There can only be "The Truth, The whole Truth and Nothing but the Truth." Hence the association of the word Truth with God and the implication that was such a vital tool of Christian missionaries that there could only be one true religion. But if you look at the word EMeT, truth, in the Torah, a different kind of usage emerges, one that is more empirical and less absolute.

Eliezer, the servant of Abraham uses the word Emet in thanking God for having directed him to Rebecca and either bestowing Emet or leading him down the correct path toward his goal When the patriarchs ask for a favor they ask both their children and God to deal with them in a way that is Emet, correct, appropriate. So in this Genesis context, Emet implies actions or support that are correct, beneficial and trustworthy. And this continues into the Book of Judges where, in Chapter 9, the word Emet it is used several times to mean "to do the right thing".

In Exodus when Jethro advises Moses to look for a team of men to assist, he is told to look for 'men of truth who hate corruption'. But the book of Deuteronomy uses the word empirically. "Is it true that this event actually happened?" So that when we examine the nature of the word and apply it to God, it is clear that we are talking about experiencing behavior in man and God that is dependable and honest. It is a quality of God that reinforces our love for Him and our commitment to Him. In man similarly, it is reassuring and a matter of confidence building. It tells us something about the nature of God and about the nature of man without implying absolutes or a monochromatic concept that excludes other possibilities. And so it was in Classical Judaism that there was room to accept and even appreciate other religions that were monotheistic and to allow for 'the pious of the nations of the world, who would achieve spiritual greatness and the World to Come. But more important is the fact that if "truth" is empirical, then it allows for intellectual uncertainty and experiment. This is the very opposite of the fundamentalist position which implies a stasis, that the idea is fixed, defined and impervious to modification.

7

The Torah is primarily concerned with behavior. It is the action that defines, not the thought. And so in rabbinic Judaism it is the act of breaking Jewish law in public that results in a person being barred from giving testimony in a Court Of Law. It is the commitment to Law that defines membership of the group once ones genealogy or conversion has gained one initial acceptance. After all, this is the only way one can reliably test a person's affiliation. Anyone can say whatever he or she wants. I can say I believe in men from Mars. I guess I would be prepared to say that I believe in lots of strange things if I thought my life was in danger. Perhaps once, one was frightened to take The Lord's Name in vain. But even then, the Torah knew full well that a Credo was no basis for reliable verification. This is why there is no such statement in the Torah as, "Speak to the Children of Israel and tell them they must believe." This is a meaningless statement. God is to be experienced. One must attempt to understand.

The Torah talks about "knowing" God in the way that man "knows" his wife. The Torah talks about loving God in the way lovers know each other. These terms are not necessarily intellectual terms. One brings a whole lot of sensual and emotional experiences and sensitivities to play in the act of knowing and loving another human being. It does indeed involve the mind and the thought process, but not exclusively. Indeed the Greek way, and hence Maimonides' way, to God is through the pure intellect. The intellect in contradistinction to matter. The two eternal substances that are caught in a primordial battle in Greek thought are intertwined and indivisible in biblical Judaism. But I am arguing that it is through a mystical rather than a rationalist position that one can understand God in the Jewish experience, not the intellect.

So the need to prove the existence of God is redundant and irrelevant in Judaism. Whereas the need to experience is essential. "Taste it and see," says the Psalmist. And yet there is no single way, no single formula which is ' the correct one' to come to God. There may be a revealed ways to behave but there are not prescribed ways to think.

This is not to say that the world of ideas is irrelevant in Judaism. There are indeed ideas that play an important part in our religious tradition. But they play this part in very different way and in a far less precise manner than they do in other Western religious traditions. Theology is the science of the Christian religious world. It is incidental to the Jewish. Just as Maimonides says that one can only say what God is not, one cannot describe the indescribable, so too, Judaism is essentially concerned with avoiding negative ideology. Its approach is not to reject even if one is uncertain about what to accept.

If one looks at the Talmudic statements of a Theological nature, the attack is against the ideological heretic. The Talmud recounts, at the end of Sanhedrin, those who have no portion of the World To Come. They are the deniers. Those who say there is no Life beyond the Grave. Those who know precisely that the Torah is not the word of God. It is the Atheist rather than the Agnostic, the denier rather than the doubter who creates the problem for Traditional Judaism. It is the person who eats forbidden food as an act of ideological defiance who is rejected far more than the one who gives in to weakness and eats out of self indulgent appetite. We are all in the second category to some extent or another. This is the biblical understanding of the inclination of man. There is a constant struggle. Biblical Judaism sees every person, including King David, as caught in this behavioral battle. The way to survive is by accepting the presence and the influence of the Divine. But this is something to be experienced and lived with. It is not a door one goes through. It is not a state one enters into and then one is saved. It is rather a constant engagement with a constant stream of experiences that reinforce the commitment to the way of living that reinforces the experience of an and the commitment to the Divine. It is not a formula. It is not a Credo. It is an act of devotion and love.

Go to Next Chapter: Can we know what God is?

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