Reason and Faith: Kierkegaard, Abraham, and Manoah’s Wife

Kierkegaard’s Abraham

Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard wrote the book Fear and Trembling, discussing the topic of Abraham’s obedience to the divine command to sacrifice his son.

His stance on this most thorny and contentious of biblical moral conundrums – was Abraham’s obedience something to be emulated, was it moral, or was it repugnant? – is not that Abraham simply concluded that G-d is irrational. Rather, Abraham put aside ordinary human logic while continuing to believe, “by virtue of the absurd,” that somehow he would not lose Isaac. The same G-d who had miraculously given him this son at the age of 100, and who had told him, “for through Isaac shall your offspring be named” (Genesis 21:12), could then command his father to put him to death.

For Kierkegaard, Abraham’s choice to surrender his own logic, while continuing to believe that he would somehow receive Isaac back, was at the heart of faith.

Blind Faith

Jews sometimes criticize Christianity for its emphasis on blind faith. Judaism often approaches things rationally, and we have our rational luminaries such as Maimonides. Yet we also have our own strand of thinkers who do not always privilege the rational: our mystics, our teachers who emphasize emunah above reason (though not above halachah). Rebbe Nahman comes to mind. In Likkutei Moharan I, 62:2, he teaches: 

For there are different types of questions: There is the question whose solution a man can understand, of which it is said: “And know what [to answer the heretic].” And there is the question whose solution is incomprehensible to the human mind; only in the Future will the solution be revealed. It is forbidden for a person to delve into these. Anyone who does rely on his intellect and delves into them, of this it is said (Proverbs 2:19): “None that go to her return.” This is because for such a question he may not rely on his intellect, but rather be steadfast in faith.

Enter Manoah’s Wife

To this enormous discussion, I want to add one modest piece. There is a biblical character who seems to think that G-d acts in reasonable and rational ways, at least in her context. I refer to she who is known as Manoah’s wife, and is the mother of Samson. Though not even granted a name, she is clearly a refined woman, honoured with a visit by an angel, privileged to be the mother of Samson.

Towards the end of the chapter (Judges 13:20–23), after the angel reveals himself as such by ascending to heaven in the flame, and her husband in terror shouts, “We are going to die because we have seen G-d,” she reassures him with the following words (Judges 13:23):

“Had the Lord meant to take our lives, He would not have accepted a burnt offering and a grain offering from us, or shown us all these things, or now announced to us such things as these.”

You might argue that she simply wants to calm down a terrified husband, but to me her words indicate a genuine train of thought, a small theology of divine reason. G-d has accepted their offering, appeared to them and promised them a son. It would make no sense for G-d to do all of this and then kill them.

* 

So did Manoah’s wife hold a different theology to that of Abraham?

That is too strong a statement to make. Her situation is not Abraham’s. Manoah’s wife has not been commanded to do anything, and she does not appear to share her husband’s belief that they are actually going to die. She has the luxury of being able to calmly assemble the evidence and reach the reasonable conclusion.

Abraham, by contrast, is in a terrible bind. He has received two apparently irreconcilable divine communications, promising that his descendants will come through Isaac, and yet commanding him now to kill Isaac (who still has no offspring).

What would this fine woman have done had she been asked, after the miraculous birth of her son, to go sacrifice him? Would she have said to G-d, “Hang on a minute, what You said does not make sense – could You explain?” Would she have thought to herself, “I will do it, because G-d will never let me go through with it”? Or would she have surmised that although G-d generally acts reasonably, there is another level at which the divine is completely opaque to our small minds and has a logic of its own?

In other words, would she:

* challenge the contradiction;

* expect last-minute intervention;

* obey without knowing how the promise can survive.

This last position is closest to Kierkegaard’s Abraham and to Rebbe Nahman’s insistence that faith begins where the intellect can go no further.

We do not know. Manoah’s wife is not being tested in the manner of Abraham: she is not asked to act against everything she knows about G-d’s promise.

Perhaps we simply learn that faith can look reasonable under reasonable circumstances; but under extreme circumstances of apparent divine contradiction, that is when we discover whether reason remains sufficient for us – and if not, what form our faith will take.

* Thank you to my Shalem student Guy Michaeli whose discussion with me on Kierkegaard, while I was teaching the Samson story through Bibliodrama, led to the writing of this post.

A Genesis Moment You Never Noticed: Tiny, Yet Huge

Did you ever notice the moment between when Eve has eaten the forbidden fruit and she gives it to Adam? Presumably not, because the text ignores that moment, and rushes straight into (Gen 3:6)

and she also gave [of the fruit] to her man with her, and he ate

It is only after Adam eats that

the eyes of both of them were opened, and they knew they were naked” (Gen 3:7).

It appears that after they both eat they are both endowed with knowledge. But logically speaking, there is indeed one moment in which Eve has already eaten, and should already be the possessor of knowledge of good and evil.

This is the moment in which she could have paused, and differentiated from Adam. Until now, in their short life history, they have been the same. But now Eve has not only done something different—eaten from the forbidden fruit—but at this moment she is ontologically different. She possesses knowledge, she has crossed the Rubicon. She could potentially be more powerful than Adam.

Yet she does not even for a moment allow this knowledge any place. The text shows her in one fluid motion giving it immediately to Adam to eat, stringing one vav (“and”) after another – and she took …and she ate and she gave… Then immediately we see “and he ate”.

Why, Eve? Perhaps she answers:

"Because I did not want to be alone with all that new knowledge. Whatever this journey is, we have to do it together.”

Is this cowardice – or clarity?
Instead of power, Eve chooses relationality. And the text goes along with her, presenting it not as we might imagine the reality would be – a moment of differential power – but as though they eat together, and only then are both their eyes opened.

So you could argue that from the dawn of time, humans are relational. But would Adam have done the same?

Some research has suggested that women specifically are more relational, wanting to do things collaboratively, while men might prefer to act alone and to compete. Would Adam have paused, reveling in his sudden superiority over Eve – and perhaps, not even handed the fruit to her to eat, but finished it quickly himself? Or does the word עמה describing how Adam was “with her” (Gen 3:6) hint that his orientation was such that he would want to remain with her and not differentiate?

We will never know.

Torah Ideas After Watching Nolan's Odyssey

Watching Christopher Nolan’s Odyssey got me thinking and comparing with two Torah subjects:

1) Odysseus spends ten years returning home, encountering all sorts of obstacles along the way. I wondered which biblical characters also have to take a long journey home, and what did they encounter?

The most prominent person is Jacob, returning after twenty years in his uncle Laban’s house. On his way back, he is delayed by Laban himself, then an unknown man (angel) whom he wrestles all night, and finally the terrifying anticipation of meeting his brother Esau and the encounter itself. He meets no Cyclops or sirens, but each incident requires its own courage to overcome it.

Moses also returns to his birthplace Egypt after forty years of exile in Midian. The only incident we know of on his way home is his son’s strange circumcision by his wife, at the inn.

Joseph never gets to go home while alive; he commands that his bones be carried up to Canaan. And Esther too (Joseph’s textual twin) remains in the palace for the rest of her life, at least as far as is documented. This is her new home, she does not get to return to Mordechai’s house or the Jewish community.

Finally, when we consider that the Promised Land is a home for the Jewish people – there were not ten but forty years of wanderings, quarrels, battles, hunger, thirst, and more, until the people could reach that land. Even more if you count the years of slavery.

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2) Unlike in Homer’s epic, Nolan’s Circe, who is much more witchy, turns Odysseus’ men into pigs. When Odysseus understands this and asks her to turn them back, she reluctantly does so, and the sentence she says is telling: “Back to your disguises.” The implication is that men are very animalistic and base in their true nature – and perhaps especially soldiers and warriors, who pillage their way across territories leaving a lone woman such as Circe highly vulnerable to their whims.

In the laws of the captive woman (Deut. 10-14), the Torah recognizes the same base impulse occurring when an Israelite soldier sees a beautiful woman of the enemy tribe and desires her for his wife. The Torah does not forbid it, but it manages and regulates it (just as the Torah managed the bloodlust arising in the blood avenger, by creating cities of refuge). The Torah tells the soldier, “Ok you can have her. Just make her far less attractive, and give it a month. Then decide. If you don’t want her, you cannot sell her, she must go free.”

The Torah sidesteps the coarse binary between forbidding and permitting, and says “It is permitted but only under very proscribed circumstances that will help you control your lust.”

In my opinion, the halachic system itself should try to follow this line as much as possible, instead of the simplistic “forbidden” and “permitted”. To what extent it actually does so is not something I have researched deeply, but I wish I heard more psak along the lines of “Ok you are going to do this anyway, so let’s see if we can contain it and minimize the harmful effects” instead of “Assur!”

Why only Calev went to pray in Hevron

Rava says: …Caleb separated himself from the counsel of the other spies and went and prostrated himself on the graves of the forefathers in Hebron. He said to them: My forefathers, pray for mercy for me so that I will be saved from the counsel of the spies.

(Sotah 34b)

Here we might ask: why did Joshua not also go to the Hebron, to the cave of his ancestors to pray?

There may be several possible answers to this question: for example – perhaps each spy was allocated to spy out a different area and Joshua was occupied in doing that. However, I want to suggest that perhaps Joshua did not go because he did not feel the burning necessity for it in the same way as Calev did.

The midrash asks:

“Why was Calev called Shovav? (I Chronicles 2:18)” and answers: “Because he broke (shivev) his evil inclination” (Soth 12a).

Meaning, he had to struggle against the influence of the ten other spies – he found himself impacted by their negative views.

Joshua – who had spent much time with Moshe and even perhaps partially ascended Mt Sinai (Shemot 24:13) – did not. Additionally, Moses had given Joshua, who had till now been called Hoshea, the extra letter yud at the beginning of his name, which as Rashi explains was meant to protect him as “May G-d (Yah) save you from the evil counsel of the spies” (Rashi Bamidbar 13:16).

Though a good man, Calev did not have Joshua’s merit or his spiritual level. Seeing himself pulled into the spies’ groupthink and urgently needing spiritual reinforcement, Calev made the journey to the cave of Machpelah and prostrated himself on the graves, praying for help.

Furthermore, perhaps, while the ancestors of all Jews are buried at Machpelah (Abraham, Sarah, Isaac, Rebecca, and Jacob), Calev had a stronger connection to this gravesite, as his ancestress Leah was buried there, while Rachel, ancestress of Joshua who hailed from the tribe of Ephraim, had been buried elsewhere, along the way.

Calev was able connect there to the energy of Leah, who withstood the test of not winning her husband’s love, and remained in gratitude to G-d, as seen in the name of Calev’s ancestor Judah (Leah’s fourth son).

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This trip had an important ramification, differentiating between Calev and Joshua. When the spies return and give their report, at first we see only Calev stand up to rebuff it and rally the people (Bamidbar 13:30). Where is Joshua, why is he silent? Again, several answers are possible. But perhaps what happened was that Calev had indeed, after praying at Hebron, received spiritual fortitude, a divine blessing, and had the strength to stand up against the people. Joshua was a tzaddik, undoubtedly, but he had not had that spiritual vitamin boost.

So we see from here that being flawed, needing to seek spiritual aid and effortfully rise from a low place, can ultimately bring a person to places that the saint may not achieve. “In the place where penitents stand, even the full-fledged righteous do not stand” (Brachot 34b)

The Way of the Flint/The Way of the Mouth

What is going on in the somewhat strange biblical story known as “the circumcision at the inn”? (Exodus 4:20-26)

Moses is on his way, together with his wife Tzipporah and their two sons, to Egypt, in obedience to God’s commands. Suddenly the Lord appears and wishes to kill him (who Moses? The son?)

Tzipporah seizes a flint, circumcises their son, and ends by announcing “You are a bridegroom of blood to me.”

The mysteries are many. Here is one possible insight.

While doing a Bibliodrama on the life of Tzipporah, a couple of the participants brought to light something interesting. We noticed that at the well in Midian, where Tzipporah first meets Moses, Moses steps in to help Yitro’s seven daughters, who are harassed daily by shepherds who drive them away.

We are told Moses “stood up and helped them, and watered their flock” (Ex. 4:17). Participant Esther Goldenberg noted that Moses was fleeing from Egypt, where he had killed a man. When he comes to the well, he wishes to rectify his violence and chooses to act more peacefully, intentionally helping the young women in a non-violent way and not interacting with the shepherds at all.

Now let’s see how this plays out in the circumcision story. Uri Etigson pointed out to me we notice that in Ex. 4:25, Tzipporah takes up a flint, in Hebrew צר, comprising two of the four letters of her name צפרה.

The other two letters of her name are פה meaning “mouth.” So one message of this story might be to present two paths – the way of the flint (violence) and the way of the mouth (non-violence).

We see Tzipporah taking upon herself the violence that Moses has long rejected, after his murderous deed forty years before caused him to have to flee his home. This may be one explanation for why Moses did not circumcise his own son during these forty years in Midian – he went to the other extreme and did not even want to engage in this important ritual act.

In their coupling and its dynamic, Tzipporah find she must take up the slack to fill the void left by Moses’ shadow side – his inner violence that we later see emerging from time to time in his flaring anger at different points. This does happen inside couple relationships, that one partner becomes a certain way in order to compensate for a repression or unbalancing in the other.

“The way of the mouth” encapsulates Moses’ future mission in Egypt. There, he and Aaron will speak for God before Pharaoh, whose name breaks down to פה רע meaning “bad mouth”.

As a person with a speech impediment (“heavy of mouth and tongue”), Moses cannot take words lightly, each word comes at a cost. So much so that he does not think he can speak at all, and G-d has to reassure him that He Himself will be with his mouth, and that Aaron will be his spokesman. (Ex. 4:10-17, where the word “mouth” is mentioned repeatedly). Yet we do see Moses speak later, many times. He is not justified in his overcaution. He can do this.

It is surely no coincidence that Moses initially describes himself as being “of uncircumcised lips” (Ex. 6:12, 6:30). Perhaps, suggests Uri Etigson, by circumcising their son, Tzipporah is also “circumcising’ her husband’s lips, allowing him to speak much more fluidly than he ever could have imagined when he took on the mission.