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OVERVIEW

Many of the texts of Judaism are familiar to students with a Christian upbringing. For instance, the stories of God's creating the world in seven days, Adam and Even in the Garden of Eden, Noah and the Ark, and the Ten Commandments are all stories from the Jewish Scriptures. Likewise the stories of the great Kings of Israel including David, Saul, and Solomon.

What is distinctive about Judaism is how these stories are approached. They are seen as part of a "salvation history" which demonstrates at least two important themes. We will touch on these themes briefly in this chapter. The first is the theme of meaning and the second is the theme of exile and return.

Judaism and Meaning

Smith's text focuses on the "passion for meaning" as a central feature of the Jewish religion. The Jews have often been in the role of the underdog. Their territory has been invaded, they have been enslaved, they have been the targets of genocide, but their God has never abandoned them and they have never abandoned their God. In time, God will bring a better future out of their grief.

We see this theme again and again in the stories of Moses in Egypt, in the first and second destructions of the Temple, and in recent history in the Holocaust. The Jews are able to find meaning in their trials and tribulations and therefore they are able to give meaning to the entire span of human history. Indeed, Judaism is seen by many as the historical religion par excellence. It does not begin with the myths of how the world came to be nor the doings of the gods nor with moral and ethical codes. Rather it begins with considering how God watched over one particular people throughout all of their history. God has dealt with them harshly in times when they strayed from their covenant with Him, but He has always been merciful in their return. Because of this balance of the attributes of justice and mercy, both good and evil fortunes are seen as having profound meaning in the greater scheme of things.

Exile and Return

Jacob Neusner writes in Our Religions (a book commissioned for the 1993 Parliament of the World's Religions) that there are many different ways of answering the question "what is Judaism?" In this book, he tries to point out some features which can be found in the various strains of Jewish thought. One prominent feature he mentions is the theme of Exile and Return. In this section, we will look briefly at this theme.

From the beginning, the Hebrews were nomads. Whenever they did settle in one place or another, they were sooner or later pushed out by invaders. The theme of being displaced, then, was familiar right from the beginning. Nuesner suggests that these historical facts were thematized, which led to the reading of other historical facts within the light of exile and return.

Once this idea was established, it permeated all of Jewish thought and became in a way self-perpetuating. The Jews would feel themselves outsiders in whatever situation they found themselves and act as such, thus reinforcing to observers that they actually were outsiders.

In the long run, this worked to the advantage of Judaism as a religion because the model did not focus exclusively on the theme of exile, but also provided for return. Therefore, the knowledge that "God is with us" could operate no matter how bad external events looked. The external events became, in Nuesner's words "mere facts." That the world was set against the Jews was not proof that God had abandoned them, but proof that history was working itself out in its inevitable cycle of exile and return. Return to Smith's chapter and you will see that the idea of meaning in suffering is referred to. This kind of meaning can be found when history is seen in its entirety rather than focusing only on what is happening right here and now.

Jewish view of the Absolute

Finally, we will consider the distinctive features of the Jewish view of the Absolute. The relationship between God and God's creatures is seen in distinctly human terms. It is the relationship between a benevolent kind and his subjects, between a God of justice and mercy and those who approach him with their crimes and weaknesses. It is the relationship between a loving father and his children.

Even while God is recognized as being fundamentally 'other' than human beings, that 'otherness' does not remove God from human relationships. God is eternally concerned with us, eternally willing to forgive us and take us back even when we have not held up our part in the covenant He has made with us. The twin fact that God does punish us when we stray but is always willing to take us back stresses that balance of justice and mercy that Smith mentions in the last line of p. 275.

The idea of God as father stresses his relationship with us. It also underlines the awareness of and requirement for justice and mercy in human relationships that are stressed in Judaism. Since we are all indeed children of God, we are therefore "in possession of rights even kings must respect" (Smith, p.292). Justice and mercy toward each other are not abstract requirements enforced by God, but simply what we owe each other because we have the same father.

The way the Absolute was envisioned in Judaism found its way into Christianity (Jesus was born and raised a Jew). Much of Jewish thinking about justice and mercy, about the way God interacts with the world, and about the nature of God himself carried over with little change. Jesus brought what he felt were correctives to certain Jewish practices and beliefs, certain ways in which the rituals and obligations had become more important than the love of God, but many of the fundamental tenets were not challenged. The image of God as the provider and guarantor of meaning in history is still a powerful concept and one which might be considered a direct challenge to some contemporary views of the world as devoid of any meaning, as the result of random chance, or as an overwhelming jumble of conflicting worldviews and claims which cannot be judged against any absolute criterion.