We're at the point in "After Religion" we we start pluralizing voices. One of the TAs gave a mini-lecture today so thought-provoking that we wound up spending most of the class discussing it. Which isn't to say that I agreed with all he said! Sort of the point, I guess!
Anyway, the topic was how traditions old and new are configured or configure themselves as religions, and his focus was an interview with Leora Batnitzky about how Judaism "became a religion." Appropriate in its way for the first night of Passover, his presentationit was framed by a story about memory.
When Rabbi Israel Baal Shem Tov, the founder of Hasidism, saw that the Jewish people were threatened by tragedy, he would go to a particular place in the forest where he lit a fire, recited a particular prayer, and asked for a miracle to save the Jews from the threat. Because of the Holy Fire and faithfulness of the prayer, the miracle was accomplished, averting the tragedy.
Later, when the Baal Shem Tov’s disciple, the Maggid of Mezrich, had to intervene with heaven for the same reason, he went to the same place in the forest where he told the Master of the Universe that while he did not know how to light the fire, he could still recite the prayer, and again, the miracle was accomplished.
Later still, Rabbi Moshe Leib of Sasov, in turn a disciple of the Maggid of Mezrich, went into the forest to save his people. “I do not know how to light the fire,” he pleaded with God, “and I do not know the prayer, but I can find the place and this must be sufficient.” Once again, the miracle was accomplished.
When it was the turn of Rabbi Israel of Rizhyn, the great grandson of the Maggid of Mezrichwho, who was named after the Baal Shem Tov, to avert the threat, he sat in his armchair, holding his head in his hands, and said to God: “I am unable to light the fire, I do not know the prayer, and I cannot even find the place in the forest. All I can do is to tell the story. That must be enough.”
It's a great story for a course called "After Religion," not least because it allows of different interpretations. The TA presented the story as an allegory for how Judaism was "protestantized," becoming a religion of "inner feeling" rather than law (something he thought was a good thing). A student who identifies as a Polish Catholic said the story seemed to apply more generally, and made clear that what's most important in religion is intention.
I asked if intention is the same thing as feeling, and if the story isn't really about something else again, namely storytelling. We talked a little about how well contructed this particular story was, how it seemed to be heading toward a tipping point yet finds there isn't one: intention's enough. Or is it? Not all the students had noticed that there was no miracle at the end of the fourth paragraph, and so the rabbi's last words are really a question. Was it really enough?
[A brief internet search
traces the story to the preface to Elie Wiesel's 1964
The Gates of the Forest, where it ends with the words "And It was sufficient. God made man because he loves stories." I asked my TA where he found this artfully truncated version, and he told me he'd been unable to locate the version he was seeking, in Giorgio Agamben's 2014
The Fire and the Story - which it happens is not truncated - and happened on
this trimmed one instead.]
We contemplated what further paragraphs of the story might be, recounting experiences of further generations. They'll keep telling the story, one student said confidently. (ChatGPT when asked said the same.) Another, more attuned to the narrative momentum of the tale, said the story would be lost - but the intention would remain. All good, then? "By the seventh paragraph," another student declared darkly, "even the intention will be forgotten."
What a great discussion! And it let me push gently back at the TA's celebration of a lawless Judaism of individual feeling. What if part of the wisdom of Jewish tradition is knowing that things peter out this way if everything is left to intention and feeling - and stories?
Perhaps I can start the next iteration of "After Religion" with this...
