Atelier TenouaTalk14 June 2022
Does God have a good excuse? A small Jewish reflection on doubt
1h 17min
The closing session of the 5782 season, opened in memory of A. B. Yehoshua, who died that very day. Under a title borrowed from Woody Allen, a course in the Jewish theology of doubt built around the Talmud's most famous heretic: Elisha ben Abuya, who became Aher, the Other. From the oven of Akhnai to the child fallen from the tree, what the tradition truly fears, and what the yad, the reading hand, enacts. In French.
“Learn to tear yourself away from the literal sense so as not to tear yourself away from this world.”
“The rabbis produce […] a kind of theological revolution one might call a Jewish theology of chutzpah, of nerve […] which consists […] in saying to God: Stay where you are, in sublime heights, and let us inhabit the world and interpret the text.”
“The midrash interprets this phrase of the prophets as follows: God says to the Jews: Me, you may abandon. It matters not at all, as long as you do not abandon my Torah.”
“At the foot of a tree, somewhere in Israel, around the first or second century of our era, a child dies. And with him dies, or crashes to the ground, the literal sense of the text, the literal sense of the law.”
“Rabbinic Judaism has no problem with calling God and his power into question, but it has a problem with uprooted roots, that is, with the fear and anguish of an impossible return. […] There is nothing more dangerous than believing a return is impossible, for you or for generations to come.”
“We never read the text of the Torah directly with a finger, never in direct contact. We always place an object between the text and ourselves […] It is as if this object told better than anyone the Jewish prohibition of literal reading.”
“In Hebrew, God is called perhaps. And I am certain, in fact I have no doubt, that in that God each of us can believe, perhaps.”
The session
The session opens with a tribute: A. B. Yehoshua died that very day, and the study is placed under his blessing. The title, borrowed from Woody Allen, embraces Jewish humour as the traditional vehicle of legitimate reproach addressed to God, from the shtetl joke reservoir to Elie Wiesel and his image of the couple in crisis who cannot divorce. The oven of Akhnai sets up the theology of nerve: the Torah is not in heaven, and God laughs at being rebuffed; Henri Atlan calls this an atheism of writing. Then the evening's hero: Elisha ben Abuya, born in the year 70 on the ashes of the Temple, teacher of Rabbi Meir, friend of Rabbi Akiva who was tortured to death under Bar Kokhba, the only sage of the Talmud saddled with a pseudonym, Aher, the Other, the one who in the garden of Pardes uproots the roots. The havruta studies the only two commandments carrying a promise of long life (honouring one's parents, sending the mother bird from the nest), then the two scenes of his deviation: the child who fulfils both and dies falling from the tree, and a martyr's tongue dragged through the dust. The room's responses weave trauma and language, the last child's stutter, the brother hidden in Aher's name. The final unfolding places it all in the calendar, between Shavuot and Tisha b'Av: how could the God who split the sea not save his own house? The rabbis' true problem is not doubt but the certainty of an impossible return; the proof, they never erase Aher from the Talmud. The close passes through the yad, the object that forbids reading with a finger, and the letters of Eli that also read oulai: perhaps.
Texts studied
- Deuteronomy 5 (the fifth commandment) and 22:6-7 (sending the mother bird from the nest)
- Talmud, Kiddushin 39b (the child at the nest, the two versions of Aher's deviation)
- Talmud, Chagigah 15 (the horse on Shabbat, the thirteen synagogues, the prostitute and the horseradish)
- Along the way: Elisha ben Abuya, called Aher · the oven of Akhnai · the Pardes · Kiddushin 39b · Chagigah 15 · Rabbi Meir · Rabbi Akiva · Woody Allen · Elie Wiesel · Henri Atlan · A. B. Yehoshua · the yad.