Fragile Finitude

A Jewish Hermeneutical Theology

Michael Fishbane

• Publisher: University of Chicago Press
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9780226764290
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Religion

The world we engage with is a vibrant collage brought to consciousness by language and our creative imagination. It is through the symbolic forms of language that the human world of value is revealed—this is where religious scholar Michael Fishbane dwells in his latest contribution to Jewish thought.In Fragile Finitude, Fishbane clears new ground for a theological life through a novel reinterpretation of the Book of Job. On this basis, he offers a contemporary engagement with the four classical types of Jewish Scriptural exegesis. The first focuses on worldly experience, the second on communal forms of practice and thought in the rabbinical tradition, the third on personal development, and the fourth on transcendent, cosmic orientations. Through these four modes, Fishbane manages to transform Jewish theology from within, at once reinvigorating a long tradition and moving beyond it. What he offers is nothing short of a way to reorient our lives in relation to the divine and our fellow humans. Written from within the Jewish tradition, Fragile Finitude is intended for readers across the religious spectrum.

* PART ONE *

Introduction

Seeking Spiritual Ground: Reengaging Theology

The spiritual challenge of a living theology requires a focused determination to live in the everyday with a threefold goal: to cultivate a mind devoted to God’s all-creative vitality in worldly reality, to transform all one’s acts into expressions of this focal awareness, and to speak with thoughtful intention and purpose. Such theological living is an attempt to attune one’s thoughts, and deeds, and words to Divinity and divine manifestations at all times and as truly as possible. Jewish theology takes up these goals in its own distinctive manner, by finding their source in scripture and tradition, and appropriating them through works of thoughtful personal performance. As an ensemble, these topics typify the classic hermeneutical dimensions of Jewish theology, as reformulated over the generations. Phrases like “Know God in all your ways” (Proverbs 3:6)—mindful thought, “My entire being shall proclaim ‘O Lord, who is like You?!’” (Psalm 35:10)—devoted action, and “May the words of my mouth and the meditations of my heart be acceptable to You, O Lord” (Psalm 19:15)—perfected speech, have been repeatedly expanded as spiritual instructions in diverse genres and settings. They are fundamental components of Jewish religious practice and thought.

Some commentators perceive a concise expression of these ideals in the biblical exhortation that the divine instruction is not “beyond reach,” but near at hand: “in your mouth and in your heart to do it” (Deuteronomy 30:11–14). The medieval sage R. Baḥye ben Asher (thirteenth century, Spain) observed that “three things are mentioned here: the mouth, the heart, and the deed—since all the commandments are comprised of these three [essential] elements. There are commandments requiring speech, others requiring the heart, and others requiring action.” Speaking thus, R. Baḥye follows a line of explication famously developed by Maimonides and other halakhic codifiers. This threefold ideal is equally articulated in the mystical tradition, where the emphasis is on the sanctification of existence and cultivation of one’s spiritual life. Pertinent passages in the Book of Zohar were cited and explained to enforce this process. Particularly notable among these teachers and commentators was R. Elijah de Vidas (sixteenth century, Safed) and subsequent generations of Hasidic masters. Though difficult to achieve, it was believed that these ideals were “within reach”; hence exhortations for their realization were frequently made. According to many traditional Jewish practitioners, the legal (halakhic) and mystical ideals went hand in hand. The halakhic practices were deemed a codified means to center and order one’s spiritual life—indeed, to give that life a worldly embodiment.

As heir of this tradition, contemporary theology will also wish to retrieve this triad, and give renewed focus to the integral themes of thought, deed, and word. The present situation, however, makes this difficult, for there is virtually no area of modern life that has not undergone a significant change in sensibility and thought, and these influence our behavior in multiple ways—at the prereflective level of daily experience, where the influences of modernity have a silent effect, and at the more reflective levels of conceptual analysis. To produce a reformulation of Jewish theology that may guide us toward these spiritual ends, we must first consider some of the factors that complicate our modern situation. Each can be specified on its own terms and in relation to the overall theological framework to be constituted in this book. Annotating these matters is therefore a necessary first step.

Preliminary Considerations: Prereflective Matters

As mortal creatures, we naturally confront challenges to our thoughts, words, and deeds. Already at the prereflective level, physical impulses and bodily needs precondition many responses and values, and compel us to seek solutions for our safety and sustenance. Thus concrete existential matters often take precedence over other considerations, affecting them substantially, despite all our best intentions. We are also easily thrown off course by unconscious drives or external events. Such is the way of the world. Its impingements require a reckoning; but whether we do so or not, they exact their toll in every case. In addition, many contemporary factors have ramped up these issues in disconcerting ways, beginning with our primary levels of experience. From morning to night, numerous technological stimuli assault our bodies, often in unfiltered ways, unnerving their normal homeostasis. Similarly, a great mass of information simultaneously floods our thought processes, leaving us at odds with ourselves, as we struggle to sort out topics of significance to inform and guide our actions. But like a roiling undertow, each topic offers new temptations in turn; and without stable principles to guide our judgment, we swirl in a sea of uncertainty or cynicism. Secular and traditional minds share this cultural predicament. To protect ourselves and achieve some temporary balance, many turn inward; but with this shift (personal or social), our ethical axis narrows and becomes self-centered. Autosatisfactions now rule the day—often measured by a thick cyber-catalog of “likes” and “un-likes.” Theological discourse is a victim of this situation. Beset by constant stimuli, it too has lost touch with the life-rhythms of the natural world or human order. As a result, a sense of inner space has imploded against our will, and silence is under constant siege. Little wonder that contemporary theology has erected ideological or social barriers to filter the inrush of confusions, or (through a more inner process) has turned to meditative therapeutics to help recenter the dislocated spirit. Numbed by a battery of stimuli, social walls or interior isolation seems a good-enough strategy. But the cost is considerable.

The crisis of sensory overload weakens the ability to focus in a resolute way. We swing from one impulse to another, worse off, it seems, than the ancients who responded to “moment gods” when experiencing sudden manifestations of natural power. They at least had hope in the life benefits of these transient gods, and thus constructed rituals for their appeasement or solicitation. By contrast, we live in a barrage of invasive information, and are hardly comforted by ritual responses to each (momentary) ping from some cyber-device. These intrusions affect even the traditionally minded—disrupting ritual and spiritual practices that yield to these new autonomic responses. Distractions shade the uniqueness of life events or their felt mystery: “things” merely come and go. Futility, said the Preacher in Ecclesiastes, all is futility: we are provoked by whatever makes the most immediate or alluring visual appeal (marʾeh einayim); and are left without a clear spiritual direction (mahalakh ruaḥ), or the will to find one (Ecclesiastes 6:8). Moments occur or disappear in endless rhythms, seemingly disjointed and without wonder. The sun also rises and sets, coming and going without impact; and that is that.

Speech, too, is affected. Everyday discourse is routinized by cant-like formulas and media-sponsored memes. In the process, topics of concern and their speakers lose their distinctive voice. Platitudes rule the day and clog the airwaves with stereotypes, all the worse for wear. We talk past one another, avoiding the presence of living speech-partners. Genuine dialogue—one that speaks with the rhythms of living breath, and answers only after listening—is shunted aside; and the mysteries of language and voice lose their resonance, replaced by archives in cyberspace. No revelation speaks from such virtual, vapid truths; and the voice of being is stifled—both within and without. One becomes tone-deaf to any call or claim.

Reflective life and thought fare no better, having their own complications.

Considerations of Method and Analysis

The intellectual critiques of modernity have challenged or undermined the certainty of our cognitive frameworks. In the process, traditional moorings have been cut, and once authoritative teachings are suspect or have a diminished effect. They all require reassessment, or revaluation, in light of circumstances. Take the example of Benedict Spinoza, our intellectual predecessor in several cultural areas. With critical and trenchant clarity, he applied methodological considerations that have become increasingly valid or convincing as one seeks to negotiate modernity with mental integrity. Consider the impact of his Theological-Political Treatise on traditional Bible study, and the role of scripture as a coherent document by which one might appropriate collective or valorized wisdom. For over two millennia the sacred scriptures constituted a foundational canon of knowledge, read along with the innumerable interpretations that gave authority and guidance to thought and action. But under the scrutiny of Spinoza’s critical analysis, the threads of its verbal texture unraveled. Applying a scientific hermeneutic that examined sacred texts with the same principles used to assess the nature of nature, Spinoza and legions of successors were no longer able or willing to regard scripture as a harmonious order of sacred truth. It was no longer a stable code or matrix of instructions. Suddenly its literary contradictions and diversity were exposed, but not resolved by one harmonistic strategy or another.

The traditional practice of intertextual readings that reconciled or realigned contradictory or redundant expressions lost its methodological privilege. Simultaneously, scripture lost its special status as an integrated “teaching” for new spiritual edification, and was reduced to a mosaic of elements of historical interest, at best: an ethnographic ensemble to be surveyed at the requisite, dispassionate distance. This new hermeneutic took the meaning of texts at their face value, as their “plain sense” suggested, and wholly without any allusive or allegorical depth to speak of. This opened a cognitive rift between this literary corpus as a site of historical details (a fund of cultural information to be evaluated piecemeal and subsequently reconstructed into new narratives) and scripture as a foundational document for religious actions and belief. Scripture was no longer a “master narrative” to be treasured, with self-evident authority, but simply one “other” textual terrain to be surveyed in this age of cultural explorations—a text like other texts, to be read in a similar straightforward and ordinary manner.

Such was the driving force of early biblical criticism. Even those steeped in traditional commentaries had to devise exegetical methods to save the spiritual and literary coherence of scripture. The hermeneutical controversies that resulted were part of a struggle for a religious modernity that had to grapple with the pivotal role of reading in the reception and meanings of culture. Contemporary hermeneutic theory has further complicated these issues. Forcefully asserting that all exegetical acts are fundamentally affected by the horizon of one’s cognitive situation, the vectors of scripture have been narrowed in the opposite direction as well—making all textual interpretation a function of individual perspectives or predilections. Questions of meaning and coherence were reduced to the view of the beholder, often subjectively or ideologically imposed. And insofar as each reader claimed independent authority, the social basis for the hermeneutical results was fragile. Whatever the value of any given interpretation, the difficulties for building a common spiritual life upon this exegetical foundation were evident. Scripture was no longer the basis for a valid, communal hermeneutic, but a sphere of culturally determined exegetical strategies. Even calling textual interpretations a “language game” offers little comfort, since the forms of life and meanings that language expresses are correlated to particular communities that agree (implicitly or otherwise) on the interpretations made for specific purposes or shared understanding. For religious communities, all this was either lost or severely fractured.

The crisis for the modern reader is a contested belief in textual meanings that can both assert a personal resonance and strive to build (or reinforce) a common ethical or spiritual vision. In an open society, subject to diverse mentalities, the forms of life reflected by texts often reflect the political perspective of their practitioners; and for this reason their implicit hermeneutical justifications are subject to the “critique of ideologies.” For those who celebrate this social situation, hermeneutics is believed to serve a more liberated life by breaking the unconscious chains of exegetical presumptions. Indeed, the very deconstruction of such hidden ideologies is felt to have a near-prophetic agenda (a variation of political theology, in fact). As a result, the control of meaning was put under critical siege: no textual corpus retained a privileged status, and no textual community was immune to this social critique. One now reads to unread or to undermine latent determinants, not for cultural growth or social stability.

So we must wonder, Are we left without any canonical ground, without any textual basis for an integral theological enterprise? And if scripture may still retain a viable status, what kind of sense can it convey to sustain our theological-spiritual projects or guide our common language and deeds? Can it still provide a hermeneutical basis for religious thought without denying the plausibility of the modern critique? Or even more fundamentally, Can scripture be read with both a critical eye and spiritual purpose—the two together and in tandem—or must readers now chose one approach and ignore the other? This question has perturbed postmodern generations in search of both scriptural meaning and intellectual integrity, hoping to “save the text” as a spiritually coherent document and activate its content for contemporary purposes. At the present juncture, each side is enveloped within its own cognitive presuppositions. Those who champion the cultural contingency of interpretation frequently turn this into an ideology, whereas those who hold onto the special or inviolate authority of scripture construct self-serving exegetical procedures, or maroon themselves on epistemological islands of their own formation. These are two worldviews at apparent cross-purposes. But for those who feel the need for some alignment or conjunction between these two orientations, a reconsideration of the complex issues is required. The ensuing theological project shall take up this challenge, and attempt to reground Jewish thought in a new-old scriptural hermeneutic.

Another Complication

The difficulty in discerning a literary-hermeneutical foundation for modern religious culture intersects with another consideration: the methodological problem of correlating part and whole. Here too Spinoza provided a formulation of decisive significance. For if the issue of canonical texts highlights the methodological issue of language and interpretation, this topic focuses on a thinker’s relationship to what is thought. Responding to a scientific query that solicited his advice, Spinoza said that if the particular parts of nature are all composed of intersecting units—so that wholes contain parts, and these parts are composed of multiple particulars—one’s analytic standpoint must take this into account. Every assessment is qualified, for the viewer is inescapably part of the content being studied, and thereby integral to its meaning and coherence. It is now common to concede that an individual is not totally outside the conceptual frame being considered or measured. In short, there is no “view from above”; and, since Kant, there is also no absolute or unqualified metaphysical position that purports to encompass the totality of thought. We have lost our former transcendent vision: the sky has fallen to human proportions and projections. And here below, we must also confront the epistemological revolutions of the new physics, and come to terms with the fact that our analytic position influences what we see and construe. If we are co-constructors of meaning, from every standpoint we choose, how might we locate any sure ground for thought, or think about transcendence in a viable way? Without guidance, cultural hermeneutics often shrinks to cognitively limited or preferred perspectives charged with personal or social power; and the critique of hierarchy that ensues may also endanger the search for superior positions or values. Is the only choice between the anxieties of anomie and the assertions of personal perspective? Can subjectivity be a creative, cultural project, or is it the default position of private purposes?

The names Nietzsche and Freud have become code words for the powers of will and subjectivity that mark the absence of any solid hermeneutic ground. We are left disoriented from within and without. Appearances are rife with ambiguity, and our thoughts and assessments are beset with unconscious drives and deceitful displacements. Self-assurance is weakened and fallible and, in response, becomes reactively assertive. With authority and confidence under siege, the conflict of interpretations is often overcome by either false fideism or triumphalist constructions that rebuild confidence by the suppression of diversity. When these features are also bolstered by political power or technological industry, our repressed fears return as hate and fanaticism, which in our time have produced barbarisms of every kind. Hence it is not hermeneutics, as such, that must be overcome, but the fear of freedom and the lack of stable coordinates of value that might anchor the self as a responsible interpreter—attentive to the various claims of existence (human and natural) that call out on a daily basis. Traditions (and their interpretative engagement) provide a rich fund of possibilities, but these must be sorted and assessed for the values or principles that can meet the challenges of modernity and its crisis of responsibility. Theology stands at the headwaters of these challenges, for it situates the self within the vastness of cosmic mystery and worldly purpose—from the life-forms existent all around to the formulations we give to the forces (perceptible or otherwise) that shape our lives. So we ask, Can theology be reconstructed for a responsible freedom—to support a God-directed life of spiritual purpose and moral courage? Contemporary theology must confront its hermeneutical heritage and modern predicaments—simultaneously, directly, and with integrity.

Facing the Challenge

How can we move forward, given our inability to think beyond our cognitive limitations—hardly adequate for ordinary purposes and utterly inadequate to think of God in any sense? For if worldly thought cannot grasp objects in their totality, but is limited to specific standpoints, themselves of contested merit, what thought could conceive of God in whole or part? Words can speak only from within their circle of linguistic sense, so how can we even imagine formulations of ultimate matters? Situated within the whole, we cannot think the whole; and bound to our subjective selves, objective ground slips away. Are we trapped, then, in a vortex of silence, without consolation; or can our fundamental ignorance be the spiritual breakthrough we pray for?

Theology must face these cognitive difficulties if it would again offer a new opening to God. It must narrow to the null-point of mortal thought in order to be cognizant of the unthinkable as such—of God and the infinite bounties of reality. Abstract formulations must give way to lived, concrete experience, and to verities validated by personal experience. We must confront conceptual uncertainties in order to move forward in truth,...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• PROLOGUE
• PART ONE: Introduction
• PART TWO: Peshat
• PART THREE: Derash
• PART FOUR: Remez
• PART FIVE: Sod
• CONCLUSION
• Acknowledgments
• Notes
• Index