Plant the Sapling First

I've been reading this book, The Jew in the Lotus: A Poet's Rediscovery of Jewish Identity in Buddhist India by Rodger Kamenetz, for about a week. I've been looking forward to doing so since I saw it, what, 25 years ago, as I was stocking copies in the Religions-Judaism section in Barnes and Noble. I had somehow thought of it all these years as an exploration of Kamenetz' own experiences in India, but he was actually operating as a journalist traveling with a Jewish delegation meeting with the Dalai Lama. Doesn't matter, it's a good book. 

It's in his position as the outsider, secular Jew traveling with rabbis and their coterie, that he raises fascinating and difficult questions about both Judaism and religion. The Dalai Lama had requested, after a visit to the US, to meet with Jews who might commiserate with him regarding being a part of a diaspora, recognizing  the reality of Tibetan spiritual homelessness. There are many good segments but this one comes during the presentation by Rabbi Yitz Greenberg, the Orthodox representative, who takes the Dalai Lama through the early history of Jewish diaspora. 

[The] Babylonian story offers...hope. But I knew why Yitz chose instead to make a parallel with events surrounding the Roman destruction. The Tibetans might well be facing a long exile. And not far from his mind was also the Holocaust and the theological questions it raises...How can Jews affirm faith in God and his covenant with the chosen people after Auschwitz? The question is settled for most secular and liberal Jews--they can't. Obviously such a position is unacceptable to an Orthodox Jew...In contemporary Orthdox Jewish theology, Rabbi Greenberg's own substantial contribution has been the concept of the "voluntary covenant." According to [sociologist Arnold] Eisen, "The word 'voluntary' is crucial...It emphasizes that the initiative--now, more than ever--is on the human side rather than on God's. It suggests that we will be faithful, we will uphold the covenant, even if God in the Holocaust did not." 

Here, I would add a massive exclamation point to the text if I could. This is radical Orthodoxy as I understand it. 

[Rabbi] Greenberg told the Dalai Lama that the covenant is "the most seminal idea" in Judaism. The covenant that began with Abraham has not been abrogated--even at Auschwitz. Instead..."The creator God seeds the universe with life. Humanity can become a partner with the divine in making the world better or perfect." 

What has changed is the human role in the partnership. And that happened, not in recent times, but "about nineteen hundred years ago, halfway in the history of the religion. The Jewish people in Judea were conquered by the Romans and their Temple destroyed by the Roman  empire. It was devastating." 

...In the first century, many interpreted the Roman destruction as abandonment by God, the end of the covenant. "And since the whole Jewish idea of covenant is that the world can be made better, this would be such a victory for evil that many Jew simply gave up. They assimilated and joined the very dynamic culture around them, Hellenism. Another large groups, the Zealots, put all of their energy to recapturing and rebuilding the Temple..."

The Romans not only destroyed Jerusalem, they renamed the capital and drove her people into exile. More than one million Jews died at that time...But Judaism did not die..."There was one great rabbi of the time, Rabbi Yochanan ben Zakkai. The Talmud says, when the Romans had Jerusalem surrounded and were about to destroy it, he was able to break through to the Roman emperor and was given one wish. He said, 'Give me Yavneh and its scholars. I want to set up an academy there.'" There he told his students that they would outlast the exile by teaching, interpreting, and preserving the tradition.

"Yochanan ben Zakkai basically said, 'If we don't have our Temple, but we have our learning, our texts--our Bible with us, we have the power by learning to create the equivalent of the Temple. It's a portable homeland.' 

"It's not enough to preserve...[As] partners in the covenant, fallible humans have the authority to add new insights, so that their activity was the equivalent of a renewal of the covenant. Their courage to renew preserved the past."

[Yitz said the first-century rabbis] did not choose to believe that God had abandoned them, and they insisted that the Torah was still fully binding and valid. They interpreted God's nonintervention with the Roman destruction as a sign that, henceforth, in history, the human partner in covenant must take more responsibility for the outcome...God was no longer going to step in and do the miracles for his human partners.

...The memory of the Temple was never lost--but it was turned into literature...More--the magical side of religion, especially the yearning for a messiah--was subdued, if not basically suppressed, by the rabbinic sages. And this became a dominant cautionary note in rabbinic thought for centuries to come, extended not just to messianism but to mysticism in general...Reason became the keynote of Jewish religion, and though some of the rabbinic sages were themselves mystical practitioners, the Talmud certainly expresses strong caution against too much interest in mystical topics.

Rabbi Yochanan ben Zakkai had had good reason for such caution. He had seen that excessive messianic faith had led the Zealots to challenge Rome, only to bring destruction on all of Israel. His is quoted in the Talmud as saying, "If you holding a sapling in your hand, and someone tell you the Messiah has come, plant the sapling first, then go looking for the Messiah."