Arts & Culture
When Mystery Transcends Mythology
By Philip Smith / September 11, 2008
The opening scene of The Golem, a silent German film, features a rabbi, wearing a conical wizard’s hat, looking through a telescope. He sees a dangerous configuration of the stars and predicts bad times for the Jewish people. Based on his astrological findings, he decides to go and create the Golem, a kind of robot similar to The Hulk who will protect the Jews.
As I watched this movie, it hit me that much of the mysticism and the mythology have been drained from modern Judaism. This is the rich texture, the essence that keeps religions alive and deep with meaning. Raised as a reform Jew, I still have no idea as to where this form of Judaism stands on an afterlife or what happens after you die. Do you go to heaven? My understanding is that heaven is a Christian concept. Do you become a spirit, do you become a cat, does God welcome you? I profess to be ignorant on all aspects of Jewish theology due to my upbringing in the reform movement. Perhaps this is why the largest number of American Buddhists are Jews who are seeking a more metaphysical approach to life.
My attraction to the more mystical aspects of Judaism and in fact, all religions, emanates from my father, a Polish immigrant who as a kid in the 20s, read books on Christian Science, Buddhism, Hinduism, magic and Judaism.
When he came to this country, they branded him "Smith" and our history was erased. With that he became an American Jew, frequenting the synagogue on high holiday days with family gatherings for Passover.
Then one day, everything changed. He discovered that he possessed extraordinary psychic powers and could talk to the dead and heal the sick. Again, from my limited knowledge of Jewish theology, there are no guidelines or precedents for this. The rabbi at our synagogue had no interest in my father’s new found powers. My father began to cobble together a philosophical structure to support his strange abilities wherever he could find it. In short order he became a pan-theologist creating a stew of various concepts from every religion.
It is without question that my father was working with unseen powers that he attributed to coming from God. I don’t think he was wrong as I witnessed daily miraculous healings of people who had been given up for dead by the medical profession. Over the years, he healed thousands of people from every conceivable type of ailment. And yet, he could not find confirmation or guidance from any of the rabbis he approached.
Just like life itself, religion and human experience are much broader, more complicated and mysterious than what we hear from our sermons and what we read in our prayer books. The inexplicable should not be shunned but embraced as it reminds us of our own miraculous being and our unlimited spiritual potential.
Philip Smith, author of Walking Through Walls, is guest blogging for Jewcy, and he’ll be here all week. Stay tuned.
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Hillel was wrong – but was the majority
Shammai was correct but in the minority
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"In the mystical writings of quantum physics they explain that every
single particle and electron jumps in and out of existence in their
dance around each other. Instead of smoothly swirling around the
neutron like the orbit of the planets around the sun, the electrons
appear and then seem to completely disappear and then they reappear in
a different position on the apparent orbit…."
click below to continue reading
http://urbanguru.co.uk/light-fantastic/
Don’t try the freshman philosophy and "aren’t I translogical" stuff. We’ve all been through it and out the other side. We understand the limitations of over-extended empiricism, naive positivism and all the other things you’re just waiting to toss at us. Honest.
The simple fact is that you believe all kinds of crap simply because it makes you comfortable to believe it. And it gives you a sense of mystic cred which makes you feel good about yourself. That’s fine. It’s absolutely your prerogative. But consensus reality demands a consensus. Your desire to appear wise is not a sufficient basis for the rest to enter into it.
In the version in which we choose to engage in dialog a guiding principle is that unsupported claims, ones not based on common experience, gain credibility through evidence. The standards by which that evidence is judged are fairly clear.
I will certainly admit to tremendous ignorance. But "I don’t know X" is no reason to believe that A-W, Y-Z and Aleph-Taf must be true. They can be weighed in the light of – again – shared experience, emperical evidence, logic (with reservations) and robustness. "What do you know and how do you know it?" are absolutely legitimate questions. So far your answers haven’t even gotten to the sniff test, let alone the standard of evidence by which one might displace that which is commonly accepted.
To put it another way:
They laughed at Fulton. They laughed at Galileo. And they also laughed at Bozo the Clown.
It’s all very comfy to live in your binary Cartesian worlds,
so logical and sensible, so grown up and clear. The problem is that it is
superficial; it is not even scraping the surface of the ‘unbearable lightness
of being’. We create social constructs that we inhabit that make living easier,
we form notions of reality and norm based on a worldview which only
acknowledges the 5 senses, that believes that everything is known, that science
and evolution have answered all the big questions, that nothing has meaning
except those things which you give meaning (with the exclusion of language,
which for some unknown reason seems to be ‘special’ within the realm of
philosophy – but that really is another discussion). What I’m opposing is the
sense comfortable predictability, and the smug assumption that if it can not be
proved with hard science it’s not true, I’m opposed to the comfortable
safe-haven of your pretty little grown up world of ideas that you are so sure
about that you never question yourself, with your ego bound notion that we know
everything. I am proposing a wildly
different and slightly more honest approach to life, I DON’T KNOW.
I’m sorry if you find that illogical – I believe that it was
one of the co-founders of philosophy that said, the beginning of all knowledge
is to admit that you don’t know.
I’m not arguing facts but worldviews.
You’re hyperventilating, as well as not making any sense.
Angry Max! Max hates grownups! Max hates kids!
Does Max want a cookie?
I’ve not said that – grown ups ? i hate grown ups! bunch of stupid miserable kids who like to hurt each other with their social norms.
At least our positions admit logic, reason, facts and correction. Yours is simply "It’s true because I want it to be true." When you get past that and are ready to sit at the grownups’ table please let us know.
Carl & tellner – you have no idea – i’m doin MIRACULOUS healing on your asses right now! ! – (it’s an extraordinary claim – verifided but the fact you are still alive – even though you probably don’t deserve to be.) I have no problem with claims of PHYSICAL healing because i believe that the everyday is actually divine. The problem is that you’re both still too stupid to turn that critical and objective worldview in on itself on yourselves and examine with cool logic your own a-priori!
Max, Philip made outrageous claims. He could have kept his mouth shut. But he opened it up in public. Having done that he can either provide some evidence for the miraculous healings or he can accept the ridicule he brought on himself. It really is that simple.
No, Max, he’s talking about healing physical stuff, not spiritual stuff. And for that, you DO need a catscan if you want to verify that anything happened at all.
The author made some very specific extraordinary claims that need to be checked out.
Carl – You’re Sick and God Himself brings you back to life every moment – do you need a CAT scan to prove this – or is the fact that you are alive proof enough?
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Philip – there are many points that need answering -
Judaism is HUGE! multiple – numerous views on every single point from the theological to the practical.
But in short there are views and oppinions that would have helped your dad be far more comfortatble with his powers and abilities, it’s a shame that the Reform rabbis and others didn’t know their own stuff.
The problem is the the very same thing that make Judaism so fantastic – the fact that it is made up of multiple opinions – a huge number of different people with very different world views – tied together and pointing to the very same Judaism – is it’s main draw back.
The Judaism of one person or school – although outwardly very similar to other forms of Judaism – they are infact – and in all honesty completely different religions.
The Kabbalistic tradition within Judaism – would have made far more sense to someone that is looking for answers and guidance – in matters pertaining to the afterlife, to miraculous healing and to communicating to the dead.
It’s not that Judaism stopped believing in this stuff – but Modernity stopped us from being comfortable with it.
postmodernity however allows us to sit comfortably with things that don’t make sense to people like Carl, who need a CAT scan to make sure their brain works.
Got any proof of these miracles? Before and after CAT scans? X rays? Doctors’ reports?
Extraordinary claims call for extraordinary evidence.
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