Just some drivel from a PhD student in 17th century English literature. Masoret is Hebrew for tradition; Masor is also the Hebrew word for saw. Since i hope to be learning and blogging about traditional woodworking (amongst sundry other things), i thought it was an apt play on words. Before you ask, yes, i have a glamorous social life.
The story of Korach, which we read this week, was a popular epithet used by seventeenth century theologians for their adversaries. Amusingly, it would seem that everyone called everyone else 'Korach'.
Richard Hooker uses the term to describe the Presbyterians' desire to democratise ecclesiastical power amongst the laymen
Launcelot Andrewes made use of it from his earliest sermons at Cambridge in the late 1580s and throughout his career at court (the sermon that comes to mind is his 'Sacrilege a Snare', which is difficult to find online, so uploaded it here. Below is a different example of Andrewes alluding to Korach), as well as in his Catechism as an anti-Puritan polemical device.
As a royalist, Jeremy Taylor made frequent use of the story of Korach
Taylor also brings Korach in order to discuss the importance of purity of intention:
But, since everyone was vying to portray their masoret as the spiritual heir of Israel (Catholics, Protestants, and amongst the Protestant factions, Presbyterians, Conformers, Calvinists, Arminians, etc., etc.), republicans like John Milton compared royalists with Korach and his followers:
And of course, in his unfortunately-timed 'Brief Notes Upon a Late Sermon' we have an example of a Puritan responding to the charge of being like Korach with a seventeenth-century scholarly version of 'I know you are but what am I?'
Milton also identified Satan's rebellion against God with Korah in Paradise Lost. The examples are endless--i haven't even thrown in Hobbes!--and would make for an interesting survey, some day....
Now that Hooker is slowly re-emerging in academic journals and theological discussions, it seems that there is anther area to be explored: Hooker's impact on art. In the 19th century, Keble's edition of Hooker's works were widely read. This passage from the ODNB perfectly captures the various connections between Ruskin, Hooker, and the Pre-Raphaelites:
In May 1851 he [Holman Hunt] wrote to the poet Coventry Patmore, who had been responsible for enlisting Ruskin's support, asking to borrow a copy of the works of the seventeenth-century theologian Richard Hooker. He added: 'As however I am obliged to read for my next year's subjects much just now, I hope you will be able to spare it some time'. Hooker provided the theme of The Hireling Shepherd, with its underlying attack on sectarianism for deflecting the clergy from the task of tending their flock. The picture marks out a new direction, in which the symbolism is so arcane as to be virtually impenetrable without a literary gloss. The painting can, however, be enjoyed on many levels. Its sunlit landscape, with its closely observed blue shadows, was painted at Ewell, Surrey, between June and December 1851 and was Hunt's most ambitious attempt at naturalism to date.
Hooker's writing not only impacted Hunt's art, but it also prompted the painter to take social action:
His dislike of narrow sectarianism-which underlies the composition of The Hireling Shepherd and Our English Coasts, 1852-deepened into disgust on his first visit to Jerusalem, where he found squabbling Christian sects vying with each other to convert the poverty-stricken Jews. Bribery was endemic and Hunt was so incensed by the activities of Samuel Gobat, Anglican bishop of Jerusalem, in this respect that in 1858 he published a pamphlet unmasking him (ODNB).
Along with Ruskin's observations about paintings by Tintoretto, Hooker's works must also be included as influences on Hunt's art, including 'The Shadow of Death,' which we looked at a few weeks ago. For more context to the painting, click here.
It is hard to overstate John Ruskin's impact on art, and the more i read about him, the more i am convinced that this post will not do justice to the man who, according to Charlotte Bronte, taught an entire generation how to see. His proteges included John Everett Millais, William Holman Hunt, Oscar Wilde, and William Morris. His writings on political economy were also not bad. Cecil Rhodes and Tolstoy were fans. Gandhi had something of a conversion experience whilst reading Ruskin's Unto This Last on a train from Johannesburg to Durban. According to a survey of the first Parliament in which Labour managed to get seats, that very book had more of an impact on the Labour Party members than Das Kapital.
Ruskin aspired to write like Richard Hooker and George Herbert. Volume II of his Modern Painters (1846) is consciously styled after Hooker's Of the Lawes of Ecclesiastical Polity. Ruskin invokes Hooker for his conception of moderation as beauty:
He also seems to draw heavily on Hooker in his discussion of unity amid variety, or what Hooker would call 'harmonious dissimilitude', and in his discussion of the delight of creating, Ruskin also borrows from Book V of Of the Lawes of Ecclesiastical Polity.For an awesome article about Anglicanism and art, click here.
Ruskin's influence is as durable as it is expansive; he's a particular favourite amongst woodworkers in our time. One of my favourite blogs, Chris Hall's 'The Carpentry Way', which is about eastern and western woodworking, refers to Ruskin numerous times in his series 'The Master Builder Tradition-What Happened?'. Evan Adams is quite forthcoming about Ruskin quotes being one of the main features of his fantastic blog, and Brad at treefrogfurniture explains the evolution of Dutch Arts and Crafts in the United States! By and large, it seems that Ruskin's The Seven Lamps of Architecture (1849),which you can read here, is the most popular amongst woodworkers.
The Seven Lamps of Architecture was published in May 1849, the first of Ruskin's works to carry his name, and the first to be illustrated, with fourteen plates drawn and etched by him. A reference in the preface to the depredations of 'the Restorer, or Revolutionist' made Ruskin's position clear. He wished to protect what survived, and draw from it certain principles which would influence the direction of the Gothic revival, notably towards the use of Gothic in secular buildings. His purpose was both to secularize and make protestant the movement, drawing it away from the Roman Catholic influence of Augustus Welby Pugin. His intervention was theoretical rather than practical: the 'lamps' of architecture were moral categories-sacrifice, truth, power, beauty, life, memory, and obedience. Like the types of typical beauty in Modern Painters, volume 2, they are abstract notions in themselves, but for Ruskin were manifested in particular Gothic buildings in Italy and northern France. (ODNB)
Whilst in Oxford, he had been acquainted with many giants of the literary and artistic scene:
Ruskin recruited Wilde into a group of social activists trying to build a road, and his anger at social cruelty found fallow soil in the boy from the famine-writers' house. Pater and Ruskin shaped Wilde's thought and its expression: they did not originate it. Initially he brought their ideas and his glosses into the market place in lectures on aesthetics in the UK and the USA. Thereafter he embedded them, begirt in his own wit and charm, in fictions such as The Happy Prince and other Tales and The Picture of Dorian Gray. (ODNB Wilde entry)
Ruskin was also friendly with Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, who shared Ruskin's love of sketching (and definitely exceeded Ruskin's love of little girls) and wished to illustrate his own works, such as The Adventures of Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass.Dodgson had already taken a step back from his work by publishing under the pseudonym 'Lewis Carroll'. Ruskin informed Dodgson that his talents as an artist were 'severely limited.' Dogdson took Ruskin's criticisms quite well, and relinquished even more artistic involvment in his work, hiring professionals to illustrate his books. Nonetheless, Dodgson continued to enjoy sketching and socialised with many artists who were also amongst Ruskin's circle of friends, such as Arthur Hughes, William Holman Hunt, J. E. Millais, Alexander Munro, V. Princep, D. G. Rossetti, J. Sant, C. A. Swinburne, Mrs E. M. Ward, and G. F. Watts.
Ruskin is probably most famous for his relationship with the Pre-Raphaelites, mainly Millais, through their mutual friend, the poet Coventry Patmore. Ruskin defended Millais and the Pre-Raphalites' style against the aesthetic orthodoxy established by dudes like Sir Joshua Reynolds and The Royal Academy, enabling mainstream acceptance of the artistic movement. Hopefully we'll come back to that.
In Millais, Ruskin saw a successor to Turner, and due to the age difference, Ruskin was more like his patron and mentor. You'd think that it was a relationship that Ruskin would kick himself for later, as his wife Effie (Euphemia. i know, right?), ran off with (and later married) Millais. Actually, Ruskin was rather relieved, and the 5-year marriage annulled in court on the grounds that it was never consummated. Against charges of impotence, Ruskin apparently volunteered to drop trou and prove otherwise. Classy. Definitely the kind of thing one would expect from a Victorian art critic:
There is little that is certain about the intimate details of Ruskin's marriage to Euphemia Chalmers Gray beyond the fact that it was never consummated. A medical examination confirmed Effie's virginity, but in a legal deposition that was not introduced in court, Ruskin stated: 'I can prove my virility at once'. This was never put to the test, [thankfully!] but it seems likely that Ruskin was referring to masturbation. Again, there is no confirmation of this, but a letter to a confidante, Mrs Cowper, in 1868 in which he wrote 'Have I not often told you that I was another Rousseau?' has been taken as a discreet reference to the practice. [i don't get it...] At this same time he told a male friend that he had been capable of consummating his marriage, but that he had not loved Effie sufficiently to want to do so. (ODNB)
Nonetheless, Ruskin's conceptions of nature and beauty, combined with a mystical streak made for an interesting collaboration with the Pre-Raphaelites. These were also into reviving Blake, who was into pretty interesting things, among them, mystical Jewish symbolism. Here's a little teaser:
Today, the 14th of July, is, amongst other things, the Feast of John Keble...You were picturing this guy, weren't you? Since Keble was the first modern editor of Richard Hooker, this mental image quickly wore off for me (though i kind of still want soft chocolate-chip cookies when i hear his name. Mmm...). In reviewing my chapter on Hooker's Hebraism, I came across a passage in which he was discussing Jewish catechisms. We have catechisms? Last week i was watching a film with my friend and her brother in which the word 'catechism' came up; both blankly looked at me and asked, 'what's that?' Keble identifies this Jewish catechism as Rabbi Abraham ben Hananiah Jaghel of Montfelice's Lekach Tob, and afterwards adding:
It is satisfactory to know that the writer became afterwards a Christian.
Momentarily morphing into my sister, i thought, Um...rude! And false...What's up with that comment? Hooker was writing before Jews were allowed back into England (the first country to have expelled the Jews in 1290), but Keble was writing well after the Jew Bill; I wonder if that is a factor in allowing himself to say something like that. In other words, i would have expected it from Hooker. That's really a minor aside, yet one that got me thinking. The real question is, what was going on in England during Keble's time that prompted him to edit Hooker and how did this effect his portrayal of Hooker's work? So for the past few days, I have been asking myself, who was this dude? And the answers have been pretty cool. Yes, it connects with woodworking, and no, i didn't have to force it (well, barely).
Some background: With the Reform Act--or the restructuring of English society between 1828-1832, the idea of the Church and Commonwealth being one society was basically chucked out the window. The Oxford Movement was a response to the separation of church and state and an attempt to re-establish the Catholic character of the Church of England. Interestingly, everyone who wrote on this topic, from Coleridge to Peele had recourse to Richard Hooker. But it was probably the Congregationalist historian Benjamin Hanbury's 1830 edition of Hooker's works and his contention that Hooker was 'ably supported by Locke and Hoadly' that Keble was primarily reacting to. Keble specifically denounced Locke, Hoadly, and all their rationalist and liberal followers, from which he decided to liberate Hooker with his edition of Of the Lawes of Ecclesiastical Polity which he published in 1836. Three years before, Keble had gotten the ball rolling.
The Oxford Movement pretty much started 176 years ago today, when John Keble, a professor of poetry at Oxford, preached his Assize Sermon in 1833. For an article outlining the contributions of this movement in the vein of 'What have the Romans ever done for us?', click here. Or, here for a more scathing overview of the period. These guys were basically all nostalgic about the medieval period, and wanted the Church of England to get back in touch with its Catholic roots. Ever hear of the Gothic Revival? You know, Big Ben, Houses of Parliament, and those buildings that make Princeton University look like Disneyland to Europeans (i was half expecting to find roller coasters)? That's those guys.
Central to the Oxford Movement was Keble's edition of Hooker's Of the Lawes of Ecclesiastical Polity, which he published in 1836. Though it was exemplary in its time of meticulous scholarship, as we have seen, it lacked the scholarly attempt at objectivity; Keble pretty much censored Hooker's Erastianism and other elements of his theology that didn't suit the needs of the Tractarians.
The Oxford Movement, with Hooker as a central component, had a GINORMOUS impact on art and literature, and yet, also took its cue from these sources. I'll clarify. Keble, as we have noted, was a poet, and a lecturer of poetry at Oxford. Following Hooker's lead, Keble tempered religious fervour with rationalism:
In linking creed and feeling, Keble witnessed to (and himself furthered) the change in sensibility we associate with Romanticism. By bringing the dangers of Romanticism under the discipline of religious self-control Keble contributed to what one historian has aptly described as 'the Victorian Churching of Romanticism'. It is not surprising, therefore, that Wordsworth, despite his radical past, was Keble's chief influence. Keble had been introduced as an undergraduate to his poetry by Coleridge's nephew, the future Lord Justice Coleridge, and its impact upon him was both lasting and profound. Nevertheless, his essentially sacramental approach to nature-which he saw as the repository of types and symbols of the unseen and the spiritual-owed even more to patristic theology; his sense of nature as a sacrament of a divine indwelling may well have derived, too, from Bishop Joseph Butler's influential Analogy of Religion (1736), which established a harmony between natural and revealed religion and natural phenomena. (ODNB)
And yet, for all the pastoral romance of Keble's theology, he was deeply grounded, engaged in the 'gritty realism' of rural life, which he set out to revivify through social welfare programmes. This emphases on morality, spiritual experience, and social concern informed Keble's theology via Hooker and the Romantics. Keble's theology--or the Oxford Movement--in turn gave rise to an artistic and social movement that combined the importance of realism, imitating nature, morality, symbolism, and religious experience (or sacramentalism): The Pre-Raphaelites. The conduit for these ideas was a young undergraduate who described the first meeting of the Oxford Society of Architecture in 1839 as a 'very slow affair', and whose name is familiar to any aspiring woodworker or enthusiast of the Arts and Crafts, Frank Lloyd Wright, Corbusier, and countless others. Hells, yeah: John Ruskin. He'll be the next post.
I'm feeling a bit cognitively challenged at the moment. After many frustrating hours of trying to understand the relationship between law, natural law, the law of nature, rationalism, morality, voluntary natural law, first law eternal, second law eternal, etc., it dawned on me that i was not going to figure it out (It also occurred to me that it was a bit arrogant to even attempt it, but i will chalk it up to plummeting blood sugar and the inability to think clearly), considering the fact that it's a centuries-old debate (oh yeah...). Luckily (and oddly) my tiny flat has many glass doors, and the photo to the left illustrates the desperate (yet typical) measures i was forced to take in order to prevent my head from exploding. My work on Donne had taught me that structure of someone's argument, sometimes the very examples they bring, can offer us clues as to who they were reading. That didn't work so well here. Both Hooker and Maimonides bring up different examples of chukim in various contexts. Furthermore, the complications resulting from the subtleties of language--the shifting etymologies, the theological jargon, the scores of subcategories in defining words and axioms--used by both Hooker and Maimonides are not to be underestimated.
A common theme that emerges in the study of Maimonides (and a real pain in the ...neck) is that he says one thing in the Mishneh Torah and another thing in the Guide. Some people try to reconcile those differences, and some people chalk it up to Maimonides consciously addressing two very different audiences. I, unfortunately am not well-versed enough in this area.
I've often noticed over the course of this dissertation that i have made my work much harder by choosing as my topic two different subjects (early modern literature and rabbinics) about which i know very little, and this is just one instance of that. So, i'm still not entirely sure where either of them stands on this issue, but it does seem like it's rather consciously complex on both of their parts, it would seem, intentionally so...
From Utriusque Cosmi, Maioris scilicet et Minoris, metaphysica, physica, atque technica Historia (1617-1619)
A few weeks ago, during the Eco Film Festival at the Jerusalem Cinematheque, i got to see two films (the trailers of which are at the bottom of this page). The Age of Stupid--a jeremiad about climate change--and Sharkwater--a film about the brutality of shark finning and its impact on the ecosystem. Both films seemed to be trying to teach their 21st century audience about the structure of our delicate universe, and our place in it. Basically, we're ruining it. And the worst part is, we know it.
Don't get me wrong. I am well aware that there are loads of human concerns. I live in Israel, where yesterday (unbeknownst to me), we had our largest national drill to prepare for missile attacks. One reason i joined Greenpeace (the other being that when it comes to politics, i'm still watching Cecil and Essex duke it out) was because of the enormous potential environmentalism has to unify people from all countries, religions, beliefs, etc. No matter what our differences, we can all agree that we don't want to be wiped out as a species. Well, one would think so anyway...
Interestingly, the hackneyed categories of the 'ancients and the moderns', (hopefully a future post) which seem to have evolved into 'backwards religious people' and 'rational modernists' have moved into the political arena as the stereotypes of the 'Bible-thumping-moose-killing-oil-drilling-Republicans' and 'liberal-godless-immoral-baby-killing-Democrats'. Like all generalisations, this is grossly exaggerated, yet rings true in certain ways.
It pains me to admit that the environment is practically a non-issue amongst religious or orthodox people. In 1999, Meimad, a left wing religious Zionist party was formed in Israel. This groundbreaking move to reclaim both Orthodox Judaism and Zionism from right-wing politics is still viewed as an anomaly; in this year's elections, the Meimad-Green Movementcoalition failed to gain a seat in the Knesset. The underlying tension felt by many of Meimad's members is well expressed by the the religious philosopher Ernst Simon, incidentally, the father of Professor Uriel Simon, one of the party's leaders and an academic giant in his own right:
The people you can talk to, you can’t daven (pray) with, and the people with whom you can daven, you can’t talk
Why is it that the religious communities tend to play down environmental concerns whilst those who embrace those causes tend to reject tradition?
In 1940, at the behest of the pacifist society in Oxford (otherwise it would have been pretty awkward), CS Lewis delivered the address 'Why I am Not a Pacifist' (published later in The Weight of Glory), in which he explains the departure from tradition within the context of a crumbling sense of community:
I am aware that, though Hooker thought 'the general and perpetual voice of men is as the sentence of God Himself,' yet many who hear will give it little or no weight. This disregard of human authority may have two roots. It may spring from the belief that human history is a simple, unilinear movement from worse to better--what is belief in Progress--so that any given generation is always in all respects wiser than all previous generations. To those who believe thus, our ancestors are superceded and there seems nothing improbable in the claim that the whole world was wrong until the day before yesterday and now has suddenly become right. With such people I confess I cannot argue, for I do not share their basic assumption.
Hooker is clearly Lewis's go-to guy, perhaps because he is a strong advocate of an ageless morality that Lewis would go on to refer to as 'The Tao' in The Abolition of Man. Lewis further distinguishes this body of knowledge from the evolution of the mechanical world:
Believers in progress rightly note that in the world of machines the new model supercedes the old; from this they falsely infer a similar kind of supercession in such things as virtue and wisdom.
As a devotee of The Schwarz and a follower of St. Roy, i'm inclined to take issue with the notion that progress entails using newer machinery, but even if this was a correct supposition, are we really more tuned in now then people 'back then'? Check out the bizarre picture above--it's from Robert Fludd's Utriusque Cosmi, Maioris scilicet et Minoris, metaphysica, physica, atque technica Historia--The metaphysical, physical, and technical history of the two worlds, namely the greater and the lesser.Click here to download Fludd's book. Go ahead. Don't be shy. Drink it in.Fludddepicts the complexity of the natural world, in all of its hierarchies, yet depicts nature (yeah--the naked lady) as holding a chain linking the physical world to God, and the microcosm to the macrocosm. In other words, the enmeshed existence of humanity, nature, and God was obvious to Fludd.
About fifty years later, John Evelyn, the famous diarist wrote the first English book against pollution, entitled Fumifugium, or, The inconveniencie of the aer and smoak of London dissipated together with some remedies humbly proposed by J.E. esq. to His Sacred Majestie, and to the Parliament now assembledin 1661, and the following year published Sylva, or A Discourse on Forest-Trees and the Propagation of Timber in His Majesty's Dominions. It seems that people have been aware of the problems of pollution for even before the Industrial Revolution. Both Fludd and Evelyn were living at a time when, as Donne says, 'new philosophy (science) calls all in doubt'. Astronomers had trashed the idea of a geocentric, and with it, androcentric universe. It was something of a humbling time. In a scene of Sharkwater, Paul Watson of Sea Shepherd echoes this sentiment:
We don't really understand what we are. In essence, we're just a conceited, naked ape, that in our minds are some kind of divine legend. And we see ourselves as some kind of a God that can walk around the earth deciding who will live and who will die; what will be destroyed and what will be saved. But the fact is, we're just a bunch of primates out of control.
Remember that weird Fludd illustration? Here's a closeup. Check out what the naked lady's standing above (NASA is clearly lying about shooting stars):
Copyright Adam McLean 1997-2004 Taken from www.levity.com/alchemy
Yep! An ape! Although it's not meant in the negative sense that Watson was talking about. Rather, the idea of humanity 'aping' nature through art (including science) is seen as a spiritual endeavour that connects us to God. In a previous post, we discussed the reversal of this process according to Frank Lloyd Wright's philosophy.
Watson's view is an extreme response, proportionate to the destruction that we are inflicting on the world, and though his anger is justified, i doubt that his outlook will compel Creationists to join the cause. In The Glory of the Garden, Rudyard Kipling uses the metaphor of a garden to describe English society, in which everyone must chip in:
There's not a pair of legs so thin, there's not a head so thick, There's not a hand so weak and white, nor yet a heart so sick But it can find some needful job that's crying to be done, For the Glory of the Garden glorifieth every one.
Then seek your job with thankfulness and work till further orders, If it's only netting strawberries or killing slugs on borders; And when your back stops aching and your hands begin to harden, You will find yourself a partner In the Glory of the Garden.
Kipling's portrait of a society united through a common project or custodianship and governed by ethics continues in the mould cast by Hooker, and celebrated by Lewis. If that didn't make you want to net strawberries or join the Home Front Command, Kipling draws upon the joys of Edenic horticulture to drive his point home:
Oh, Adam was a gardener, and God who made him sees That half a proper gardener's work is done upon his knees, So when your work is finished, you can wash your hands and pray For the Glory of the Garden that it may not pass away! And the Glory of the Garden it shall never pass away !
Drawing upon Adam as a gardener made for a charming poetic emblem, but it seems to have done little to inspire the action and sense of responsibility to be found in Kipling's poem. But what would be the result if Adam's responsibilities as gardner were examined under the Judaic-legalistic lens?
1970 marked this turning point in environmental studies with the publication of Dr. Eric G. Freudenstein's ז"ל 'Ecology and the Jewish Tradition'. The article reveals that then, as now, the issue of environmentalism was charged with religion. Freudenstein demonstrates that careful readings of Biblical and Talmudic text
disprove the repeated statements in the popular press that the “Judeo-Christian concept” of Genesis 1:28 is the cause of the destruction of our environment by western civilization. Rather it is man’s misunderstanding of this Scriptural concept and his insensitivity to the Holy Writ’s concern for God’s nature that should be accused. The concern for the “guarding of the garden” in which man has been placed by Providence is implicit in the Scriptural message. It has been made explicit in the Jewish tradition as formulated in the Biblical exegesis of the Rabbis and in the legal ordinances of the Talmud.
Taken from Yad Gavriel: The Complete Anthology of Original Articles by Eric Gabriel Freudenstein, ed. by George G. Freudenstein, forthcoming
Beginning, appropriately with Adam, Freudenstein explains:
Sensitivity to nature can be found by a careful reading of the Creation story. Adam, the first man, is placed in his world, in the garden of Eden, “to work it and to guard it.” (Genesis 2:15). This supervision and maintenance can be taken as the duty to protect the natural environment.
So how are we doing? Well, here are some quick facts about the current plight of sharks and shark finning:
Shark finning refers to the removal and retention of shark fins and the discard at sea of the carcass. The shark is most often still alive when it is tossed back into the water. Unable to swim, the shark slowly sinks toward the bottom where it is eaten alive by other fish.
Shark specialists estimate that 100 million sharks are killed for their fins, annually.
One pound of dried shark fin can retail for $300 or more. It's a multi-billion dollar industry that is only exceeded by the trafficking of narcotics.
We've decreased the shark population by about 90%, creating, according to scientists, an ecological time-bomb that is not yet fully understood
Here's an example of how we're basically the cause of our own downfall: shark depletion led to an increase in the octopus population which then preyed upon lobsters, and has already destroyed the Tasmanian fishing industry. This in turn sets into motion a slew of chain reactions in the economy and elsewhere
Experts estimate that within a decade, most species of sharks will be lost because of longlining.
It doesn't look like we're guarding nature very well. Freudenstein elaborates on the nature of our relationship to the environment, citing Rabbi Benno Jacob's commentary of Genesis:
Adam’s relation to the Owner of the garden in the terminology of Halakhah, Jewish law, is that of a guardian. To guard may simply mean careful treatment and protection against damage. Primarily, however, this term is meant to characterize the garden as someone else’s property. It is a garden that belongs to God, not to Man. (B. Jacob, Das Erste Buch der Tora, Genesis [Schocken Verlag, 1934], p. 91).
In the beginning of this (ridiculously long) post, i suggested that environmentalism has the potential to transcend political and religious factions in order to unite society and lamented the lack of impetus from the religious community. Freudenstein's innovation lies in the assertion that environmentalism is not something external to Judaism, but rather quite central to it. Therefore, those who are immersed in the Jewish tradition are propitiously positioned to promulgate the message of environmentalism:
Ancient Jewish tradition stressed the maintenance of the biosphere over three and one half thousand years ago, but during the centuries of the Diaspora, divorced from the land, that message of our venerable tradition became weak. Jews were often cooped up in urban ghettos, their energies absorbed by the struggle for survival in a hostile world which they were powerless to influence. Nor was the destruction of the world’s natural assets as yet a threat to human existence. In modern times, the active participation of Jews in the Diaspora, in all phases of the public welfare, the reclamation of the land in the State of Israel and a general awareness of the problems of ecology, have created a new climate for a deeper understanding and acceptance of the concern for the environment evinced by the Jewish tradition. Conditions are now propitious for the ancient Jewish message of bal tashchit to be once again proclaimed loud and clear to all men of goodwill.
I got another 'commission', recently, and that was to repair some dining room chairs for some friends. This posting is a little photo journal of the process. I thought it was a bit ironic that in order to fix the chairs, i had to break them. Obviously, i was thinking of Donne:
That I may rise, and stand, o'erthrow me, and bend Your force, to break, blow, burn, and make me new
Well, his Holy Sonnet XIV, as well as classic kabbalistic imagery, which, in keeping with our previous discussions about law, oddly seems to be applied by Launcelot Andrewes in his discussion about the fall of man: from A Pattern of Catechistical Doctrine (1642) And also, i suppose, i was thinking of Andrewes's friend Richard Hooker who discusses the concept of 'compatible variety' along similar lines:
A more dutifull and religious way for us were to admire the wisedome of God, which shineth in the bewtifull varietie of all things, but most in the manifold and yet harmonious dissimilitude of those ways (III.xi.8)
Click here for Rowan Williams's (the current Archbishop of Canterbury) excellent Richard Hooker Lecture (2005) at the Temple Church, in which he manages to explain, and, perhaps more impressively, apply Hooker's philosophy to modern multi-cultural societies.
Anyway, having established the harmonious dissimilitude of the chair pieces, the glue had to be removed from the mortises. See how old and nasty looking the glue is?
I have my cousin Otto and my uncle Kees to thank for the next step. When i was in Amsterdam a few months ago, i saw a dremel for sale near the Cuyp markt. I totally needed a dremel and told Otto of the price and bits, etc, and headed out and bought it. When i brought it home, i proudly showed it to my cousin Kathelijne and my aunt, Saskia.'Isn't it cute?!' I asked them. They agreed it was indeed a cute little thing with a plethora of cute little bits. But they wanted to know why i was making such a strange (albeit, cute) purchase. 'Oh, everyone needs a dremel, really,' was my reply, which was vigorously backed up by both Otto--'Yes, it's a common tool, and everyone has one' (he has the coolest job ever--restoring buildings) and Kees 'Oh, you can do everything with them' (he is a bronze sculptor). 'Well, what do you do with it?', came the question. Crap, i actually have no idea. Maybe i'll know what to do with it when Otto or Kees explains it. 'Well...you...' [hesitation] 'There are many...' And they both looked at each other, laughed, and admitted that they actually can't quite recall the last time they used their dremels! Anyway, the chisel pictured is one from Otto's grandfather (i still need to finish the handle).
I took this photo to show my parents that i do, indeed, wear safety equipment (Tali, don't mock the headlamp!). Plus, i felt like a dentist. Cool-maybe i'll study dentistry. Although, now that i think of it, i'm not so comfortable with someone operating a rotary tool in my mouth...
The reason for the mask is that when i used the dremel, the glue smelled like a rotting dead animal. For real. There's no way it's hide glue, right? Obviously, the tenons were also covered in old glue, so i sliced off chunks of nasty, smelly glue.
The book of Leviticus is a code of conduct required of Israel as a result of the establishment of a relationship with God in the books of Genesis and Exodus. More or less. There's loads of stuff in here; rules about moral, sexual, and sacrificial conduct, Sabbath, slavery, harvest, social justice, etc. Most of us nod enthusiastically when reading about many of these laws (like the prohibitions of stealing, cheating, and lying--19:11). And then there are those, called chukim, or divine decrees that just seem...random (like mixing wool and linnen--19:19). Richard Hooker, the 16th century divine (basically the father of Anglicanism) addresses these unusual laws in the context of his discussion about the reformation of laws or church practises: It may so fall out that the reason why some lawes of God were given is neither opened nor possible to be gathered by the wit of man. As why God should forbid Adam that one tree, there was no way for Adam ever to have certainely understoode. And at Adam’s ignorance of this pointe Satan tooke advantage, urging the more securely a faulse cause because the true was unto Adam unknowen. Why the Jewes were forbidden to plowe their grounde with an oxe and an asse, why to cloth them selves with mingled attire of wooll and lynnen, both it was unto them, and unto us it remaineth obscure. Such lawes perhaps can not be abrogated saving onely by whome they were made: because the intent of them being knowne unto none but the author, he alone can judge how long it is requisite they should indure.
Obviously Hooker, like most Christians, would hold that these laws were abrogated by Jesus. However, Hooker's belief in Divine law as moral and just, despite humanity's inability to fathom the reasons, led Hooker to differ from scholars such as John Selden, Dionysius Vossius (a pupil of Menasseh Ben Israel), and John Spencer. It also underscores Hooker's own puzzling relationship with his go-to guy on the subject of the 'Israelite State'--Maimonides. In The Guide of the Perplexed (III:37), Maimonides explains the reason for the prohibition on shaving (Leviticus 19: 27, 28) as follows:
The shaving of the corner of the head and of the corner of the beard has been forbidden because it was a usage of idolatrous priests. This is also the reason for the prohibition of mingled stuff, for this too was a usage of these priests, as they put together in their garments vegetable and animal substances bearing at the same time a seal made out of some mineral..." (trans. by Shlomo Pines, p. 544)
In Book IV, Hooker pretty explicitly parts ways with Maimonides, who had been his authority until then:
That shaving therefore and cutting, which the law doth mention, was not a matter in itself indifferent, and forbidden only because it was in use amongst such idolaters as were neighbours to the people of God: but to use it had been a crime, though no other people or nation under heaven should have done it saving only themselves. As for those laws concerning attires : " There shall no garment of linen and wool- Levit. len come upon thee ;" as also those touching food and diet, wherein swine's flesh, together with sundry other meats, are forbidden; the use of these things had been indeed of itself harmless and indifferent: so that hereby it doth appear, how the law of God forbad in some special consideration, such things as were lawful enough in themselves. But yet even here they likewise fail of that they intend. For it doth not Dent, appear that the consideration, in regard whereof the law forbiddeth these things, was because those nations did use them. Likely enough it is, that the Canaanites used to feed as well on sheep as on swine's flesh; and therefore, if the forbidding of the latter had no other reason than dissimilitude with that people, they which of their own heads allege this for reason, can shew I think some reason more than we are able to find why the former was not also forbidden. Might there not be some other mystery in this prohibition than they think of? Yes, some other mystery there was in it by all likelihood.For what reason is there, which should but induce, and therefore much less enforce us to think, that care of dissimilitude between the people of God and the heathen nations about them, was any more the cause of forbidding them to put on garments of sundry stuff, than of charging them withal not to sow their fields with meslin; or that this was any more the cause of forbidding them to eat swine's flesh, than of charging them withal not to eat the flesh of eagles, hawks, and the like? Wherefore, although the church of Rome were to us, as to Israel the Egyptians and Canaanites were of old ; yet doth it not follow, that the wisdom of God without respect doth teach us to erect between us and them a partition-wall of difference, in such things indifferent as have been hitherto disputed of.
Eagles, hawks, and the like? Mmm...and now the forbidden fowl must be tasted:
Hey! Pay attention!
As I was saying, quite simply, it would seem that Hooker is against the idea of God telling people what to do 'because i told you so'. He argued against the voluntarist position of the Puritans who felt that law was dependent on God's will alone. In The Problem of Pain, CS Lewis meditates on the relationship between religion and morality:
It has sometimes been asked whether God commands certain things because they are right, or whether certain things are right because God commands them. With Hooker, and against Dr. Johnson, I emphatically embrace the first alternative. The second might lead to the abominable conclusion (reached, I think, by Paley) that charity is good only because God arbitrarily commanded it—that He might equally well have commanded us to hate Him and one another and that hatred would then have been right. I believe, on the contrary, that ‘they err who think that of the will of God to do this or that there is no reason besides His will'
Ok-that's all for part 1. Just thinking aloud. Thanks for reading. And if you didn't--it will get better soon (not in part 2--just when i get unstuck and off this topic).
