Ultimately, I see Judaism not as an original revelation of an absolute truth, but as an initiatory constitution (covenant) and an initiating thrust toward relationship with an inconceivable, incomprehensible Absolute. The present of Judaism is suspended between from and toward. This is radical Reform Judaism.

One of Adonai’s favorite rebukes is “stiff-necked people”. Plato also wrote about stiff-necked people:

Imagine human beings living in an underground, cavelike dwelling, with an entrance a long way up, which is both open to the light and as wide as the cave itself. They’ve been there since childhood, fixed in the same place, with their necks and legs fettered, able to see only in front of them, because their bonds prevent them from turning their heads around. Light is provided by a fire burning far above and behind them. Also behind them, but on higher ground, there is a path stretching between them and the fire. Imagine that along this path a low wall has been built, like the screen in front of puppeteers above which they show their puppets.

This is just how we are, we humans.

Sometimes we need to de-fascinate our eyes, unfasten our heads, loosen our necks and look from side to side. We might even turn around to see what is going on behind the backs of our heads. And once we get used to a stationary 360-degree view, we might stand up and walk around. We might even interact with the things around us. Some of those things might be other people, and here it might occur to us to converse with them and enlarge our understanding. Finally, we might summon enough courage to go full-on peripatetic and start feeling for exits, openings and entrances to elsewhere and otherwise.

Welcome to Beriah!

A great many religious people today, seeking religious intensity within their traditions, believe that they have found it in activism.

And indeed, they have found something.

But what they have found is the furthest thing from God. They have found collective misapotheosis in totalizing ideology.

They believe they are taking their faith to the streets, when in fact they have imported the street into their sanctuaries.

Their escape from illusion is an intoxicating delusion. Their spiritual awakening is the climax of a collective ideological dream.

Chuang Tzu never said:

Once Chuang Chou dreamt he was a butterfly, a butterfly flitting and fluttering around, happy with himself and doing as he pleased. He had awakened from the delusion that he had ever been Chuang Chou. He realized that it was his duty to make everyone around him “do the work” required to wake up to the fact that they are butterflies dreaming that they are people.

I look forward to the day that Reform Judaism turns to its proper from-toward present and, overcome with teshuvah, grinds up and drinks its political ideoidols.