Liberated Consciousness; Where’s the Cheese? – Marc Gafni
by Marc Gafni
A Sukkat Shalom according to the Zohar is the sense that I belong. That I am part of something far deeper than just the walls of my house. And so we leave our houses to dwell in the fragility of the Sukkah in order to try and discover where our real Sukkat Shalom is to be found. Sukkat Shalom in many mystical passages is a reference to liberated consciousness.
One of the most important Jewish teachings on finding Sukkat Shalom rests on our ability to expand our identity through the incorporation of national memory into the very pores of our being. This is the essential goal of Jewish study. This is the purpose of the holidays.
The word Torah itself has four meanings. One of them is light or enlightened. The Rebbe of Izbica speaks of He’arah, which is literally means enlightened consciousness. The consciousness of Liberation. The means to achieve that liberated mind are unique in Hebrew Wisdom. They differ significantly from the important paths offered in the east. One of the most vital paths in the journey towards enlightenment for the Hebrew mystic is the expansion of self through the integration of historical memory and consciousness into the very fabric of her being.
A child is introduced to Abraham and Sarah, Joseph and his brothers, Moses and Aaron. Transformed from distant, historical figures to immediate, living personalities, they become part of her frame of reference. The child speaks to, argues with, entreats, questions, and draws comfort and strength from the figures of Jewish history. She hears the music of David’s harp, experiences the pathos of Saul who has lost the kingship, accompanies Elijah as he confronts Ahab about idolatry and injustice. All these figures and these experiences become part of who the child is.
The loneliness rootlesness of the modern experience is a product in part of historical amnesia. We have forgotten the intimate friends of our past who walked with us, challenged us and caresses us throughout the ages.
I first began to truly understand this idea only a few years ago. I was invited to attend a group dynamics seminar in the United States called the Forum1. My one condition to the leadership of the organization who invited me: my being a Rabbi would be held in confidence. I would come without my kippah, not as Rabbi Gafni but as Marc, and I would participate and experience the seminar like everyone else.
Early on in the seminar I leaned over and whispered something to the person in front of me. Suddenly the seminar leader shouted out: “Rabbi, why are you talking?” And of course 300 people turned round to see who was the Rabbi. From that moment on, the leader would lash out at me whenever she could. I became one of the focal points of the seminar. ‘The problem Marc was having’ became everyone’s concern, and ‘the difficulty the Rabbi was having in making the breakthrough’ spiced up the coffee breaks. They assigned people to work with me during meals because I was ‘recalcitrant.’ I didn’t seem to be going along with the Forum ideas and this was ‘spoiling the group.’ It was a very lonely weekend.
On Saturday afternoon the leader delivered a key session on the essential philosophy of the Forum. In brief, she claimed that there is no intrinsic meaning in life. Meaning is something we create, and we need to discard meanings that haven’t brought us satisfaction. Even a mouse that runs through a maze and finds electric shocks instead of cheese will not go down the same path again. But we human beings keep doing the same thing over and over, even though it doesn’t bring us results. Human beings need to ask, in her much-repeated words: “Where’s the cheese?” We need to discard meanings that haven’t worked and create new ones in their place.
On one hand this philosophy sounded real and compelling. On the other hand, the underlying idea was that there is no intrinsic meaning to anything. This discussion occurred around the time the sun was setting, when traditional Jews eat the third Sabbath meal. According to Kabbalah, this meal – Seudah Shlishit – signifies the most intimate moments of our encounter with God2. And with a the memory of a haunting Seudah Shlishit melody echoing in my head, I felt this strange clash between beauty and meaninglessness could not pass without comment.
I raised my hand and said, “This approach reflects a particular school of existentialist philosophy: one which was popular in the 40’s and 50’s in Europe and the United States,” I took a deep breath and continued, “But it is an isolated school, challenged from many directions by many other schools of thought. Moreover, it doesn’t sound true to me. I believe there is intrinsic meaning in life, beyond what human beings create. There are things that are irrevocably, inherently meaningful. Discarding them will not help the people here, but will rather offer them a way to live in denial of meaning.”3
Before I could go on, the leader cut me off and attacked me with such ferocity and skill that it shook me to the core. In her conclusion she turned and asked for the groups applause. There was an angry, almost hateful, energy directed at me from the group. I sat down in shock, and the leader perhaps felt she had settled things once and for all.
Certain that I was about to either bolt from the room or burst into tears, I was terrified to find myself standing up again. However I found that I was no longer alone. Very quietly I began to speak, “You know, there are over three hundred people in this room and I don’t know them well, but I’m sure they are wonderful people…” and yet as I am speaking, from the corner of my eye I see someone else entering the room. His name is Abraham, the first Jewish patriarch and on his arm is his wife Sara…and with them are Jacob and Rachel, and Rabbi Akiva the great scholar, and his wife, his beloved Rachel.
So I began to talk of these other people I saw entering the room. And I could not stop the rush of consciousness. More people came. I introduced the seminar to Yitzchak Luria of Tsfat, the great Kabbalist, Moses Cordevero and the Shach and Moses Isserles, and Moses Feinstein and Rabbi Soloveitchik: giants from every generation in the history of Jewish thought, of Jewish depth, of Jewish passion. I ‘shared’ that I sensed those figures surrounding and supporting me and saying to me: “Mordechai, regardless of what is said here, there is intrinsic meaning to life. True, it is not always easy to access. Yes, we create much of our meaning, but we also access meaning that is real. The existence of God means that life has intrinsic value and meaning. Stand strong and be gentle.”4
In sensing the presence of the great figures of Jewish history in the room with me, I understood the power of holy memory: the power of a past that lives in the present. I experienced in a profound way what it means to be connected to the Jewish people, to be a part of a covenantal community that transcends time and space. To be able to draw from the existential core certainty of every generation of Jews: Jews who laughed and Jews who cried, Jews who dared and Jews who danced, Jews who suffered and Jews who rejoiced. The relationship to that community creates a core reality of God’s presence that carries us through our lives. It was through this relationship that I was able to reaffirm the belief that life is meaningful.
Amalek and Sacred Memory
In the light of our understanding of sacred memory we can now return to the strange Kabbalistic teaching we touched on earlier. The mystics teach that the numerical value of safek – uncertainty – is the same as that of Amalek. Amalek, the people who attacked the children of Israel in the desert, Amalek, the rabbinical symbol for evil, is described by the biblical text the word the word “Mikreh.” Why?
Because Amalek is a people without a memory.
The children of Israel have left Egypt. As they journey in the desert, the nations tremble (Exodus 15:14). The awesome display of divine power, which characterized the Exodus, is fresh in their memory. All the nations refrain from attacking this people protected by a plague-endowing, sea-splitting God. Only one nation attacks: Amalek. Like a small dog without enough sense to know not to growl at a huge Alsatian, Amalek attacks Israel. Why?
Amalek has no memory. Amalek lives in the reality of a present ruptured from past and future5. According to the Midrahs Amalek attacks Israel because they alone of all the nations do not remember the splitting of the sea and the ten plagues which took place but a few short weeks before. Therefore Amalek is the Biblical symbol for evil. For the Greek, evil comes from a lack of knowledge. According to Plato, virtue is knowledge and ignorance is the source of evil. For the Jew however, the primary source of evil is not the lack of knowledge but the inner safek that results from the loss of memory. Amalek, the symbol of evil in Jewish sources, is the person or the people without a memory.
According to R. Soloveitchik, Amalek’s modern incarnation was the Nazi movement6. Elie Wiesel, in his Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech, tried to capture the essence of what the Nazi said to the Jew: “‘Forget,’ they were told. ‘Forget where you came from; forget who you were. Only the present matters.'”7 The Nazi, who’s primary goal was to destroy the Jew’s core certainty of identity, chose as his method the destruction of memory8. It comes as little surprise then, that the major intellectual activity of contemporary Nazi sympathizers is historical revisionism. To revise history is to destroy memory, is to murder once again9. It therefore comes as no surprise to learn that the Jewish response to Amalek is an act of defiant memory: “Remember what Amalek did to you when you left Egypt.”
Sacred memory is our route back to the Sukkat Shalom of our people: they are the memories of our national infancy in the cradling arms of God. In the prison of what we may experience as a spiritual exile, in the dungeons of meaninglessness, like Scharansky we can return to our collective memory of a period of core certainty of being in the infancy of our nationhood. And in remembering this certainty, we revive it to play a clear role in our daily lives.
FOOTNOTES
4. The next day, the leader asked to meet me. Tearfully, she told me that she was wrong for violating the agreement about the confidentiality of my clergy status. She had been raised in an Orthodox Jewish home in New York, but it was a difficult home, and so she left Judaism and found the Forum and that became life. My presence in the seminar stimulated old hurts and threatened her deeply. That was the reason for her actions. To her enormous credit, she then went back into the room and apologized to the entire seminar.
5. See Midrash HaGadol …
6. See R. Joseph Soloveitchik The Voice of My Beloved Knocks Fn 23 where, based on legal sources, he explicates this identification.
7. Delivered on December 11,1986, in Oslo, Norway from The Kingdom of Memory, I thank Sigmond Shore for this reference.
8. see Victor Frankel Death camps and Existentialism.
9. “The voice of your brother’s blood calls out to Me from the ground.”
(Genesis 4:10) In the Hebrew the word ‘blood’ appears in the plural form. A modern Midrash asserts that ‘blood’ is in the plural because it is possible to kill someone twice: first the actual murder, and second the denial of memory.
by Marc Gafni
