Literally t’shuva means turning, as in re-turning to a forest path after one accidentally loses sight of it, covered in leaves.

T’shuva is something of a cosmically significant concept within Jewish thought. Cosmically, because the concept of t’shuva is used to answer BIG problems. Classically, t’shuva is a response to the problem of how the world remains despite the presence of evil. Said differently, t’shuva helps explain how we can keep our sanity despite the presence of so much suffering caused by intentional wickedness and callous disregard.

For example, imagine a potter creating a pot at a potter’s wheel. What if the form of the pot began to deviate from the vision of the potter. Well, the potter could just as easily smush the pot and start over again.

Now imagine that the pot is imbued with magical powers. Not only can it hold water, but it can ask for water and pour its own water into other pots — even make new pots! New creatures can grow from the water inside the pot too and also be imbued with some of its power. Now what if the some of these creatures come to abuse their power by withholding water from their fellow creatures, or by sullying it, or by mythologizing that they themselves are the source of and reason for all water being. Well, then the potter can still crush the pot and start over again.

Alternately, there could be some sort of safeguard that can protect this pot and its emergent potlings from being so easily destroyed. The answer is t’shuva — a kind of a safeguard for all relationships, protecting creations from their creators, children from their parents, or lovers from indiscretions. Transgressing beyond healthy boundaries invites danger — t’shuva is a way of returning back to the place of safety by healing relationships. Faith in the fact of t’shuva’s existence as woven into the fabric of creation becomes both a guarantee that relationships can be healed and a sign that our relationships are founded on an understanding of loving-kindness (ḥesed in Hebrew) rather than the simply the manifestation of “rules” (or in Hebrew, din).

We can try to lead our lives with consideration for others, expressing our empathy beyond ourselves, beyond our kin and ken, even beyond this world into imaginary realms, but when we fail — when we hurt — all is not lost. The dream of my ancestors was a fragile world balanced on the head of a pin, its continued existence depending on our intentions and actions to suffuse the world with loving-kindness. Without t’shuva the world descends into unmitigated anger, despair, and doom.

Given the history of the Jewish people, perhaps it’s already apparent why this concept could be so important in Jewish teachings… both in the mystical and non-mystical school of Judaism, which assumes the world is continually sustained by a Creative Consciousness but also greatly in need of a tikkun or repair/healing. In the non-mystical schools, t’shuva might only describe an ethical responsibility one has in their relationships to be conscious of their transgressions and humble in submitting their ego in a process of repentance towards aggrieved or possibly aggrieved parties, to heal them. In the mystical schools, t’shuva helps to explain how the world can continue to exist despite an apparent fracture between the transcendent unknowable aspect of creation, and the manifest revealed aspect. The consequence of this fracture is itself reflected in the difficulty we experience in always respecting the beauty of creation and our fellow creatures in our actions. (The meaning of each of our lives is thus in the potential for us to take part in this cosmic healing, by being living, compassionate, aware, and creative bridges between these two aspects.)

Practically then, T’shuva becomes an everyday awareness practice: to be conscious of when a relationship might be transgressed or a fellow creature injured callously or by negligence. As a community, Jews are enjoined to do an intense group t’shuva on Yom Kippur, and in traditional Jewish practice begin preparing for that day more than a month in advance by apologizing to their friends, neighbors and through soul searching. As a mythic ritual, Yom Kippur plays out the concept of t’shuva helping to preserve the world despite the vast lack of awareness which radiates suffering across the myriad relationships that take place between all of its manifest creatures.

Any number of classic Ḥasidic texts can provide additional insight although I’m partial to Raphael Patai’s Hebrew Goddess for a more historical account of the evolving narrative of broken relationships in Jewish cosmology. For those already familiar with t’shuva, I would specifically recommend Philip K. Dick’s novel, The Galactic Pot Healer.

“We must move forward, not backward; upward, not forward; and always twirling, twirling, twirling towards freedom.” — “Kang for President” (The Simpsons: Treehouse of Horror VII)

According to one ancient Jewish tradition, the custom of not eating meat on Shavuot celebrates the vow God made with Noaḥ and his children on Mt. Ararat. Although the vow was witnessed by Noaḥ on Ararat, because Noaḥ’s descendants continued to eat the flesh of an animal with its blood, a suitable partner to the vow wasn’t discovered until Avraham. The covenant with Avraham wasn’t realized until the acceptance of the Torah by Avraham’s descendants, Bnei Yisroel, at Mt. Sinai.

So what was the vow to Noaḥ? In the context of the story of the Flood, the vow was to never again destroy the world with a great flood. But what sort of world existed such that this sort of intervention could even be imagined? According to Biblical myth, the Deluge washed away a world where such primary needs as eating and loving had degenerated into eating other animals and rape. In this mythic view, nature was not created as carnivorous. Rather, the existence of predatory behavior is an undesired outcome of divine/angelic desire in the world. The root of this transgressive divine desire was a mistaken worship of angels/stars rather than their creator.

The story of the Exodus is a retelling of this myth. The exodus from Egypt to Sinai parallels the passage of Noaḥ’s ark to Ararat; the Flood parallels the drowning of the army of Pharoah in the Sea of Reeds. The oppression of the Mitzriim and their influence on the Israelites in the story of the Exodus parallel the actions of the Giants and the “Men of Renown” in their coruption of the generation of the Flood.

Played out in the Jewish calendar and in ritual re-enactment, the passage of time from Pesaḥ to Shavuot, from escape to revelation, is thus a journey from the depths of bondage to the epiphanies of freedom — not just for a people but for all of creation. But what is the context for this sense of freedom? The minhag of not eating flesh on Shavuot represents an Edenic hope for a world of compassion as envisioned in Isaiah 11:6-9:

/11:6 And the wolf shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the kid; and the calf and the young lion and the fatling together; and a little child shall lead them. /11:7 And the cow and the bear shall feed; their young ones shall lie down together; and the lion shall eat straw like the ox. /11:8 And the sucking child shall play on the hole of the asp, and the weaned child shall put his hand on the basilisk’s den. /11:9 They shall not hurt nor destroy in all My holy mountain; for the earth shall be full of the knowledge of YHVH, as the waters cover the sea.

Having such a hope manifest in the traditions and identity of an entire people is certainly a useful strategy for preserving this vision. The failure of the Israelites in the sin of the Golden Calf, thus provide a rationale for God offering to Moshe a very Noaḥian bargain: with the vow unfulfilled, why not destroy the world with fire and start over with Moshe as the seed of a new humankind. Moshe, thankfully, rejects this possibility, does a t’shuva for the people and brings about the possibility of a greater cosmic tikkun for the world with Israel’s observance of the Torah providing a particular example of universal righteousness.

The source for this idea of Shavuot being a holiday remembering God’s vow to Noaḥ realized at Sinai comes from the Book of Jubilees, a work composed in the second century BCE, and which records a number of the biblical legends surrounding the events before and after the Deluge which are alluded to in the early chapters of Genesis. The tragic story of the introduction of this predatory nature is recorded in a series of related legends concerning the antediluvian age. Jubilees is the earliest source connecting the holiday of Shavuot to the giving of the Torah at Sinai, a link which is not made explicit anywhere in the TaNaKh. Here are a few of the relevant verses from Jubilees:

Jubilees Chapter 5:1-2
/5:1 And when the children of men began to multiply on the surface of the earth and daughters were born to them that the angels of YHVH saw in a certain year of that jubilee that they were good to look at. And they took wives for themselves from all of those whom they chose. And they bore children for them; and they were the giants. /5:2 And injustice increased upon the earth, and all flesh corrupted its way; man and cattle and beasts and birds and everything which walks on the earth. And they all corrupted their way and their ordinances, and they began to eat one another. And injustice grew upon the earth and every imagination of the thoughts of all mankind was thus continually evil.

Jubilees Chapter 6:1-2, 6-7, 13-22
/6:1 And on the first of the third month, he went out of the ark, and he built an altar on that mountain. /6:2 And he made atonement for the land. And he took the kid of a goat, and he made atonement with its blood for all the sins of the land because everything which was on it had been blotted out except those who were in the ark with Noaḥ-¦.

/6:6 And behold, I have given you all of the beasts and everything which flies and everything which moves upon the earth and in the water, the fish and everything, for food like the green herbs. /6:7 And I have given you everything so that you might eat. But flesh which is (filled) with life, (that is) with blood, you shall not eat-because the life of all flesh is in the blood lest your blood be sought for your lives-¦.

/6:13 And you, command the children of Israel not to eat any blood so that their names and seed might be before YHVH your God always. And there is no limit of days for this law because it is forever. They shall keep it for their generations so that they might make supplication on your behalf with blood before the altar on every day. /6:14 And at the hour of daybreak and evening they will seek atonement on their own behalf continually before YHVH so that they might guard it and not be rooted out. /6:15 And he gave a sign to Noaḥ and his children that there should not again be a flood upon the earth. /6:16 He set his [rain]bow in the clouds for a sign of the covenant which is forever, that the water of the Flood should therefore not be upon the earth to destroy it all of the days of the earth. /6:17 Therefore, it is ordained and written in the heavenly tablets that they should observe the feast of Shevuot in this month, once per year, in order to renew the covenant in all (respects), year by year. /6:18 And all of this feast was celebrated in heaven from the day of creation until the days of Noaḥ, twenty-six jubilees and five weeks of years. And Noaḥ and his children kept it for seven jubilees and one week of years until the day of the death of Noaḥ. And from the day of the death of Noaḥ, his sons corrupted it until the days of Abraham, and they ate blood. /6:19 But Abraham alone kept it. And Isaac and Jacob and his sons kept it until your days, but in your days the children of Israel forgot it until you renewed it for them on this mountain. /6:20 And you, command the children of Israel so that they might keep this feast in all of their generations as a commandment to them. One day per year in this month they shall celebrate the feast, /6:21 for it is the feast of Shevuot [oaths] and it is the feast of the first fruits. This feast is twofold and of two natures. Just as it is written and engraved concerning it, observe it. /6:22 This is because I have written it in the book of the first law, which I wrote for you, so that you might observe it in each of its appointed times, one day per year. And I have told you its sacrificial offering so that the children of Israel might remember them and observe them in their generations in this month one day each year.

(Translation O.S. Wintermute in J. Charlesworth’s Pseudepigrapha)

From Jubilees one can more easily see the the parallel between the two stories: the treatment and degradation of the descendants of Yaakov under the Mitzriim in Exodus and the decadence and corruption of the Children of Enosh under the B’nai Elohim in Genesis. The midrashim describing the moral decay of the Hebrew slaves of Egypt and their desperate need for rehabilitation provide even more linkage between the two stories. Given that Moshe and Noaḥ are also related characters, both drawn from the water and preserved in arks, the connection and import of the biblical aggadah as it might inform the story of the Exodus seems quite significant.

A good number of later sources in extra-canonical works: pseudepigrapaha and midrash provide additional details (Sefer Ḥanoch/1 Enoch, the Clementine Homilies, the Adambuch, the Midrash of Shemḥazai and Azael, Sefer Rabbi Ishmael/3 Enoch, Sefer haYashar), but only the Book of Jubilees connects these events specifically to the holiday of Shavuot. Inspired by Raphael Patai and Robert Grave’s Hebrew Myths, I’ve combined details from all of these sources in the following reconstruction of the legend. (Those familiar with Greek mythology will find some pretty wonderful parallels with the story of Merope.) Sources for this story are included in this sourcesheet, The End of Predatory Nature (pdf). (I prepared the sourcesheet to accompany a 20 minute presentation at Yeshivat Hadar entitled “The End of Predatory Nature and the Rectification of Divine Desire.”) It need not be said but what follows is mytho-history, not history. The two should never ever be confused.

On the sixth day of creation, God gave all the herbs of the world to Adam and the other animals to eat. No creatures until the generation of Enosh ate meat at all. (Male descendants of Enosh are to this day called in Hebrew, Anashim (men), and females, Nashim (women).) Enosh, the grandson of Adam and the son of Shet (Seth), was born outside of the garden of Eden. God’s divine presence (shekhina) was strikingly obvious and manifest in the Garden, and Adam’s children pined for such closeness. Enosh’s generation was the first to begin worshiping angelic forces instead of the blessed Holy One, inventing images of these beings, cultivating precious stones in their cults, and inviting the angels through their passion to descend from their perch in the celestial heavens to Earth.

Meanwhile, the angels, being the bnai elohim and firstborn of creation, never understood why Adam and his descendants inherited the earth. Witnessing God’s grief at the decadent worship of the angelic powers, Shemḥazai, the chief of the angels, testified against humans, and made the following request: “‘Master of the world, give us leave, let us dwell with the creatures, and you will see how we shall sanctify your name.” God gave Shemḥazai and his fellow angel, Aza’el, leave to descend but also noted, “It is evident and clear before Me that if you dwelt on earth the yetzer hara (evil inclination) would rule you, and you would behave even worse than children of Adam.”

At this time, despite his great popularity as a tzaddik (righteous guru), Ḥanoch, Adam’s great-grandson, became increasingly reclusive, eventually only appearing once a year, and thereafter, not at all. Climbing a great mountain, he ultimately ascended to heaven where he was transformed into the angel Metatron. All who tried to follow him were crushed by great blocks of ice. As God’s heavenly recorder, the following events were witnessed by Metatron/Ḥanoch.

As soon as Shemḥazai came to earth he came upon Istahar, and overcome with desire demanded the unwed girl to give herself to him. Cleverly, she consented but only under the condition that he first teach her to pronounce the shem hameforash (tetragrammaton). Upon pronouncing it she was at once transported away from Shemḥazai and his uncontrolled passion, and brought up into the celestial heavens and transformed into one of the stars in the Pleiades.

Seeing what they desired and no longer naive, Shemḥazai and Azael simply took what they wished. The children born from their conquests became powerful and mighty in their own way. Powerful yet lacking empathy for the Children of Adam they transgressed all boundaries. Their appetites were unquenchable. Satisfying their wonts became increasingly difficult, and then impossible, and God rained manna down from heaven to feed them and thus safeguard creation, but to no avail. In outrageous quantities they began consuming animals until desiring more they turned on their human subjects and began devouring them. With such titanic exploitation of resources, and so much food all gobbled up, hunger and desperation and conflict appeared. Neighbor devoured neighbor, and animals each other. The world became a frenzy of uncontrolled predatory nature, and Azael was ready to teach men the formerly unnecessary knowledge of warfare and weaponry, and women, the formerly unnecessary knowledge of using colors to manipulate their beauty. Other angels, inspired by this descended and taught other once useless things: the use of plants in medicine, and the reading of omens.

The stench of all this blood and turmoil of suffering grieved God tremendously who determined to wipe the slate fresh, and start anew. Shemḥazai’s gigantic sons, Ḥiyya and Ḥeeva, learned about their impending doom in nightmares that evening. In one dream, a stone table inscribed over with letters was erased by an angel bearing a chisel; only four letters remained. In another dream, an entire forest was felled except for one tree with four branches. Upon waking they came to their father to explain their dream. Shemḥazai inquired above and learned that the world would soon be destroyed. He began to worry for his two sons. What would they eat with the world all destroyed wondered Shemḥazai? Ḥeeva and Ḥiyya accepted their fate upon learning their names would be preserved in the future groanings of men, heaving stones and pulling longs oars on ships.

The nefilim (fallen ones) came to Ḥanoch requesting him to intercede on their behalf and compose a confessional prayer. Shemḥazai, repentant in his t’shuva suspended himself upside down like meat in the heavens as the constellation Orion. Azael, unrepentant, continues to reside on earth, albeit hidden deep in the heart of humankind, in the abyss of existential suffering and unfathomable desires of men and women. Just as Istahar had done, the shem hameforash was pronounced once a year in the Temple on Yom Kippur at the moment the Azazel goat was sent away. A lottery was made between two goats: one offered to God as a sin offering in the Temple, and the other launched off Mount Tzor and dashed on its rocks. Imprisoned under great blocks of stone Azael waits, the sins of humankind piled up on it until the end of this Age.

Upon exiting the Ark, Noaḥ made an offering to God, and God vowed never again to so destroy the world, instituting the holiday of Shevuot to celebrate this vow, and revealing the rainbow as the sign of this promise and as a revelation of the shekhina on Earth. The vow also served as a concession to the yetzer hara in humankind, permitting them to exercise their predatory nature but within strict limits, never to drink the blood of other creatures out of respect for the life force flowing through it, and never to eat the flesh of an animal still alive (ever min hachai). The culmination of this vow would be celebrated when a people might exist trustworthy to follow its command, and so we celebrate Shavuot as both the holiday of this vow and the revelation of the Torah that records this vow. Those who refuse to eat flesh and are mindful of predatory nature, honor the vision of a world filled with the radiant light of the shekhina, a sukkah of peace and loving compassion over the entire world and its creatures.

In these days of massive eco-destruction, over-consumption, hunger, and wont, Shavuot is a time to be reminded of a vision of this revolutionary compassionate worldview. As human beings, we can control our predatory nature. So my plea is that anyone reading this feels somewhat inspired to act in kindness and consideration towards all creatures and help bring about civil and open societies committed to compassion. Choosing not to eat animals processed by factories into processed meats is one single choice one that can greatly lower one’s environmental footprint, save thousands of fellow creatures from ruthless exploitation, and preserve ecosystems from anthropogenic change. For the sake of the world, go vegetarian this Shavuot, and stay vegetarian for the next fifty Shavuots. Let’s do our best to increase joy in this world rather than add to its suffering.

Image of reflection nebulosity near Merope in the Pleiades (Hubble Space Telescope)

Imagine a Judaism in which no ḥanukiah is lit, and only the light of the menorah illuminates a central Temple’s Holy Sanctuary. Imagine a time when the performance of thrice daily service to God was focused only on the Temple offerings. Imagine when it would be absurd to think of the study of Temple offerings as a surrogate for an offering itself. Imagine when our vision of the Temple was of stone rather than comprised of some sort of fantastic light emanating directly from the Heavens. The Temple that we have in our imagination and ritual has been democratized, the result of beautiful and enlightened metaphor.

The Hasmoneans might be turning in their ossuaries, but our rabbis of yor were content with the knowledge that the Temple service would forevermore be non-localized, abstracted, and preserved in the heartfelt spiritual practices of its survivors. Ḥanukah can be seen as the first precedent for this abstraction of the Temple Service. Here we have the during the rededication of the Temple on Hanukah, a memorial for the important Sukkot fertility rituals and ritual offerings not provided. As Beith Shammai teaches in Masekhet Shabbat 21b, the Ḥanukiah is lit on the first night with eight lights, and on the second night with seven and so forth… in memory of the bull offerings that decreased day by day over the eight days of Sukkot. In other words, the ritual of lighting each day is performed as a surrogate offering in memory of the bull sacrifices not offered earlier those years when the Syrian Greeks controlled the Beit Mikdash.

The relationship between Sukkot and Ḥanukah is explained in II Maccabees chapter 10 verses 5-8. Here is the translation from the original Greek as found in the The New Oxford Annotated Apocrypha (Augmented Third Edition):

It happened that on the same day on which the sanctuary had been profaned by the foreigners, the purification of the sanctuary took place, that is, on the twenty-fifth day of the same month, which was Kislev. They celebrated it for eight days with rejoicing, in the manner of the Festival of Booths [Sukkot], remembering how not long before, during the Festival of Booths, they had been wandering in the mountains and caves like wild animals. Therefore, carrying ivy-wreathed wands and beautiful branches and also fronds of palm [lulavim], they offered hyms of thanksgiving to him who had given success to the purifying of his own holy place. They decreed by public edict, ratified by vote, that the whole nation of the Jews should observe these days each year.

The thirteen lost bull offerings of Sukkot might be remembered as 13 breaches in the Temple by the “Greek kings” in Mishna Middot 2:3.

…the lattice-work fence was ten tefaḥim high. And there were thirteen breaches where the kings of Greece breached. They went and repaired them again, and decreed thirteen prostrations according to [the breaches].

The number 13 here is very odd since there were only seven entrances to the Temple grounds where physical breaches were likely to occur (see Mishna Middot 1:4-5, and Talmud Yerushalmi Shekalim 17a/25b). I think it’s important to consider that any numbers used in an architectural context with the Temple also have a profound cosmological importance.

The memory of Sukkot permeates the laws of Ḥanukah and the juxtaposition of each eight day holiday’s mitzvot is significant. At the end of the dry season, the mitzvah of sukkot requires the erection of a temporary dwelling and stresses the importance of keeping an open sukkah open to the visit of guests. During the rainy season, the mitzvah of Ḥanukah requiring the ḥanukiah lit in a Bayit, a house (i.e., a permanent dwelling) and at the time that gleaners pass through the souq so they can see and perhaps beckoned by the beautiful light. It makes sense that the mitzvah of Ḥanukah cannot be performed in a temporary dwelling when the season is already too inhospitable to allow for it. The relationship between the holidays is clearly alluded to in the choice of measure for the maximum height by which a ḥanukiah can be lit — it is the maximum height a sukkah can be built.

These mysterious associative references are more easily understood if we accept that the symbols of the sukkah dwelling and the light of the ḥanukiah are equivalent to each other. Both represent the peace that will spread out over the entire earth, and perhaps all other worlds too, in a messianic age. In the language of Rashi, it is the light preserved for the righteous. In the language of the medieval piyyutim it is the sukkah of peace, each sukkah a mishkan, a tabernacle, the sḥaḥ (impermanent roof) of the sukkah likened to the luminous skin of the mysterious Leviathan, the cosmic creature that itself represents the primordial light from before creation. (Notably, the ḥanukiah is lit opposite from the mezuzah in its intended location: an open entrance. The ḥanukiah cannot be confused with the mezuzah, the prophylactic memory of the ward against the mashḥit, the mask of God wearing the hood of the executioner, slaughterer of the firstborn one terrible night in Egypt.)

It’s hard to imagine how significant the holiday of Sukkot was to our ancestors when so few of us are farmers, aware and conscious of the natural vivifying seasonal water cycle and how our food resources and economy depend on a good rainy season. Those offerings were important then, and the loss of the Temple and its rituals ensuring rain represented a catastrophic danger. One can imagine how important a surrogate holiday fixed at the time of the Temple’s restoration, critically at the time of the Brumalia following the Saturnalia on the Winter Solstice, Kislev 25. (Ḥanukah retains the celebratory atmosphere of the Simḥat Beit Hashoeva, the Water Drawing Festival, the most joyous day of the entire year as discussed just after the statement above regarding the breached made by the “Greek Kings” in Middot 2:5.  The day was reconstituted after the destruction of the Temple as the holiday of Simḥat Torah, the celebration of the renewal of the annual Torah reading cycle.)

Metaphors liberate us. Sukkot offerings become light offerings. Temple offerings become daily prayers. I’ve just returned from my morning prayers during Shaḥarit, and the entire service is coded to represent the lost Temple Service and its lost Temple Cult. Even though I am not a Cohen, I am standing in for daily service performed by the Kohanim and I am time bound to it. The rabbis also taught that even though I cannot bring a sacrificial offering I can study the offerings brought and in this way the service can be sustained.

But post-Temple metaphors don’t stop there. For most of the history of rabbinic Judaism, the dominant vision of the restored temple in the messianic age was a temple of fire descending from heaven. A celestial Temple remains even when an earthly temple is destroyed. Here again is the echo of the primordial light reserved for the righteous until the end of days. What a danger that some would give up on this vision for a reconstituted Temple Cult and the loss of 2000 years of spiritual democracy.

Considering how Ḥanukah found renewed popularity 150 years ago as the celebration of ethnic national aspirations in Zionism, and seeing how religious nationalist zealots today pine for the construction of a physical third Temple (and implicit destruction of the beautiful shrine that currently preserves that sacred space), it’s time to celebrate, and take pride in our imagination — in our vision of a non-physical Temple rather than any physical, mortar and brick Temple, the aspiration of contemporary zealots.

We are liberated by our metaphors, our abstractions. We have innovated beyond the need to slaughter animals in our spiritual practice, nor to rely on a dedicated caste to preserve it. Just as our third temple is made of enlightening fire, burning brilliantly in hearts illuminating like warm homes in the middle of winter, we might also see that our people’s identity is composed of values and sensibilities, rather than nationalist dreams rooted in hard earth. Realizing civil and open societies that ensure those rights which foster our peace, plurality, and vibrant creative spirits is the realizing of a messianic age. Let us find freedom in our abstractions and communicate them with our wit and language and actions rather than build old bulwarks in mud and stone.

The Sanctuary by Edwin Forbes, 1876

In his 1978 essay, “How to Build a Universe That Doesn’t Fall Apart Two Days Later“, Philip K. Dick wrote, “Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn’t go away.” This ontology is challenged by a syndrome recently brought to my attention in a recent post on boingboing.net, “Hallucinations brought on by eye disease,” wherein David Pescovitz writes,

In recent days, both the Daily Mail and Wired.com looked at Charles Bonnet Syndrome [CBS], a disease characterized by bizarre and vivid visual hallucinations. Interestingly, people who suffer from CBS aren’t mentally ill but have visual impairments such as macular degeneration. Even weirder is that the hallucinations often involve characters or things that are much smaller in size than reality.

Read the whole post and follow the link to this article at the Daily Mail on Charles Bonnet Syndrome, and this interview at Wired with neurologist Oliver Sachs. Together, they provide an insight for understanding a particularly fascinating method given in the Talmud for seeing Mazikin (lit. harmful spirits, ie. demons). Mazikin are a class of sheydim (animistic spirits) that pervaded the natural world in the Rabbinic Jewish worldview of late antiquity. From תלמוד בבלי ברכות ו׃א (Talmud Bavli Tractate Berakhot, 6a):

תניא אבא בנימין אומר אלמלי נתנה רשות לעין לראות אין כל בריה יכולה לעמוד מפני המזיקין אמר אביי אינהו נפישי מינן וקיימי עלן כי כסלא לאוגיא אמר רב הונא כל חד וחד מינן אלפא משמאליה ורבבתא מימיניה אמר רבא האי דוחקא דהוי בכלה מנייהו הוי הני ברכי דשלהי מנייהו הני מאני דרבנן דבלו מחופיא דידהו הני כרעי דמנקפן מנייהו האי מאן דבעי למידע להו לייתי קיטמא נהילא ונהדר אפורייה ובצפרא חזי כי כרעי דתרנגולא האי מאן דבעי למחזינהו ליתי שלייתא דשונרתא אוכמתא בת אוכמתא בוכרתא בת בוכרתא ולקליה בנורא ולשחקיה ולימלי עיניה מניה וחזי להו ולשדייה בגובתא דפרזלא ולחתמי’ בגושפנקא דפרזלא דילמא גנבי מניה ולחתום פומיה כי היכי דלא ליתזק רב ביבי בר אביי עבד הכי חזא ואתזק בעו רבנן רחמי עליה ואתסי

It has been taught:

Abba Benjamin says, If the eye had the power to see them, no creature could endure the Mazikin.

Abaye says: They are more numerous than we are and they surround us like the ridge round a field.

R. Huna says: Every one among us has a thousand on his left hand and ten thousand on his right. [Psalm 91:7]

Raba says: The crushing in the Kallah lectures comes from them.  Fatigue in the knees comes from them. The wearing out of the clothes of the scholars is due to their rubbing against them. The bruising of the feet comes from them. If one wants to discover them,  let him take sifted ashes and sprinkle around his bed, and in the morning he will see something like the footprints of a rooster. If one wishes to see them, let him take the placenta of a black she-cat [that is] the offspring of a black she-cat [that is] the first-born of a first-born, let him roast it [the placenta] in fire and grind it to powder, and then let him put some into his eye, and he will see them. Let him also pour it into an iron tube and seal it with an iron signet that they [the demons] should not steal it from him. Let him also close his mouth, lest he come to harm.

R. Bibi b. Abaye did so,  saw them and came to harm. The scholars, however, prayed for him and he recovered.

Could Raba’s magic recipe for perceiving demons by placing ash in one’s eye create a condition like Charles Bonnet Syndrome? Could Rav Huna’s 10:1 ratio of ubiquitous albeit invisible demons indicate a left-brained dominance when perceiving/hallucinating these creatures? Curious minds wish to know the answer to these arcane questions. Rav Huna’s midrashic reading of Psalms 91:7 in particular might suggest that these creatures are small and recalls the peculiar reduced stature of the persons in David Stannard’s hallucination.

So it came as a surprise to the 73-year-old when he looked up from his television one evening to discover he was sharing his living room with two RAF pilots and a schoolboy. ‘The pilots were standing next to the TV, watching it as if they were in the wings of a theatre,’ he says. ‘The little boy was in a grey, Fifties-style school uniform. He just stood there in the hearth looking puzzled. He was 18 inches high at most.’

Just in case anyone is worried, according to Jewish lore the likelihood of perceiving sheydim and “being brought to harm” is substantially reduced if one avoids ruins, wetlands, and other lonely places — and travels in groups of three or more. According to the following argument inברכות מג ב (Tractate Berakhot 43b):

רב זוטרא בר טוביה אמר רב אבוקה כשנים וירח כשלשה איבעיא להו אבוקה כשנים בהדי דידיה או דילמא אבוקה כשנים לבר מדידיה ת”ש וירח כשלשה אי אמרת בשלמא בהדי דידיה שפיר אלא אי אמרת לבר מדידיה ארבעה למה לי והאמר מר לאחד נראה ומזיק לשנים נראה ואינו מזיק לשלשה אינו נראה כל עיקר אלא לאו שמע מינה אבוקה כשנים בהדי דידיה שמע מינה

R. Zutra b. Tobiah further said in the name of Rab: [To avoid danger while traveling in darkness] a torch is as good as two [companions] and moonlight is as good as three. The question was asked: Is the torch as good as two [people] including the carrier [of the torch], or as good as two besides the carrier? [The first argument would require one to travel in darkness with at least one torch and one companion. The second argument would allow one to travel alone so long as they carried a lit torch with them. -- aharon]

Come and hear: ‘Moonlight is as good as three [traveling companions]‘.

If now you argue, ‘including the carrier,’ [then] there is no difficulty. [The torch carrier will need an additional companion.] But if you say, ‘besides the carrier’ [then there is a problem with your argument]. Why would I need four, seeing that a Master has said: “To one [person] a Mazik may show itself and harm them; to two it may show itself, but without harming them; to three it will not even show itself“? [With the 'besides the carrier' argument, four would equal the traveler plus the additional three virtual companions provided by the moonlight. Meanwhile only three are actually needed per the Master's teaching concerning demons. --aharon]

We must therefore conclude that a torch is equivalent to two [persons] including the carrier; and this may be taken as proved.

In darkness, two people can see a demon but not be harmed. Only without the company of another can one both see and be harmed thereby. However irrational this idea appears on the surface, on deeper reflection I think one can see the logic of it. Rationally, one may interpret the mazikin as outward personifications of ever present danger or as dangerous constructs of one’s own imagination. One can endanger themselves, when stumbling about in darkness alone. When isolated from others, one’s imagination can leave themselves into madness. And in the company of two, one is still vulnerable to the Folie à deux. Only with the reality confirmation (and distraction) of friends can what is real be parsed from what is imaginary. (Perhaps for this same reason, a court of judges in Jewish law must be composed of a minimum of three persons.)

Jorge Luis Borges' Jewish Demons as illustrated by the graduate students in the Department of Illustration and Art of the Book at the Vakalo School of Art and Design in Athens, Greece for Borges' The Book of Imaginary Beings.

The image at the top of this post is a painting by Jesse Patrick Martin entitled “Litterbox” and inspired by the defecation of the animals in Borges’ Beastiary. (Used with the artist’s permission. Please visit Jesse’s site for more fantastic work.)

On the Quest for Understanding

Tiger got to hunt,
Bird got to fly;
Man got to sit and wonder, ‘Why, why, why?’
Tiger got to sleep,
Bird got to land,
Man got to tell himself he understand.

On Life

We do, doodley do, doodley do, doodley do,
What we must, muddily must, muddily must, muddily must;
Muddily do, muddily do, muddily do, muddily do,
Until we bust, bodily bust, bodily bust, bodily bust.

On God

Someday, someday, this crazy world will have to end,
And our God will take things back that He to us did lend.
And if, on that sad day, you want to scold our God,
Why go right ahead and scold Him. He’ll just smile and nod.

On the Roots of Bokononism

I wanted all things
To seem to make sense,
So we all could be happy, yes,
Instead of tense.
And I made up lies
So that they all fit nice,
And I made this sad world
A par-a-dise.

On Love

A lover’s a liar,
To himself he lies.
The truthful are loveless,
Like oysters their eyes!

On Boko-Maru

We will touch our feet, yes,
Yes, for all we’re worth,
And we will love each other, yes,
Yes, like we love our Mother Earth.

The Last Rites of the Bokononist Faith

Performed in the Boko-Maru posture, both parties repeat one after the other:

God made mud,
God got lonesome,
So God said to some of the mud, “Sit up!”,
“See all I’ve made,” said God, “the hills, the sea, the sky, the stars.”
And I was some of the mud that got to sit up and look around.
Lucky me, lucky mud.
I, mud, sat up and saw what a nice job God had done.
Nice going, God!
Nobody but You could have done it, God! I certainly couldn’t have.
I feel very unimportant compared to You.
The only way that I can feel the least bit important is to think
of all the mud that didn’t even get to sit up and look around.
I got so much, and most mud got so little.
Thank you for the honour!
Now mud lies down again and goes to sleep.
What memories for mud to have!
What interesting other kinds of sitting-up mud I met!
I loved everything I saw!
Good night.
I will go to heaven now.
I can hardly wait …
To find out for certain what my wampeter was …
And who was in my karass …
And all the good things our karass did for you.
Amen.

On the Members of a Karass

Around and around and around we spin,
With feet of lead and wings of tin …

Bokonon’s 53rd Calypso

Oh, a sleeping drunkard
Up in Central Park,
And a lion-hunter
In the jungle dark,
And a chinese dentist,
And a British queen -
All fit together
In the same machine.
Nice, nice, very nice;
Nice, nice, very nice;
Nice, nice, very nice -
So many different people
In the same device.

On Granfalloons

If you wish to study a granfalloon,
Just remove the skin of a toy balloon.

Bokonon’s 119th Calypso

“Where’s my good old gang done gone?”
I heard a man say.
I whispered in that sad man’s ear,
“Your gang’s done gone away.”

On Bokonon’s Rebirth

A fish pitched up
By the angry sea,
I gasped on land,
and I became me.

On Growth

Be like a baby,
The Bible say,
So I stay like a baby
To this very day.

Bokonon’s 14th Calypso

When I was young,
I was so gay and mean,
And I drank and chased the girls
Just like St Augustine.
St Augustine,
He got to be a saint.
So if I get to be one also,
Please, mama, don’t you faint.

On the People of San Lorenzo

Oh, a very sorry people, yes,
Did I find here.
Oh, they had no music,
And they had no beer.
And, oh, everywhere
Where they tried to perch
Belonged to Castle Sugar, Incorporated,
Or the Catholic Church.

The San Lorenzan National Anthem (1922, Bokonon)

Oh, ours is a land
Where the living is grand,
And the men are as fearless as sharks;
The women are pure,
And we always are sure
That our children will all toe their marks.
San, San Lo-ren-zo!
What a rich, lucky island are we!
Our enemies quail,
For they know they will fail
Against people so reverent and free.

On Contrast

‘Papa’ Monzano, he’s so very bad,
But without bad ‘Papa’ I would be so sad;
Because without ‘Papa’s’ badness,
Tell me, if you would,
How could wicked old Bokonon
Ever, ever look good?

On the Outlawing of Bokonon

So I said good-bye to government,
And I gave my reason:
That a really good religion
Is a form of treason.

On Torture

In any case, there’s bound to be much crying.
But the oubliette alone will let you think while dying.

It happened that on the same day on which the sanctuary had been profaned by the foreigners, the purification of the sanctuary took place, that is, on the twenty-fifth day of the same month, which was Kislev. They celebrated it for eight days with rejoicing, in the manner of the Festival of Booths [Sukkot], remembering how not long before, during the Festival of Booths, they had been wandering in the mountains and caves like wild animals. Therefore, carrying ivy-wreathed wands and beautiful branches and also fronds of palm [lulavim], they offered hyms of thanksgiving to him who had given success to the purifying of his own holy place. They decreed by public edict, ratified by vote, that the whole nation of the Jews should observe these days each year.

It can be difficult to imagine how important the pilgrimage holidays were in the Temple eras. Not only did they fulfill the important social function for reuniting families and clans, opportunities for the young to meet and fall in love (or for the arrangement of marriages), they also expressed the real anxieties Jews shared for a good harvest and a sufficient rainy season. The passion of the Sukkot fertility rituals and the joy expressed at the Simchat beit hashoeva (Water Drawing festival) cannot be exaggerated. The Mishnah in Middoth 2:5 exclaims “He who has not seen the rejoicing at the place of the water-drawing has never in his life seen true rejoicing.”  The loss of the Sukkot pilgrimage due to fighting must have been so difficult that the victory inspired a religious innovation: recelebrating a Sukkot, albeit with light! The important bull sacrifices in the Temple on Sukkot that were missed could symbolically be commemorated by offerings of light by all of Israel. (This also helps to explain the symbolism of Beit Shammai’s alternative Chanukah lighting tradition. See below.)

Given that a pagan ritual defiled the Temple on that same winter day (the 25th of Kislev), what can we know about it? Chapter 6 of Maccabees 2 describes a series of defilements including the Temple’s consecration to Zeus and a festival to Dionysus (2 Macabees 6:7). Could this have been the Brumalia, a month long holiday held in honor of Bacchus/Dionysus ending on the winter solstice? (Brumalia is derived from the Latin bruma, or “shortest day.”) The holiday was known for its wine mixing and revelry. Perhaps there was some Dionysian mystery cult that also lit candles on the solstice, but the  ritual lighting of sacred candles on Chanukah, signifying an increase of light both above (with the solstice) and below (with the Temple’s re-sanctification) seems a more relevant celebration of the bruma.

The Talmudic legend in Tractate Shabbat 21b — that undefiled oil found in the Temple, only enough for one day nevertheless lasted for eight — is not found in either Maccabees 1 or 2. Nor is the connection to Sukkot made obvious in the Talmud. In his distinctive poetic form, Beit Midrash shel Melkh Goblin elucidates the connection between the Talmud and Macabees in his latest (brilliant) d’var torah “.” (Check this link for the full drash.) [My translations and transliterations are in brackets.]

In the Babylonian Talmud
in מסכת שבת [Masechet Shabbat, Tractate Shabbat of the Talmud, 21b]
our Sages explain
the holiday of חנוכה
with the story
of the miraculous jug of pure oil
that lasted for eight days
when it should have only lasted
for one.

When the Maccabees
liberated the בית המקדש,
they found the Temple
stained
with spiritual darkness
and impurity.
Everything had been desecrated.
And then,
in the midst
of that thick dark cloud
of impurity and despair,
they found that first small jug of oil —
the first glimmering hint
of holy light.

But we find another explanation —
another layer of significance —
to the eight days of illumination
in the Books of the Maccabees,
which describe the first חנוכה
as a late סוכות,
celebrated by the victorious Jewish warrior-priests
in commemoration
of the סוכות they were unable to observe
when they were busy fighting
for the survival of Judaism
against the Seleucid Empire.

This other layer
of the Festival of Lights
is corroborated
by hints in the על הנסים prayer
and by the opinion of בית שמאי in the גמרא —
who taught
that like the bull sacrifices
of סוכות,
we should count down in candles
for the eight days
of the חנוכה holiday.

Just as the number of sacrifices
decreased each day of סוכות
from 13 to 12 to 11 and so on,
according to בית שמאי
we should kindle the חנוכה lights
8 on the first night
and 7 on the second
6 on the third
and so on,
all the way down
to one.

However
we don’t rule
according to בית שמאי.

Instead,
following the opinion of בית הלל,
we start
at one candle the first night;
on the second night, two;
on the third night, three —
and slowly,
day by day,
work our way up
to eight.
As בית הלל put it, going up in holiness.

We increase light
we increase holiness
and we increase hope.

In מסכת עבודה־זרה [Tractate Avodah Zara of the Talmud, page 8a]
we are told a story
about אדם הראשון.

After he was kicked out of Eden,
Adam noticed
that the days
were getting shorter.
Every 24 hours
the amount of daylight decreased
and the amount of darkness grew.

אדם fasted and prayed
for eight days,
terrified
that it was all his fault —
that because of his sin inside the Garden,
the light of creation
was dwindling away
to nothing,
and the world was returning
to empty chaos.

And then
תקופת טבת came —
the winter solstice —
and אדם saw
that the days
were once again
growing in length.

When he realized
that light
was returning to the world —
that the universe
was not dissolving
back into the primordial darkness —
that what he was so frightened of
was nothing but a natural cycle,
instituted by God —
אדם celebrated
for another eight days,
from the solstice onwards.

אדם celebrated תקופת טבת
for eight days
as hope returned to his dreams
and light returned to the world.

Whatever victory the Maccabees had wrought from Antiochus in 164BCE, the following hundred years of Hasmonean rule described a painful progression from despotism and corruption, to masscares and civil war, and finally to Roman rule over Hasmonean puppet governments. Disturbed by this history, both the midrash cited in Tractate Avodah Zara and the decision to follow the candle lighting tradition of Beit Hillel represent a rabbinic tradition in late antiquity that clearly emphasized Chanukah as a celebration of light. The relationships that connected the Maccabean victory with Sukkot became obscure — but not lost. Through Chanukah, the renewed light of the sun on the winter solstice becomes identified with the renewal of the light of the menorah in the Temple, and as on Sukkot, for the shining light of peace to spread over the entire earth. (This last apocryphal vision is related to the luminous skin of the leviatan and the primordial light reserved for the righteous at the end of time, myths discussed elsewhere on this blog.)

Significantly, the tradition of Beit Shammai is relegated to the manner in which Judaism imagines the candles lit in the messianic age. Until then, Jews follow the tradition of Hillel: increases light each day below in anticipation of the increase in light above, a beutiful example of magical reciprocity. But in the messianic age, when the primordial light will be revealed, Hillel’s tradition will no longer be necessary. (Perhaps the decrease in light will signify the approaching end of the messianic age and the coming of the myserious and unimaginable Olam Haba, the world-to-come (aka, the next epoch of creation).

Before he passed away this past year, Rabbi Zelig Scharfstein of blessed memory, taught me a very special Hassidic vort (bit of Torah) concerning the fifth night of Chanukah. To review it, I sought the teaching online at Sichos in English, a site providing translations of the teachings of the Chabad Lubavitch hassidic tradition. The following is very similar to what I remember Rav Scharfstein teaching me.

The fifth day of Chanukah can never occur on a Shabbat. When Chanukah occurs on days that are even only potentially Shabbat days, the light of Chanukah combines with the light of Shabbat for a powerful illumination. So the fifth night, which can never be Shabbat, represents great darkness relative to the other nights.

Thus, the fifth light of Chanukah has the unique task and power to illuminate and instill spirituality even in such a time of darkness. [source]

To really grasp the intensity of  this tradition, one has to imagine themselves in a time and a place where artificial light and electricity are not as ubiquitous and familiar as they are in our nighttime world. The chassidic teaching  describes a spiritual darkness that can be imagined, but the darkness of the fifth night is one that can also be observed. This is because the Hebrew calendar follows a lunar cycle. The first night of Chanukah always begins on the 25th of the month of Kislev, the fifth night corresponds with the 29th of Kislev, the Eve of the New Moon. While the winter solstice is the longest night of the year, the nights of the waning moon are the longest darkest nights of the year. Without the moon’s illumination, and without the joy of the Sabbath, the 29th would be profoundly dark — if not for the light of our Chanukah lights. Chanukah, aka Chag Urim [Festival of Lights], ends with the light of the sun increasing as well as the waxing of the moon’s strength.

Before they were made famous as one eyed monsters in Homer’s epic poem, The Odyssey, the cyclopes were known as primordial blacksmiths who could fashion the power of the universe into tridents and other weapons wielded by gods. It’s not such a far leap to see La Forge (lit. the forge!) as a current incarnation of the cyclopaean archetype. According to a hymn of Callimachus, the Cyclopes were helpers at the forge of Hephaestus, the god of blacksmiths and craft. I can even see La Forge as a reconstituted Polyphemus, once blinded, but liberated from the darkest depths of Tartarus through the intervention of Technology.

The depiction of a cyclops by Odilon Redon (see below, The Cyclops) follows less from Hesiod’s tale than from an antediluvian idyll. The cyclops in this garden to me appears to be modeling a primordial desire: a rather sheepish, male gaze. Is the cyclops of Redon a representation of the Edenic snake, the single eye symbolizing phallus and desire, staring at Eve? Or perhaps the cyclops is one of the mysterious נפילים (Nephilim), who in Genesis 6:1-4 desires of the daughters of Adam? The story is expanded on in aggadic literature both in Rabbinic midrash and in pseudepigrapha. There these Watchers and their progeny are giants that share some of the attributes of the Greek cyclops. In both myths, these divine figures possess useful technological knowledge. In the Book of Enoch it is the sharing of this knowledge with men that leads to the dissemination of evil on Earth. It should also be mentioned that Goliath, the foe of David singularly defeated by a single blow to the head from a slinged projectile, was characterized in midrash as the last of the race of Giants.

The Cyclops (1914) by Odilon Redon

The first modern adaptation of the cyclops must be credited to the robot Gort from the 1951 sci-fi classic The Day the Earth Stood Still. Here too, there seems to be some syncretism between ancient Greek and Hebraic myth, except that the technology the heavenly beings wish to share with earthkind is wholly good, and it’s only our xenophobia and paranoid tendencies which cause mayhem. Fear of subjugation and the unknown replaces the earlier myth’s fear of sexual conquest of earth women (a common enough trope in other period sci-fi films).

The slit eyed helmet of Gort seems the obvious root of the robotic fashion leading up to Urs Amann’s cover art to Klaus Schulze’s Audentity (1983). A closer antecedent influencing Amann may have been the design for the Cylon Centurions in the TV show Battlestar Galactica (the original series, 1978-1980). Pictured below, Cyrus, a Cylon from the episode “The Return of Starbuck” (aired May 5, 1980). Battlestar Gallactica was famously rife with biblical adaptations, from the wandering of the “twelve colonies” to the character of Adamah. It’s no surprise that the fecund imagination of the Mormon writer, Glen Larson, managed to stuff so much biblical myth into a show that aired at the peak of 70s fascination with UFOs and new age religion. Larson’s story of war between the civilizations of robotic Cyclons and space faring humans (developed to greater depth in Star Trek’s war withthe Borg) is another shade of the antediluvian battles described in the Book of Enoch and Jubilees.

Come to think of it, the Borg character of Hugh, rehabilitated by La Forge in the Star Trek Next Generation episode “I, Robot” (1992) totally parallels the Cylon character of Cyrus, reconstituted by Starbuck in “The Return of Starbuck.”

No discussion of mute cyclopean monsters would be complete without mentioning Maximilian, Disney’s homicidal robot from The Black Hole (December 1979). (Poor eviscerated Dr. Durant (played by Anthony Perkins), just another casualty of Disney’s adventurous post-Walt, pre-Eisner decade of dangerous entertainment experiments.)

With these antecedents in mind, looking above back to Audentity, note Amann’s translation of the cyclopean cliché from robot to human; Amann is depicting some sort alienated audiophile listening to Schulze’s Kosmiche Musik. This is the cover Schulze should have had for his 1973 album Cyborg. Here is man like machine but not as automaton — rather, man as desocialized being, completely self-centered, and focused inwardly on processing piped in audio and perhaps also visual stimulus. The commercial realization of this ideal has been evolving over the past 15 years with a profusion of (the not-yet-quite popular) head mounted displays (aka video goggles and video glasses).

Early reports of nausea and neck cramps prevented these consumer products from gaining too much popularity. Every few years gadget bloggers report that the technology has improved and that the price has dropped some. (See below, a protoype 360° immersive environment by Toshiba.)

Even as the realization of this dream has (so far) failed consumers, the obverse of this ideal has been realized in the torture of prisoners of war by our horrible Bush administration. Insanity is the natural consequence of sensory deprivation inflicted on these prisoners. (See below Jose Padilla being led to a dentist, December 2006.) Others must endure the torture playlist.

Where once the cyclopean eye represented the focal point of untold and mysterious power in the creature of Gort, in the characters  of Maximillian and the Cylon Centurions the eye is demoted to the unblinking, unwavering madness of automatons that lack free-will and empathy. The bold vision of bringing sight to the blind depicted in Star Trek’s 25th century techno-utopia is perverted at the dawn of the 21st century. In Guantanamo (and presumably elsewhere) our society brings blindness and madness to the sighted and sane (imprisoned under suspicion of terrorism).

Our blinding of presumed terrorists (officially, to prevent communication through blinking) recalls Odysseus’ blinding of the cyclops Polyphemus. But really, who now has become the myopic monster of yor, the blinder or the blind? I write with great hope that we will soon end this era of manufacturing suitable monsters, and suitable blindness.

Hopefully, in three weeks.

Some unanswered questions to inspire further exploration in the labyrinth of myth:

What do the single eyes of the cyclopes of Greek myth symbolize? The sacred inner eye turned outward? The realization and beneficence of inner knowledge expressed and realized in the outer world?

How is the cyclops eye related to the single eyes (and the lost eyes) of Odin and Ra in Norse and Egyptian mythology? Does one eye represent empathy while the other a sort of panoptic embrace of all creation? If so, which eye is lost?

Are the Cyclopes eyes related to the biblical character of Cain and the sign on his forehead? Are the extra-biblical myths of the Nephilim related to the Cyclopes who are renowned for their productive and creative capabilities?

How might the eye of the cyclops be related to the shining light of the Tzohar or the brilliant eye of the Leviathan? Is this a kind of primordial eye that has not yet been divided into two (or more) eyes at a later stage of the cosmogony?

Can the myth that masturbation leads to blindness be rooted in some sort of cyclopaean/phallic conflation? What then would the blinding of the cyclops represent for Odysseus?

Strange questions to ponder in sleep with my inner eye open in dream.

Upon moving to Philadelphia in 2007 I bought a copy of Commercial Entertainment Product at the Digital Underground, a music store at 5th and South where I was making friends with local scenesters, and it was there that I probably learned the following year of the Spooky tour with EBN coming to the TLA. I had a mixed experience at the show. I think I got there late but was quickly impressed by EBN’s visuals. They had set up a double screen with a mirror image of the left on the right side, so there was some very cool if simple effects of action in the videos blending towards the center of the two screens. The visuals they provided for Spooky’s set were again very aggressive and I thought kind of childishly masculine, with lots of quick cut edits of men in race cars, spies, guns, and things getting blown up. EBN had made their name for videos that parodied the manipulation and dissemination of propaganda for the first Gulf War through mainstream media. For example, in their video “Syncopated Ordinance Demonstration #1″ (see below) they contrast the war footage of tanks getting bombed, with GI Joe’s cartoon battles, and scantily clad women shooting uzis in gun manufacturer advertisements, and so present the different ways violence on TV is presented in one single grotesque.

EBN’s viduals for dj Spooky’s sets were much more superficial. Without depth, EBN’s art was merely being used to complement the aggressive and masculine tone of Spooky’s presentation of illbient in relation to hip hop.

But I wasn’t dissapointed during EBN’s solo set. I saw videos that were works of art in and of themselves, and not being used to complement some other message. One of them featured a manipulation of Frank Sinatra from a short TV clip that would phase in and out of itself in audio and video. Seeing it made the entire evening worthwhile. Following the show, I searched in vain for anyone who had recorded the show. I wrote to dj Spooky asking for more information. I asked friends who new folks that regularly bootlegged shows at the TLA. Nada. And to make matters worse, I soon learned that EBN disbanded.

Fast forward to 2006. EBN videos were all over the place on youtube, and I did some exploring and found that the EBN project has been revived somewhat. All the members had gone onto other things, mostly in media production work, and EBN frontman Joshua L. Pearson had become a family man. But he had also created an official web page for EBN and posted a few videos, mostly quicktime files from Commercial Entertainment Product, for download. I still couldn’t find the Sinatra video but I was excited that it probably wasn’t lost. Hopefully it would be posted on youtube or somewhere else. At the time, looking for it would have to wait since I was terribly busy in Louisiana doing urban planning following the hurricanes of 2005. I would follow up on this later.

And so when I had some spare time earlier this year I sent out emails to all the EBN project members on whether the group had any plans to make an official release of the old videos on DVD. Greg Deocampo (currently of Mediatronica) was the only one who responded, but wow, what a response. He pointed me to his pesonal project Eclectic Method (EMN) and his portfolio of EMN videos. On a separate page of the EMN project, Greg had all the videos that had been made for the CD album Telecommunication Breakdown in 1995 but hadn’t been released due to there not being enough space on the CD for all those videos. (Only “Electronic Behavior Control System,” “3:7:8,” and “Homicidal Schizophrenic (A Lad Insane)” were released on the data side of the CD.) Mediatronica was also hosting a mirror of the videos on their video distribution site televis.es. Among the flash videos was a copy of the Sinatra video entitled “Frank”; I was overjoyed! (See “Frank” below.) A great interview of Deocampo is available in the episode archive of the public radio program, Some Assembly Required.

Having become a collector of EBN videos, I was dismayed to find that quite a few were no longer accessible on youtube or anywhere else. For years, a site called GNN (Guerilla News Network) had hosted a series of seven EBN videos it called “The Lost Tapes.” A few had surfaced on youtube, and one or two on file sharing networks, but the others had since 2004 when GNN stopped hosting them, become truly lost. Another video, “Banjo Lesson,” was made inaccessible when a youtube user named Nomeus had his account suspended. And so last week, I went looking for Nomeus, and finally caught up with him on his urban exploration site flurbex.com. I’ve since been able to get copies of all the missing files and repost them on youtube. Here’s “Banjo Lesson”:

Zohan fits well within a pantheon of fantastic He-Man stories of the bible beginning with a fugitive young Moshe (Moses) defending Midianite women and ending perhaps with Moshe “Muki” Betser’s largely successful IDF hostage-rescure mission at Entebbe. Zohan is a “Golden Boy,” capable of near miraculous feats of perfect timing, detail, dexterity, strength and endurance. In the Torah, as in other Mediterranean mythologies, the source of Zohan’s talents would have been identified early on as Divine; that Zohan’s are not, points to the story being couched within a modern and secular worldview.

Zohan is really a new take on the story of long-haired Israelite strong man, Shimshon (Samson), and his clever Philistine lover and hair cutter, Delilah. Just to make sure you don’t miss the parallel, Robert Smigel named Zohan’s Palestinian love interest Dalia (played by Emmanuel Chriqui).

The connecting motif is hair. For Samson, hair represents his Nazirite status and by extension, his divinely given strength. This is a critical point since in his story both Samson and the Philistines make the mistake of perceiving his hair as the actual source of his strength, while in reality it is just an outward, if sacred, symbol. In Zohan, this understanding is implicit, since Zohan’s strength isn’t his curly Jewfro (or much discussed giant bush of genital hair). Rather, Zohan’s strength is his passion to fulfill his dream of self-becoming (a hair dresser). This is impressed in the film so many times when he tells the Paul Mitchell hair salon, and afterwards, to Dalia that he’s ready to cut hair in his salon, not because he has any prior experience but because he has the passion and desire to do so. For Samson, his strength is ultimately given to the selfless call to war and ultimately, martyrdom. Zohan’s sacrifice of what his mother calls his “safe career” as a macho war hero for his “faygele” dream of becoming a hair dresser turns this theme of sacrifice on its head. It is through his striving to realize his personal dream that Zohan discovers, achieves, and in the end help to safeguard a place on earth where Israelis and Palestinian Arabs can live together in peace and love.

Just as Jonah learned, Zohan can’t really run away from his calling; he is a born leader, a defender of his people, and his past does catch up with him. But significantly, Zohan has given up on Israel as the place where his dreams can be realized. And this is why You Don’t Mess With the Zohan has been called post-Zionist. The film speaks to the frustrated desire of many Israeli Jews to make peace with their neighbors and get on with the fulfillment of the Zionist dream to achieve self-determination within a land of their own. However, the peace that must sustain the reality of this self-determination is shown to be shallow and fleeting. The leisure of Zohan’s parade through Tel Aviv’s beachfront, through its myriad of beautiful hedonistic people, is shown to be just so fragile and fleeting. Without warning, an IDF helicopter comes to break the peace of his ocean side BBQ.

But in America, the dream of simple success trumps all nationalist and ethnic division. And here we see the difference in worldviews between Zohan and the Hebrew Hammer (2003). Only a few months ago, for the first time, five years late I watched Jonathan Kesselman and Adam Goldberg’s Hebrew Hammer . Here was a film that speaks to a diaspora Jewish identity struggling with assimilation and acculturation. Just as with the Zohan’s unapologetic clownish macho sabra-ness, the Hebrew Hammer has no interest in arguing with stereotypes. The Hammer appropriates guilt and angst into a rubric of traits that include badass decidedly non-Orthodox Jewish tattoos and pre-marital sex. In embracing tattoos and sex, the Hebrew Hammer not only presents an alternative take on Jewish identity, it arguably reflects the reality of not a few proudly Jewish hipsters.

The difference between Zohan and Hammer, however, is in the attitude towards America as either an immigrant’s dream or as the continuing challenge of diaspora Jewish identity. As a first generation immigrant, Zohan is self-confident in his identity as an Israeli Jew. As a fourth or fifth generation descendant of European Jewish immigrants the Hammer represents the insecurity of diaspora Jewry as the angry defender of a cultural world under attack. If buffoonish and over the top, Goldberg’s Hammer and Sandler’s Zohan are archetypes (if not role models) for relating to Jewish identity in the US. While the Hammer took some plenty of identity from religious Judaism, it took none from Israeli secularism, and the reverse is true for Zohan. The difference points to real divisions in Jewish diaspora and Israeli Jewish ethnocultural identities.

I promised myself I wouldn’t think too hard about this film. It’s totally enjoyable if you’re Jewish or Israeli and I’m hopeful that for all the non-Jews I saw this with at the AMC theater in Northern Kentucky it delivered a bit more nuance and sophistication into their understanding of Jews and Arabs. (After all, we can all agree that the real problems in this world are caused by greedy capitalist WASP real estate developers. Right?)

The UK release date for the film is August 18th, so Israeli cinemas can’t be too far behind. I’ll be very curious to hear how Israelis receive the Zohan.

[crossposted to Jewcy]

Here is how Solomon has Cain describe his relationship to his brother with special attention to his eponymous name, Hevel, which has the literal meaning of “breath” connoting a sense of his “fleeting” and impermanence:

I would sometimes prod him to see if he would dissolve into vapor at my touch. You have to understand, it wouldn’t have seemed so odd. In those times, things were as they were and we, the first three, were discovering a newly created world. We were each so different from each other, would it be so odd to have a man who was flesh and a man who was not? Well he was solid enough- solid enough to bleed, solid enough to kill- but though, as it turned out, he could be killed, he did not truly live. Hevel was not Named. Hevel did not speak. I was given to Mother Chava to be Man after Father Adam. Hevel was added. Added to be My Brother.

To see what I would do.

Read more. (link, Beyond the Near)

With the essential role Cain must play in the narrative, can he actually have free will. This is a playful suggestion Solomon makes — but from Dwayne Hoover’s revelation in Vonnegut’s Breakfast of Champions to Nobusuke Tagomi’s epiphany in Philip K. Dick’s Man in the High Castle, the self-awareness of imaginary characters is a postmodern trope that resonates. As Authors we can give our characters a tselem elohim (an image of their creator) — and our characters in turn reflect whatever creative spirit we possess to our readers. When we write, when we dream we are in a state of communion with those that we are dreaming. Our imagination gives them life and if the myth of their life can be transmitted, it can endure long after we’ve ceased dreaming them.

Solomon’s reading of Cain also reminds me of the sympathetic reading of Judas Iscariot in the second century Gospel of Judas. In that second century work, Jesus asks Judas to turn him into the Romans, since “betrayal” is not really possible for a supposedly living god whose determination of all events must preclude the free will of betrayal. In the Gospel of Judas, Judas is the most beloved since only the most trusted lover of a god could be entrusted with the most painful job of assuring his capture and execution. In this reading popular with early Christian Gnostics, Judas is written in a sense similar to Abraham ready to offer up his son Isaac.The theme of child sacrifice within biblical and post-biblical christian narratives is more fully explored in Jon D. Levenson’s excellent Death and Ressurection of the Beloved Son: Sacrifice in Judaism and Christianity.

Strangely enough, the gnostic sect that appreciated and possibly authored the Gospel of Judas were Sethians – a sect the predated Christianity and traced the lineage of their spiritual authority to Adam and Eve’s third son, the one born to replace the murdered Abel — Seth. In Sethian traditions, aspects which in other common traditions are seen as failures (e.g. the transgression of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden) are seen rather as necessities in an unraveling emergence of divine transformation.

Solomon doesn’t make mention of Seth in her midrash, though his absence could I think easily be remedied with a perusal of the extant midrashim on the significance of Seth, as well as the more recent discoveries of ancient lost gnostic works such as the Apocalypse of Adam.

I was having a conversation with a mathematician, Yaakov, at the University of Maryland recently, and he was struggling with aesthetic questions on what is good or bad art, so I suggested an alternative more useful question as rather, “what is this art good for?” recalling Marcel Duchamp’s 1957 essay, The Creative Act:

What I have in mind is that art may be bad, good or indifferent, but, whatever adjective is used, we must call it art, and bad art is still art in the same way that a bad emotion is still an emotion.

The verdict of the spectator is separate from the activity of the artist. The spectator might very well take umbrage if the art object, the object of fascination (or boredom) had been or had not been toiled over, had or had not been the expression of a theory or movement, had or had not been the work of an artist at all. As a spectator, my verdict is not whether art is or is not art, but whether the art is useful — and useful only in the sense of whether it has opened my eyes and expanded my conscious awareness as to the existence of wonder in the world of relationships and things outside of frames and pedestals, galleries and museums — whether appreciation of the art object has brought me to appreciate everything else in the Everything Else room in the Everything in the Whole Wide World Museum.

In a related sense, as much as I ponder myth in Judaism specifically, and religion in general, I return to this concern, that these ideas, while interesting to me, while stimulating and enriching an emerging creative expressive innerverse within me, that these ideas should also hopefully be useful for others. That if they are not, that they are trivial, and that this whole project is a delusion of self-indulgence. I will be honest with you, that I am not wholly convinced that this is not, but I am writing — with the intention that these labyrinth of ideas I’m exploring and sometimes getting lost in — that I will bring back along my wayfinding thread/trail of breadcrumbs/umbilical chord, something useful.

I’m hopeful that just as art becomes useful by revealing to an observer the greater wondrous reality outside the frame of (framed) Art, that my insights into myth and religion might also be useful for helping to reveal a greater wondrous imaginary world only hinted at within the source text of religious doctrine and dogma. Myth and storytelling thus convey the promise and potential of enduring creative liberty and the subversion of religious control to generations of eager children and aging heresiarchs.

Having said this, let me share with you something totally weird that I just found (on wikipedia, where else) that blew my mind. An Arabian myth of a creature called Bahamut (بهموت-Ž) which unlike the Behemot is not terrestrial, but like Leviatan, inhabits the endless depths of the ocean. This is mind blowing to me because the tradition in Sefer Chanoch, that the Leviatan is the mate of the Behemot seems much more plausible (in a sort-of mythic taxonomy) if we imagine both of them as sea dwellers rather than as opposites on a terrestrial/aquatic scale.

Just for review, I’ve written about the Behemot in Jewish myth, how it seems to relate to Apsu, the ancient ur-deity in Babylonian mythology, the personification of heavenly fresh water. I’ve written how the Behemot is imagined as a cosmically large hippopatamus dripping with condensation, and referred to in midrash as the “Ox of the Pit.” I’ve wondered whether the Pit was a reference to the t’hom, the primordial abyss, the abstraction of the other Babylonian ur-deity and personification of saltwater, Tiamat. How Leviatan seems to be synonymous with Tiamat in biblical writings. How Behemot/Leviatan are mated to one another in Sefer Chanoch. The Talmud also prefers the notion that Leviathan and Behemot were each created like all other creatures, male and female. So the existence of a myth where Behemot takes the form of a non-terrestrial sea creature like the leviathan seems significant.

From the wikipedia article on Bahamut:

Bahamut (Arabic: بهموت, Bahamūt) is a vast fish that supports the earth in Arabian mythology. In some sources, Bahamut is described as having a head resembling a hippopotamus or elephant.

If that’s not enough of a teaser, here is the entire fantastic entry on Bahamut written by Jorge Luis Borges in his Book of Imaginary Beings (translated by Margarita Guerrero, Norman Thomas di Giovanni). I want to point out that I find it significant that similar to the Behemot tradition, the Bahamut myth describes the creatures with hippopotamus features.

Behemoth’s fame reached the wastes of Arabia, where men altered and magnified its image.

From a hippopotamus or elephant they turned it into a fish afloat in a fathomless sea; on the fish they placed a bull, and on the bull a ruby mountain, and on the mountain an angel, and over the angel six hells, and over these hells the earth, and over the earth seven heavens. A Moslem tradition runs: God made the earth, but the earth had no base and so under the earth he made an angel. But the angel had no base and so under the angel’s feet he made a crag of ruby. But the crag had no base and so under the crag he made a bull endowed with four thousand eyes, ears, nostrils, mouths, tongues, and feet. But the bull had no base and so under the bull he made a fish named Bahamut, and under the fish he put water, and under the water he put darkness, and beyond this men’s knowledge does not reach.

Others have it that the earth has its foundation on the water; the water, on the crag; the crag, on the bull’s forehead; the bull, on a bed of sand; the sand, on Bahamut; Bahamut, on a stifling wind; the stifling wind on a mist. What lies under the mist is unknown. So immense and dazzling is Bahamut that the eyes of man cannot bear its sight. All the seas of the world, placed in one of the fish’s nostrils, would be like a mustard seed laid in the desert. In the 496th night of the Arabian Nights we are told that it was given to Isa ( Jesus) to behold Bahamut and that, this mercy granted, Isa fell to the ground in a faint, and three days and their nights passed before he recovered his senses.

The tale goes on that beneath the measureless fish is a sea; and beneath the sea, a chasm of air; and beneath the air, fire; and beneath the fire, a serpent named Falak in whose mouth are the six hells.

The idea of the crag resting on the bull, and the bull on Bahamut, and Bahamut on anything else, seems to be an illustration of the cosmological proof of the existence of God. This proof argues that every cause requires a prior cause, and so, in order to avoid proceeding into infinity, a first cause is necessary.

The story of Bahamut is thus a variation in a wide tradition of cosmic creatures said to be supporting the world. In Hinduism, the creature is Akupara, a ginormous tortoise. Or elsewhere in the Vedas, as the turtle being Kurma, second incarnation of Vishnu. In Greek myth, it is the titan, Atlas. If you’ve read any Terry Pratchett, you might also be reminded of the turtle that supports his fictional Discworld.

In modern Western philosophical debate, an anecdote relating the myth of Bahamut or Akupara is sometimes referred to as “Turtles all the way down” (explanation below). The anecdote has been used by enlightened moderns lampooning the logical fallacies of irrational belief systems since the 17th century. Or as the wikipedia describes it, the anecdote is used “to humorously illustrate both infinite regress, in cosmological imagery, and the perils of religious/mythic myopia.” This is how Stephen Hawking relates the anecdote in his A Brief History of Time (1988):

A well-known scientist (some say it was Bertrand Russell) once gave a public lecture on astronomy. He described how the earth orbits around the sun and how the sun, in turn, orbits around the center of a vast collection of stars called our galaxy. At the end of the lecture, a little old lady at the back of the room got up and said: “What you have told us is rubbish. The world is really a flat plate supported on the back of a giant tortoise.” The scientist gave a superior smile before replying, “What is the tortoise standing on?” “You’re very clever, young man, very clever,” said the old lady. “But it’s turtles all the way down!”

Russell probably wasn’t the scientist to have been the recipient of this retort. Most identify the scientist in this popular anecdote as the 19th century psychologist and philosopher William James. But Hawking can be forgiven for thinking so since Bertrand Russell, said the following in his lecture Why I Am Not a Christian (1927):

If everything must have a cause, then God must have a cause. If there can be anything without a cause, it may just as well be the world as God, so that there cannot be any validity in that argument. It is exactly of the same nature as the Hindu’s view, that the world rested upon an elephant and the elephant rested upon a tortoise; and when they said, “How about the tortoise?” the Indian said, “Suppose we change the subject.”

William James’ godfather, Ralph Waldo Emerson, may very well have been acquainted with the story from his peer, Henry David Thoreau who wrote in his journal in 1852,

Men are making speeches-¦ all over the country, but each expresses only the thought, or the want of thought, of the multitude. No man stands on truth. They are merely banded together as usual, one leaning on another and all together on nothing; as the Hindoos made the world rest on an elephant, and the elephant on a tortoise, and had nothing to put under the tortoise.

So whether the Turtles anecdote originated with Russell or James, it is clear that myths representing cosmological proofs were useful arguments of ridicule for enlightenment rationalists and other freethinkers. In 1690 John Locke may have been the first western philosopher to refer to this myth in a philosophical argument on what the substance is of an object being empirically investigated. From book 2, chapter 23 of An Essay Concerning Human Understanding Locke writes,

If anyone be asked what is the subject wherein colour or weight inheres, he would have nothing to say but, the solid extended parts; and if he were demanded what is it that solidity and extension adhere in, he would not be in a much better case than the Indian before-mentioned who, saying that the world was supported by a great elephant, was asked what the elephant rested on, to which his answer was, a great tortoise; but being again pressed to know what gave support to the broad backed tortoise, replied, something, he knew not what.

Perhaps the Indian said, “Bahamut.” Bahamut, the imaginary foundation of the world of myth.

Above: illustration of Bahamut for The Book of Imaginary Beings by the graduate students in the Department of Illustration and Art of the Book at the Vakalo School of Art and Design in Athens, Greece.

UPDATE 6/5: It is something of a testament to my interest (obsession?) over the Leviatan myths that I realized only today that I had provided something a fuller treatment in a post I wrote already over two years ago, “Rejoining Tetragrammaton.” You can read on below for a good enough summation of my thoughts but it lacks source references and quotes. So please go to the earlier post first if you’re interested in these myths. What appears below is a rewritten article I wrote originally as the about page for this blog when it was called — guess — “The Leviathan and the Behemoth.” In the post below I write with some more detail on what I find relevant in the Enuma Elish and I do mention Hermann Gunkel as the source for the idea that Tiamat is a cognate for the biblical hebrew Tohu/T’hom, and I should have mentioned this in that earlier post. So besides being topical, these posts will help me in a later synthesis I need to write. I think what’s important to note in any case is that all of this has been written about with greater academic rigor, sophistication and nuance in scholarly literature — what I’m trying to do is articulate how this myth may still be relevant (read: useful) in a Judaism that is both mythically and environmentally conscious. The Leviatan/Behemot myths ARE interesting specifically because they are so well linked to an ancient natural cosmology that seems to have identified and personified aspects of what we now call the Water Cycle.

——

The Leviathan is one of the oldest and most obscure creation myths in the Torah. For me, the myth must be understood in the context of other midrashim concerning the Behemot (Behemoth). Together, I believe the Leviatan and Behemot represent two aspects of the ancient Israelite cosmology: the snowy pure waters above shamayim (the heavens) and the sweet waters below the aretz (the earth). The origins of the Leviathan myth are old and can be traced even into Sumerian mythology thousands of years before the birth of ancient Israel.

Being so old, the meaning of the myth has morphed over time. In perhaps its oldest known incarnation, the Leviatan (Kur and Tiamat in Sumerian mythology, Tiamat and Rakhab elsewhere in the TaNaKH) is a primordial chaotic force which must be defeated or tamed by wisdom in order to allow for creation to proceed. According to Hermann Gunkel, the primordial mother deity Tiamat (representing chaos in Sumerian myth) is abstracted in the Torah’s Genesis as T‘hom (the abyss). Following from Raphael Patai’s reading in his Hebrew Myths (with Robert Graves) the body of the Leviathan forms the earthly depths and is alternately represented as a tremendous underwater mountain, as a dragon, as a cosmic serpent (sustained by fresh waters flowing underground from terrestrial streams), as the abyss of the cosmos (the blank slate before creation), or as purely abstract chaos.

Meanwhile, midrashim represent the Behemot as an impossibly ginormous hippopotamus or water buffalo, supported on earth by the four pillars of its gigantic legs, dripping with condensation from the fresh waters above the earth, or simply as the primordial Void. The esoteric Sefer Chanoch preserves the ancient tradition that the Behemot and the Leviatan are each others mates. If we accept Patai’s reading, then Behemot, in his earlier Sumerian incarnation, was the ur-deity, lover of Tiamat, the fresh water god, Apsu.

In the Enuma Elish, Apsu, is killed by the newborn God of Wisdom, Ea (an early cognate of the YHVH) in order for creation to proceed. After this, Tiamat, and Kinghu (her new lover) and their children (representing the chaotic unstructured waterworld) battle with Ea to return the world to its chaotic state. The two lovers must be separated (violently in the myth) in order to be defeated (this time by the hero of Ea, Marduk) and a new age to begin.

Besides the explicit tradition preserved in Sefer Chanoch, the relationship between Apsu/Kingu and Tiamat, Leviatan and Behemot was all but lost. Whispers of it, however, remained in the two creatures relationship to fresh water, their below and above relation to the world as giants, and the Leviatan’s enduring association with the chaotic Ocean and saltwater despite her reliance on fresh water.

The Talmud alternately presents the notion that to preserve space in the world, God slaughtered the male counterparts of the created Leviatan and Behemot and pickled them for later feasting by the righteous when the sukah of peace is spread out across the world at the dawn of the messianic age. The idea that the primordial deities needed to be slaughtered for creation not to be filed with cosmic monsters also recalls the motivation of Ea’s fratricide in the Enuma Elish.

Much much later, Hobbes invoked the image of Leviathan to represent the gigantic nature of state bureaucracy. The Behemot and his relationship to Leviatan was forgotten. This past century, fundamentalist Christians have revived the Behemot as textual proof for the existence of dinosaurs during the age of Man.

Putting aside Hobbes and the creationist ideas, when I think of the leviathan and the behemoth, I can’t help but join the ancient mythic ideas in my mind with Andy Goldsworthy’s observation of serpentine forms in the movement of water on the surface of land, as well as the ancient Jewish mystical belief that all forces must be reconciled and unified for their to be a cosmic healing, a Tikkun Olam.

In contrast to the midrashim describing a final battle at the end of days when God slaughters the surviving Leviatan, Behemot, and Ziz (another ginormous birdlike creature), I imagine Behemot and Leviatan as once close, inseparable friends whose love for one another was so profound it excluded the possibility of any other relationships forming. While the midrashim imagine the Leviatan slaughtered and skinned with the tzakkim (righteous) feasting on her flesh of the Leviatan and sheltered under her luminous skin, I imagine a peaceful unification after a tragic separation spanning the history of all creation. In this way as well, I can reconcile the aspiration to be righteous with my practice of not eating the flesh of other creatures

This binary relationship expressed in verticality (above/below), or terrestrial vs. marine, or inner vs. outer expansiveness (depth/void), also helps me imagine two other invisible reactives, thought of at odds: the invisible hand of the market, and the complicated ecology of nature. As a planner, my power derives from my position as an expert to provide intelligence for people making market decisions, decisions that will have wide repurcussions on an environment (that in turn impacts the market). I am a mediator between two invisible forces, surrogates for the hand of God: the Market and Nature.

IMPORTANT NOTE: This d’var is somewhat unapologetically anachronistic, by which I mean, I’m taking the myth and context of multiple traditions and using them to understand the meaning of related myths in another early or later tradition. In doing so, this d’var is creative and while not totally devoid of insight, should not be taken as a surrogate for a sophisticated academic reading of the sources. With this fair warning, onwards into Torah.

From Midrash Konen, 25:

“God found the Upper Waters and the female Lower Waters locked in a passionate embrace. ‘Let one of you rise,” He ordered, ‘and the other fall!’ But they rose up together, whereupon God asked: ‘Why did you both rise?’ ‘We are inseparable,’ they answered with one voice. ‘Leave us to our love!’ God now stretched His little finger and tore them apart; the upper He lifted high, the Lower He cast down. To punish their defiance, God would have singed them with fire, had they not sued for mercy. He pardoned them on two conditions: that, at the Exodus, they would allow the Children of Israel to pass though dry-shod; and that they would prevent Yonah from fleeing by ship to Tarshish.” (Hebrew Myths, Graves and Patai, p.40).

In the Sumerian cosmology, in the beginning, everything was water, pure undelineated water. In B’reishit, there was Tohu and Bohu (often translated as waste or chaos and void, respectively. I prefer depth and expanse.  The two were so inextricably bound that nothing else could exist. And yet something did. And that thing was Spreading Out, reaching, filling, moving, creating whatever was necessary for further infinite expressions. In a word, something Emergent. What was God’s spirit doing hovering over the abyss? I believe I have an idea, that will be made clear later in this d’var.

Raphael Patai cites Hermann Gunkel’s explanation in Schopfung und Chaos in Urzeit und Endzeit (1895) that Tiamat is an early cognate of the biblical Hebrew words, T’hom and Tohu. The important premise is thus that the creatures alternately known as Tiamat, Leviathan, Rachab, and Behemoth are mythic incarnations and equivalents of important aspects of the cosmos, central to the worldview of our ancestors (and which is now almost entirely forgotten…) — the Lower Waters and the Upper Waters.  (By the end of the d’var we hope that the relationship between the two will seem clear and obvious. And the ramifications for understanding apocryphal events such as the flood and cosmic reconciliations such as the Age of the Messiah, will be made clearer (from a mythic perspective).

“Depth”, Tohu, is referred to as Tehom — the abyss, its destiny within a few verses is to become the Lower Waters. Expanse is called, Bohu becomes the Upper Waters. Alternately, depending on the midrash or the myth, the two, Tohu and Bohu were allies or lovers. Whichever, the important lesson, the iqar, is that Tohu and Bohu were so closely linked that creation was impossible unless they could be divided.

Tehom, in midrash is described as the sweet Underground Waters, the Lower Waters forbidden to rise and unite again with the Upper Waters. In Sumerian myth, Enki/Ea, god of Wisdom, emerges out of the sweet water abyss, called the Abzu. (The “begetter” ur-god in the sumerian pantheon, is Apsu the beloved of Tiamat. Apsu is killed by Ea.) Graves and Pattai, speculate that for doctrinal reasons, these details are washed over in B’resihit and the abstract concepts of Tehom, Tohu and Bohu, stand in for what in these other myths are cosmogonic battles of creation.

And yet Tohu and Bohu do reappear in a less abstract form, if not as gods, then as cosmically huge monstrous creatures: Bohu as Behemoth and Tohu/Tehom as Tiamat, a great serpent also referred to alternately as Leviathan, Rachab. (Graves and Pattai add other biblical serpents: the Tanin, Aharon’s serpent/rod, and the Nachash, the tempting snake in Eden, to the list). Tiamat may be the only mythic creature/character from Mesopotamian myth to be referred to with the same name in the Tanakh. In the Enuma Elish, however, Tiamat is not only seen as a great serpent. She is Mother Tiamat, the primordial God Tiamat, who allied by incestuous marriage with her son Kingu must be defeated by Marduk. After Tiamat’s defeat, her body forms the material for the earth’s crust and the planets).

Although the sages were confused whether the female Leviathan and male Behemoth were creatures with male Leviathan and female Behemoth consorts (like the other animals), other legends maintained that the Leviathan and Behemoth were each others mates (despite the differences in their monstrous anatomies).

“Yet others hold that Leviathan was to have been Behemoth’s mate; but that God parted them, keeping Behemoth on dry land and sending Leviathan into the sea, lest their combined wight crack Earth’s arches.” (4 Ezra vi. 47-52; Enoch I.X. 7-8)

The sages imagined the Leviathan to be a great sea serpent or crocodile, the largest of the sea creatures, but strange older legends left a legacy of contradictions. When the Leviathan moved, the earth shuddered in earthquakes. This reflected the ancient idea that the Leviathan is in the bedrock, in the farthest depths — the abyss. The Behemoth is imagined to be the largest of the land animals, a giant hippopotamus intriguingly called the “Ox of the Pit’, dwelling in the land of the Thousand Mountains beyond the river Sabbatyon.

Being incarnations of the Upper and Lower Waters. Both the Behemoth and the Leviathan drink pure water, both relying on fresh water — attesting to their primordial roots in a universe created out of pure fresh water.

“…[Leviathan] drinks from a tributary of the Jordan, as it flows into the ocean through a secret channel.” (many sources to cite, see Hebrew Myths, Graves and Patai, p.50)

“Summer heat makes him [Behemoth] so thirsty that all the waters flowing down the Jordan in six months, or even a year, barely suffice for a single gulp. He therefore drinks at a huge river issuing from Eden, Jubal by name.” (Mid. Konen, 26; Pesiqta Rabbatai, 80b-81a; Lev. Rab 13.3; 22.10; Num. Rab 21.18; PRE, ch. 11)

The importance of this ancient symbolism, although arcane, is still entirely relevant as they represent the powerful relationships with nature and natural cycles that were (and remain still) at the core of our tradition and worldview. Consider the lost holiday, of the Simchat Beit haShoeva, the most festive day in the whole calendar when water was pured over a rock in an underground chamber on the temple mount. It was the most festive day in the whole Jewish calendar! A full explanation of why would require delving into the meaning of the Even ha-Shetiyah… the foundation stone (even ma’su hobim hayta l’rosh hapina). But the following aggadoth/midrashim provide some context:

“God also forbade Tehom, the sweet Underground Waters, to rise up — except little by little and enforced obedience by placing a sherd [the even ha-shetiya] above her, on which He had engraved His Ineffable Name. This seal was removed only once only; when mankind sinned in Noach’s day. Therupon Tehom united with the Upper Waters [!] and together they flooded the earth.” (Yer. sanh. 29a bot.; Mid Shemuel, ch. 26; Yalqut Reubeni i:4 f.; ii: 109; cf. Enoch LIX. 7-10; PRE, ch. 23; all based on Gen VII. 11.)

“Since then, Tehom has always crouched submissively in her deep abode like a huge beast, sending up springs to those who deserve them, and nourishing the tree roots. Though she thus influences man’s fate, none may visit her recesses.” (Genesis xlix. 25; ezekiel xxxi. 4; xxvi. 19; xxxi. 15; job xxxviii 16)

“Tehom delivers three times more water to Earth than the rain [the Upper Waters]. At the Feast of Tabernacles [Sukkot/Simchat Beit hs-shoeva], Temple priests pour libations of wine and water on God’s altar. Then Ridya, an angel shaped like a three year heifer with cleft lips, commands Tehom: ‘Let your springs rise!’, and commands the Upper Waters: ‘Let rain fall!’” (Gen. Rab. 122, 294; B. Taanit 25b)

…Think of our Upper Water prayer begun in this same period and recalling this event: “mashiv haruch umorid hagashem” (may the winds flow and the rains fall) — a prayer prior to the rainy season to help ensure the refreshing of the land over the Winter. However, unlike our prayer today, the temple prayers were delivered with a more cosmic worldview. These libations were being made at the central portal to the Lower Waters, the stone cap above which was the single most precious object in the universe — that which separated the upper and lower waters — the first thing ever created! And the equivalence between Leviathan and the primeval Lower Waters is further betrayed by the mysterious agaddoth that when the Leviathan moves, earthquakes are generated.

“When hungry, [Leviathan] puffs out a smoky vapour which troubles an immense extent of waters; when thirsty, [Leviathan] causes such an upheval that seventy years must elapse before calm returns to the Deep, and even Behemoth on the Thousand Mountains shows signs of terror.”

The Leviathan generates earthquakes when it moves because the Leviathan resides just below the navel of the world.

“Some say that a gem bearing the Messiah’s name — which floated with the wind until the Altar of Sacrifice had been built on Mount Zion, and then came to rest there — was the first solid thing God created. Others, that it was the Foundation Rock [Even Shtiyah] supporting his altar; and that when God restrained Tehom’s waters, He engraved His forty-two-letter Name on its face, rather than on a shard. Still others say that He cast the Rock into deep water and built land around, much as a child before birth grows from the navel outward; it remains the world’s navel to this day”.

That we have this tradition of omphalos, the navel of the world, connects us to a host of other people with similar origin myths. Currently, I am trying to understand the omphalos as it connects to the idea of tzimtzum. I’ve spoken earlier with friends how I think per Rav Aryeh Kaplan that the cosmogony of tzimtzum is a cosmic analogy of contractions in a womb, the “thread” of the tzimtzum being an umbilical cord, and that it is not necessary to think of it in terms of fertilization. The even ha’shetiyah would then be an early image of what in the Lurianic period would become the vessels and the klippot shards. Just as the even ha’shettiyah protects the world from being overwhelmed by the waters below, the vessels were supposed to protect creation from being overwhelmed by the primal creative light passing through the thread. Common to both traditions are shards, but in one there is water, and in the other, energy. I have to think about this more — and with your help. Because I don’t believe this idea has been published anywhere and it is so central to the central cosmologies of our people, ancient and now modern (even if by modern, I’m referring to kabbalah and chassidut).

So what was God doing hovering above the abyss? I strongly suspect that the midrashim are pointing to an ancient lost legend that the spirit of god hovering over the abyss was the creation of the Even ha’shetiyah, the foundation stone.

But back to the future,

At the dawn of the Age of the Messiah, the sages imagine the Leviathan and the Behemoth will be slaughtered, providing delicacies for the righteous, their skins providing covering over their tents of celebration.

“While those who sit in its shade will be judged righteous, and in it will be banded together, to protect them from evil, to nourish them, in the succah of curtains [made of Leviathan's skin] to eat, to carry them [from exile] to good pasture [in Eretz Yisrael], to pay it’s reward…” (from Ba’al T’hi, Shacharit service, chazzan’s repetition of the Amidah, second day of Sukkot, p. 296-7, machzor zichron shmuel, artscroll).

In reviving these symbols per their ancient meaning, I would propose an alternate suggestion for the fate of the Leviathan and the Behemoth in the Age of the Messiah. Just as the Upper and Lower Waters were brought together in the time of Noach, so they are brought together again, however, it is we who have changed. In the Messianic Age, we breath water and the flood is not destructive — it is a creative force, just as we have analogized Water to be Torah. (Alternately, in the Messianic Age, we join with the waters above, i.e. the Moon, possibly populating the moon with waters from earth. Is the heavenly Jerusalem on the Moon?)

Should the Israelites, now the Jews, be more correctly knows as people of the moon, the moon representing the primeval pure waters, the purifying waters that are always replenished, symbolizing in the waxing and waning cycles of fertility, and of the earth’s fertility? How the calfs and the red heifers relate to water purification and moon symbolism, I’m not certain, but Raphael and Pattai think there’s a connection, and the description of the angel Ridya I think suggests something too. I’m wondering whether these sacrifice/offerings are rehearsing the origin myth of the separation of the waters, which in other myths was the slaughter of Apsi/Bohu/Behemoth. In the Sumerian tradition, man is formed from the blood of Apsu. If Apsu represents Upper Waters and Adam (a-dam) is formed of the blood of the Upper Waters could then some purification be made by returning Man to his upper water source? Or slaughtering an animal representing the Upper Waters in the place of Man? I’m not sure, but it’s something I have to think about more with your help.

Credits for most of the sources used above are referenced out of Robert Graves and Raphael Patai’s Hebrew Myths: The Book of Genesis (McGraw Hill: New York, 1964)

Behemoth and Leviathan (1825, reprinted 1874) by William Blake, an engraved illustration that appears in Blake’s The Book of Job.

UPDATE: James Hebert, KRVS Operations Manager writes me, “Regarding the Mardi-Gras special we aired Tuesday, it’s Dance for a Chicken, a video documentary produced by Pat Mire Films. It’s available at 1-800-256-8471, or 337-232-0700, or 625 Garfield Street Lafayette, LA 70115.”

From the Pat Mire Films website:

Dance for a Chicken: The Cajun Mardi Gras (1993, 60 mins. Color). This award-winning film brims over with stunning images of carnival play and a rich soundtrack of hot Cajun music. Cajun filmmaker Pat Mire gives us an inside look at the colorful, rural Cajun Mardi Gras. Every year before Lent begins, processions of masked and costumed revelers, often on horseback, go from house to house gathering ingredients for communal gumbos in communities across rural southwest Louisiana. The often-unruly participants in this ancient tradition play as beggars, fools, and thieves as they raid farmsteads and perform in exchange for charity or, in other words, “dance for a chicken.”

“Dance for a Chicken is an articulate, intelligent, and compelling film portraying the richness of indigenous Louisiana Cajun culture. Without question the best Mardi Gras film to date. A true gem.” — Tom Rankin, Center for the Study of Southern Culture.

“Dance for a Chicken” was the winner of the “Award of Excellence” at the 1993 American Anthropological Association Film Festival.