20th Century Jewish Religious Thought: Original Essays on Critical Concepts, Movements, and Beliefs

Unity

Unity Charles Elliott Vernoff U nity is an essential concept within Judaism and a principle that grounds the entire structure of the Judaic worldview. An understanding of Judaic unity may be approached through consideration of the context of its emergence, its systematic structure , and its development within historical Judaism. Recognition of Judaic unity may originally have emerged some four millennia ago. Around the era usually assigned to Abraham, Mesopotamians had begun to conceptualize justice as an autonomous principle and had started to insist upon it by right rather than divine whim. The textual evidence for this demand intimates the birth of yearning for rectification of the entire world system of ancient Sumer. In this yearning, very probably, lay the germ of incipient breakthrough to the Judaic principle of unity. The contours of Hebraic faith may in any case be anticipated through systematic negation of the Sumerian religious perspective. First, justice could be assured in principle only if the gods open to caring personal relationship with humans were not minor, as in Sumer, but indeed the very One who wields decisive power in administering the cosmos. Second, justice effec- 1026 UNITY tively means that each element of reality is emplaced in appropriate relation to others within an overall integral order, and thus requires a view of the cosmos as embodying a potentially unified, essentially harmonious design. Sumer, in contrast, presupposed endemic cosmic conflict. Third, each element of nature is a substance whose functions are nece"ssarily determined by its fixed characteristics and thus must apparently clash with elements having conflicting characteristics. The power to conceive and actualize a unified cosmic design, that is, to effect comprehensive justice, therefore cannot even arise at this level of substantive reality with its necessary inherent conflicts, whose forces the gods of Sumer personified. A power capable of ordaining ultimate harmony among the elements of physical and human nature could only be superordinate to them, a God uniquely transcending the gods personifying natural forces. Fourth, the essential character of this power would have to reside in a capacity to override the inherent necessities that seem to impel natural forces into conflict. But any substance, of whatever subtle composition, behaves according to the necessity of its nature. The power that unifies, in its essential contrast with necessity, could not then be "substance" at all in this sense. Rather, that power would have to consist in what may be called spirit, contrasting with substance~ its character , as overriding necessity, is definable as freedom. As transcendent absolute freedom, it would differ radically from all powers subject to its governance. These four points anticipate four cardinal aspects of the Judaic principle of unity as subsequently ascribed paradigmatically to the God of Israel, namely, God is singular (ehad), unified (meuhad), unique (yehida'i), and one (a~duti). The equation of the divine personal name (Adonai) with the divine office of administering the cosmic powers (Elohim) asserts that it is a Single god (e~ad) who cares personally for humans and who governs the great impersonal forces of nature. Because God is essentially unified (meuhad) within himself, he has the capacity to draw subsidiary elements into a unified and integral (mita~ed) order. This capacity for exerting the power of unification (yehud) implies that God is unique (yehida'i) in alone transcending the elements he governs, creating and integrating them. God's transcendent power to determine all conditioned entities implies the absolute oneness (a~dut) of his nature as completely without restrictions and conditions , determining itself in pure freedom. Only a deity of this description could meet the deepest spiritual needs likely engendered in late Sumer for a god of justice, freedom, and harmony, essentially nullifying the slave status of Mesopotamian humanity with its intrinsic proclivity to injustice while altering the political scene-a wearisomely futile, violent, and enslaving UNITY 1027 cycle for Sumer-in the direction of meaningful progress toward global harmony and peace. Appearance of such a deity would furthermore signify the decisive breakthrough to the elevation of personal over impersonal being as the ultimate principle of reality. Ancient India's contrasting spiritual crisis began with the compromise of distinctions among the various impersonal forces of nature, as the identities of their divine personifications blurred. That crisis accordingly yielded to an answer that dissolved all discrete entities, gods included, into an ultimate substantive ground of impersonal being. Because Mesopotamia's crisis developed precisely within an entrenched sociocultural commitment...