Comparative Perspectives on Judaisms and Jewish Identities

Introduction to Part 2

85 In part 2 I revisit and revise my analysis of the Jewish religious movements that were the subject of my book Messianism, Mysticism, and Magic (1982). The revision incorporates the conceptual framework of religious action that I formulated in my Comparative Sociology of World Religions (2001). I focus on two broad categories of religious action (thaumaturgical and transformative), which I adopted from the writings of Max Weber. Thaumaturgy was introduced in chapter 3, on saints. It refers to special dispensation and release sought from specific ills within a nature and society whose basic features are not expected to change. In this type of religious action, supramundane assistance is sought either for protection from evil supramundanes, who wish to do harm to specific persons, or for relief from sickness and other woeful conditions affecting particular individuals and families. In the transformative type of religious action, the goal is to produce a pervasive or fundamental change in nature, society, or the individual. Such a change may involve a change in the supramundane (the divine, the Godhead) itself. In addition to goals, the components of religious action include the actor (an individual or a collectivity), conditions, and means. The means are those objects, persons, groups, or processes that actors understand can be used or manipulated in the realization of their ends. The conditions are those objects, persons, groups, or processes that actors understand cannot be used or manipulated but that must be taken into account or addressed. The conditions and means in religious action include such elements as the pantheons of supramundanes (gods, devils, spirits, ghosts, etc.), the types of communication with supramundanes (coercion, supplication , etc.), and behaviors in accord with ritual formulas or ethical imperatives. Two often interrelated subtypes of the transformative type of action can be distinguished . The first is sacralization, in which the goal is to infuse worldly activities with sacredness so that the world conforms to divine directives or ethical imperatives . The second subtype is soteriology, which can take both other-worldly and this-worldly forms. In this-worldly salvation, people believe they will be redeemed from economic and political oppression and suffering, and they expect to become politically dominant or attain social or religious prestige. Examples include messianic kingdoms and rebirth into a higher state on this earth. In other-worldly forms of salvation, people believe that they will be freed from the physical, psychological, and social sufferings of terrestrial life, liberated from the transitoriness of life as such, or redeemed from individual imperfections such as sin and earthly ignorance. introduction to part 2 02 Part 2.indd 85 9/20/10 10:24 AM 86 i n t r o d u c ti o n t o p a r t 2 Examples include a state of nonbeing, union with a divinity, and permanent bliss in a heaven. The belief in a transcendental god in the religions commonly called monotheistic has generally ruled out the goal of self-deification, or absolute unity with the divine, but mystics in these religions have sought to approach, cleave to, or reside with the divine. A strong case can be made that the most prominent transformative goal in Judaism is sacralization of the world rather than soteriology. Observance of the mitzvot (commandments) and study of the religious law are the major means or expressions by which Jews sacralize the world. Maimonides was not unusual among Jewish thinkers in stating that the reward for virtuous living is the good life on this earth. In comparison with Christianity and Islam, descriptions of the person or soul’s existence after death have been rare and often vague and indefinite in official or rabbinic Judaism. Nevertheless, eschatology was not ignored by Judaism, and rabbinic authorities distinguished three stages: (1) the location of the soul after an individual’s death, (2) the messianic age, and (3) the resurrection of the dead and final judgment at the end of the messianic age. After death the promise for the righteous, those who had observed the mitzvot, was Gan Eden (heaven or paradise), whereas the wicked were destined for Gehinnom (hell). There were varying conceptions of heaven. One elitist notion was that heaven was where the person could finally understand the conception of God, but heaven was also portrayed as a place of perfect pleasantness where the soul resided with God and his angels, and popular conceptions included tangible, sensual delights . An elitist notion of hell was the extinction of the soul so that the sinful had...