The Meaning of God in Modern Jewish Religion

V. God in Nature and in History

V GOD฀ IN฀ NATURE฀ AND฀ IN฀ HISTORY i The consciousness of history as an ethical influence THE distinctive achievement of the Jewish spirit lies neither in philosophy, music, letters, or the arts, although Jews have made their mark in all these fields. Its unique contribution consists in having enriched the most difficult and inclusive of arts, the art of living. Jews have not discovered new continents, nor explored unknown regions, but they have discovered unsuspected meanings and relationships in the human scene with the cosmos as its background, meanings and relationships which not only convert living into an art but also indicate how to become expert in it. The truth of this general observation is borne out by what the Jews did with the three Pilgrimage Fesivals: Pesah, Shabuot, and Sukkot. The observance of festivals was from earliest times among all peoples an expression of gratitude to the gods for granting them life and sustenance. There was no people which did not have its spring festival, which did not rejoice in the awakening of the fertility of the soil. But there was no nation of antiquity which celebrated any festival to commemorate an historic event. By utilizing the nature festivals to recall historical experiences, the Jews directed the human mind to the consciousness of history as an ethical and spiritual influence in human life. "I love history," wrote H. 188 GOD IN NATURE AND IN HISTORY 189 Taine in one of his letters, "because it shows me the birth and progress of justice; and I find it all the more beautiful in that I see in it the ultimate development of human nature." The Jews loved history because it showed them the way God dealt with man, and the way men should deal with one another. Man differs from the rest of living creation mainly in the possession of self-consciousness. Other creatures live from moment to moment. If they have memories, they are not aware that those are memories. If the future in any way determines their actions, they have no mental picture of that future. The consciousness of history is the consciousness of that larger self which one shares with one's fellow men. The individual person is centuries, if not millennia, older than his chronological age. But if he also has a historical consciousness , he actually feels that the life which he lives extends far beyond the actual life of his body. Conscious of the experiences of the past, attached by a kind of umbilical cord to the history, the culture, the civilization of centuries, his being becomes coextensive with the being of his people. He enjoys, as it were, an earthly immortality. The self-consciousness of the human being, contrasted with the simple consciousness of the animal, brings in its train a whole series of purposes, ideas, values, which constitute the entire character of spiritual and ethical life. Selfconsciousness gives rise to the idea of moral responsibility, and to the distinction between right and wrong. In envisaging the future, it enables man to readjust himself to life in ways that would otherwise be impossible to him. Through his sense of history, man enlarges his field of operation far beyond the range of the three generations of time with which his life is usually contemporaneous. By means of this sense, human life is lived on a larger scale. It gives to the human being a dignity and significance which he could not otherwise possess. The individual instead of remaining merely a point 190 THE MEANING OF GOD on the circumference of human existence, becomes, as it were, a large enough segment by which to measure the entire circumference. Literally speaking, he becomes the bearer of collective consciousness or individuality. This is how the human being has achieved an awareness of godhood, for it is only as a member of society that man comes to know God. The Jews were the first people to achieve national history. This means that no people before the Jews molded its life by an awareness of its own past. Great rulers made it a point to record their achievements on stone or parchment. The records of the Egyptian kings and the Babylonian monarchs were considered part of their expression of gratitude to their respective deities for their victorious exploits. These records were part of the religious ritual expected of a ruler. The people, not being conscious of their share in...