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

Redemption

Redeltlption Arthur A. Cohen A characteristic signature of the classical rabbinic style is its interweaving of various theological motifs and preoccupations , its refusal to separate out high argument from examples drawn from the most mundane events of life, its continuous care for using simple fidelities and loyalty to the halakhah as occasions for promising large redemptions. It is consequently extremely difficult to set forth a doctrine of redemption in the classical tradition that does not entail consideration of every other teaching, since redemption is contingent upon performance of the commandments, overcoming of the evil ye?er or impulse, devotion to the community, right intention and purity of heart, the exhibition of all the virtues, just behavior in treating the stranger and the poor, and a whole galaxy of similar and dissimilar moral and spiritual undertakings. The consequence of this is that the conception of redemption that obtains in the classical tradition becomes almost a catchphrase for a kind of concrete perfection, the integral saint being he who is redeemed, redemption coming to mean God's generosity to the fully faithful and exigent Jew. At the same time that redemption is offered to reward a whole 762 REDEMPTION variety of ancient virtues and performances, it tends-by the very tensility and encompassing character of its usage-to lose some of its force, to become a term by which to hold out the promise of divine justification and reward to the believing practitioner of rabbinic judaism. Another characteristic as outstanding and unique is the paucity and spareness of the rabbinic description of redemption. Redemption is, after all, an encompassing divine resolution that includes as many aspects of the divine justification of human obedience as can be imagined. It is the eschatological concept, and precisely because it is preeminent its power tends, on first examination, to be muted by such overwhelming notions as the End of Days, the advent of the Messiah, the restoration of the jewish people to their land, the unification of all mankind in service of the one true God, and the resurrection of the dead. Are not all of these dimensions of redemption? It may, however, be asked at the outset: What calls forth the need and beseechment for redemption? What does man seek in the promise of redemption? The predicament of human beings is that they conduct a difficult life in this world. Even if they be rich and comfortable, the days of man are numbed with unfulfillment, wavering concentration, the demands of the body, weariness of spirit, frustration of will, the trials of self-contempt and humiliation, diminishment of pride, falsehood, and evildoing. Even those then who are beyond privation conduct their lives in deprivation. How much more so with those who gain their livelihood in trial and precariousness , who suffer illness and anguish, who live unsatisfying and unsatisfiable lives? Whatever the situation of human beings, their days are marked with finitude and limit, constrained by the boundary markings that infect their days with temporality, loss, uncontrol, anxiety, and despair. These "limit situations," as Karl jaspers called them, are categoric conditions of the human. No person evades them, not even the ~addik, the righteous man, since even he-or he above all human beings-is aware of the discrepancy between the human and the divine life, between the situation of jewish faithfulness and the demands of God. In one sense, then, God is always dissatisfied with human performance. It may be metaphysical churlishness on God's part, since he made his creatures in his image, but the ambit of expectation in which God moves seems narrower than the demand for human perfection. God does not expect human perfection, but he does expect as a portion of the reciprocity entailed by the covenant with Abraham and Moses that the jewish people exert themselves to service and obedience . The ambiguous moral freedom of the jew constrains the self to limit its extension, to keep rein upon those passions that debase the creature, REDEMPTION 763 and to observe a structure of laws whose justification is not rational but simply reflects the obdurate and impenetrable will of God. Against such a background, what emerges as the substantial relevance of a doctrine of redemption is limited and secondary. Redemption is no goal, nor is redemption the bestowal of a clear and individuated justification. Redemption is an aura-concept, since in a religion of study, attention, continuity , and covenantal unity reward...