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Jrosemary
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 Posted: Thu Aug 27, 2009 11:36 am Post subject: Polytheism, Monotheism & Monism |
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Hey Coyotero,
As I mentioned in a previous thread, I have certain issues with Paganism. . . or at least with polytheism. I'm a Jew who is, in a technical sense, an agnostic: I don't know for sure if there is a God or gods or what have you. But that's a technicality. For practical purposes, I'm a monotheist or monist*, depending on what day of the week you ask me. 
I'm not a biblical literalist: when I read the Tanakh (what Christians call the Old Testament) I view myself as stepping into a particular mythos, comprised of mythology, folk tales, history, exaggerated history, and so forth.
Judaism is not a missionary religion. If a gentile wants to join the tribe, great. It's going to take a long time and a lot of study, but welcome aboard. However, Judaism has never said that you need to be Jewish in order to be right with God. Judaism has long taught that deed outweighs creed: it's what you do that counts, not what you believe. That's a long-winded way of saying that I'm not after converting you, nor do I believe you're a soul in need of saving.
I worship the God of Israel--Whom I will henceforth refer to as HaShem. HaShem is Hebrew for 'the Name.' The actual name of the God of Israel is the Yod Heh Vav Heh--the four letters that translate, more-or-less, as YHVH or YHWH. Traditionally Jews hold that Name in such respect that we don't even pronounce it; in fact, we couldn't even if we wanted to. No one's sure how it was pronounced. So, in formal settings we substitute Adonai (meaning Lord); in informal settings we substitute HaShem.
I have no issue with people worshipping other gods--if, mythically speaking, your soul didn't stand at Sinai and you didn't accept the covenant with HaShem, there's no particular reason for you to worship HaShem. If you want to, great. Or if HaShem has revealed Himself to you outside Judaism (arguably that's the case for Christians and Muslims) that's great too. But otherwise, worship Isis or Vishnu or Durga . . . or no one at all. As the prophet Michah says:
For all the people walk
each in the name of its god,
but we will walk in the name of HaShem our God,
forever and ever. (Michah 4:5)
However, I've always viewed Isis, Vishnu, Durga and other gods as aspects of the same Eternal One who reveals Himself to Jews as HaShem. I've always avoided thinking about true polytheism. If you told me that you prefer to worship Odin and Tyr, I'd be thinking that Odin is yet another face of the Eternal One, Tyr yet another one, and so forth. But if your religion says: no, we're talking about true polytheism; Odin and Tyr are not different faces of the same Eternal One, they're separate but related deities--well, I honestly don't know what to do with that.
Judging by Jewish Scripture, there was a time when we had a sort of monotheism-within-polytheism. We probably thought that out of all the gods, HaShem was ours. But monotheism (and monism) are so ingrained in Judaism now that it's hard for me to get a grip on polytheism.
Ok, enough of my background. Here are some of my questions:
1. What is your branch of Paganism called? Is it Asatru or Odinism? (Are they one and the same or separate?) Or is it another branch?
2. Do your beliefs make room for the possiblity of monotheism/monism--that is, that all the different Gods are aspects of an Eternal One?
3. How do you view your myths? As myths, or do some take them more literally? (Is anyone counting down the days until the Ragnarok?)
4. How do you view other religions? Most Pagans I know are fairly pluralistic. (I'm also a religious pluralist, as you've probably guessed.) Religious pluralists generally don't judge one religion as being better or worse than another; instead, we focus on our common morality and common ways to help heal the world.
Ok, that should be enough to start!
*I define monism as monotheism on crack--not only God is one, everything is one. In the end, there is nothing but God.
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Jrosemary Scholar
Joined: 12 Jul 2009 Total posts: 345 Location: New Jersey Gender: Female
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Post 21:
Fri Jul 02, 2010 10:13 am Post subject: |
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| Coyotero wrote: | | I think pagans in general need to get more loud. It's difficult because of the aforementioned stigma, but it's not going to go away on it's own. I'd like to see more pagan organizations participating in charities, and being vocal about it. We need to bring positive attention to ourselves, rather than hoping it will find us. |
I agree with you 100%. I'd also like to see more Pagans working with interfaith groups, both in interfaith dialogues and in interfaith charitable efforts, like soup kitchens.
Now for the holiday issue: instead of giving an overview of all Jewish holidays, I decided to go in-depth on one. Then you can do likewise, and we'll keep going like that. Sound good?
Our next holiday is Tisha B'Av. I posted about this last year in the "Judaism" section (remember, folks, everyone is welcome to join our conversations there!), but it didn't get much reaction. (Sigh.)
But I'm going to repost it here, since it will give you the essence of the holiday and the controversies that surround it:
I found this blog entry recently which shared one of my concerns about Tisha B'Av, which means the Ninth Day of the month of Av on the Jewish calendar. It's the day we commemorate the desctruction of the first and second Temple and the expulsion of the Jews from Spain--and a number of other tragedies in Jewish history. It's a full day fast, from sundown till an hour after sundown, that occurred last week.
But out of the ashes of the Temple rose rabbinic Judaism. And how many Jews really want to go back to the Temple and animal sacrifice? Ok, ok--there are a few. I can still remember sitting in Torah Study, listening to one man explaining why we should rebuild the Temple. An older gentleman rolled his eyes as he leaned over toward me and whispered, "There's one in every shul."
But the majority of us have moved on. So why mourn the loss of the Temple? Mourn the loss of lives--yes, of course. But losing the Temple is what taught us that repentance, prayer and deeds of loving kindness can (and should) replace animal sacrifice.
This blog post from the Velveteen Rabbi addresses that issue. My only complaint is the author's karmic views. The general principle of karma isn't foreign to Judaism, but we of all people should have learned its shortcomings. If the book of Job wasn't enough to teach us that we can't point to something bad a victim did to explain a tragedy, the Shoah certainly should have. But that complaint aside, I did like this:
| Velveteen Rabbi wrote: | The nadir of the year
I've never been comfortable with Tisha b'Av. When I was growing up, my family didn't observe it; I knew it only as a figure of speech, one that suggested an eventuality unlikely to come to pass (as in, "yeah, sure, that'll happen -- maybe after Tisha b'Av," a phrase we used year-round.)
In my adult life I've come to understand the holiday intellectually, but it still challenges me emotionally. I understand why the destruction of both the first and second temples was devastating, but I see that tragedy as the catalyst which allowed Rabbinic Judaism to arise and flourish -- a painful death, in its time, but one that gave rise to a new birthing of Jewish life and potential. After the temple fell, we learned to see ourselves as a theophoric people, bearing God with us wherever we roam. Today we sanctify not space, but time. I wouldn't return to the days of the temple; how then can I legitimately grieve its destruction?
That's been my line, the last several years. But one of the best things about being a rabbinic student is that I am often called to question where I stand and why, and to push the envelope of my comfort zone. Because my rabbi is on sabbatical at the moment, I'm responsible for leading Tisha b'Av services at my shul this week. It's time for me to stop equivocating, and to find a way to relate to this uncomfortable day, because I need to be able to lead my congregation into a meaningful observance.
***
On a practical level -- the level of assiyah, the physical world -- Tisha b'Av marks the date of the destruction of the first and second temples in Jerusalem. It is also, tradition teaches, the anniversary of the date when the twelve spies sent by Moses, in their cowardice, brought back a negative report and doomed the Israelites to further wandering; the anniversary of the failed Bar Kokhba revolt against Roman rule; the anniversary of the beginning of the Crusades; and the anniversary of the date when the Jews were expelled from Spain.
On an emotional level -- the level of yetzirah, thoughts and feelings -- Tisha b'Av is a day of grief. On 9 Av we join together to remember our deepest sorrows. The story of the twelve spies reminds us of our failings; the story of the fallen temples reminds us of our losses; the story of the attempted revolt against Rome reminds us of our failures. At first glance this might look like a wallow in the memory of victimhood, but I think there's an emotional truth here. There can be value in pausing once a year to remember what hurts, maybe in part because doing so inoculates us against allowing those hurts to poison our everyday reality.
On an intellectual level -- the level of beriyah, mind and thought -- Tisha b'Av is a time for contemplation. We read Eikha (Lamentations) and we force ourselves to face the memory of Jerusalem destroyed. We meditate on exile and on suffering. Maybe this year we also obligate ourselves to face the dual reality of northern Israel besieged by Hizbullah, and of southern Lebanon besieged by Israel, and the tremendous suffering on both sides of that divide.
According to the four worlds paradigm, the fourth world is atzilut, the world of essence. Tisha b'Av commemorates our distance from that holistic world of intuition and immutable connection with God. On this holiday we acknowledge how far we are from the Holy One of Blessing, and how painful that distance can be.
Tisha b'Av falls at a fascinating point in the cycle of the year. In the northern hemisphere, these are the dog days of summer. In the western world we're accustomed to thinking of the shortest day of the year as the low point, that brief and dark day when the sun is as far away as it can possibly be -- but on the Jewish calendar, the nadir of our year comes in a shimmering haze of heat.
It's explicitly a day of communal mourning, as opposed to personal mourning. On 9 Av we stand before God as a community and bemoan what is broken about our world. For some of us, that brokenness is most manifest in war. For others, that brokenness is most manifest in our distance from God -- in Reb Arthur's words, "the first and deepest exile," the existential galut that keeps us fundamentally solitary. For many of us, the two are inextricably linked; we couldn't kill if we weren't already distant from our Source.
When the Days of Awe roll around, we'll do a different kind of inner work. During Elul and the Days of Awe we are called to consider our relationship with God and with the world. We consider where we have missed the mark and how we can continue the work of growing into the people we mean to be. 9 Av is a necessary precursor to that. Before we can make teshuvah as individuals, the tradition teaches, we need to re/turn to our Source together. The ninth of Av gives us 25 hours within which to do that: to remember our sorrows, to weep for what we've lost, and to derive strength from sharing our grief.
There's a Talmudic story about Kamtza and Bar Kamtza which is often taught on Tisha b'Av. It's a story about one man's pride causing him to treat a fellow man shamefully -- which, our tradition teaches, was the deep root cause of the temple's destruction. When we fail to recognize the sparks of holiness in each other, we commit a grievous sin, and the wheel of karma spins that sin into destruction. For me, at least this year, that's the fundamental teaching of Tisha b'Av. In the rabbinic teaching that interpersonal hatred caused the temple to be destroyed, I recognize a deep truth about how our egos and petty frustrations can destroy the very foundations of our spiritual lives.
I still think the fall of the temple created space in which a fruitful period of Jewish history could arise, as new saplings sprout in the aftermath of a forest fire. But I am growing to understand why it's important to mourn the fire, even though we celebrate what its ashes fertilized. On Tisha b'Av we dip into grief together. When we come out the other side, faces wet with tears, perhaps we'll be ready to begin the uphill climb to the Days of Awe and the next phase of our liturgical year.
I've blogged before about the Talmudic teaching that on Tisha b'Av, someday moshiach will be born. In the midst of our greatest grief, the possibility of redemption arises. Within Reform Judaism today we speak in terms not of the birth of a literal and singular messiah, but of the messianic age when the work of restoring wholeness to creation will be complete. For me the notion of the messiah being born on Tisha b'Av is a metaphorical teaching, not a literal one. But regardless of how various branches of Judaism interpret the term "messiah," I find value in the notion that in our deepest sorrow, a door to transformation opens.
And I'm not sure that door opens in a way we can perceive until we open ourselves to sorrow. Until we allow ourselves to grieve what is broken in our world, we can't begin to build anew. This year may our grief be genuine -- and may it galvanize us to begin again, as we perennially need to do, in creating the relationship with God and with each other that will repair the broken world. |
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| Coyotero Scholar
Joined: 23 Jun 2009 Total posts: 413 Location: Tempe, Arizona Age: 26 Gender: Male
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Post 22:
Wed Jul 21, 2010 8:31 pm Post subject: |
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Very interesting reading.
The next big holiday of Asatru is Freyfaxi (The loaf feast), on August 19th. In ancient times, this was a harvest festival devoted to the god Freyr. Typically the event is marked with games and competition during the day, followed by blot, festing, much drinking, a sumbel, and much more drinking.
The games usually entail sports and tests of martial skill, although given that any outdoor activity in Arizona during August is dangerous (Heat exhaustion is not fun.) my kindred usually takes it easy indoors (Does Xbox count as martial competition?  ) We do play tafl, an ancestral norse game somewhat like chess. Competitive drinking usually starts around noon.
A unique historical artifact of the holiday is the collection of wheat. In ancient times, three sheafs of wheat were kept aside from the harvest, the first sheaf, the last sheaf, and the best sheaf. The first sheaf was made into a loaf of bread to be consumed on freyfaxi, the last one was put aside for a special bread to be eaten at Yuletide, and the best sheaf of the harvest was kept to be made into a loaf that would be left outside during December's wild hunt as an offering to the furious host.
Since nobody in my kindred harvests wheat, and several of us are brewers, we do something a bit different, and brew up a special beer. Consuming one third on freyfaxi, and saving the other two in a similar way as above.
The blot (pronounced "Bloat") is an offering of hamingja(a spiritual force somewhat similar to karma) is made first to the Deity being celebrated (Freyr, in this case.) and then an offering is received from the deity. In ancient times, the offering was either consecrated mead or an animal, in the case of an animal, the spilled blood was the offering to the God, whilst the consumed meat was considered the offering received from the God. These days most of us use mead, with one drought poured out in offering, and a second drought consumed in receiving.
After blot we feast, and after feasting we celebrate, by drinking, singing, telling stories, and general reveling.
The Sumbel is the holiest rite in Asatru, and is performed by a series of toasts. A horn of mead is passed around, in the first round, each member announces a toast to their deity of choice. In the second round, the dead are honored, either heroes or ancestors. In the third round, we toast to ourselves, a little well-earned boasting is not frowned upon in Asatru, and we see a measure of pride as being a positive thing if it is well-earned. |
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