Baruch de Spinoza (1632-1677)

During the time of Rembrandt, there lived in Amsterdam a shy and courteous young man who studied rabbinical law and the Holy Scriptures, but who at the age of twenty-four so outraged his fellow Jews that he was violently chastised and excommunicated from his religion and community.Baruch de Spinoza was the son of prosperous Portuguese immigrants who had fled the religious and political persecution of the Inquisition for the safety and freedom of Holland. These Portuguese Jews had concealed their religion in their homeland through conversion, but had still practiced Judaism secretly. 

Spinoza was able to witness firsthand the conflict between these newly arrived “Conversos” (or converts) and the Ashkenazic or Talmudic Jews who had resided in Amsterdam for centuries. Added to the turmoil was the availability in this free society of a secular education. Young Baruch not only learned the classics of literature and philosophy, but also was able to study Latin and, horror of horrors, the New Testament taught to him by an ex-Jesuit priest.While a young student he became a member of a group of radical thinkers and at the same time learned the craft of grinding optical lenses. By temperament he was slightly melancholic but remarkably even, never quick to respond in anger. 

He managed to subsist on a barely nutritious diet consisting mainly of buttered porridge and gruel flavored with raisins.It is not entirely clear how the dispute with the Jewish community arose. However, he was accused of denying the existence of angels, the orientation of the Bible by God, and the immortality of the soul. The official excommunication document may still be read today; its virulence was obviously intended to leave him in unending torment. Spinoza was thrown out of his community and even threatened with assassination. 

Ironically, the Portuguese and Spanish refugees of Amsterdam, safe in their bourgeois existence, had conducted their own Inquisition.Baruch (“blessed” in Hebrew) changed his name to the Latin equivalent, Benedictus, and after some wandering, finally settled in The Hague. Other than a small state pension and an annuity from an admiring friend, he supported himself through his lens craft. All other offers for help were quietly rejected, even a professorship at the prestigious university in Heidelberg. 

He preferred a scholar’s life, austere, ascetic, the monk’s habit of the poor workman. He died at age forty-four, alone, of a lung disease caused by his repeated breathing in of toxic dust from grinding glass.Despite this life of virtual obscurity and sobriety, Spinoza is recognized as one of the central figures in the history of philosophy. Despite his excommunication, many philosophers correctly call him a “God-intoxicated man.” Despite his denial of divinity as the original source of the Bible, Spinoza is commonly regarded as the first modern biblical critic. 

And despite his reverence for reason, his work has elicited a baneful irrationality from many important philosophers and writers who followed him.Spinoza’s philosophy was expressed in a theological and political study, the Tractatus Theologico-Politicus (the only book of his published while he lived) and the Ethics. He was surely influenced by the rational teachings of Maimonides, but was also marked by the anti-rationalism of the Jewish mystics or cabalists. This combination of reason and “unreason” carried his philosophical investigations out of Jewish tradition to a point of no return.While Spinoza believed in resolving disputes through reason, he did not believe, as did Maimonides, that the Messiah would come through strict obedience to God’s law. Rather, Spinoza urged that religious writings be cast aside as worthless and artificial. 

Only through pure intellect could man’s passions be tamed. Spinoza then sought a prescription for what he perceived as the disease of the emotions. Sin was not due to evil but was caused by ignorance. Suffering was not an isolated event but was instead a part of an infinitely larger and uncaring whole. If man only accepted that he was part of an unchanging order of nature, of God (they were the same to Spinoza), then hatred and sorrow, worry and upset, anger and deceit, would vanish.

God is not only everything (pantheism), God is in every mode of life. Nothing is left to chance. There is no free will. If we would only realize this, we would be liberated. Albert Einstein, echoing Spinoza, is quoted as having said that “the Old One does not play dice.”In his Ethics, Spinoza used Euclidean geometry as essential proof of the inevitability of his philosophy. Not only has God predetermined everything, but also Spinoza’s use of geometric progressions makes his philosophy appear immutable and absolute.

Spinoza’s approach to biblical analysis revolutionized the way people viewed religious tradition. His rational discussions of biblical tales in their historical context exposed the sometimes superstitious and complex commentaries of Talmudic teachings. Spinoza’s cold-blooded observations led the way for Voltaire and others during the French Enlightenment of the eighteenth century to ridicule Christianity and what they considered its cartoon cousin, Judaism. Inadvertently, Spinoza gave anti-Semites an intellectual basis for attack. 

While revealing the Bible to be an inexact history, his method undermined permanently the foundations of organized religion and had a long-term and deadly effect on the Jewish community.Contemporary philosophy rejects much of Spinoza while remaining in awe of him. Each new generation finds something of itself in his words. The German Romantic writers at the beginning of the 1800s imposed their own world on Spinoza; the great poet Goethe considered Spinoza essential to an understanding of the cosmos. 

In the last century, the eminent British philosopher Bertrand Russell found weakness in Spinoza’s ideas, preferring the twentieth-century scientific view that facts are never fully discovered by reasoning but rather by observation. Yet Russell adored Spinoza with an uncharacteristic ardor, urging that his philosophy be used to flee the insanity of modern life, so that we may never again be paralyzed by the bitterness of despair.

Read More

Mary (b. ca. 20 B.C.E.)

There are very few details of her life. What is known is in the Gospels, mostly picturesque references written by sages who lived more than a century after her death. We know of her, of course, due to the great life and death of her son. Yet Mary, daughter of Galilean parents, with the Hebrew name, Miriam, became the most influential woman and mother in human history.In the art of the early church, she is depicted as a queen to Jesus, the emperor. 

The largely illiterate flock of the young church needed visual stimulus to aid in their prayer and to comprehend biblical stories. The Byzantine Church sought to move worshipers away from pagan ties. With the almost geometric increase of saints and martyrs vying for attention, and in direct conflict with the proscription against graven images in the Old Testament, the Church mass-produced icons of their faces, including otherworldly, often sorrowful portraits of Mary.

In the fifth and sixth centuries Christian religious leaders sublimated worship of Hellenic and Egyptian gods (among others), retaining from these symbols their most loving features. The “cult of Mary” was awarded August 13 each year as the Feast of the Assumption, on the day formerly reserved for Isis and Artemis, pagan goddesses of fertility and the hunt.Through the following centuries, the common people assigned to Mary the spirit of all motherhood. The special place in their hearts and aspirations for the Virgin influenced the development of Christianity and world culture simultaneously. 

After the terrors of the Dark Ages (reflected in what was a harsh religious environment), people sought a more humane environment in which to pray. In the twelfth and thirteenth centuries the idolatry of Mary, called “Mariology,” made her the most beloved figure in history. No longer was the demanding God sternly casting damned souls into Hell. The Blessed Virgin would save her children, give them warmth, good health, hope. She had pity, a mother’s compassion.Mary became for many medieval Christians almost a part of the Trinity. Although a role for her in the Trinity was denied by theologians, her developing role as protector and intermediary with God transformed the Church into a more caring institution.

Church fathers from Augustine to Popes in recent times took special care in defining her place in the religious hierarchy. The Gospels stated that Jesus was “born of a woman.” Some assigned this the Hebraic definition meaning that Jesus was a human being, truly a man. Without a human parent, his activity among men would be too supernatural. Others denied the virgin birth, asserting that they did so in the name of humanity. How could Jesus be human if not born as others were? This question of the guarantee of the Incarnation remains controversial. Like belief in Jesus as divine, it remains fundamentally a matter of faith.Although textual variants in the Gospel of Matthew include lines that “Joseph begat Jesus,” the greatest amount of Christian writings concerning Mary are about her virginity. 

It is the almost unanimous teaching of Catholicism that Mary conceived Jesus with her virginity intact.That her virginity was unimpaired was tied to the Pauline concept of original sin. All people are inherently sinful, said Paul. The later Church (as late as the 1800s in official dogma) declared that she was immaculate. At the very moment of her conception she was freed from sin.It was stated by theologians in the fourth century that Mary was the theotokos, the “God bearer.” When Jesus was pronounced divine at that time by the Church, her title as the Mother of God followed logically. Her sacred purpose inspired icon painters in the Eastern Orthodox Church. Others viewed her as the symbol of humanity’s redemption through nature. 

The minnesingers and troubadours of the Middle Ages sang praises to her perfect nobility. Through her, chivalry was born. During the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, Italian Renaissance artists saw her as the exemplar of ideal beauty. “Ave Maria,” full of grace, was sung with consoling warmth in Catholic churches. Much of the loveliness of Christian art was inspired by the physical beauty of woman, personified by Mary’s image.Mary became the Church’s symbol of family and the central role of the mother. Christian visions of apocalypse and terror (inspired no doubt more from the plague of life in the Dark Ages than from religion) were transformed into dreams of mercy and compassion.

In modern times, the symbol of Mary, full of warmth and grace, has been altered by some philosophers, psychoanalysts, feminists, and entertainers. Recast as a female goddess figure, cited as the origin of the “whore/Madonna” syndrome of male oppression, or exploited by an Catholic Italian American rock star into one of the most profitable (and debased) show business reputations, the myth of Mary, even if corrupted, retains remarkable powers.

Read More

Theodor Herzl (1860-1904)

He was a fop, a boulevard dandy. He was said to have adored Wagnerian opera, fancy dress, cafe gossip, parading down the avenue. He was everything a fin de siècle gentleman should be, sporting a full but perfectly trimmed beard, writing fashionable plays, moody travel pieces, and feuilletons, enjoying the idle pleasures of a young man in peacetime Vienna. However, while reporting in the early 1890s as the Paris correspondent of a leading Viennese newspaper, he was transformed by the vicious anti-Semitic Dreyfus affair. 

More than a decade of creative and commercial writing culminated in 1896 with feverish work on a pamphlet proclaiming the necessity of a Jewish state. Though others before him had urged a return to Zion, it was Theodor Herzl’s visionary article and political devotion in organizing a Zionist movement that led fifty years later to the creation of the State of Israel. Herzl’s zeal also led to a debilitating heart condition, which ended his life abruptly at age forty-four, leaving his ailing young widow alone with three small children.Although Herzl is identified with Vienna, he was born and raised in Budapest. 

The Hungarian capital was at the edge of the Austrian empire, a border town rising during the 1800s into a great city. His father won and lost most of his fortune in business, alienating son Theodor from commercial pursuits and turning him to literary goals. His mother, devoted to German language, literature, and culture, exposed Herzl to the influences, which marked his lifelong outlook and expectations.After the death of his nineteen-year-old sister from typhoid fever, Herzl and his parents relocated in Vienna. At the urging of his parents, he began law studies at the university. He rapidly became more Viennese than the Viennese. 

Vienna was then fertile ground for the many young Jews who came to live and work in the city. Not far from the Herzls lived Arthur Schnitzler, the great novella writer, and Gustav Mahler, soon to become a leading conductor and one of the most important composers of the turn of the century. Although Herzl was at first militantly pro-German (as Freud, Schnitzler, and Mahler had also been), his experiences with anti-Semites in university clubs and with Jews who despised being Jewish (seeking to hide in German Kultur) began to affect him. For beneath the sweet veneer of Viennese Gemütlìchkeit, or congeniality, sinister forces lay ready to leap out. 

These forces burst forth in the election of the popular Karl Lüger as mayor of Vienna. Lüger, a charismatic anti-Semite, inspired a young house painter named Hitler whose hand-to-mouth existence a few years later in Vienna would shape his passion for power and hatred of Jews. (Sigmund Freud recognized the power of these dark forces in man’s subconscious, and his discoveries led to the establishment of modern psychoanalytic therapy.)After working as a law clerk for a short, unhappy period, Herzl, supported by his father, devoted himself to writing. Gradually his short, melancholy travel pieces and plays became fashionable. After a major success at the most prominent Viennese theater, Herzl felt emboldened to marry a young Jewish woman of considerable fortune. 

He learned soon thereafter, however, that during their courtship she had masked a deepening psychosis. Despite the births of his three beloved children (one of whom would die in Theresienstadt, a Nazi concentration camp), his wife’s illness and Herzl’s temperament contributed to a desperate and unhappy marriage.Herzl was hired by the Neue Freie Presse, Vienna’s most famous newspaper, first as a freelance travel writer and later as a foreign correspondent. Separated from (and later reconciled with) his wife and family, Herzl began in 1891 his Parisian assignment. It was the era of the époque époque, the time of Toulouse-Lautrec, Debussy, Baudelaire, and Bernhardt. At first, Herzl was enthralled by the French capital. 

However, soon his adoration was quelled by the anti-Semitic Drumont and Mayer incidents culminating in that international scandal, the Dreyfus affair.A notorious anti-Semite, Edouard Drumont, accused a prominent politician of being manipulated by the Jews. A series of duels between anti-Semites and Jewish military men followed, as officers’ patriotism (and affiliation with the hated Germans!) was tested. Herzl reported in great detail on the Drumont trial as well as the well-attended funeral of the Jewish army officer Captain Armand Mayer, who had died in a duel brought on by a French chauvinism poisoned with hate.The playwright Herzl began imagining grandiose plans to save world Jewry from these irrational forces. 

First, he would fight a duel with some prominent anti-Semite, like Lüger. Rather, he would make a grand alliance with the Pope to convert all the Jews in Christendom to Christianity.In 1894, reality in the form of the Dreyfus affair brought Herzl to a clearer vision. Herzl, in fact, was present on the military ground when Dreyfus was shorn of his rank and sword in an infamous tableau of degradation and injustice.Spurred to action by the Dreyfus affair, Herzl sought out the help of Baron Maurice de Hirsch, one of the wealthiest Jews in the world and a supporter of Jewish settlement in the New World. In an embarrassing interview with Hirsch, the nervous Herzl failed to set forth clearly his still unformed plans for the rescue of European Jewry by exodus to a new Zion. 

Commentators have since remarked that Herzl’s failure with Hirsch was a great tragedy as the rich man had the desire and the means to implement the visions Herzl would later state so clearly.Unfazed by his failure with Hirsch, Herzl went on to develop an exodus scheme partaking of Wagnerian pageantry. As he revealed his plan to learned colleagues, Herzl was greeted with shock, dismay, and fears for his sanity. Toning down the literary bent of his initial draft, Herzl reworked his plan into what would become a celebrated pamphlet, “The Jewish State: An Attempt at a Modern Solution of the Jewish Question.” Jewry would request that the world provide a land large enough to house a nation. It did not matter where Zion would be. The Jewish people would approve the location offered if it met certain reasonable requirements. 

The state would be modern and progressive, incorporating all the latest and best ideas of civilized society. Herzl did not envision that Hebrew would be the nation’s language. Rather, the first Jewish settlers would communicate in all of their languages until a national dialect emerged from the most practical tongue.The pamphlet was initially printed in five hundred copies by a small Viennese bookseller. Within months the pamphlet had received worldwide attention and controversy, aided by virulent attacks by anti-Semitic politicians and press.With the help of a merchant named David Wolffsohn, who after Herzl’s death became the president of the Zionist movement, Herzl began to organize (a Zionist political organization), propagandize (by writing, editing, and publishing a Zionist weekly), and politick (meeting quixotically and unsuccessfully with important political leaders such as the grand vizier of Turkey and Kaiser Wilhelm). 

Baron de Hirsch died just as the movement began to gain momentum.Herzl used the remaining years of his life in the service of his cause. He founded and wrote a weekly newspaper in German as the official organ of the movement. His ability to entrance his listeners with visions of Zion gained him many followers despite the opposition of some rabbis and their flocks. To show the world the serious nature of what was being discussed at each annual Zionist congress, Herzl insisted that formal dress be worn. Failing to secure the Turkish ruler’s grant of Palestine as an autonomous Jewish region, Herzl began to gain the attention of British authorities. In 1903, he was offered a charter by Great Britain for Jewish settlement in Uganda. Herzl was willing to accept Africa as the site of the new homeland, but met violent opposition at the Zionist congress. 

The conflict over this issue rapidly became bitter and led to Herzl’s death of a heart attack in 1904 near Vienna.His funeral was attended by countless thousands who descended on Vienna from all over Europe. The Viennese were shocked by the depth of Jewish reaction to Herzl’s death. They remembered him only as a literary type who had some fanciful nationalist ideals. The anti-Semitic press, however, did not resist the opportunity to publish nasty rhymes, which sought to dance on Herzl’s grave.In remote parts of Europe, however, old rabbis and young people felt the meaning of Herzl’s message. Both Chaim Weizmann, later architect of the Balfour Declaration and first president of the State of Israel, and David Ben-Gurion, later to be its first prime minister and then growing up in a small town in Poland, responded in their individual ways with deep grief. 

Inspired by Herzl’s visions, they were ready to lead the first pioneers to the soil of Palestine. Herzl predicted in 1897 that he had founded the Jewish state; his prediction came true just fifty years later.Herzl’s Zionism also in a way gave rise to a parallel Arab nationalism, which has also sought a homeland grounded in history and myth. Herzl had foreseen conflict with the Arabs but asserted that Jews and Arabs could build together a greater society based on their best qualities. Herzl’s influence on world history is still unfolding.His remains were moved in 1949 to a hill just west of Jerusalem. On Mount Herzl he lies with his compatriot David Wolffsohn. A large military cemetery containing fallen heroes of Israel’s tragic wars and Yad Vashem, the Holocaust memorial, are nearby. Like Moses, Herzl was driven by dreams of Zion. It would be left to others to lead the remnants of the faithful home.

Read More

Karl Marx (1818-1883)

During the late 1980s, Communists ceased to dictate the affairs of Eastern Europe and Russia. Even China and Vietnam, once rigidly extreme examples of Marxism, adopted capitalist methods. Despite the retreat of much of the world from his teachings, Karl Heinrich Marx, a German Jew, descended on both sides from generations of rabbis, remains the most influential political philosopher in Jewish and indeed world history.Marx was born in Trier, a small town in the Rhineland. His father, Heinrich was a prosperous lawyer, his uncle, the town’s rabbi. Seeking to improve his position by denying his heritage and over the rabbi’s objections, Heinrich converted his immediate family, including six-year-old Karl, to the Lutheran Church. 

Instead of the yeshiva, Karl went to a secular gymnasium. The conversion of Karl Marx would have the gravest consequences on the future of much of the world.Marx was educated at universities in Bonn, Berlin, and Jena (the last, more a degree market than a school). He was particularly drawn to the philosophic teachings of G.W.F. Hegel. Marx first thought he would become a poet, then a philosopher, and finally a journalist. He met another young Jewish thinker, Moses Hess, who had founded the Rhenish Gazette. 

Hess initially used his journal to criticize the reactionary policies of the Prussian government. Marx overwhelmed Hess, taking on editorial control, attacking the local government, and after fifteen months was stripped of his German citizenship and deported to France for criticizing Berlin’s alliance with Moscow.With his newly wed twenty-nine-year-old wife, Jenny von Westphalen (whom he married after seven years of courtship, the death of her objecting father, a baron, and wearing down her widowed mother), Marx settled in the Paris of Balzac, Chopin, and Sand and gained the acquaintance of another German expatriate, poet Heinrich Heine. 

During this period, Marx also met the Russian anarchist Mikhail Bakunin and the French radical author Pierre Joseph Proudhon.However, Marx’s most fortunate encounter was with Friedrich Engels, the impressionable son of a wealthy German textile manufacturer. Engels was a curious mixture of capitalist factory owner and revolutionary. Marx was impressed by Engels’s writings on the English working class and his ability to express himself clearly and simply. For nearly the next forty years, Engels would largely support his friend (often to his own detriment). Other than an occasional newspaper job, Marx never worked for a living, preferring to spend his days studying and writing articles and manifestos (all eagerly edited by Engels). 

To this day it is often impossible in Marxist literature to distinguish the ideas of Marx from the style of Engels.Expelled again, this time from Paris to Brussels, Marx, living on Engels’ support, wrote his first important work, The Poverty of Philosophy, in 1847. One year later, Marx and Engels published their most important joint work, The Communist Manifesto. Only days after its publication (and having nothing to do with its radical ideas), workers in France and Germany rebelled against political oppression. It was as if Marx and Engels had predicted their revolt. Yet Marx’s class war was not on the revolutionaries’ minds, but rather progressive, liberal politics. During these unstable years, Marx predicted (almost forty times) that the era of class struggle would foster rebellion. He was mostly wrong about the near future but brutally accurate about the next century.

Throughout his life, Marx bitterly opposed the tsarist regime in Russia, identifying it as the most oppressive in the world. Ironically, Marxism would be responsible for Stalin’s massacre of millions of landed peasants and the frigid death of the Gulag.Much more than his friend, the lyrical poet Heine, Karl Marx became a virulently self-hating Jew. His vicious temperament (whether a product of his miserable life or equally difficult self), loathing for Jewish culture, warping of his people’s history, and fiercely analytical mind, combined to form one of the most influential economic and political systems of any age (Marx’s well-known anti-Semitism strangely did not discourage young Jews of future generations from leaving behind their heritage to follow his example). 

Marx viewed his ideas as rooted in and compelled by history. It was imperative to him that people understand his interpretation of history and act accordingly. For him, his ideas were a new Gospel—Marxism as Torah and Talmud uttered by its only prophet.A specter is wandering over Europe now—the specter of Communism.The workers have nothing to lose but their chains. Workers, everywhere, UNITE!Drawn to the revolutionary fires of 1848, Marx returned to Germany. He began to publish and distribute a new Rhenish Gazette, was quickly arrested and tried for sedition, and won an acquittal by his own eloquent defense. Although they lost in the courts, the authorities found another, more effective way of silencing Marx. 

He was expelled forever from his homeland as a subversive alien.Refused admittance to France and Belgium, Marx and family traveled to England. For most of the rest of his life, Marx lived in abject poverty in London’s slums. Several of his children died in young childhood. Marx chose to work only on his research and writings, spending hours in the British Museum compiling statistics to justify his philosophic claims. A small allowance from Engels, some journalistic work for the New York Tribune of Charles A. Dana, and the remains of an inheritance from his wife’s mother sustained the family.Marx’s personal fury over his wretched condition exploded in Das Kapital (“Capital”), a huge and severe indictment of the economics of his contemporary society. 

The volume was to be the first in a series of tomes, which Engels completed from Marx’s voluminous notes after his death.Marx’s only effort to organize in the spirit of his beliefs was an involvement in the First International of the 1860s. Marx was placed on the council of this loose confederation of workers. He proceeded with bulldog perseverance first to dominate and then, when he could not get his complete way, to destroy the organization. (To his credit, during these years, and despite a racist bent, Marx loudly supported the North in the American Civil War, trumpeting with the fervor of an abolitionist the delivery of African-Americans from slavery.) In 1870, Prussia savagely defeated France. Marx supported the leftist revolutionaries of the Paris commune who attempted in vain during a period of political vacuum to seize control of France. 

In their frenzy, the commune leaders executed the archbishop of Paris and other prominent leaders. Establishment forces reacted with a massacre of their own, staining the medieval byways of old Paris blood red. For his support, Marx became internationally known as the infamous “Red Doctor.” In the common psyche, communism became synonymous with deadly violence, an association which Lenin and Mao later proved true.In his remaining years, Marx was viewed (mostly by much younger, idealistic followers) as the gray eminence of communism. After the quickly successive deaths of his beloved Jennys, wife and daughter, he raged no more. Marx was buried in Highgate Cemetery in London. His grave became almost a holy shrine to his believers.Marx’s work is an integral (and, for some, hateful) part of mankind’s intellect. 

From Marxism came the famous “isms” of Lenin, Trotsky, and Mao. Partly in reaction to his leftist creed came the fatal onslaught of the Fascists and Nazis.Marx’s concept of the exploitation of the workers by the bosses was, however, only part of economic life. Ideas of “surplus value,” or excess left to owners after exploitation of workers, did not fully explain how output was affected, quality controlled, or worth created. Marx seemingly ignored the fact that people were worth something too. Spiritual, cultural, and intellectual capital did make a difference. His intense concentration on the causes and operations of systems failed to recognize the interplay of people making things happen. Initiative has never been induced by a five-year plan.

Marx’s personal aloofness and arrogance also served as the prime example for future communist leaders. Lenin believed strongly that the masses had to be led by an elite; left alone, they would barely aspire to trade unionism. “Dictatorship of the proletariat” became a hollow phrase connoting terror, dull lives, conformity, class-consciousness but no conscience, democratic republics without democracy. Marx’s dream of a Utopia far from his impoverished existence was a world under control. He forgot basic Jewish principles that man cannot avoid responsibility by retreating into regulated behavior. The world is too complex for so simplistic an answer.

Read More

Saul of Tarsus (Saint Paul) (4-64 c. E.)

He was a Jew, born at Tarsus in Cilicia (now Turkey), raised in Jerusalem, the great Rabbi Gamaliel’s pupil, called Pharisee of the Pharisees, a tentmaker, zealous all his life for God. Known through the centuries as Saint Paul, apostle to the Gentile world; without this remarkable Jewish man, it is unlikely that Christianity would have become a worldwide religion.As this is a book about influence, not greatness, and people are ordered here in relation to the power of their influence, Paul must rank near Moses and Jesus as the most influential Jewish religious figure of all time. 

Paul, however, would not have existed were it not for Jesus of Nazareth. Jesus was surely the greater man, his followers assert, the greatest spirit the world has ever known. Paul, however, may have been more influential in shaping his present and the future. For all the good and sorrow it would bring to the world, the universal religion of Christianity could not have been created out of Messianic Judaism without the unique genius of Saul of Tarsus.During his lifetime, the grandiose Second Temple was built by Herod the Great in Jerusalem. 

At the same time, developing out of the compelling logic of its precepts and to some degree marked by overwhelming Roman persecution, Judaism became not a faith only of Temple rituals and sacrifices, but a religion of interior thoughts. Great rabbis such as Hillel, Shammai, Gamaliel (and later, Akiba and Johanan ben Zakkai), stressed the overwhelming importance and, more crucially, the meaning of the law, a temple of belief grounded in the Torah, not in a great edifice.Paul’s huge leap was to guide non-Jews into Jewish monotheism without demanding they be circumcised or observe dietary laws or countless regulations of virtuous behavior. Paul indeed quotes the Torah in his Epistles some six dozen times, to deny the references each time. 

Only through faith in a man Paul considered the Messiah would salvation be reached.Paul recognized that without belief in the Resurrection and in the history and divinity of Jesus, Christianity unravels. For Paul, Jesus’ death was a crucial event in world history. With the Resurrection, death itself is overcome. “Grave, where is thy triumph? Death, where is thy sting?” Rather than the appeasement of God in countless Temple sacrifices of birds and sheep, the “Lamb of God” died on the cross to set his children free. The sacrifice of one life for all, in Paul’s view, was a singular and essential act of atonement for humanity.

Like some of the early Jewish Christians, he was obsessed with the death on the Cross. Paul was much less concerned about the actual events of Jesus’ life. Many of the early Jewish Christians did not know how to deal with Jesus’ awful death. The Romans reserved death-by crucifixion, a shameful, horrifying form of execution, for those they considered the worst criminals, for rebellious slaves and terrorists against Rome. 

Paul’s obsession with the Crucifixion arises directly from his novel theory of original sin. In contrast to the basic optimism of Judaism (that good works, virtue, morality, and righteousness count; God can be seen in all the minutiae of life, therefore most facets of daily living require regulation to ensure order and a religious spirit), Paul’s view was largely pessimistic. Jewish law, he argued, cannot be wholly followed. We are imperfect. We cannot obey every rule, every moment. The law’s very presence establishes how truly sinful people are. Jesus, unlike Paul, clearly stated that the law must be obeyed. For Paul, faith in Jesus supplanted the need for the law.The aggregate sin of mankind is so overwhelming that one unique person had to pay for it. 

Paul saw Jesus’ death on the Cross as the cost of man’s sin. Indeed, in a literate attempt to explain Pauline theology, A.N. Wilson and others have dubbed Paul’s new religion “Crosstianity.”With the Resurrection, Paul was convinced that hope everlasting had brightened a dark world. Through Jesus’ love and forgiveness, sin was forgotten and heavenly grace opened the eternal kingdom to the weakest slave. The meek and the strong, rich and poor, girl and boy, can commune with God only through Jesus.Paul was the product of a wealthy, cosmopolitan, Hellenized background. He spoke and wrote in Greek and was a Roman citizen. 

At first a strictly religious Jew, zealous in his defense of his faith, and a confessed persecutor of Christians, on a journey to Damascus he abruptly shifted to a belief in Jesus as the Messiah or Christ. Saul became Paul. His conversion to Christianity in a blaze of blinding light remains controversial. Recent studies of the early Jewish Christian church reveal that Paul opposed the Jerusalem church (led by Jesus’ brother James) in the most vehement terms. He viewed it as just another sect, though following “the Way,” too obsessed with traditional Jewish ritual, believing in Jesus only as a great prophet, and not open to Gentile converts.This Pharisee of the first century was the greatest publicist and interpreter in human history. We know him from his own writings. In notable addition to the historian Josephus, Paul’s Epistles are the only extant written record of a first-century Pharisee we now possess. 

Like many of the other Pharisees of his era (contrary to biased custom, the Pharisees were devout men and the founders of Talmudic Judaism), he was a pious and God-filled man. But Paul was obsessed with the idea of Jesus.Of course, the Christian religion is the result of the work and ideas of two men, Jesus and Paul. However, it was Paul who combined his Hellenic background and Diaspora Judaism (much more liberal in personal habits and not tied to worship in the Temple in Jerusalem) with the messianic solution, to create a new theology, a new religion—and to gather sufficient followers to ensure its survival. Paul was the first to understand that belief in Jesus of Nazareth had a cosmic importance. The changes basic to Jesus’ teachings demanded a break with Jewish practice (Paul’s conflict with the Jerusalem church of James may have contributed to this schism). 

While Jesus lived in a wholly Jewish country, preaching and seeking to influence Jews only, Paul proselytized in a largely Gentile empire. Most Jews would not naturally recognize any man as divine, but in the Gentile world men (especially royalty) were continually being made gods. It was easier therefore for non-Jews to commune with God through the symbol of a perfectly good man. Perhaps Paul’s idea of grace was his most persuasive lesson. God, Paul argued, forgave everyone out of an infinite and divine love of humanity, without regard for morals or evil acts. To the downtrodden masses living without hope under Roman tyranny, such an idea, tied to life eternal in God’s kingdom, proved irresistible. Paul, the first Christian theologian and credited by many historians as the “creator” of a religion, expressed in his own dynamic prose a way for an ancient monotheistic religion to become a universal practice. 

He changed not only biblical law and history, but provided an alternative concept and purpose for people. For Paul, Jews were not the only people chosen specially for God’s grace.The writings of Paul had a profound influence on his contemporaries in establishing early Christianity, as well as on generations of important figures such as Augustine, Aquinas, Luther, and Calvin. When Christian theologians have sought answers to essential questions, they have frequently turned to Paul’s letters for inspiration.It is also clear that without Gentile acceptance of the Christian faith (a faith grounded in Jewish virtues and traditions) the future history of the world would have been radically different. Without Paul there would have been no shift to government-endorsed Christianity under the Emperor Constantine, no Church centered in Rome (the site of Peter’s and Paul’s deaths), no Greek culture tinted with Judeo-Christian ethics, no Crusades, no Catholic-Protestant European wars—in fact, no Christian religion.

Read More

Abraham (ca. 20th—19th century B.C.E.; according to the Bible, 1813-1638B.C.E.)

Father of three great Semitic religions, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, ancestor of the Hebrew and Arabic peoples, seminal prophet, model of holy obedience, believer in and recipient of a personal, eternal covenant with his single, eternal God, Abraham is surely one of the most influential men in the history of the world.Until the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, most people assumed that he really existed. The stories of the Bible were accepted with faith, no questions asked. Then philosophers such as Georg Hegel began to rationalize the lives of the Patriarchs, imposing contemporary concepts on age-old tales. 

Later, archaeological digs at Abraham’s birthplace, the city of Ur on the banks of the Euphrates River near the Persian Gulf, and the discovery in recent years of ancient tablets corroborating many of the names of his relatives, friends, and enemies, appeared to confirm his history. Time worn ruins exposed to light after thousands of years confirm that Abraham lived in a sophisticated society, not with primitive Middle Bronze Age men. Cities were ruled by monarchs tied to other rulers for trade and security. Never out of sight from a city’s gates were its planting fields, the lives of its inhabitants nurtured by the fruits of the soil. God’s gift of the Promised Land to his people has a special meaning when one remembers how close to the earth Abraham and his brethren truly were.

He was a leader or sheik of a group of nomads or outcasts called the Habiru (later the Hebrews). The Habiru, a group of non—city dwellers, wandered from place to place, settling for short periods, yanking up their roots to move on when it suited their purpose. Not a part of settled society, the Habiru were viewed with distrust, but also with a hard-won respect. Unlike the more pastoral Bedouin, whose movement was tied to the grazing of their animals and their agriculture, the Habiru served as mercenaries and traders. Their wanderlust did not lead them to build cities, but wherever they roamed, they kept their language, literature, and beliefs. 

Their religion was portable—thus Abraham, the first wandering Jew.Indeed, the Bible records his remarkable moving around the Middle East, from his birthplace near the Persian Gulf, through the land of Canaan, past drought, to the harvests of Egypt and back. Along the way Abraham negotiated treaties with local kings, acted as a hired soldier, and purchased burial plots from the Hittites, noting carefully that he was a stranger and sojourner among them.As the pilgrim Abraham made his progress across deserts and mountains, he did not immediately become the great prophet of legend. His wanderings exposed him to personal danger and hardship. As a kind of early Moses, his mettle was tested. 

First called Abram (probably an Amorite name), he was transformed by his experiences and faith into a new man, Abraham. While the Canaanites prayed to their old god El for a plentiful harvest and long life, Abraham expanded such worship into a special new relationship. The concept of a land promised forever to one people, a special covenant with the children of Abraham, was novel, and is unique to the Jewish religion. Yet this covenant may be revoked if God’s laws are not carefully followed. Heavenly grace and favor are won only after an anxious existence. 

Abraham’s tale first made plain the delicate nature of Jewish life through the ages.The patriarch’s deepest faith was challenged when he was instructed to carry his son Isaac (delivered from the womb of his elderly and barren wife, Sarah, long after her child-rearing years) to the top of a mountain to sacrifice. Isaac too, in his passive acceptance of his fate, is an ideal symbol. God can take back all that has been given, the covenant as a lease, not a perpetual gift. 

When Abraham was restrained from sacrificing his son, an essential lesson was taught mankind: human life is sacred and adored by God. Indeed, recent archaeological digs in Israel have uncovered jars from Abraham’s time containing remains of little children who apparently were killed by the Canaanites in ghastly ancient rituals. The story of Abraham and Isaac showed humanity how to believe and to trust.

To the Jews, Abraham is their ancestor, the father of Isaac, whose son Jacob was also called Israel. Descended from Shem, Noah’s son, Abraham was a S(h)emite and that rare model of strict obedience to divine law. He exhibits pity and concern for the evil of Sodom and Gomorrah, bargaining with God over how many good men still remain in those decadent towns. His faith in God is unshakeable. He is willing to sacrifice his Isaac at his Lord’s direction. Abraham receives God’s promise of a Promised Land and a people infinitely numbered.

For the Christians, the promises given by God to Abraham are fulfilled in Jesus. Abraham and Jesus both possessed a simple faith, which motivated their actions. The renunciation of the “Son of God” by the “Father” is analogous to the “sacrifice” of Isaac by Abraham. Both Abraham and Jesus were transformed absolutely by their absolute faith. While Abraham received the covenant for his people, Jesus was said to have transmitted God’s love for all to share.Muslims share the same devotion to Abraham as Jews and Christians. As the actual father of Ishmael, the father of the Arabs, Abraham establishes Mecca as the one true sanctuary of God. Abraham’s flight from Ur is also an archetype for the Prophet’s flight from Mecca. 

Abraham is a prime example of Islamic virtue, the man who lives by God’s laws, is righteous and pleasing to his Supreme Judge; his receipt from God of the original unveiling of divine truth is best expressed for Muslims in the blessed Koran without what they have viewed as the distortions of Judaism and Christianity.Abraham’s central place as the father of the three great Semitic religions, the source of monotheism throughout the world, demands that his descendants try finally to make peace with one another. All three religions share the same early language, the same belief in the one God of Abraham and the prophecy that there is a purpose under Heaven to what happens in the world, and that without ethical behavior man is bereft of his divine origin.

Read More

Sigmund Freud (1856-1939)

In any list of the most influential Jews of not only recent history but of all time, Sigmund Freud must rank near the top. Freud was (in Paul Johnson’s words in A History of the Jews) “the greatest of all Jewish innovators.” There is much truth to Johnson’s characterization. Freud’s colleague and personal propagandist Ernest Jones (in his three-volume biography of the Viennese psychoanalyst) also noted the huge influence the founder of psychoanalysis had on many fields. To name but a few, Jones identified Freud’s impact on clinical psychiatry, biology, anthropology, sociology, religion, the occult, art, literature, psychology, education, and criminology. 

There are few figures in history that have had so wide (and controversial) an effect.Freud is commonly known as the father of psychoanalytic theory and practice. He was not the first psychologist, yet he is the first person people discuss when they think about the diseases of the mind. Many of his theories were attacked when first introduced, and many are still disputed, others derided as imaginative but useless. Freud’s importance rests securely, however, in the quality of his thought, not just for the provocative nature of many of his theories. His ideas changed the way people think about the unconscious. Before him, most people thought hysteria was caused by demons.Because of Freud, people are now more understanding about mental illness. 

Prior to his discoveries, the mentally ill were thrown into insane asylums without hope of recovery. Despite lingering prejudice (and fear), many recognize psychological disorders today as simply another sickness, curable through therapy. Selecting the correct method of therapy has stirred the greatest controversy. Many scientists have questioned the medical basis of Freud’s theories. They are uncomfortable both with his psychoanalytic methods (which often take a long time to work) and with Freud’s basic assumptions. Still, his ideas continue to work their influence.Freud was born in the town of Freiberg, Moravia, then a district of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. 

His earliest memories were of a prosperous home. When Sigmund was four years old, however, his father lost his wool merchant business and the family moved to Vienna and into a period of great poverty. Freud would never forget the feelings of privation he suffered in his youth.His family members were not practicing Jews. Despite a fascination and respect for Jewish history and the character of his people, Freud was never observant. Yet he refused to convert, finding in his Jewish roots a strength to be different.

When he entered the University of Vienna, Freud was shocked to encounter the anti-Semitism of both students and faculty. Their racial hatred, sometimes muted, sometimes overt, both sensitized and energized him. He recalled later with some bitterness a story his father told him when he was ten. The young Jakob Freud was once walking well-dressed through the streets of Vienna, and suddenly his new fur cap was knocked off his head by a Christian thug shouting, “Jew! Get off the pavement.” Jakob walked quietly into the street, picked up his hat, and went away without protest. Sigmund was outraged by his father’s humiliation, referring to the story in traumatic terms. 

Freud’s rage over the incident fueled his desire to fight for his beliefs.A top student, Freud studied medicine with a particular fascination for the physical sciences. Not sure what he wanted to do, other than somehow study the human condition, he worked first as a researcher at a physiological institute, then, desperate to earn a better living, joined the staff of Vienna General Hospital. While working in the clinics of the hospital, Freud continued to conduct research. During this period he tinkered with the use of narcotics such as cocaine, becoming addicted, then suffering withdrawal. With his career sullied by rumors of his addiction, Freud left the hospital for studies with Jean Charcot, a prominent French neurologist in Paris. During this period he wrote over twenty articles on the nervous system.

When he returned to Vienna, reacting to the need to support his new wife, Martha Bernays, Freud set up a private practice as a neuropathologist. He began to work with another Jewish doctor, Josef Breuer, fourteen years his senior, who was conducting experiments in the treatment of hysteria through hypnosis. Together they attempted to treat a young woman by trying to purge her of her worst memories. In their classic text Studies in Hysteria, published in 1895, Breuer and Freud dubbed her “Anna O.” (Her real name was Bertha Pappenheim, and she would later do much to establish early German social welfare organizations.) Their cathartic method was a primitive precursor of later psychoanalytic techniques, but they attempted to show “Anna O.” that her repression of feelings and hysterical state were the result of a defense mechanism hiding the truth from herself.

Working from Breuer’s lead, Freud began to develop theories of sexuality that the older physician could not accept. Their friendship ended bitterly. This was to be the first of several important friendships Freud would enjoy, then angrily end over philosophical disagreements (Wilhelm Fliess, Carl Jung, and Alfred Adler, to name the three most famous). Freud acted like a biblical prophet when his ideas were questioned, surrounding himself with followers like a Hasidic rebbe uttering Talmudic wisdom to disciples hanging on every word.In 1900 Freud published arguably his greatest book, certainly his most influential. The Interpretation of Dreams revealed that people act without being fully conscious of their desires. By analyzing dreams, unconscious thoughts hidden from awareness can be uncovered and deciphered. 

Freud proposed new theories about what causes the way people feel and act. Regression, repression, displacement, transfers of emotional reactions, were all psychological states he first acknowledged. Freud made us think differently about the way we view ourselves and the words we use to describe those thoughts.With Sigmund Freud, a whole new vocabulary entered common language. Slips of the tongue (“Freudian slips”), infantile sexuality, sexual drive, reaction formations, the id, the ego, the superego, libido, Oedipus complex, inhibitions, phallic symbols, death wish, pleasure-pain principle, gratification, reality principle, attraction and repulsion, sublimation, anxiety avoidance, behavior modification, metapsychology—are all terms he coined in a treasury of psychological writings. He often used the lives of great men to prove his psychoanalytic theories. 

In particular, Freud was fascinated with the lives of Moses, Leonardo da Vinci, and William Shakespeare. Freud posited the theory that Moses was really an Egyptian and the true founder of Judaism (not Abraham). According to Freud, Moses took an Egyptian theory of monotheism and preached it to Jewish slaves. In a great confusion the Jews murdered Moses, carrying with them to this day an unconscious, never-ending guilt. Jews and non-Jews vilified Freud for his Moses tale, ignoring its implications for humanity.

Freud was not only a path-breaking scientist, but also a great literary stylist. A revolutionary thinker, he was quite conservative in his artistic tastes, his personal habits rigid (strict schedules caring for patients, conducting research, walking, meeting with his beloved B’nai B’rith) and comfortably middle-class. Assimilated though he was, Freud was a proud and defiant Jew, never capitulating to the Nazis after the Anschluss. On exiting Vienna in 1938 for London, in great pain from the jaw cancer that would kill him a year later and forced to make a positive public statement about his treatment by the Nazis, Freud wrote, “Ich kann die Gestapo jedermann auf das beste empfehlen” (“I can highly recommend the Gestapo to all”). Freud’s own life proved the dual nature of the psychological man.

Read More

Albert Einstein (1879-1955)

The most influential person of modern times was the German-born physicist Albert Einstein. Moses, the lawgiver, defined the Jewish people and, in essence, established civilization. Jesus of Nazareth exposed countless millions to a faith beyond themselves. At the dawn of the first technological century, Einstein revealed the inexhaustible power of matter. His famous equation, E = mc2, became synonymous with the concept that energy and mass are equivalent. His theories, expressed in elegant formulas and eloquent prose, are highly complex, and were, when first uttered, wholly revolutionary and controversial. Unlike the ideas of Sir Isaac Newton, which are relatively easy to understand, Einstein’s theories are very difficult. Einstein felt, however, that any student who had been through basic physics could understand his special theory of relativity.

His life is forever linked with three of the defining events of the twentieth century—the eruption of Nazi hate and terror, the rise of Zionism and the creation of the State of Israel, and the development of nuclear weapons and power. The juxtaposition of mankind’s most destructive and most creative tendencies made the 1900s and much of Einstein’s life a period of torment and exaltation, blackest night and blinding light. Einstein is important not only for his scientific accomplishments (and he did alter accepted norms), but also for his involvement in the dynamic social events of his time.Einstein was born in the small town of Ulm in Bavaria. 

His father was an unsuccessful owner of an electrochemical concern. The family moved frequently during Einstein’s youth to accommodate his father’s repeated attempts to improve business. The young Einstein was apparently slow to talk. He attributed his failure to mature as the prime reason behind a wholly original view of the world. Albert had a secular education, attending Luitpold Gymnasium in Munich and developing a lifelong repugnance for rigid, Teutonic authority and inflexible thinking. For him, militarism had no place in a free community of ideas.After his family moved to Italy, Einstein followed. Repulsed by the increase of German nationalism, he renounced his citizenship. 

A stateless person, Einstein moved to Switzerland, eager to study at the famed Polytechnic Institute in Zurich. Rejected on his first application (the headmaster acknowledged his superiority in mathematics and science, but noted decided weakness in other subjects), Einstein, the most brilliant person after Newton, spent a year in preparatory school in a small Swiss village. Only in 1896 was he accepted at the institute. After graduation in 1900, Einstein, having become a Swiss citizen and unable to secure a teaching post at the institute, accepted a post as a patent clerk in Berne.His work in the patent office as a civil servant provided free time to pursue his research. His coworkers marveled how Einstein in one hour could accomplish as much as the average worker in a full day. In 1905, Einstein had published in the Annalen der Physik, a prominent scientific journal of the day, three extraordinary papers. 

The first quantified the so-called Brownian motion of molecules (affecting the future of scientific methods of measurement). The second paper concerned the “photo-electric effect,” which was to lay the theoretical foundation for the later invention of television. His third subject, a “special theory of relativity,” would change the way we view the world.Einstein postulated that physical laws do not change when observers move in relation to one another. His conception of the relativity of motion proved that space and time are not absolute, but are affected by the relationships of movement and mass.

His first paper on relativity did not contain his famous equation. E = mc2 appeared, almost as an afterthought, in a supplementary paper Einstein submitted the summer after the special relativity theory first appeared. After altering conventional explanations of the physical world, Einstein took the next logical (for him) step. He examined the differences between mass at rest and mass in motion, and the consequences of transforming matter into pure energy. 

Forty years before Hiroshima, Einstein had revealed the core of energy beneath all material bodies. Einstein did not, like Bohr, Fermi, Szilard, Oppenheimer, and Teller, involve himself directly in researching nuclear fission. Their work and that of others just “proved his point.”Einstein’s first theory had changed the way the world was viewed and also displayed how little mankind knew. Picasso’s cubism, Joyce’s stream-of-consciousness writing, and Schoenberg’s atomization of harmony and melody occurred at about the same time, paralleling aesthetically Einstein’s radiant discovery.After the publication of the paper on special relativity, Einstein taught briefly at the universities in Zurich and Prague, returning to teach at the Polytechnic Institute in 1912. 

On the recommendation of the distinguished German physicist Max Planck, Einstein was named professor at the Prussian Academy in Berlin. While remaining a Swiss, Einstein resumed his German citizenship (he would renounce it again when the Nazis seized power). During the First World War, he was one of only a few notable pacifists in a jingoistic Germany. Amid the fires of death and trench warfare, Einstein announced in 1916 his general theory of relativity. This theory applied relativity to all movement, uniform and irregular. He noted the relationships of gravitational fields with large masses. Applying non-Euclidean geometry to concepts of four-dimensional space, Einstein was the first to note that the light of the heavens was “bent” by the gravity of the sun.

When his theory of the “curvature of light” was proven by scientists observing a solar eclipse in 1919, Einstein became world-famous almost overnight. Although his modest temperament was ill suited for fame, Einstein used his notoriety for worthwhile goals. A celebrated symbol of a new scientific age after the ravages of world war, Einstein preached for peace on behalf of the League of Nations, urged the use of science to benefit, not destroy, mankind, and on the urging of Chaim Weizmann, ardently supported Zionist goals.

During the 1920s, while the importance of his scientific activities diminished, Einstein’s celebrity grew. He encouraged other younger scientists to discover practical applications of his theories. His public debates with Niels Bohr raised the awareness of what was again, albeit only for a short time before the Nazis, an international scientific community.When Hitler came to power in 1933, Einstein resigned his professorship in Berlin and accepted a position at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey. 

He never returned to Germany, and became an American citizen.Recognizing the German nuclear threat and encouraged by Leo Szilard, Einstein wrote a now-famous letter to President Franklin Roosevelt noting the need for intensive atomic research. Einstein’s letter is widely credited with inspiring America’s secret development of the atomic bomb, which led, of course, to the end of the war with Japan and the modern age. Einstein later voiced his opposition to the use of the bomb. During the 1950s he also vigorously opposed the totalitarian tactics of Senator Joseph McCarthy, advising scientists not to testify before the House Un-American Activities Committee.

Before he died in 1955, Einstein was hard at work on a “unifiedfield theory.” He had hoped to explain in one thought the interplay of gravity and electromagnetic theory. His work on a unified theory has been continued by scientists such as Stephen Hawking and others.More than any other scientist, Einstein ushered in our science-driven world. No other person so represents the power and importance of scientific accomplishment. Although nations still remain obsessed with grabbing as much power as possible, their peoples consider scientific progress the swiftest route to their own material well-being. Einstein’s great influence lies not only in his path breaking theories, but also in his spiritual example. 

He reportedly noted that God does not play dice. There must be a purpose under Heaven. Future generations will do well to remember Einstein’s warning that scientists should not lose their souls in a coldly logical quest, but serve the interests of humanity.

Read More

Jesus of Nazareth (ca. 4 B.C.E.-ca. 30 C.E.)

In any ranking of the most influential Jews in history, Jesus of Nazareth must be listed near the top. If history is carefully examined, with an open mind and cold logic, the true effect of his ethos must be viewed, however, as less influential than Moses’. The traditions established by Moses defined the Jewish people and formed the basis of the three great monotheistic religions: Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.

Any person, Jew, Christian, or Muslim, must recognize that many of Jesus’ teachings contain essential truths and exhibit the highest standards of ethical behavior. The bright light of his vision has illuminated innumerable souls and inspired the creation of many of the greatest artistic masterworks. Yet so many in the world have failed, century after century, to obey his good and wise moral teachings. The meek have not inherited the earth. From the savagery and destruction of the Crusades through the “ethnic cleansing” of today, humankind has repeatedly failed this son of man. People of all faiths continue to show that they need the guidance of Mosaic law to survive each other.

There have been countless and notable exceptions to the murderous misuse of Jesus’ name by the wicked. The abolition of slavery during the American Civil War, the saving of Jewish lives by righteous Gentiles during the Holocaust despite indescribable risk, and the caring for the sick by saintly women such as mothers Teresa in Calcutta and Hale in Harlem, are recent examples (from untold many).

Jesus’ example of pacifism has had a vast and supremely beneficial influence on the faithful of all religions. His lesson of turning one’s cheek was the first example of pacifism in Western history and surely one of its most important civilizing teachings. Regrettably, there remain instances in life when aggression can only be halted with arms. Christian pacifism was wholly ineffective against the Nazi terror. Jesus’ spirit of nonviolence, however, has returned in recent times in the work of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. (also influenced by the example of the Hindu Mahatma Gandhi whose Satyagraha was derived from Tolstoy). 

However, nonviolent resistance to tyranny is only possible in the rare circumstance when a society is fundamentally just.If Jesus’ message of peace had been followed, Europe would not have been continually ravaged over the centuries by vicious religious and cultural wars: Crusaders on their way to battle in the Holy Land massacring defenseless Jews as easy practice for the slaughter of Muslims, Spaniards expelling or burning infidels in an Inquisition of organized hate or raping the New World of its people and natural riches, Catholic France battling Protestant England, Napoleonic wars of conquest and domination, mass annihilation of millions of innocents by post-Christians Hitler and Stalin, Irish maiming Irish, Croats killing Serbs killing Bosnians.

Only the most narrow-minded would deny that Jesus would have been repulsed by these thousands of years of carnage (especially the near destruction of his people in the Holocaust). The sins committed in his name by churches, governments, and individuals must be separated from his legacy of love and charity. His essential message was not to separate but to bring people together. A crucial mission of the contemporary church must be to recognize how easily his revelations can be turned by the false prophets of bigotry into unmitigated hate.

How would Jesus have reacted to the dozens of creeds founded in his name? When he made Simon and Andrew into “fishers of men,” could Jesus have imagined not only the Eastern Orthodox, Catholic, and Protestant churches, but also the infinite, ever-changing, denominations? Surely, the ability of Christianity to adapt to disparate cultures (think of a Catholic mass in Boston versus one in East Africa) allowed it to spread and to multiply the faithful. Jesus’ dreams of brotherhood and an afterlife in Paradise proved universally acceptable to peoples of diverse cultures and backgrounds. 

The largely insular and national religion of Judaism became through his changes to it and personal example (as molded by Saint Paul, the Apostle to the Gentiles) a path of instant and easy conversion for multitudes.Examining Jesus’ life and thoughts raises many unanswered questions. He is often impossible to pin down, an enigma. His use of parables, wondrous tales, homespun stories, to make a point, render him incapable of encapsulation. However, he seemed always to cast doubt on assumptions.

During a time of brutal Roman oppression and zealous opposition, Jesus urged his fellow Jews not to revolt, but to render to Caesar what was Caesar’s. Did he foresee the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem and the dispersion of Palestinian Jewry, or was his “prediction” created by later Christian theologians to justify the rise of their religion and to show allegiance to Rome during the Judean revolts?Jesus’ views on personal possessions are well known. He urged that people sell what they own and give to the poor. In this, Jesus was squarely in the tradition of Jewish charitable giving (or tsedakah). Yet, over history, how many Christian kings or papal rulers have given up their treasure for the downtrodden?

The basic ethical principles of Christianity were first enunciated by Jesus. With a charismatic presence, vibrant mind, and skillful way with words, Saint Paul interpreted Jesus’ teachings and developed them into a religion. Although it is unclear what Christianity would have been without Paul, it would not have survived so vigorously without his proselytizing and theology.The ability of Jesus to undermine conventional wisdom made him controversial in his time. His teachings retain their freshness and controversy today. They are often easy and difficult to understand at the same time. In the tradition of the great rabbi and Pharisee Hillel (who may have been his teacher), Jesus quoted Scripture for emphasis. He was also influenced by the Essenes, a monastic Jewish group of believers in rites of purification, sacred priestly garments and ritual, devotion to the poor, and worship away from the pomp of the great Temple centered in Jerusalem. Jesus surely thought of himself as a reformer, seeking in the tradition of the Jewish Baptist and Essene sects to purify religious practice. It is difficult, however, to find the true man in the New Testament. 

The Gospels were written many years after his death, serve institutional purposes, are inconsistent with each other, and cannot be viewed as reliable sources of his life. Was his name Joshua, Y’shua, Yehoshua? We cannot be sure of any of this. There are often cited references to him in the works of ancient writers—Josephus, Tacitus, and Suetonius—but are these accretions added by medieval translators? Enough ancient shards have been retrieved from the desert sands to confirm Jesus’ existence. So, why have so many in the world over and over again forgotten his lessons? Myths have overwhelmed truths.Indeed, his preaching of the Golden Rule accentuates his concern for mankind. 

This concern is derived directly from Jewish tradition. Before Jesus, Rabbi Hillel stated that the Golden Rule was the fundamental principle of Judaism. Of course, prior to Hillel, Confucius and ancient Hindu poetry contain the identical principle, and it was found later in the sayings of Muhammad. There can be no monopoly on virtue.Jesus’ mission was one of tolerance and peace. Whether or not he was divine must of course be viewed as a matter of faith. Jews and Muslims believe that no man can be divine. Only God is God. 

The Pauline assertion that Jesus was the Messiah and the later declaration by the Nicene Council in the fourth century that he was godly have divided Jews, Christians, and Muslims from much common ground.Jesus most likely saw himself a part of a long line of Jewish prophets, teachers, and holy men. He surely would have found comfort in the transformation of so many disparate peoples the world over into monotheistic observers daily seeking the guidance of what are essentially Judaic visions and insights.

Read More

Moses (Thirteenth century B.C.E.)

He was a prince in Egypt, then a killer, an outcast, a shepherd, a liberator of slaves, a receiver of God’s laws, a judge, a conqueror, and a prophet. Snatched from the Nile, he was raised by Pharaoh’s sister, attended by an Israelite woman (actually his mother). Only a slave brought up as royalty could have had the courage and know-how to lead the oppressed in such a revolt. The Jews’ flight from Egypt was, remarkably, the one successful rebellion of an enslaved people in ancient times. The Exodus, that singular event in history, transformed nomads into a power that changed earthly life forever.

The Exodus, rather than the Creation, defined the Jewish people. The laws given by God directly to Moses in the desert became known as the Sinai covenant, with the Ten Commandments, or Decalogue, its core. Simple justice and respect for life were established in Sinai as the controlling forces of humanity.In the ancient Egyptian language, Moses, or Mosheh, means “born of” or “is born”; the Hebrew masheh translates as “drawn of.” Whatever the origins (which seem to combine the strongest strains of ancient Egyptian and Hebraic cultures), Moses’ life story dominates the Bible. 

He was the most exemplary of the Hebrew prophets and the most influential Jew in all history. As either a model or a real man, he brought to human life a concern for the downtrodden, an idealism, a hope, a system of laws by which people can survive each other, whether lost in the wilderness for forty years or seated in the courts of great palaces of stone and marble. Through Moses, God directed mankind. Yet Moses spoke sluggishly, relying on his brother Aaron for eloquent speech.“I am what I am,” God declared to Moses. The God of Moses and the Israelites is one god; Moses, however, was a man with faults like other men, never a minor god (unlike the pharaohs of Egypt and emperors of Rome, who fancied themselves gods). 

Monotheism, the belief in one god, displaced forever the primitive worship of gods in the guise of animals. Each person’s experience of God must be personal, that person’s experience. God can only be comprehended in the abstract, not through graven images. Distinct from the deathly imagery of the Egyptian gods, the God of Moses is always the God of life, affirmation, and existence, of what is and what is next. The Hebrew word for God, YHWH, means “to be.”The Lord’s prophet, Moses, the political leader, remains a vital symbol in the righteous fight against persecution. In our times, the biblical exhortation “Let my people go!” became the clarion call of the American civil rights movement, and was later sounded for Soviet refuseniks.

Moses always fought injustice. As a young Egyptian prince, he slew a brutal overseer and buried him in a shallow grave. As a noble, Moses could have ordered the overseer to halt his abuse of a slave. Instead, in a blind rage, Moses felled the overseer. It is as if Moses wished to be uncovered as an imposter. He also stopped two Hebrews from fighting, defended his soon-to-be Midian wife and her sisters from marauding shepherds, and led a rebellion against a great, oppressive, and suffocating power.

His every act has rich, symbolic meaning: After killing the overseer, he fled into the desert, began a family with Zipporah and her wise father, sheik Jethro, and purged his soul of Egyptian customs. Moses knew that his murder of the overseer was produced by an uncontrollable rage against Egyptian tyranny. Slavery and the worship of animals had made Jewish life in Egypt an abomination. All human life, whether slave or pharaoh, must be held sacred. God directed Moses to free the slaves from their bondage so that they might pray to Him.

Although Moses pleaded with his cousin to let the Israelites go, and despite fearful plagues, Pharaoh’s heart turned to stone; his silence brought repeated pestilence and sure death on Egypt. Whether the plagues and the drowning of Egyptian charioteers in the Red Sea are viewed today as magic or gospel, the events are based in history. The Egyptians did drown Hebrew babies in the Nile as a vicious method of controlling a swelling slave population, and the Red Sea was really a sea of reeds, a swamp in which chariot wheels could easily become mired.

The rabbis of later generations directed the observant not to rejoice at these miracles. Rather, the lesson of the Exodus is one of compassion: Do not hate the Egyptians, as you were once strangers in their land. At the Passover Seder, the spilling of a few drops of wine reminds observant Jews that their joy in salvation is diminished—the cup of happiness is not full—when others suffer or are despised. This remarkable conciliatory response to the pain of the defeated defines not only Judaism but also all western civilization.

The burning bush also sears a new meaning into suffering humanity. No longer are animal gods to be worshipped. The golden calf and all who bow down to it are condemned and destroyed in Old Testament fury. A burning bush that is not consumed manifests God’s omnipotent control over nature. (The burning bush has also been seen as a symbol of Jewish survival and of the visionary wisdom of Moses.)The laws given in the desert, the Sinai covenant, are known today as Mosaic law. 

Although more ancient codes have been discovered in the ruins of Mesopotamia (especially the Code of Hammurabi) and while Jewish law has much the same structure and diction of other laws of antiquity, Judaism was the first system of human beliefs that respected human life. Most ancient governments valued property over people. Crimes against property were punishable by death. Murderers, on the other hand, could compensate the relatives of their victims by paying them or by sacrificing a valuable slave. Jewish law is consumed with caring for morality and social values. There has been nothing in history quite like it.

Moses, the prophet and giver of laws, is revered by Christians and Muslims, albeit in slightly different ways. After Abraham, of course, Moses is viewed as the second most important figure. Many events in the New Testament seem modeled on Moses’ life and work. Jesus’ young life parallels that of Moses. An evil king threatens to kill newborns, the prophet flees into exile in the desert, only to return to “free” his people. When the prophet is absent from his people, he is despised among men, his preaching forgotten. 

The Sermon on the Mount is meant to enrich the covenant given at Sinai. Jesus is depicted as a “second Moses.” Both Moses and Jesus are referred to as “redeemer.” For Saint Paul, the faith of Moses is a religion of law, while that of the Christians rests in the grace of God in the Christ. For Christians, however, Jesus is the Son of God, while for Jews, Moses remains a man, an ambassador of God’s laws.For Islam, Moses, like Muhammad, received God’s revelation through a book. Both are recipients of God’s laws. Muhammad, too, must flee into the desert to Medina, but he returns in triumph, leading to his blessed death and ascent into Heaven. What distinguishes Islam from Judaism and Christianity is the Muslim belief that Muhammad is the final seal of all biblical prophecy, proclaiming the word of God in its purest state.

Moses, unlike Buddha or Confucius, was not an inward-looking mystic. For Moses, perfect life is not found adrift in the sea of the infinite. Judaism and the religions it gave rise to, Christianity and Islam, call their followers to interact with God through everyday behavior controlled by His laws. Moses, like Jesus and Muhammad, not only has visions of God, but also speaks directly to Him. Mankind must likewise dream of heavenly grace while living together in a community governed by ethics and morality.

Read More