Encore Archive

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The Meaning We Create

Harold M. Schulweis (Sh'ma, 5/96, September 5, 1975)

I have often wondered how it is that on Rosh Hashanah, of all days, no passage from the first two chapters of Genesis are found in the Machzor. How is it that among the multiple biblical verses which comprise the Malkuyot-Zikronot-Shoferot trilogy none are selected from the book of Genesis? What more appropriate and obvious readings for the Torah service on Rosh Hashanah than those describing God's creation of the universe and man? In its stead the tradition chooses to recite the biblical narrations dealing with the difficult banishment of Hagar and Ishmael and the awesome conflicts surrounding the near sacrifice of Isaac.

Pagan new year celebrations stress creation

Such omissions suggest to me a deliberate decision to deflect attention from the creation event and to place emphasis elsewhere, upon the human moral struggles of the patriarchs of our people. It is as if the rabbinic or pre-rabbinic focus meant to repudiate the ideology of archaic religions which have at the heart of New Year celebration the ritual miming of the cosmogonic act. At each New Year the victory of the gods in creating cosmos out of chaos is celebrated through a choreography which relives the primordial event. In reactualizing the eternal repetition of this myth of creation, religious man finds the meaning and guarantee of the meaning of his life. Only the sacred time exemplified in this original event is truly real. History offers no meaning and no hope for salvation. Man is not a historical being and preservation of his memories has no value. After the mythic act of divine creation, it is all over. The liturgical time of the calendar, cyclical time, has been created only to be periodically repeated. The circle is closed, the serpent holds its tail in its mouth, profane time is swallowed by sacred time. Is it conceivable that during the twelve day Babylonian New Year, the epic of creation should be omitted?

Rosh Hashanah stresses creativity and moral striving

The Jewish tradition is differently related to creation and the conspicuous deletion of the creation legend throughout the High Holy Days dramatizes that unique relationship. The Rabbis never weary in repeating their understanding that everything created is incomplete, unfinished, imperfect. Creation is the beginning not the end of the world. What is celebrated is not the sacred time of creation but the givenness of' creation, that plenitude of potentiality which enables us to continue shaping moral order out of amoral energy. The mustard seed must be sweetened, the lupine made soft, the wheat ground and human nature worked at - for everything created requires repair. Not the metaphysics of creation but the ethics of creativity is celebrated. Our attention is therefore drawn not to the seven days of creation, but to the struggles of father Abraham with sibling claims and contradictory voices from heaven testing his faith and moral sensitivity. His salvation is not found through ritual identification with the gods of creation; not through imitation of nature but in its moral transformation is his meaning to be discovered.

The quest for meaning is never completed

Meaning is not handed down by creation or by belief in creation. Meaning is wrested out of the obduracies of personal and collective history, out of concrete, profane time which is real. We build our meaning-cosmos out of selected memories, e.g., Abraham at Sodom and Moriah rejecting genocide and infanticide as incompatible with his understanding of Elohuth.

The quest for meaning is not over, for it is no more complete and finished than is creation. Meaning is not one and not given once and for all. Events are prismatic and meanings are varied. They go through endless gilgulim (cycles) of refinement and qualification. And there is no guarantee that this is "the" meaning for all times and for all men. It is of course tempting to proclaim that the divine plan is given and secure, that meaning is absolute, immutable and guaranteed. But history, profane and concrete, has taught us the terrible price which such certitudes demand. To promise meaning on the grounds that creation has God's purpose in it and later to admit that we cannot know His purpose, is first to raise a dust of expectations and then complain we cannot see. If meaning is related to Divine purpose, then not to know what God means to will is to smother the promise of meaning under a blanket of ignorance.

Jews search for moral purpose, not absolute meaning

Even if creation may be argued to imply purpose, it offers little evidence for meaning. Pagans too believed in creation and so presumably does Satan. Not sheer purpose but the moral quality of that purpose, not the will of God but the moral character of that will can satisfy the hunger for meaning. For Jews it is the morality of revelation, the morality of purpose, the morality of creativity which must be known before revelation, purpose and creation may be sanctified in celebration. Not the mysterious Subject and His inscrutable will in creation and revelation, but the moral sacredness in creativity, choice and discovery is essential for the celebration of meaningful Elohuth. We are not forced to accept the loaded options offered us: God's guarantee or moral anarchy, one absolute meaning or absurdity. Other alternatives assume a more modest appreciation of the human predicament which is destined to filter every claim, whatever its alleged source, through human heart and mind. The relativism of meaning derives from our human condition. That predicament is not avoided through reading one's own idea of meaning into a text only to get it back with the blessing of absolute authority.

Creative questioning reveals meanings

Meanings there are which are not invented nor flung down upon us from above. There are meanings discovered by our people through their experienced transactions with their environment. Not "the" beginning but many beginnings shape our world; not one meaning, one revelation, one interpretation but many are called for. And all remain open and subject to scrutiny, rational debate and judgment on the table of consequences.

Menachem Mendel of Kotzk counselled the hasid who experienced "terrible thoughts" questioning judge and justice and meaning in the world. To every anguished doubt of the hasid, Menachem Mendel retorted - "and so - what do you care? "And seeing that the hasid truly cared advised him not to worry about his doubts, "for if you care so deeply, you are an honest Jew and an honest Jew is entitled to such doubts." In beginnings worlds are created. In creativity, meanings are formed.