Re: Things to Thank the Maccabees For

Micha Berger wrote:
Over the years that I've been blogging, I noticed a number of ways
in which Jewish and Hellenic thought differ. Not just difference
of philosophy -- differences even more fundamental than philosophy.
Ideas that conflicting schools of thought that belong to the same culture
rarely argue. The things people raised in each culture take for granted.

I thought in honor of tomorrow night being Chanukah, I would construct a
list. Aside from the inevitable discussion and argument over the items I
listed, I invite others to add to it.


[comments cut - chsw]


.....

TAHARAH
http://www.aishdas.org/asp/2005/01/politeness-and-taharah.shtml

(By which I mean the mental attitude, not ritual purity.)

The word "polite" comes from the Latin "politus" via the Old English
"polit", to polish. Polish is itself of the same derivation.I think
this is a very telling statement about Western Culture. Politeness is
about perfecting the surface. It doesn't demand a change of the self,
but putting up the appropriate front for others.


"Polite" comes from the Greek "poleis" or "polis." It shares the same root as "politics." Literally, "politics" means "Things of the city" or "Ways of the city" and "polite" can be viewed as its singular - a way of the city. That being said, it doesn't affect the surface gloss vs. thorough purity analogy at all.

chsw



Taharah is also the term used for the purity of a metal -- the menorah
must be made of (pure gold). zahav tahor. Taharah, then, is the lack of
adulteration of the mind with prejudices caused by the body. Free to
choose when to pursue its physical needs and desires, man can
consciously control his relationship to the physical world and the
people we encounter in it.

This distinction dates back to Noah, who saw in Yefes an attention to
surface matters and thus aesthetics. "Yaft E-lokim leYefes -- G-d's
beauty is for Japeth, veyishkon be'ohalei Sheim -- and he lives in the
tents of Sheim." Yefes's son Yavan is the one for whome Ionia was named,
Yavan is Hebrew for "Greece". Yefes sees beauty, Sheim develops an
internal G-dliness.

With the taharah mindset, it's not just about behaving properly, it's
about finding improper motives in the mix and trying to eliminate them.
Thus, we don't look for proper behavior, but look to develop core values
which are manifest in that behavior.

Judaism looks to create ba'alei chessed, people who relate to this
world primarily in terms of its opportunities to give and share with
others. Not to simply be polite and act inoffensively. Which doesn't
quite work; backstabbing while smiling and using just the implications
is a feature of "polite society". But to actually have a relationship
with the other.


NETWORKING
http://www.aishdas.org/asp/2006/04/roads-and-cities.shtml

Do roads exist to connect cities, or do cities exist to serve the roads?
We naturally assume the former, that roads are built to allow people and
goods to travel from one center to another.

However, historically speaking, it's usually the reverse. Medina, in
Saudi Arabia, grew from the crossroads of trading routes. Canaan was at
the crossroads of three continents, and its very name comes from the
word for "traders". This is why the Israel of Na"kh was so often
crossed by the soldiers of Assyria and Egypt, en route to the other to
battle. And being at a traffic center placed us in the ideal situation
to influence world thought. Because of the centrality of shipping, New
York, Baltimore and Boston all grew around their harbors, and many
European cities are on rivers -- London, Paris, Budapest, Frankfurt,
etc...

This is illustrative of a basic issue of perception, one which may not
be the most central to Judaism, is perhaps most fundamental. It shapes
the framework in which Jewish tradition looks at the world and frames
its questions and answers.

Western Thought is based around the notion of "things", devarim in the
biblical sense -- davar as object, dibrah as statement or idea. These
are primary, and the relationships between them are seen as a
consequence of the essence of those objects.

Our tradition seems to pretty clearly be based on the idea that "cities
are defined by their roads", in other words, that the essence of an
object is in how it relates to others. This is very much related to what
I wrote above about taharah. A person is the sum of his relationships,
they aren't surface matters. And therefore, the word "boneh" means
both "is building" and "builder". While someone is building, he is
a builder. The difference between a present tense verbs and active
participles (a builder, a fisher, a watcher, a guard, a guide, etc..) is
not meaningful from this perspective.

Aristotle catalogues. He divides a subject into subtopics, and those
subtopics even further, until one is down to the individual fact. Greek
thought was focused on reductionism. To understand a phenomenon, break
it down into smaller pieces, and try to understand each piece. This is
typical of the Yefetic perspective.

In contrast, look how Rav Yehudah haNasi redacted the first mishnah. The
beginning of the mishnah could have said that the time for evening shema
is from sunset until 1/3 the night. But instead it uses referents
involving kehunah, taharah and ashmores. This is not to confuse the
issue, but because from the Semitic perspective the key to understanding
one mitzvah is from its connections to everything else.

HUMAN LOGIC
http://www.aishdas.org/asp/2005/12/semitic-perspective.shtml

And from the notion of holism and a network view of reality, we get a
totally different perspective on logic.

The West never formalized the notion of reality having gray areas. For
example, the question of whether a ball is red gets fuzzy around the
edges of the notion of red. Add just an invisible tincture of blue,
and it's still red. Keep on adding blue, and at some point it's
clearly purple. But at some point in the middle, it's "sort of red".
Classical logic has no way to describe that "sort of".Since Aristotle's
day, western logic has had two basic rules:

The Law of Contradiction: Something can never be both true and false.

From this law, we have the reductio ad absurdum; we can assume something
is true if denying it leads to a contradiction. The Law of Excluded
Middle: Something is either true or false, not neither. These seem so
self-evident to us, one wonders how other positions could exist. However,
had we grown up in the Far East, we wouldn't be so Yefetic.

In a perspective that focuses on connections, there is no isolated fact.
Therefore, many things Yefes would consider a single yes/no question
are complex, shaded, and nuanced to Sheim.

Think how badly the logic of Aristotle or Boole occlude "fuzzy logic"
issues, like the difference between "John isn't tall" and "John is short"
where John is of roughly average height.

And how many human realities involve ambivalence and dialectic, our
ability to embrace conflicting viewpoints simulataneously emotionally
and even rationally, despite the usability of the Law of Contradiction
for human-scale physical events?

We frequently feel both joy and sorrow
over an event -- because we relate to it in multiple ways. The talmud's
example is finding out one is rich, because of the death of a wealthy
but beloved parents.

Also, human reality is dialectic. To cite one case from Rabbi JB
Soloveitchik's writings, is it not true that:
Society exists to serve its members
and yet
A person's highest calling is to benefit that society
?

By divorcing human experience from reductionism, Judaism gave the west
the tools for exploring our own reactions.

None of which would have been preserved had the Maccabees lost the war.

Tir'u baTov!
-Micha

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