Arguing With God - A Review

7/29/2019 Arguing With God - A Review

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Arguing with God: A Jewish Tradition by Anson LaytnerReview by: David R. BlumenthalModern Judaism, Vol. 12, No. 1 (Feb., 1992), pp. 105-110Published by: Oxford University PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1396496 .

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REVIEWS

Anson Laytner, Arguing With God:AJewish Tradition(Northvale, N.J.:Jason Aronson, 1990). xxii + 314 pages.This is a book that needed to be written. Anson Laytner, who isDirector of the Jewish Federation Community Relations Council ofGreater Seattle and a Reform Rabbi, has brought together familiarand unfamiliar material and analyzed it historically and theologically.The sources that Laytner has assembled have a power and a relevancethat leap out from the page.In the Introduction and Overview, Laytner identifies the basicform he will discuss, the law-court pattern of address to God, in whichcomplaints and charges against God are allowable. He, then, sets theimportance of his research in the post-holocaust theological context,maintaining that arguing with God is a form of post-holocaust Jewishtheology.

Laytner begins with the evidence from the Bible (Chapter One):Abraham and Sodom [Genesis 18] and Moses' spirited defense of thepeople [Exodus 5 and 32; Numbers 14], showing the emergence, inthese earliest strata of the tradition, of the basic themes: questioningof God over the issue of justice; the appeal to God to act for the meritof the ancestors, the covenant, and sake of His' Name; and confessionof guilt (7-12). Laytner, then, moves to Jeremiah and Psalms wherehe shows the national and the personal lament as a form. The textof Psalm 44 is always a shock to read. In various classes, I ask studentsto read this psalm out loud, with full voice and full expression of theanger, indeed the rage, that permeates this psalm. Laytner presentsit and, together with passages from Jeremiah, points out several newelements: the command tense used to address God when demandingjustice, the presentation of God as defendant as well as judge, theappeal to past historical redemptive deeds, and the cry for vengeanceagainst the enemy (26-9). Finally, Laytner analyzes the Book of Job,the apex of the law-court form, with its oaths, its fierce accusations,and its "answer" which is really not an answer but in which "God ... isexpressing approval of Job's vociferous insistence of his innocenceand of his right for justice" (34). Extending the Job text from thepersonal to the national, Laytner concludes that the message was not

'It is my practice to use inclusive language, even in reference to God. HoweverLaytner, following his sources, does not and I shall respect his convention.105

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ModernJudaismto despair but to hope for ultimate redemption and justification (36-7).

Laytner, then, deals with the evidence from the rabbinic sources:interpretations of the biblical passages and motifs (Chapters Two andThree); special prayers (Chapters Four and Five); and the statutoryliturgy and poetry (Chapters Six and Seven). Laytner's analysis ofthese rabbinic materials leads him to seven important conclusions.First, the rabbis made the protest argument more explicit than itis in the biblical text. For example: God can be said to commit an actof desecration of His Name; Moses can be said to be God's advisorand God learns from him; Moses seizes God by His garment whenaddressing Him; and Moses acts as the master lawyer in formallydissolving God's vow to destroy the people (46-56).Second, the rabbis emphasized the anthropopathism of the biblicalsources, making it more explicit, indeed deeper. Thus, God is pre-sented as both wrathful and as grief-stricken; God punishes but Hefeels the people's pain and suffers with them. The clearest text forthis is LamentationsRabbah where the heroes and heroines of Jewishhistory speak out on behalf of the people (70-85). I agree, and regretonly that Laytner did not note that the late Max Kadushin had alreadypointed out this emphatic trend in rabbinic thinking.Third, the rabbis recognized the tradition of the protest prayerbased on individual merit. For example, the audacious oath of Honi,the circledrawer, "I swear by Your great name that I shall not movefrom here until You show mercy to Your children" (89) and similartraditions (89-92). However, the rabbis also recognized the dangerin this type of prayer (indeed, in any appeal to the supernatural)because such appeals constituted a threat to the rational legal authorityof the rabbinic system. Hence, protest prayer was discouraged andhighly restricted to times of communal emergency, to be used onlyafter all other methods were exhausted, and then to be performedonly by the most righteous rabbis (94-101; 116-7).Fourth, protest was suppressed in the statutory liturgy, though itwas permitted in midrash. For example, there is a text which forbidsa Jew to pray, "Your mercies extend to a bird's nest" (103). Laytnerunderstands this passage, together with the Jerusalem Talmud, as onewhich is intended to contest God's justice (109) and sets it within thebroader issue of theodicy texts (106-7). As a protest midrash, thebird's nest text expressed the people's doubt, perhaps even theirdespair. But, as a protest prayer, the same text had the effect of tryingto force a revelatory or redemptive action from God. This latter wasunacceptable to the rabbis who realized that they needed to sustainthe people on a daily basis which could not be done in an atmosphereof impending messianism. The very length of the exile moved the

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rabbis to suppress the protest-prayer as a form of address to God,though they allowed the motif to find its place in the midrash (85,108-10). (See also the suppression of the recitation of Psalm 44 [Tal-mud, Sotah 48a]).Fifth, the submissive-penitent form of prayer was adopted as theliturgical stance under the leadership of Akiba (116). Laytner detailsthe strategies which were permitted in the statutory liturgy: one couldquote God's words back to Him, e.g., "redeem us according to Yourword," "remember the covenant with the ancestors," and the recitationof the "thirteen attributes" with the midrashic understanding of theorigin of that text; one could appeal to past precedents, especiallythose rooted in the intervention of the main figures of Jewish holyhistory (see the Aneinu prayer cited on 162-3); and, to be sure, onecould confess the sins of the people (117-26).Sixth, the tension between protest prayer and submissive prayercould not be fully repressed. Thus, the medieval prayerbook "jux-tapose[d] the liturgy of faith with the poetry of protest" (157). Forexample: the poem, based on a biblical verse cited in the liturgy "Thereis no God besides You," which plays on the Hebrew text and reads,"There is none like You among the dumb"-a stunning protest writ-ten just after the second crusade (135-7); and the poem, based onthe imagery of the Akeda, which describes the actual sacrifice of chil-dren-again, written after a crusade (145, 157). These poems haveas their form: a submissive introduction in accordance with rabbinicideology, a strong protest, and a closing petition (147). They developthe theme of vindictiveness and give voice to a new argument-themerit of the martyrs (149-51) though this theme is an extension ofthe merit of the ancestors argument. The presence of this protestpoetry returned wholeness toJewish prayer (139) by giving expressionto the darker thoughts Jews had about God (176). Laytner suggeststo the Reform movement that these poems be revived and integratedinto contemporary liturgy (176). For myself, I have always found thesepoems to be too "artistic";they appear to me to lack the raw powerof the psalms of protest, even though they do restore a measure ofunpleasant truth to the formal liturgy which had, indeed, suppressedthe angry protest motif.Seventh, the rabbinic argumentation was developed to counterGnostic and Christian beliefs (63-9; 100). I find Laytner's evidenceon this unpersuasive. It seems to me that the inner logic of injustice,especially in the post-destruction period, surely generated enoughtension to create these rabbinic developments.The high point of this book may be in Chapter Eight. In it, Laytnerdeals with the modern materials. He begins with the hasidic traditions,concluding with the protest-threat of the Kotzker Rebbe: "Send us

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our Messiah, for we have no more strength to suffer. Show me a sign,O God. Otherwise I rebel against You. If You do not keep Yourcovenant, then neither will I keep the promise, and it is all over: weare through with being Your Chosen People, Your unique treasure"(189). Although echoed in the early rabbinic materials, this statement(and there are others like it) is still audacious to the point of beingalmost heretical. Following this, Laytner, with Roskies and Mintz,moves to the popular and secular literature of protest, includingBialik's poem in which God calls us to rebel against Him (192-3).

Moving into the holocaust and post-holocaust literature, Laytnercites from Glatstein, Greenberg, Zeitlin, Segal, Moldowsky, Katze-nelson and others. This material is very bitter. "You watched...There is no God in you, false, empty heavens" (203); "We shall re-member, Lord God, that in these years, You settled with Your eternalpeople every old score" (206); "O God of Mercy/For the time being/Choose another people./We are tired of death, tired of corpses,/Wehave no more prayers.... /Grant us one more blessing-/Take backthe gift of our separateness" (207-8); and the din Torah traditionwhich grew up in the camps: "Creator of the worlds, You are mightyand terrible beyond all doubt. But from the circle of true lovers ofIsrael, we Galicians, forever shut You out" (206, with note 50 forother incidents).

Laytner identifies five characteristics of the modern protest forms:[1] the "for our sins" mentality is rejected; [2] the material is createdby poets and authors and not by rabbis, with the result that there isa transition from liturgy to folk forms; [3] the texts are addressed tothe people, though God is often present in the background; [4] theforms embrace many differing attitudes and experiences, foreground-ing none in particular; and [5] the law-court pattern in conspicuouslyabsent, except in the din Torah form (196-7).Finally, Laytner makes two constructive theological moves. First,beginning with two poems by Glatstein-"I love my sad God, mybrother refugee... The God of my unbelief is magnificent, how Ilove my unhappy God, now that he's human and unjust" (209) and,"Begin once more! Be a small God of a small people!" (210)-Laytnercomments (210):Glatstein has undertaken a remarkableodyssey, from doubt todespair, from anguish to anger, and on to reconciliationof a sortandrebirth.HisintenselyanthropomorphicGod is far fromthe godsof modern philosophyand theology,butverytrue to classical ewishreligiousthought. Perhapshis vision of a broken,anthropopatheticGod, a God who is being rejuvenatedas the Jewish people is reju-venated, a God with whom one can argue, will speak to the many

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Jews stillstrugglingfor some sort of relationshipwith God after theHolocaust.Second, moving through a poem by Shimoni in which God weeps somuch that the poet has pity on Him, Laytner arrives at Elie Wieseland engages in an extended analysis of the theology implicit in Wiesel'swritings (214-27). Laytner begins with Night, moves to Ani Maaminwhich he correctly identifies as a midrash on LamentationsRabbah,andthen turns to TheTrial of God.This, it seems to me and I think Laytnerwould agree, is the central work of Wiesel's oeuvre for, in it, the formof argument and protest is returned to its full stature. The "hero,"Berish the innkeeper, defies and protests all the way through the playwith increasing vigor: "I lived as a Jew, and it is as a Jew that I die-and it is as a Jew that, with my last breath, I shall shout my protestto God! And because the end is near, I shall shout louder! Becausethe end is near, I'll tell Him that He's more guilty than ever" (219).Similarly, the "counter-hero," Sam/Samael/Satan is the only beingready to "defend" God, slowly seducing all but Berish into his rea-soning, until the explosive ending. This ending is not, as Laytnerpoints out, inconclusive (220); on the contrary, it is exactly what Wieselwants-an ending that affirms unadulterated protest in the light ofinjustice.In the course of this analysis of Wiesel, Laytner sets forth twoprinciples which characterize Wiesel's position and which serve as thebasis for Laytner's second constructive move. First, there is Wiesel's"faithful defiance," embodied in Berish's position and, second, thereis his "defiant activism," rooted in the words of a character fromanother Wiesel work: "Maybe God is dead, but man is alive... Suf-fering is given to the living ... it is man's duty to make it cease" (221-5). In his last chapter, Personal Afterword (231-48), Laytner iden-tifies his own positions: he is a liberal, and non-halakhic; he is an"agnostic mystic"; he does not believe in petitionary prayer most ofthe time; suffering is simply unjust, not a test or a discipline; beliefin God in the modern world is more rooted in doubt than in faith;one must, therefore, keep the wounds of faith open and not allowthem to scar over; the rabbi too often becomes the defense attorneyfor God, not the prosecutor for the people; the covenant is the bondto the past and should be preserved as such; and knowledge of theprotest tradition, in all its variety and depth, should enable us to usethe vocabulary of protest and to develop the theology impliedtherein-a theology of interdependence.In reflecting on this rich book, I realize that I was familiar with

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most of these texts before reading the book. However, seeing themdisplayed together and reading them in the context of a rabbinicexpansion of the biblical motif and a secular expansion of the rabbinicmotif was very enlightening. As a constructive theologian, I want toaffirm Laytner's revival of the law-court pattern of address to God asa form of Jewish theology, together with his adoption of Wiesel'spositions of faithful defiance and defiant activism. It seems to me thatit is our responsibility as theologians to bring the word to the Word,to defend the victim even if we have to accuse God. Laytner is right;there is ample precedent for this and we need to do it-for ourselves,for the victims, and indeed for God. I want to affirm, too, Laytner'sinclination to understand God in anthropopathic language. As Hes-chel has shown, this was the main language of the tradition until thedominance of philosophy. However, I am less sanguine about a "bro-ken, anthropopathetic God . .. who is being rejuvenated as the Jewishpeople is rejuvenated." Such an image seems to me to relieve God ofGod's responsibility. If God is creator and parent, then God is re-sponsible. We may, indeed we must, argue; but we must not, in loveor in fear, deny either God's power or ours, either God's responsibilityor ours. Dialogue-argument must be between parties with real claims,between parties who will not back down from the justice and com-passion which motivates them.

Arguing With God is a powerful book-in its material and in theargument which it provokes on this eternal theme.DAVID R. BLUMENTHALEmory University

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Arguing With God - A Review

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