Out Beyond Ideas

The Maccabee revolt in the 2nd century BCE. The Rebellion forces in Star Wars. On the one hand, we identify with oppressed people sticking up for their way of life, refusing to be assimilated. On the other hand, what are the rebels really fighting for? Are they fighting for or against progressive values?

Writer Lev Grossman raised questions about the usual way we interpret Star Wars:

“It’s entirely possible to read Star Wars as a movie about white men fighting to regain their rightful position as rulers of the universe, against a man who, if he’s not actually black, wears all black and has the voice of a black man. (Vader was voiced by James Earl Jones.) With a few notable exceptions – Princess Leia, Yoda, maybe Admiral Ackbar – women and nonhuman races are relegated to the sidelines. Human males run the show. Star Wars is framed as a story about revolution, but in some ways it’s also a fable about maintaining an old worldview of race and gender.” (Time magazine, "How J.J. Abrams Brought Back Star Wars," 2015 Dec 14)

Likewise the Maccabee revolution: it's about maintaining an old worldview. The story draws us into cheering for the rebels – yet we also identify with the sophisticates frustrated at the traditionalism of the less educated. Do these traditionalists not fear and hate people who are different? Do these traditionalists not seethe with resentment at what threatens the privileges to which they cling?

Perhaps we should let go of our own opinions, and not take sides if we aren't forced to. Instead, recognize that both sides upheld some important values and negated some other important values.

Of course, we are bound to have opinions. It is, in fact, a civic duty in a democracy, to form opinions about which candidates should be elected and which policies would be best. We also form opinions about what would be best for ourselves, what would be best for our families, what would be best for our congregation.

We exercise our best judgment, but we never really know what would be best. We don’t know if our criteria for best-ness are as comprehensive as they could be, nor do we know if our strategy for maximizing those criteria will work better than alternative strategies. We don’t know. We make our best guess – and then deal with the results with more guesses.

We can’t avoid making and having opinions. But as the saying goes: don’t believe what you think. In other words, be ready to change your mind and maintain a healthy skepticism about your own reasoning process.

We are especially prone to be suckered by stories. We love a story of good guys and bad guys. If we can just identify some group as the bad guys, then some version of the story we love can snap into place. Letting go of our opinions will mean letting go of our stories. We don't have to abandon stories altogether. We can still enjoy them -- in the way we enjoy any good fiction. We can have our stories, but we don't have to really believe them.

We see around us neighbors ready to identify Muslims as the bad guys. Perhaps we detect a similar but opposite impulse in ourselves to identify those neighbors as the bad guys.

We have to have some opinions about some things, but maybe we don’t have to have as many as we do. Are there some of them you could just let go of? If your situation doesn’t need you to weigh in on one side or another, then just stay in that space of openness, not judging good and bad, right and wrong. Unless you’re actually on the jury, you probably don’t need to have an opinion on whether the defendant is guilty or not. And when we do hold opinions, perhaps we could hold them lightly – tentatively – seeing clearly that threats to the opinion are not threats to us personally.

There’s a Zen koan about Fayan and his teacher, Dizang, in 10th-century China.

Fayan was going on pilgrimage.
Dizang said, "Where are you going?"
Fayan said, "Around on pilgrimage."
Dizang said, "What is the purpose of pilgrimage?"
Fayan said: "I don't know."
Dizang said, "Not knowing is most intimate." (Book of Serenity #20)

When we think we know, we filter experience through the categories of what we think we know. Letting go of those categories allows us to be present to the freshness of each situation. Not knowing is most intimate.

So, yes, light a candle for the Maccabee children. They represent a way of life we have left behind. We today are much more Hellenic than traditionalist. Yet still we light a candle for them – though they fought against change, though they despised anyone who was other, though they upheld patriarchy and theocracy.

We light a candle for all our enemies, for letting go of dogmatic insistence on our opinions, and for the hope of loving our enemies.

Our own opinions are surely right – and, at the same time, are also surely wrong. There is a light that shines beyond the question of who is the good guy and who has turned to the dark side. Rumi called it a field:

“Out beyond ideas of wrong-doing and right-doing, there is a field
I'll meet you there.
When the soul lies down in that grass,
the world is too full to talk about.
Ideas, language, even the phrase "each other" doesn't make any sense.”

Rumi called it a field, but we might call it a light: the light beyond the dimness of our judgments of wrong-doing and right-doing, the light that shines on what we share. We all have fears; we all have the same needs, though different strategies for trying to meet them. It is a light that shines both from the sacredness of traditions and also from breaking through tradition to new ways of understanding. It is a light compassion: compassion for those who are other – compassion as well for those who fear those who are other. It’s a light of love that transcends all opinion. Don’t let that light go out.

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This is part 3 of 3 of "A Hanukkah for Letting Go of Opinions"
See also:
Part 1: Hanukkah History
Part 2: Yay for the Bumpkins...?

Yay for the Bumpkins . . . ?

Emperor Antiochus IV, ruler of the Seleucid Empire, 175 - 164 BCE, was still, despite rumors to the contrary, very much alive in 168 BCE. He was just coming off a bit of a humiliation in Egypt. Finding that his appointed high priest, Menelaus, had been run out, Antiochus took out his frustrations on Jerusalem.

Antiochus attacked the town, restored Menelaus as high priest of the temple, massacred a few thousand Jews, outlawed Jewish rites and traditions, and ordered that Zeus be worshipped as the Supreme God. He then went on his way, leaving behind a governor in Jerusalem, Philip, to enforce Hellenic religion.

Had the people of Jerusalem thought like modernists – or postmodernists – do, they might have adapted to the new worship requirements. "No big deal," they might have said. "Zeus is simply a metaphor for Yahweh. Just go with it." The people of the second century before the Common Era were not prepared to think that way.

A huge part of what religion has always been about is: who is “us,” and who is “them.” The origin of religion – the reason religion emerged among early humans – probably had a lot to do with rituals and stories that facilitated the tribe’s cohesiveness, which was crucial since battles between tribes were frequent. The tribes that had a strong sense of bonding to “us,” and had hostility to “them,” were the tribes that survived. For the Jews of the 2nd century BCE, the word “Zeus”, and bowing to a statue of Zeus, meant “them” – and siding with “them” was a betrayal of “us.” There’s no metaphoring around when tribal identity is at stake -- when “us” is fighting for its continued existence as a distinct identity against "them.”

The more Hellenized Jews, however, didn’t see it that way. They actually were saying, essentially, “This is no big deal. Just go with it.” The First Book of Maccabees relates how Greek soldiers forcibly gathered the Jewish villages and told them to bow down to a Greek idol, then eat some pork. A Greek officer ordered Mattathias, a High Priest, to do these things. Mattathias refused. When another villager stepped forward and offered to cooperate on Mattathias' behalf, Mattathias drew his sword and killed the villager, then turned on the Greek officer and killed him too. That he struck out first against a fellow Jew indicates the simmering civil conflict between the Jewish factions.

Mattathias’ five sons and the other villagers then attacked the remaining soldiers, killing all of them. Mattathias and his family went into hiding in the mountains, where other Jews wishing to fight against the Greeks joined them. Led most prominently by Mattathias son, Judas Maccabee, the rebels retook their land from the Greek Seleucids. The Maccabean revolt succeeded.

Once the Maccabees had regained control, they returned to the Temple in Jerusalem. By this time it had been spiritually defiled by being used for the worship of foreign gods and for sacrificing animals the Jews regarded as unclean. Judas Maccabee restored and rededicated the Temple.

That’s the Hanukkah story from First Maccabees, redacted in the late second century, relating the events of 350 years before. There’s nothing in the books of Maccabees about a one-day supply of oil lasting for eight days. There’s only this decree that

“every year at that season the days of dedication of the altar should be observed with joy and gladness for eight days”

But why eight days? That bit isn’t explained until a portion of the Talmud written about 600 years after the Maccabean Revolt. That’s where we get the story of the Maccabees discovering that almost all of the ritual olive oil had been profaned. They found only a single container that was still sealed by the High Priest, and thus had not been profaned. That container had only enough oil to keep the menorah in the Temple lit for a single day. They used this, yet it burned for eight days. It had to be eight days because that’s how long it takes to have new oil pressed and made ready so that the Temple menorah can burn continuously.

So the rebels won. Yay, rebels. Of course, there is a sequel, and the Empire does strike back. Then, after that, there’s a return of the Jedi (the “Jewdi”? As Mel Brooks put it, “May the Schwartz be with you.”)

And so on, back and forth and forth and back through the millennia. This is where the story becomes a test case for letting go of our own opinions -- because in the Jewish civil war of almost 2200 years ago, there weren’t good guys and bad guys. There were just people trying to make their way as best they could. Both sides represented some qualities we can admire, and both sides were sometimes unskillful in their strategies.

On the one hand, we can identify with a rebel faction fighting against an empire that had slaughtered so many of its people. Just as in “Star Wars,” we cheer for the rebels, the country bumpkins who hold to an older and mystical religion. Yay for them.

On the other hand, we can also identify with open-ness to new ideas, to learning, to urban and urbane adaptability. If I were to sum up my philosophy of religion in six words, they would be: “It’s a metaphor. Go with it.” I identify with people who like to read Plato, and who are inspired by Greek ideas of democracy as opposed to the patriarchal and priestly rule of the Jewish traditionalists. (Not that the Seleucid Empire was very democratic, but they brought Greek thought that planted seeds of democratic hope.)

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This is part 2 of 3 of "A Hanukkah for Letting Go of Opinions"
See also:
Part 1: Hanukkah History
Part 3: Out Beyond Ideas

Hanukkah History

Happy Hanukkah! The eight-day festival of lights -- began at sundown on Sun Dec 6 ended at Sundown on Mon Dec 14. And then on Fri Dec 18 -- well, you know what happened on Fri Dec 18. Th new Star Wars movie opened, of course. The festival of lights – and then the temptation of the dark side.

The Hanukkah story and the Star Wars story both involve a heroic rebellion against an empire – and conflict within the rebelling faction. On this Hanukkah, let us review and remember that Hanukkah story – starting with the historical background.

The Historical Background

Alexander the Great's Greek-Macedonian forces conquered Israel in 333 BCE. Ten years later, 323 BCE, Alexander the Great died. On his death bed, Alexander carved up his empire and bequeathed various parts of it to his generals. Within another twenty years, the general that got Judea had lost it to Egypt. Another of Alexander’s generals, Seleucus, was more successful. Seleucus expanded on the holdings Alexander left to him, and established his own empire. The Seleucid Empire lasted 250 years, and, at its height, encompassed an area that included:

• about half of what is now Turkey,
• all of Syria,
• all of Lebanon,
• most of Israel,
• a sliver of Jordan,
• most of Iraq,
• all of Azerbajian,
• all of Iran,
• about half of Turkmenistan,
• half of Uzbekistan,
• small chunks of Kazakhstan, Kyrgystan, and Tajikistan,
• almost the entirety of Afghanistan, and
• about half of Pakistan.

Big empire!

The ruling class of the Seleucid Empire were basically Greek-Macedonian, like Alexander.
In 198 BCE, the Seleucids took control of Judea, ending a century of Egyptian control, and returning the region to Hellenic rule. (“Hellenic” means Greek-based culture.)

The conquest by Alexander, followed up by the Hellenic re-conquest by the Seleucid Empire, introduced challenges and enticements to the Hebrew people: Greek sports, Greek art and architecture, Greek philosophy. The Hebrew people had been beat up on for centuries by Assyrians, by Babylonians, by Egyptians, but these Greeks were something else. They had not only a powerful army, but had more sophisticated thought. The Greeks could subjugate you by force, and then examine your concepts with Plato and Aristotle, win your heart with the tragedies of Sophocles and the comedies of Aristophanes, and top it off by dazzling you with some Euclidean geometry.

The first Plato I ever read was “the Apology of Socrates” in high school. It won my heart – I went on to be a philosophy major in college. So I guess you could say I can relate. I'm a "Hellenizer" myself.

In those BCE years, the Jewish urban intellectuals of Jerusalem found Greek thought very attractive. More and more of them were assimilating into the high secular Hellenic culture, abandoning Jewish tradition. Meanwhile, the traditionalists in the countryside – the country hicks from the small villages around Jerusalem – were having none of it. They didn’t buy that city-slicker sophistication. They had work to do, farms to run, no time for reading Plato or attending Greek drama, and no use for that new Greek gymnasium that had gone up. They had their own literary traditions and didn’t want them cast aside or overshadowed. To them, Hellenizing was turning to the dark side.

When the Hellenizers began to get their people appointed into positions as high priests over the Temple, the traditionalists fought back. The First and Second Book of Maccabees tell of the Maccabean Revolt in the 160s, BCE – before the Common Era. The Books of Maccabees paint the Revolt as a nationalist uprising of the Jews against the political and cultural oppression of Emperor Antiochus IV of the Seleucid Empire. To some extent, it was. But historians now understand that the root of the conflict was a civil war between orthodox, traditionalist Jews and secularizing, assimilating, Greek-influenced Jews.

Antiochus got involved in an attempt to quell the civil disturbance. He took the side of the Hellenizer Jews – and unfortunately escalated the conflict. In doing so, he abandoned the usual Seleucid practice of not interfering with the local religions. The standard approach of the Seleucid empire, over its vast range encompassing a great diversity of local customs and rites, like many empires, was: we’re going to take our tribute of taxes, we’re going to conscript some of your young men for the Imperial army, but you can keep your religion and your culture.

In Judea, however, Antiochus faced a situation in which his subjugated people were fighting against each other. To bring peace to the region, he entered the conflict, put the Imperial might behind the Hellenizers – the natural choice for a Hellenic overlord – and sought to quash the Hebrew traditionalists. To do this, he banned the traditional practices of Judaism, persecuted any Jew who maintained the observances, and required the people to follow Greek religious practices, including worshiping Zeus, which meant bowing to a statue.

The Books of First Maccabees and Second Maccabees say Antiochus was simply wicked. They don’t mention that persecuting the local religions was a total departure from the Seleucid practice in all other places, and they downplay the civil conflict the Jews themselves were having with each other.

As the books of Maccabees tell it, the Seleucids had been ruling over the Jews in Jerusalem for about 30 years when, in 168 BCE, the Emperor Antiochus IV was rumored dead. Jason, who had been the high priest of the temple in Jerusalem, until outmaneuvered by Menelaus, believed the rumor to be true. Jason took advantage of the perceived interregnum to mount a little army of about 1,000 – tiny, but not bad for a priest. Menelaus fled.

Next: But Antiochus wasn't dead. . . 

* * *
This is part 1 of 3 of "A Hanukkah for Letting Go of Opinions"
See also:
Part 2: Yay for the Bumpkins...?
Part 3: Out Beyond Ideas