Paschal
Greetings
By Israel
Adam Shamir
Was it good or bad in
Egypt for the people of Israel? The Bible leaves the reader
confused. On one hand, they were enslaved and had to built the
cities in fear of the brutal overseer’s whip. Exodus 5:7-19
tells that the Pharaoh ceased to provide them with straw to make
bricks of (even to this day they mix straw and clay to make
bricks in the Nile Valley) and they ran around gathering stubble
and straw for the quota of bricks remained as it was. Whenever
they would say: “We would rather go and pray”, the Pharaoh would
answer: you say so because you are idle, you have too much time
on your hands; hurry, do your job, deliver more bricks! And they
were beaten to work harder and faster.
A legend (“midrash”)
tells of a pregnant woman who was mixing straw and clay for
bricks, worked hard, and when she gave birth, her child fell
into the pit and was made into a brick. This brick was taken up
to heaven and laid at the feet of God.
On the other hand, in
the desert, the Israelites complained that they had left the
flesh-pots of Egypt, the land of plenty, where they had
everything they ever could wish - for the hardships of desert
life.
So what it was – a cruel
bondage or prosperity? This contradiction can’t be settled
convincingly, unless one understands that the story of Exodus is
an extended metaphor. The bondage is the bondage of flesh, of
our everyday life, of pursuit of things. The Pharaoh, call him
Satan, or Consumer spirit, demands from us to make more and more
bricks, to earn more money, so we will forget about God. Every
day we sacrifice some time of our children (“turn them into
bricks”) for instead of attending to them we work more to pay
mortgage, this is the quota of bricks, to repay for the car
credit, and what not. And from time to time we go to a nice
candle-lit restaurant on the seaside for a good meal – this is
the fleshpots.
God takes you out of
bondage of flesh (“Egypt”) to the freedom of spirit (the
“Promised Land”). He Himself comes to take you out, and He will
overcome even death to save you for spiritual life. Life is more
than small talk about mortgages and new cars and candle-lit
dinners, Man is more, much more than a consumer of goods, He is
Godlike and can enter the Promised Land of spirit in flesh. This
is the Paschal message, and that is why this is the most
important message mankind ever received.
An ordinary Jew takes
this metaphor literally; he thinks this is a story of his
physical ancestors who were enslaved in the land of pyramids and
escaped into the Promised Land. An ordinary Jew thinks that God
actually killed the first-born of Egypt and empowered Joshua to
kill the natives of Canaan in order to provide his family with a
valuable seaside real estate. He thinks that the Promised Land
of the Bible is a physical real land, Palestine, that this is a
story of liberation from national slavery and conquest of a
country. By such interpretation, he debases this great message
of its spiritual and universal meaning; he privatises the story
and robs others and himself of its true meaning. The recurring
motive of Jews using blood of children for the Passover ritual
is a symbolic reply to this literalism. The Christian replies:
if you are that literal, if you read the metaphoric story of
Man’s liberation as some trivial Drang Nach Osten, you
may as well pour real blood of children into your crystal
goblets.
Much blood - of children
and of adults – was poured on the altar of Zionist conquest. But
this conquest of Palestine was inbuilt in the literalist Judaic
reading of Exodus for Zionism is a literalist realization of the
metaphor, the project of conquering the Promised Land by force
of arms instead of connecting to spirit by means of prayer, good
deeds and grace. It was a titanic, gigantic project; I mean the
titans and giants who tried to conquer Olympus and unseat the
blessed gods. And whenever people applied this literalist
reading, no good came out of it, vide the conquest of North
America, where very few natives survived (as opposed to South
America) and the resulting nation causes much trouble to the
rest of the world.
Ignorant
vulgar materialists are prone to “defend Jews” while
accusing “Zionists”, for they are not aware of theological
grounds of Zionism, and these grounds are deeply entrenched in
Judaic literalism. For sure, there were Jewish divines who
proclaimed metaphoric reading, for instance, they explained
“there was no water for three days” (Exodus 15:22-25) passage as
reference to three days without God’s Word. Thanks to these wise
men who were aware of the secret spiritual meaning of the Holy
Land, that is the Land of Spirit; Zionism did not break forth
until late 19th century. But literalism was never far
away, never sufficiently exorcised, and with rise of materialism
and decline of understanding, the spiritual reading of the
Scripture was altogether discarded.
Likewise, the sad story
of Exile can and should be understood as departure of man from
the Grace of God. The First Man was in eternal communion with
God, in eternal state of grace. Since the exile of Adam from
Paradise, we sorely miss this grace. The Christians have Christ
who offered us the way to regain the grace; Gnostics created a
pretty myth of Sophia entering the sacred marriage with Christ,
but in Jewish literalist reading even the concept of grace was
forgotten and transplanted by quite trivial physical relocation
into Palestine.
Blessed are the
Buddhists who did not entertain the thought that the Pure Land
is a part of Nepal where Gautama Buddha was born and found his
enlightenment. Indeed, literalism debases its followers, as Karl
Marx noted in his witty remark: “Christianity is sublime
Judaism, while Judaism is sordid Christianity”. The schism
between old Israel of flesh and new Israel of spirit is the
split between metaphoric and literal readers of the Exodus.
Anti-judaic polemics carried out by St John Chrysostom and
Martin Luther were arguments – not against a small tribe, but
against the deniers of spirit. Extremely potent anti-spiritual
attack of modernity which almost obliterated Christ’s footsteps
is deemed “Judaic”, and is supported by spirit-denying Jews,
though it has wider and not exclusively Jewish following.
Fathers of the Church
were aware of extremely troublesome consequences of literalism.
Origen was an enemy of "literalists who believe such things
about [God] as would not be believed of the most savage and
unjust of men".[Origen, Principles 4.1.8] He could tolerate
simple believers, but not the Judaisers. By means of a more
sophisticated literalism this group attempted to continue
obedience to the Law within the Christian Church, writes
Bradshaw, but the real problem with the Judaisers was their
opposition to spirit. They were with Letter, i.e. they were
literalists and spirit deniers.
The Eastern Orthodox
Church preserved the uncorrupted traditions of the Church
Fathers, and that is why she stresses the metaphoric reading of
the Bible narrative. Orthodox icons do not depict suffering of
Christ, as opposed to the Western paining: though the Church
surely does not deny it as the Gnostics were prone to, she
prefers the image of Christ Resurrected, the Pantocrator, the
Supreme King victorious over Death. On the icons, Christ is
equally serene on the Cross and on his Throne in heaven.
For us, this week is the
time to obtain the most important and most precious gift of God,
the Grace. See though myths for their only purpose is to
concentrate your mind on spirit, like rosary helps to
concentrate on prayer. Do not become inordinately concerned with
the details of the myth, or with material of the rosary.
Remember, if we get grace, we can solve all small problems of
this world. Out of Egypt of flesh to the Promised Land of
spirit, this is the call.
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