Same God, Other God: Judaism, Hinduism, and the Problem of Idolatry by Alon Goshen-Gottstein

Abstract

Reviewed by: Same God, Other God: Judaism, Hinduism, and the Problem of Idolatry by Alon Goshen-Gottstein Ankur Barua Same God, Other God: Judaism, Hinduism, and the Problem of Idolatry By Alon Goshen-Gottstein. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016. 265 pp. Alon Goshen-Gottstein has given us a path-breaking study, grounded in profound erudition and spiritual discernment, which explores two interconnected themes: the status of Hinduism as Avoda Zara ("foreign worship" or "idolatry"), and the rabbinic category of Avoda Zara itself, by examining its suitability to some of the multiple forms of religious Hinduisms. The term Avoda Zara in rabbinic literature represents the rejection of the worship of gods other than the God to whom Israel is bound in a relation of covenantal exclusivity. For Jewish life and thought, Avoda Zara is the conceptual prism through which other religions could be viewed as inadequate, invalid, and illegitimate and placed under the sign of suspicion, ridicule, and contempt. An instance that Goshen-Gottstein highlights is the rabbinic ruling in 2004 that Jewish Orthodox women could not wear wigs (sheitel) made of hair that had been shorn at the Hindu temple of Tirupati in South India. As a scholar of rabbinic thought who has also cultivated deep friendships with various Hindu religious figures across several decades, Goshen-Gottstein objects to such hasty dismissals of Hinduisms merely because of the presence of physical images, gurus, and cosmic powers in Hindu devotional universes, without first developing a sensitive understanding of the intentionalities of the Hindus themselves who engage with these foci in their spiritual lives. A key emphasis that runs through the book is on rethinking Jewish categories in contexts of interreligious dialogue, especially when some Jewish seekers have "turned East" and immersed themselves in diverse forms of Hindu spiritualities. Goshen-Gottstein's study highlights the points that, on the one hand, medieval rabbinic conceptualizations of Avoda Zara which were developed in response to Christianity cannot be mechanically applied in halachic rulings to Hindu universes, and, on the other hand, the ongoing encounters with Hinduism can surprisingly illuminate certain dimensions of Jewish thought. Maimonides's highly influential definition of Avoda Zara as the worship of any being other than God does not quite fit the panentheistic visions of Vedantic Hinduisms which speak of the divine presence in all beings. For Hindus, generally speaking, the image is an imperfect representation not of a finite being that is other than the divine reality but of Brahman, the metaphysical plenitude [End Page 141] of divinity. Pointing out that the idol or the image is visualized in some Hindu modes of worship as a temporary abode of the divine spirit, which is why it is later ritually immersed in water, Goshen-Gottstein offers as a Jewish analogy the theme of the divine presence in the structures of the Temple which makes the divine available to the world. Certain forms of contemporary Judaisms, too, have configured panentheistic notions of the deity, and these are conceptually similar to the Vedantic standpoint that everything is encompassed by the divine. Again, while Nachmanides operates with a hierarchical universe where the God of Israel is placed above the lesser gods (elohim) who are worshipped by the nations, Hindu worshippers of the images of the supreme God such as Vishnu do not seek any lower deities but God alone. The rich Hindu articulations of such images offer, Goshen-Gottstein suggests, points of deep spiritual resonance with the Hassidic emphasis on the cultivation of the imagination for meditatively envisioning, however falteringly, the incorporeal God. Goshen-Gottstein argues, midway through the book, that even if one concludes that Hinduism is Avoda Zara, the affirmation that Hindus and Jews worship the same God can bring about a reorientation of some Jewish perceptions of Hindu deities, images, and ritual practices as strange, foreign, and offensive. Jewish and Hindu beliefs in the divine as the ultimate source of worldly reality, and the emphases in both contexts on moral uprightness and the spiritual life indicate that the one common God is worshipped. Drawing on the thought of Menachem Meiri, who argued that the validity of a "religion" is to be measured in...