The Disappearance of God: A Divine Mystery (review)

Abstract

Book Reviews 139 Most of the pages in this intriguing book are taken up with detailed commentary on Biblical and Rabbinical texts. Ofparticular interest is the demonstration of the shift in perspective that separates the Rabbis from the very words they loved to cite about menstrual impurity in Leviticus 15. Hoffman shows that, when taken in context, the view ofmenstrual-blood taboo in Lev. 15 is explicitly paralleled by taboos surrounding bodily emissions from males, and is therefore not sexist. The Rabbis, however, did not adopt this symmetry. They interpreted the Bible in terms ofa different cosmology, in which the blood ofwomen is opposed to the blood ofmen, and is as much to be avoided as the latter is to be ritually honored. The book's fIrst chapter introduces the questions faced by modem-day Jews, interpreting circumcision as a "symbol in the Jewish psyche." The chapter also explicates Hoffman's methodology, with its important distinction between "offIcial" and "public" meanings in ritual. An "Afterword," following the fmal chapter (no. 11), takes a compassionate yet surely controversial view of "circumcision in American culture." In between is an elaborate analysis of Rabbinic texts and the culture of Rabbinic Judaism. With great attention to detail, Hoffman leads the reader to follow the path that led him to the conclusion that "the culture of the Rabbis is defmable in terms of' an equation that runs like this: men are to women as "cooked" is to "raw," as controlled is to uncontrolled, as agents who transform are to agents who do not transform, and as the "cultured" blood-flow ofmales is to the natural blood-flow of women (pp. 171ft). That our inherited traditions are sexist is not news. Hoffman's contribution is to take us deep inside the logic ofRabbinic sexism, revealing its history, development, and underlying structure. He thus reminds us that ifwe are to depart from such a cosmology it cannot be by casual means. We shall have to do the hard work ofputting together an equally cogent view ofdivine and human power that transcends the confmes of sexist history, theology, and culture. TomF. Driver Paul Tillich Professor ofTheology and Culture, Emeritus Union Theological Seminary, New York The Disappearance of God: A Divine Mystery, by Richard Elliott Friedman. Boston: Little, Brown, and Company, 1995. 335 pp. $24.95. In a classic essay, Jon Levenson asked "Why Jews Aren't Interested in Biblical 140 SHOFAR Summer 1997 Vol. 15, No.4 Theology" (The Hebrew Bible, the Old Testament, and Historical Criticism, 1993). Ironically, in recent years Jewish biblical scholars, including Levenson himself, have begun to address theological issues. Now Richard Elliott Friedman, whose best-selling Who Wrote the Bible? (New York: Summit Books, 1987) brought traditional historical criticism to widespread public attention, has entered the theological arena, going so far as to identify himself as "a biblical scholar who is interested in the manifestation of divinity" (p. 223). For Friedman, this move includes impressive forays into the study of Nietzsche, Kabbalah, and the Big Bang. In undertaking this venture, he is wise to offer the appropriate caveats about the limitations of his own expertise; however, he does not let these deter him from this project, reaching bravely, ifsomewhat nervously, beyond the boundaries ofbiblical scholarship. For this, we are all the beneficiaries. Friedman's focus is on the apparent absence of God from our world, a theme usually associated with Friedrich Nietzsche. Although several contemporary theologians have noted this sense of "the great age of closeness with the deity, as behind us and always receding" (p. 95), a phenomenon that is usually ascribed to some aspect of modernity, Friedman contends that it can be traced back to the Bible itself, where God's visibility diminishes as one moves through the books of the canon, at least as arranged in the traditional Jewish sequence. (Jack Miles observed the same phenomenon in his widely discussed God: A Biography [New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1995], which Friedman acknowledges in a note on p. 78.) Alongside and presumably related to this development, Friedman discovers a shift towards the growing importance of human responsibility in determining the outcome ofaffairs on earth. _J~presenting both the divine and the...