Can We Survive Without Kings? Parshat Nitzavim-Vayelech

This week is my last blog for the year since we have a triple header with two days of Rosh Hashanah followed by shabbat. Last year in my blog I wrote:

The origin of God as king is barely evidenced in the Bible, despite the commonly held views that God as king is biblical. God is definitely anthropomorphic in the Bible, but except for a few passages (Exodus 15:18; Numbers 23:21 and Deuteronomy 33:5) He is not associated with Kingship. If the kingship of God is primarily a rabbinic innovation, perhaps it could be easier to rid ourselves of this particular metaphor.

This year as a result of the class I am attending, I realize that there are many passages that lead us to understand that God is like a king and that these perceptions begin with its Mesopotamian origins. Those of you who know me personally, and many who only know me from my blogs, may recall that I “religiously” have been attending the morning sessions at Beit Avichai for more than three years. This week we have been studying about the origin of how God began to be described as the King. God’s origin as the God of all Gods (Melech elyon) are fairly bloody. Even the very world He brings into being is through great struggle, similar to giving birth, which is painful and fraught with danger. From the very beginning HE is a conqueror. Even though this concept helped me to understand the back story of our God, who is often vengeful and jealous when his people choose other gods, it is not a very comforting image. Through a careful reading of several biblical texts (Psalm 29 which we recite Friday nights, and Deuteronomy 32, Ha’azinu which we read between Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur), we see that there are remnants of and allusions to Mesopotamian texts which refer to the primordial battle of the gods.

THE ORIGIN STORY

Tiamat was in possession of a tablet and in a primordial battle, she gave it to a deity who was her lover and also one of her children. The terrified deities were rescued by Marduk after he secured their promise to revere him as King of the Gods.  He fought Tiamat:

And the lord stood upon Tiamat’s hinder parts, and with his merciless club he smashed her skull. He cut through the channels of her blood, and he made the North wind bear it away into secret places. Slicing Tiamat in half, Marduk made from her ribs the vault of heaven and earth. Her weeping eyes became the sources of the Tigris and Euphrates, her tail became the Milky Way. With the approval of the elder deities, he took the Tablet of Destinies and installed himself as the head of the Babylonian pantheon.  In short, the principal theme of the epic is the rightful elevation of Marduk to command over all the deities.

What I have always found interesting about this origin story of the world is that by killing off Tiamat (a female) who reigns supreme in the water, the male Marduk insists that he will be the supreme God. Was this possibly a shift in power from a matriarchal society to that of a patriarchal one? Robert Graves theorized that Tiamat and other ancient monster figures were depictions of former supreme deities of peaceful, woman-centered religions. Their defeat at the hands of a male hero corresponded to the overthrow of these matristic religions and societies by male-dominated ones. One can also associate this gruesome tale with the overthrowing and assassinations of Queens Jezebel and Athaliah (2 Kings 9: 29-37; 2 Kings 11: 1-20) in a bloody coup. The chopping up of the body into parts is reminiscent of the Concubine of Gibeah (Judges 19), when there is no law and order in the land–similar to the tohu and bohu before creation (Genesis 1:2).

SELICHOT SERVICES AND THE HIGH HOLIDAYS

The lead in to Rosh Hashanah is the selichot service, which in the Ashkenazi tradition, is the Saturday night before Rosh Hashanah.  The major part of selichot is the assertion of the kingship of God—culminating in avinu malkenu (our father, our king). Each year I think about how rulership is normally associated with men. Yet one wonders why, when even in the Orthodox world there are female rabbis, female prime ministers and after 70 years of the late reigning Queen Elizabeth, women rulers are not considered the norm. And let us all pray that in November we will have a female President in the United States. So why is the default still male?

GOD, THE ALMIGHTY IS A KING

Perhaps it is between God is the king of kings: HE is a father and an all-powerful Creator. This is reflected in our liturgy. We use male pronouns to describe God; our God is the lord, the king, the father, the soldier who leads us into battle. Because this image is familiar, it is comforting. If we add to this the melodies of the prayers that we know so well, it is possible not to notice that women are not present anywhere in this liturgy. (Although to be fair, most of the Torah and haftarah readings are about women).  All the metaphors describing God are patriarchal, even when he is described as a shepherd. He demands loyalty; he demands that we worship only Him. In this system, women are other, and men are the norm, hence God as a male king is normative and no one questions this, especially on the high holidays. I do not believe in the kingship of God, yet in the synagogue I pray to this God. I believe (or do not believe) one way and act in a manner that is not consistent with that belief (or lack of belief). And so, during an entire holiday season that stresses God’s kingship I am in a constant state of discomfort, or what the social scientists call dissonance. In an article I once wrote about prayer, I quoted Tikva Frymer-Kensky who wrote:

The cumulative impact of male-centered language and imagery is profoundly alienating to women….The fact that these images are used for God…reinvests these male images with …status and power. Women are completely left out of both the imagery and the power loop.

When we think of the monotheistic Deity as God who appears in Jewish sources, we have many images associated with masculinity and strength. There is God the husband and father; the rescuer and protector of Israel; the owner of the strong arm who took us out of Egypt. There is the God who rewards us and punishes us, who forgives our unfaithfulness, who expresses his great passion for us with love and vengeance when betrayed. Most ominously there is the violent God who is depicted as the husband of Israel, who beats his nation/wife when she disobeys him. Many of these masculine images are used to portray God, the object of prayer, in Jewish liturgy. One can argue that the concept of God the King is merely a rabbinic metaphor used to describe a transcendent God. Rabbinic thought also introduced the idea of partnership, that in order for God to do anything, he had to have followers of His divine will.  There are those who would argue that worship is an ongoing process of cooperation. God alone does not perform these acts. Man’s actions are necessary for God’s “deeds” to be actualized. However, what counts are the actual words we use and repeat in our prayers; and that the image of God as the almighty king who rules the world (Adonai elohenu Melech ha-olam) reflects our (and the world’s) unequal relationship to God.

IS THE MONOTHEISTIC GOD AN IDOL?

The entire book of Deuteronomy talks about the centralization of the place of worship. This was later understood to be Jerusalem, especially after the Temple was built. Over the years, this center has turned into an idol and those who worship there, are guilty of idol worship—addressing a holy place (like the Western Wall) as if God was actually present there. When we turn the Center into the focus of worship, we do not give equal sanctity to other places of worship. Similarly, when we visualize God as a supreme masculine being who conquered the other gods, we too are engaging in idol worship. The concept of One God (in whom we trust) does not tolerate disagreement. Disagreement is disloyal. How ironic that our God, who wants us to destroy idols, has HIMself become an idol to be worshipped. Perhaps Jewish theology needs to be reformed.

THIS WEEK’S PARSHA

Who is this God (YHWH) who succeeded in getting the people’s loyalty? At the beginning of parshat nitzavim-vayelkh, YHWH renews the covenant with His people. The covenant will be binding, not only for those who are standing before God (nitzavim kulchem lifnei Adonai), but also for those who are to be born in the future (Deut 29: 13-14). However, should there be anyone who turns away from the LORD to worship other Gods, and thinks he or she is protected by the covenant, the Lord’s wrath will rain on them from the heavens and will tear them from the land in “wrath and in anger and in great fury (Deut 29:19-20; 26-27).

God Goes Into Hiding

And if that is not enough, later on in the parsha, He will hide himself from His people:

And My wrath will flare against them on that day, and I shall forsake them and hide My face from them (histarti), and they will become fodder, and many evils and troubles will find them, and they will say on that day, ‘Is it not because our God is not in our midst that these evils have found us?’ And as for Me, I will surely hide My face (haster astir) on that day for all the evil that they have done, for they turned to other gods (Deut. 31:17-18).

Since October 7^th we seem to be living in a time of hester panim—God’s hiding from us. Rivka Lubitch, the veteran Orthodox feminist expressed her trauma at God’s sleeping on the job, in her midrash, by rewriting the ancient Psalm 121, which begins with “a Song of Ascents”—shir la’maalot,  to a song of Descents, a view of God written after October 7th:

Sleeps and Slumbers, The Guardian of Israel by Rivkah Lubitch

A song of Descents

I raised my eyes to the mountains and my help did not come. I have no help from God Maker of Heaven and Earth. He let my foot slip, He let my guardians slumber. Here, he slept and slumbered, the Guardian of Israel. God did not guard me; He did not shade me at my right hand. By day, the sun struck at me and the moon by night. God did not guard me from all harm; He did not guard my life. How will God guard my going and coming from now and forever?

As we move into Rosh Hashana when we hope to turn over a new leaf; start new calendars and diaries, we get this strange message in the Torah that no matter what we do, it is ordained that we will sin and that God is going to hide himself from us. If we are doomed to perpetually be sinning, whether in action or in our thoughts, God will not be there to pick up the pieces. What this means (perhaps) is that it is time to take responsibility for our actions and clean up the mess that we have created in the world. The “how to do it” is of course the burning issue. But right now, the leaders of the so-called democracies seem to be blaming others for war, pollution, disease, corruption, economic inequality, racism etc. (you name it), rather than take responsibility for these problems. There is no guarantee that if we collectively own up to our sins and do something about it, that God will reappear, but, it is a start. And that is all we can do as we enter a new year. The choice is ours as it appears at the end of Nitzavim:

I call heaven and earth to witness against you this day: I have put before you life and death, blessing and curse. Choose life—if you and your offspring would live (Deuteronomy 30:19).

May next year be a much better one than this past year. Shana Tova.