17. Beyond Faith
The Peril of Faith
To have no faith is callousness, to have undiscerning faith is
superstition. “The simple believeth every word.” (Proverbs
14:15), frittering away their faith on things explorable but not
yet explored. By confounding ignorance with faith a person is in-
clined to regard as exalted whatever they fail to understand, as
if faith began where understanding ended; as if it were a
supreme virtue to be convinced without proofs, to be ready
to believe.
Faith, the soul’s urge to rise above its own wisdom, to be,
like a plant, a little higher than the soil, is irrepressible, often
frantic, wayward, blind and exposed to peril. The soul’s affin-
ity for the holy is strong enough to outwit or to repress but
not annihilate the force of gravitation to the vile. Those who
are sure of their faith often tumble under their own weight,
and, when overthrown, they fall on their knees, worshiping,
deifying the snake that usually lies where flowers grow. How
much tender devotion, heroism and self-mortification have
been lavished upon the devil? How often has humanity deified
Satan, found the evil magnificent though dismal, and full of
indescribable majesty? Faith is, indeed, no security.
It is tragically true that we are often wrong about God,
believing in that which is not God, in a counterfeit ideal, in a
dream, in a cosmic force, in our own father, in our own selves.
We must never cease to question our own faith and to ask
what God means to us. Is God an alibi for ignorance? The
white flag of surrender to the unknown? Is God a pretext for
comfort and unwarranted cheer? a device to cheat despond-
ency, fear or despair?
From whom should we seek support for our faith if even
religion can be fraud, if by self-sacrifice we may hallow mur-
der? From our minds which have so often betrayed us? From
our conscience which easily fumbles and fails? From the
heart? From our good intentions? “He that trusteth in their own
heart is a fool” (Proverbs 28:26)
The heart is deceitful above all things,
It is exceedingly weak—
Who can know it.
(Jeremiah 17:9)
Individual faith is not self-sufficient: it must be counter-
signed by the dictate of unforgettable guidance.
Significantly, the Shema, the main confession of Jewish
faith, is not written in the first person and does not express a
personal attitude: I believe. All it does is to recall the Voice
that said: “Hear, O Israel.”
To Believe is to Remember
Not the individual person, not a single generation by its own
power, can erect the bridge that leads to God. Faith is the
achievement of ages, an effort accumulated over centuries.
Many of its ideas are as the light of a star that left its source
centuries ago. Many songs, unfathomable today, are the reso-
nance of voices of bygone times. There is a collective memory
of God in the human spirit, and it is this memory of which we
partake in our faith.
It has been suggested that the group-memory of acquired
characteristics is an important factor in humanity’s development.
Some of our a priori categories are collective in character and
lacking in individual content. They acquire individual charac-
ter through the encounter with empirical facts. “In the sense
they must be deposits from the experiences of the ancestors.”
C.G. Jung
The heritage of humankind includes not only dispositions but
also ideas. “motives and images which can spring anew in every
age and clime, without tradition or migration.” “The true
story of the mind is not preserved in learned volumes, but in
the living mental organism of everyone.There is a treasure-
house in our group memory. Nothing has been lost except the
key to this treasure house, and even that is occasionally found.”
C.G. Jung
The riches of a soul are stored up in its memory. This is the
test of character—not whether a person follows the daily fash-
ion, but whether the past is alive in their present. When we
want to understand ourselves, to find out what is most precious
in our lives, we search our memory. Memory is the soul’s wit-
ness to the capricious mind.
Only those who are spiritual imitators, only people who
are afraid to be grateful and too weak to be loyal, have noth-
ing but the present moment. To a noble person it is a holy joy
to remember, an overwhelming thrill to be grateful; while to
a person whose character is neither rich nor strong, gratitude
is a most painful sensation. The secret of wisdom is never to
get lost in a momentary mood or passion, never to forget
friendship because of a momentary grievance, never to lose
sight of the lasting values because of a transitory episode. The
things which sweep through our daily life should be valued
according to whether or not they enrich the inner cistern.
That only is valuable in our experience which is worth remem-
bering. Remembrance is the touchstone of all actions.
Memory is a source of faith. To have faith is to remember.
Jewish faith is a recollection of that which happened to Israel
in the past. The events in which the spirit of God became a
reality stand before our eyes painted in colors that never fade.
Much of what the Bible demands can be comprised in one word:
Remember. “Take heed to thyself, and keep thy soul diligent-
ly lest thou forget the things which thine eye saw, and lest
they depart from thy heart all the days of thy life; make them
known unto thy children and thy children’s children” Deuter-
onomy 4:19)
Jews have not preserved the ancient monuments, they
have retained the ancient moments. The light kindled in their
history was never extinguished. With sustaining vitality the
past survives in their thoughts, hearts, rituals. Recollection is
a holy act: we sanctify the present by remembering the past.
It is perhaps for this reason that we find in some of the Jew-
ish prayer books two summaries of the Jewish doctrine, one,
based on the teaching of Maimonides, contains the famous thir-
teen tenets, and the other a list of remembrances. It is as if
the essential things in Judaism were not abstract ideas but
rather concrete events. The exodus from Egypt, the giving of
the Torah on Mount Sinai, the destruction of the Temple of
Jerusalem had to be constantly present in the mind of a Jew.
For over eighteen centuries the people have been away from
the Holy Land, and still their attachment to the Land of Israel
has never been severed. The soul of Israel has pledged: “If I
forget thee, O Jerusalem, may my right hand forget its
cunning.” (Psalms 137:5)
Not far off from our consciousness there is a slow and silent
stream, a stream not of oblivion but of memory, from which
souls must constantly drink before entering the realm of faith.
When drinking from that stream we do not have to take
a leap in order to reach the level of faith. What we must do
is to be open to the stream in order to echo, in order to recall.
There is a slow and silent stream at the shore of all of hu-
man history. The heaven is the Lord’s, but the stream is open
to all humankind. And all who live by their faith finds themselves in the
community of countless people of all ages, of all nations, to
whom it was shown that one person with God is a majority
against all people of malice, that love of mercy is stronger than
power. Creeds may divide it, zealots may deny it, the com-
munity of faith endures forever. Wars cannot destroy it, rival-
ries cannot overthrow it. If the devil offered us all the wealth
of its house as a price for betraying it, it would be laughed
aside.
“For from the rising of the sun even unto the going down of
the same my name is great among the Gentiles, and in every
place incense is offered unto my name, and a pure offering: for
my name is great among the Gentiles, saith the Lord of hosts.”
Malachi 1:11). This statement refers undoubtedly to the con-
temporaries of the prophet. But who were these worshipers
of One God? At the time of Malachi there was hardly any
large number of proselytes. Yet the statement declares: All
those who worship their gods do not know it, but they are
really worshipping Me.
Faith as Individual Memory
To have faith does not mean, however, to dwell in the shadow
of old ideas conceived by prophets and sages, to live off an
inherited estate of doctrines and dogmas. In the realm of spirit
only they who are a pioneer are able to be an heir. The wages of
spiritual plagiarism is the loss of integrity; self-aggrandizement
is self-betrayal.
Authentic faith is more than an echo of a tradition. It is a
creative situation, an event. For God is not always silent, and
a person is not always blind. In every person’s life there are moments
when there is a lifting of the veil at the horizon of the known,
opening a sight of the eternal. Each of us has at least once in
their life experienced the momentous reality of God. Each of
us has once caught a glimpse of the beauty, peace and power
that flow through the souls of those who are devoted to God.
But such experiences or inspirations are rare events. To some
people they are like shooting stars, passing and unremembered.
In others they kindle a light that is never quenched. The re-
membrance of that experience and the loyalty to the response
of that moment are the forces that sustain our faith. In this
sense, faith is faithfulness, loyalty to an event, loyalty to our
response.
Faith and Belief
A distinction is to be made between belief and mere ap-
prehension. Not all ideas which we apprehend we accept
as true. We may imagine such a thing as flying elephants but
are not ready to believe in their actual existence. Belief is the
mental acceptance of a proposition or a fact as true on the
ground of authority or evidence, the conviction of the truth
of a given proposition or an alleged fact.
Belief, in this sense, is not a theological, but an epistemologi-
cal term, applying to all kinds of knowledge, and those who
identify it with faith overlook the difference between the ac-
ceptance of a judgment and the acceptance of an idea of faith.
Is faith only an attitude of the mind? Do we accept, in faith
the existence of God in the same way in which we accept the
existence of the tower of Pisa? Faith is not the assent to an
idea, but the consent to God.
Faith is a relation to God; belief a relation to an idea or a
dogma. Unlike belief (which is the accompaniment of knowl-
edge or apprehension, the assent given to what we know),
faith surges beyond knowledge and apprehension; it refers
not to the knowable but to that which transcends knowledge.
Moreover, belief is necessarily a self-conscious act. In saying:
“I believe,” there is the awareness that it is the self that accepts
something as true. Belief is personal conviction. Yet, in the
diffidence and awe in which faith is born there is no place for
self-awareness. How monstrous to think of faith as an act of
a person’s giving their expert opinion, as an act of acknowledgement,
of granting recognition to God.
A hasidic rabbi, away from home, passed the night at the
house of an opponent of Hasidism. Before dawn the host, as
was his custom, rose to study the Talmud. Hours passed, the
rabbi stayed in bed. “How unworthy of a man reputed to be
a saint to let the morning hours go by without studying the
Torah.” When the rabbi finally arose, the host remarked about
he sleeping so late. “I have been awake for many hours,” the
rabbi said. “If so why did you not arise to study?” And the
rabbi replied: “Before opening my eyes and praying: ‘I render
thanks unto Thee…’ I began to think: Who is the ‘I,” and
who is the ‘Thee’? How unworthy I am to render thanks
unto God. It was beyond my power to find an answer, to
continue praying or to rise…”
Belief without faith is a formal act, often as poor in spiritual
meaning as a proof for the existence of God produced by a
calculating machine. Faith, on the other hand, is not only the
assent to a proposition, but the staking of a whole life on the
truth of an invisible reality. It is as little reducible to an assent
as love, and its adequate expression is not a sober assertion but
an exclamation.
Faith and Creed
As we have said above, we must not equate the process of
faith with its expression. Accordingly, faith, or the act of be-
lieving, must be distinguished from creed, or that which we
believe in. As little rational as an act of inspiration, faith be-
comes a dogma or a doctrine when crystallized in an opinion.
In other words, what is expressed and taught as a creed is
but the adaptation of the uncommon spirit to the common
mind. Our creed is, like music, a translation of the unutter-
able into a form of expression. The original is known to God
alone.
Faith is an act of spiritual audacity, while in employing
terms we necessarily come to terms with our desire for in-
tellectual security, for steadiness, tranquility.
Inaccessible to analysis are the ultimate principles of
thought and action. All special sciences are compelled to take
for granted a number of presuppositions that cannot be proved.
These presuppositions rest either on positive intuitive cer-
tainty or are accepted for the negative reason that they are
not contradicted by any experience. Nobody can explain
rationally why they should sacrifice their life and happiness for
the sake of the good. The conviction that we must obey
ethical imperatives is not derived from logical arguments. It
originates in an intuitive certitude, in a certitude of faith. On
somewhat comparable fundamentals rest all positive religions.
Axioms as well as dogmas can only be expressed in metaphors
(the principle of the preservation of energy is a case in point),
since they refer to something that surpasses experience and
our means of expression are derived from experience.
The adequacy of dogmas depends upon whether they claim
to formulate or to allude; in the first case they flaunt and fail,
in the second they indicate and illumine. To be adequate they
must retain a telescopic relation to the theme which they refer
to, to point to the mysteries of God rather than to picture
them. All they can do is to mark a way not an end of think-
ing. Dogmas are obstacles unless they serve as humble sign-
post on the way. They are allusive rather than informative
or descriptive. When taken literally, they either turn flat, nar-
row and shallow or become ventriloquous myths. The dogma
of creation, for example, has often been reduced to a tale and
robbed of its authentic meaning, while as an allusion to an
ultimate fact it is of inexhaustible relevance.
There are many experiences for which we have no names,
many strata of faith for which we have no dogmas. Looking
for a medium by which to convey the unutterable, a person is too
often ready to go aboard a vehicle that goes in any direction
and from which it is afterwards difficult to alight.
A young man was eager to go to New York. Hitchhiking
on the road, he stopped a car that was passing by "Are you
going east, to New York?”—“No, I am going west, to Chi-
cago.”—“All right, so I will go to Chicago.”
The Idolatry of Dogmas
Humanity has often made a god out of a dogma, a graven image
which they worshipped, to which they prayed. They would rather
believe in dogmas than in God, serving them not for the sake
of heaven but for the sake of a creed, the diminutive of faith.
Dogmas are the poor mind’s share in the divine. A creed is
almost all a poor person has. Skin for skin, they will give their life
for all that they have. Yes, they may be ready to take other people’s
lives, if they refuse to share their tenets.
Are Dogmas Unnecessary?
Are dogmas unnecessary? We cannot be in rapport with the
reality of the divine except for rare, fugitive moments. How
can these moments be saved for the long hours of functional
living, when the thoughts that feed like bees on the inscrutable
desert us and we lose both the sight and the drive? Dogmas
are like amber in which bees, once alive, are embalmed, and
which are capable of being electrified when our minds be-
come exposed to the power of the ineffable. For the problems
we must always grapple with are: How to communicate those
rare moments of insight to all hours of our life? How to com-
mit intuition to concepts, the ineffable to words, communion
to rational understanding? How to convey our insights to
others and to unite in a fellowship of faith? It is the creed that
attempts to answer these problems.
“Hear, my son, the instruction of thy father, and forsake
not the teaching of thy mother” (Proverbs 1:8). Our creed is
like a mother who is never impatient of our folly and failing,
who does not forget, even when our faith fades into oblivion.
There are many creeds, but only one universal faith. Creeds
may change, develop and wither away, while the substance of
faith remains the same in all ages. The overgrowth of creed
may smash and seal the doom of faith. A minimum of creed
and a maximum of faith is the ideal synthesis.
Faith and Reason
Driven by soaring faith, leaving altitudes of wisdom behind,
people of faith are occasionally overtaken by doubts: Is not faith
a castle in the air in comparison with reason, which is im-
pregnable and solid like a fortress? People of faith are often
ready to barter unexampled, inalienable insights for notions
manufactured in mass production. Yet, there is no rate of
exchange for such insights, since evaluating faith in terms of
reason is like trying to understand love as a syllogism and
beauty as an algebraic equation.
What does our skepticism desire? To see God on the tele-
vision set? To let faith crystallize in hard currency of knowl-
edge?
We rarely manage to erect a tower which, resting on a
syllogistic basis, would come up to the altitude of faith. In
fact, trying to render visions of faith in terms of speculation
is like constructing an airplane of massive rock.
We should not forget that in our attempts to vindicate be-
lief, it is the creed which we examine rather than faith, the
content of which is too fine to be retained in a logician’s sieve.
Reason is not the measure of all things, not the all-control-
ling power in the life of a human, nor the foundation of all assertions.
The cry of a wounded person is not the product of discursive
thought. Science cannot be established in terms of art nor art
in terms of science. Why, then, should faith depend for its
validity upon justification by science?
The awareness of God, as we have seen, does not enter the
mind by way of syllogisms nor can the certainty of faith be
presented on a silver platter of speculation. Logical plausibility
does not create faith nor does logical implausibility refute it.
Reason seeks to integrate the unknown with the known;
faith seeks to integrate the unknown with the divine; its ripe
fruit is not cold judgement but attachment, action, song and
coming close to God. While the historians explain the suffering
of Israel in terms of the political geography of Palestine, which,
situated astride the crossroads of three continents, was exposed
to the ambitions of conquerors, the prophet speaks of a divine
plan to let Israel be afflicted in order to atone, not for its own
sins, but also for the sins of the heathen.
When transformed into creed, faith is rendered in conven-
tional terms of reason. Such terms come and go, and what is
lucid today may be a travesty tomorrow. Reason’s great con-
flict is not with faith but with belief.
”Grant Us Knowledge…”
“No greater evil can happen to anyone than to hate reasoning.
But hatred of reasoning and hatred of humankind both spring
from the same source…Pay little attention to Socrates, but
much more to the truth, and if I appear to you to say anything
true, assent to it; but if not, oppose me with all your might”
(Phaedo 87.91).
In Jewish tradition reason has always been esteemed as one
of God’s foremost gifts to humanity. It would be hard to discover
in the history of Jewish thought a tendency to conspire against
or to defy its conclusions. The first thing the Jews pray for,
three times a day, is not daily bread, health or even forgive-
ness of sins, but knowledge: “O grant us knowledge, under-
standing, insight.”
If the only safety of a creed lay in its being entrenched be-
hind the wall of stubborn believing, then behind it would be
fear, not faith; misgiving, not trust. Truth has nothing to fear
from reason. What we abhor is presumptuousness that often
goes with super-rationalism, reason conditioned by conceit,
reason subservient to passion.
That there can be no true conflict between the teachings
imparted to us by revelation and the ideas acquired by reason
was a prevalent opinion of the great Jewish thinkers of the
Middle Ages. The idea of their intrinsic agreement was, to
the mind of these thinkers, a necessary implication of the doc-
trine of monotheism. What is contained in the divine message
can neither misrepresent reality nor contradict any truths
taught by science, since both reason and revelation originated
in the wisdom of God who created all reality and knows all
truth. An essential disagreement between reason and revela-
tion would presuppose the existence of two divine beings, each
of whom would represent a different source of knowledge.
Faith, therefore, can never compel the reason to accept that
which is absurd.
Neither reason nor faith is all-inclusive nor self-sufficient.
The insights of faith are general, vague and stand in need of
conceptualization in order to be communicated to the mind,
integrated and brought to consistency. Reason is a necessary
coefficient of faith, lending form to what often becomes vio-
lent, blind and exaggerated by imagination. Faith without rea-
son is mute, reason without faith is deaf.
But do we really believe? A Hasid once started to recite
the thirteen principle of Maimonides: "I firmly believe that
the Creator, blessed be His name, is the Creator and Ruler of
all created beings”…Suddenly he paused: “Can I say that
I firmly believe? If I did, I would not be so fretful, so profane;
I would not pray so half-heartedly…But if I do not,
how dare I tell a lie…No, I will not say it; a liar is worse than
a non-believer…Yet, this would mean, I do not believe,
But I do believe!…” Again he paused, until he found a way
out. He decided to say: “Oh that I might firmly believe…”
Ezra the Scribe, the great renovator of Judaism, of whom
the rabbis said that he was worthy of receiving the Torah,
had it not been already given through Moses (Sanhedrin 21b),
confessed his lack of perfect faith. He tells us that after he had
received a royal firman from King Artaxerxes granting him
permission to lead a group of exiles from Babylonia: “I pro-
claimed a fast there at the river Ahava, that we might afflict
ourselves before our God, to seek of God a right way for us,
and for our little ones, and for all our substance. For I was
ashamed to require of the King a band of soldiers and horse-
men to help us against the enemy in the way: because we had
spoken unto the king, saying, the hand of God is upon all
them for good that seek God” (Ezra 8:11-22).
Faith is Reciprocity
For faith is not the clinging to a shrine but an endless pil-
grimage of the heart. Audacious longing, burning songs, dar-
ing thoughts, an impulse overwhelming the heart, usurping
the mind—these are all a drive towards serving God who rings
our hearts like a bell. It is as if God were waiting to enter our
empty, perishing lives.
To rely on our faith would be idol-worship. We have only
the right to rely on God. Faith is not an insurance, but a
constant effort, constant listening to the eternal voice.
Accordingly, faith is not a feature of a person’s mentality: self-
effacement of curiosity, asceticism of reason, some psychic
quality that has bearing on a person alone. Its essence is not dis-
closed in the way we utter it, but in the soul’s being in accord
with what is relevant to God; in the extension of our love to
what God may approve, our being carried away by the tide of
God’s thoughts, rising beyond the desolate ken of a person’s despair.
Faith is real only when it is not one-sided but reciprocal. A person
can rely on God, if God can rely on a person. We may trust in
God because God trusts in us. To have faith means to justify
God’s faith in humanity. It is as essential that God believe in humanity
as that humanity should believe in God. Thus faith is awareness of
divine mutuality and companionship, a form of communion
between God and humanity.
Religion is More Than Inwardness
We are often inclined to define the essence of religion as a
state of the soul, as inwardness, as an absolute feeling, and
expect a person who is religious to be endowed with a kind of
sentiment too deep to rise to the surface of common deeds, as
if religion were a plant that can only thrive at the bottom of
the ocean. As we have seen, religion is not a feeling for some-
thing that is, but an answer to God who is asking us to live in
a certain way. It is in its very origin a consciousness of duty,
of being committed to higher ends; a realization that life is
not only humanity’s but also God’s sphere of interest.
Faith does not come to an end with attaining certainty of
God’s existence. Faith is the beginning of intense craving to en-
ter a synthesis with God who is beyond the mystery, to bring
together all the might that is within us with all that is spiritual
beyond us. At the root of our yearning for integrity is a stir
of the inexpressible within us to commune with the ineffable
beyond us. But what is the language of that communion, with-
out which our impulse remains inarticulate?
We are taught that what God asks of humanity is more than an
inner attitude, that God gives humanity not only life but also a law,
that God’s will is to be served not only adored, obeyed not only
worshipped. Faith comes over us like a force urging for action,
to which we respond by pledging ourselves to constancy of
devotion, committing us to the presence of God, and remains
an affiliation for life, an allegiance involving restraint, submis-
sion, self-control and courage.
Judaism insists upon establishing a unity of faith and creed,
of piety and Halacha, of devotion and deed. Faith is but a
seed, while the deed is its growth or decay. Faith disembodied,
faith that tries to grow in splendid isolation, is but a ghost, for
which there is no place in our psycho-physical world.
What creed is in relation to faith, the Halacha is in relation
to piety. As faith cannot exist without a creed, piety cannot
subsist without a pattern of deeds; as intelligence cannot be
separated from training, religion cannot be divorced from
conduct. Judaism is lived in deeds not only in thoughts.
A pattern for living—the object of a person’s most urgent quest—
which would correspond to their dignity, must take into con-
sideration not only their ability to exploit the forces of nature
and to appreciate the loveliness of its forms, but also their unique
sense of the ineffable. It must be a design, not only for the
satisfaction of needs, but also for the attainment of ends.