A Response to As A Driven Leaf

THE STOICS HAVE a riddle: "A man is traveling in the desert. In his gourd he has enough water for one drink. He comes upon two men dying of thirst--one, his own father, the other, a philosopher. Now the problem is, to whom should the water be given?"

Woe to the one who must solve this riddle. Milton Steinberg allows us to see inside the life of one man who tried, Elisha ben Abuyah. Living during the time of the Bar Kochba rebellion of 132-135 C.E., Elisha was a historical figure about whom not much is known. The bare bones are that he was a rabbi, that he read Greek books, and that he was excommunicated. Steinberg breathes life into this skeleton, and through imagination Elisha comes alive as a man trying to bridge ancient tradition with modern philosophy, faith with reason.

Elisha is born amidst tension. His mother dies in childbirth; his father is a Hellenistic Jew who disdains his tradition and secures a Greek tutor for the boy. His orthodox uncle attempts to win Elisha back to his Jewish heritage and apprentices him to a renowned Sanhedrin scholar. By the age of ten he is an orphan in a land hemmed round with political and cultural upheaval. Survival of the Jewish people after the destruction of the Temple is a constant source of anxiety that weaves through the story. Their faith in the one God is thrown against the philosophical systems of the Greeks and the social infrastructure of the Roman Empire. Since cultural genocide was a very real possibility for the Jews, you begin to appreciate why they turned to militarism on the one hand, and religious purity on the other.

Although Elisha is already ten when he starts studying the Torah, he learns quickly and is nurtured by the kind and wise spirit of his teacher, Joshua. His Greek training recedes as he becomes a noted rabbinical scholar and then is inducted as a rabbi into the Sanhedrin. Notwithstanding his orthodoxy, the losses incurred as a child have etched an emotional faultline. His unhappy, childless marriage deepens the pressure. He finds happiness through his associations with scholars and particularly with the family of one of his students. But tragedy strikes these people who have become a surrogate family for Elisha. In empathy with their pain, his own life begins to unravel as he begins to question the mercy of God. Hairline fractures become fissures, and the unanswered questions from his Greek past re-emerge in full fury. Elisha tries in vain to bolster his crumbling faith with reasoned assumptions, using Greek rhetoric as part of his arsenal. But he soon realizes that his need for intellectual understanding cannot be contained by superstition and blind faith. The tension between external demands of rabbinical life and his inner turmoil soon leak out. Eventually, circumstances and his own integrity force him to betray his lost faith, and the community resoundingly moves to sever all ties with him.

Elisha's quest for understanding becomes a need for certainty as his displaced grief causes him to be blind to the wisdom of his past and to the limitations of the Greeks and Romans. Elisha's friend and fellow rabbi Akiba also studies the Greeks and Romans, but instead of becoming intoxicated by idealism, as did Elisha, he is able to give both reason and faith expression in his life. Demonax, an itinerant philosopher, once asked the same questions of certainty as Elisha, but now seeks to serve humanity through compassion. Joshua, Elisha's mentor, is moved by the injunction within the Old Testament that the Jews are to be the light of the nations. Yet Elisha arrogantly dismisses any notion of mysticism or aesthetics or moral necessity as valid answers to reason's relentless questions. Inspired by Euclid's Elements of Geometry, he tries to find unchallengable metaphysical assumptions as the basis of morality and justice. Once this link can be proven, mankind can for all time know with certainty the meaning of life.

Steinberg weaves the reader into Elisha's story. Through vivid imagery of lush Galilean olive groves and austere Judean desert, and through the seasonal and daily rhythms of Jewish life, you arrive in first century Palestine. Elisha's good nature draws us in, and his intellectual honesty appeals to our modern sensibility. Like any good storyteller, Steinberg aims not to resolve the tensions for the reader, but to allow the reader to fully experience them. In this direct experience of the story lies the clue to the riddle. For this is a story of how ideas work themselves into our lives. A constant note throughout is the grace of friendship that endures through circumstances. Subtly you sense Steinberg's own view that Judaism offers a unique light to the world, and that modernity, with the aid of reason, trims the wick of this light.

There is something very compelling about Elisha's quest. In the face of superstition or blind belief, reason is refreshing and evolutionarily necessary. Elisha's story is that of everyone who finds themselves honestly questioning their faith. It takes courage to ask the questions because they challenge cherished beliefs and patterns of life. At the same time, something in us which cannot be held back by superstition or convention seeks to know the mystery of the universe. We don't want to delude ourselves or avoid taking existential responsibility. But reason eventually points beyond itself because we come to understand we can never perceive reality purely objectively. There are certain experiences of reality that must be honoured but can't be explained. At this point we need courage to let go of the need for certainty and step into mystery.

This is also the story of religion coming of age. Each age must make sense of the "faith of their fathers" but in language meaningful to the present. Naïve reliance on a Watchmaker Diety must be put to the test of modernity: science, psychology and existentialism. But we can't just amputate faith experiences of the past because tucked into their limitation is something enduring as well. Elisha's tradition, when insisting on literal acceptance without questioning, becomes repressive. But cradled in that tradition is a vision of life lived in the presence of God, of rituals and practices that heighten awareness of that presence, and a valuing of all of life, because it reflects this presence. Ken Wilber admonishes us to transcend the past and then include it within our present; leave behind old forms of faith, but maintain the essence of their experience.

The historical Elisha was said to have had an ecstatic experience that pointed towards a direct apprehension of God. In Steinberg's retelling, Elisha seems to give more attention to reason than to other modes of knowing. Perhaps the omission is Steinberg's bias. Or perhaps Steinberg wishes to evoke an experience in the reader. There is a hint that the solution of the Stoic's riddle lies in life lived as deeply as possible. The story compels me to honour the truth of both faith and reason, and at the same time nurture the tension between the two for the sake of what lies beyond both. At the end of his life Elisha realizes that

"Faith and reason are not antagonists. On the contrary, salvation is through the commingling of the two, the former to establish first premises, the latter to purify them of confusion and to draw the fullness of their implications."

Like Elisha's disciple, I wept at his grave. Elisha's life ended sadly, and yet in its suffering it offered much. With echoes of Isaiah's Suffering Servant, Elisha's agonizing quest was poured out for the benefit of others, for us as readers. Perhaps the riddle's water is not to be divided, but shared through suffering, uniting the seeker with both tradition and truth.

Steinberg, Milton. As A Driven Leaf. Springfield: Behrman House, 1939. 480 pages.