Tree of Souls: The Mythology of Judaism 
by 

Howard Schwartz

 

After The Great Voice Fell Silent

According to the book of Deuteronomy (5:22), YHWH spoke his last direct words to Israel in his Sinai epiphany. At the same time, and the only time, He wrote his words down in stone. As much as the contents, the form of this divine communication is critical. The written word would henceforth become a surrogate for the Great Voice that had fallen silent.

God’s silence and his endorsement of writing initiated a profound change in the religion of Israel. In a verbal culture of tale-tellers, amendments, additions, and variations in the stories being told are essentially invisible. Interpretation, although undoubtedly pervasive, can’t be noticed except by the interpreter. But with writing, the text remains more (but not entirely) stable and separate interpretations abound. This, of course, leads quickly to interpretations of interpretations, all of which may be compared, and some of which are incorporated back into the original text. YHWH Himself initiated a process which has continued without interruption.

In doing so, God put His Word definitively into human hands. What had gone before is a kind of hearsay pregnant with untold meanings waiting to be born. His are a people that not only tell stories, but also write them. This is perhaps the most important aspect of the Sinai revelation. God would speak through human beings, not just through the prophets but through every Jew. And He would speak primarily through the written word, the meaning of which would expand and adapt as necessary to meet new circumstances and experiences while the original is preserved. The Word acquires a history which can’t be separated from it.

Writing has an even greater effect on interpretation than the mere ability to compare alternatives. In the Torah each letter is recognised as having significance so that interpretation is intensified as the significance of ‘every jot and tittle’ is drawn out by rabbinic scholars. The spaces between letters become important in ways that the pauses between spoken words cannot. The spoken word certainly carries nuance, but the written word allows an infinite number of variations to be carried simultaneously. Thus the interpretive process is accelerated in the very process of writing. YHWH’s wisdom in sharing not just the content but the engine of continuous development of revelation with His people is vindicated by their subsequent dedication to adding to it generation upon generation.

So despite the ‘closure’ of Tanakh, the official Jewish scriptures, early in the Christian Era, the process of revelation has never stopped. The Septuagint, the various texts used to create the Masoretic compilation, the Mishnah, the Aramaic Targums, the Talmud, the Midrash literature, as well as other countless commentaries including the Haggadah and Kabbalah have since been produced. And so have the less scholarly myths that provide creative background to biblical characters and events or that attempt to reconcile apparent contradictions or divine inconsistencies in officially recognised texts. The Voice never ceases to flow.

Myth in this context is not a pejorative term. For the biblical scholar Clifford Geertz, “myth both provides a model of reality, what is really real, and a model for reality, how one is to behave in its light.” In his foreword, Elliot Ginsburg captures the spirit of Jewish myth: “God is, as the benediction has it, noten ha-torah, the one who ever gives Torah, each moment anew.” That is, the Torah, despite its fixedness as a text, never stops developing, adapting, and revealing. What it reveals is a way of interpreting the world. 

Myths are the most flexible and most widely understood form of communicating a reality that cannot be fully comprehended. They are sacred stories which contain archetypal characters and events. By being simultaneously profound and fanciful, myth presents comprehensible images that are instructive but not dogmatic, practical but not prosaic, spiritual without being ethereal. They ‘reframe’ without directing behaviour. Like the Torah itself, the interpretation of myth can never be exhausted.

Tree of Souls is an anthology that demonstrates the range and depth of Jewish interpretive imagination. As such it would be exhausting and probably fruitless to be read from beginning to end. Rather it is something to be consulted, to get lost in, to assimilate over an extended period. It could well be just the ticket for daily spiritual reading. Many of the stories are short vignettes that nonetheless invite extended meditative thought. And while these stories are Jewish, like all good myths they are almost always universal in their import and their aesthetic beauty. In short, they are relevant as a major component of the Western culture which they have helped to shape. We all share in the silence of the Great Voice, do we not?