Root Experience - Beyond Philosophy

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Link to Transcript here: https://madlik.com/2025/02/06/root-experiences-beyond-philosophy/

The influence of Elie Wiesel (to whom this small volume is dedicated) will be obvious to any reader: his writings are forcing Jewish theological thought in our time into a new dimension. For my concept will of "root experience" I owe a fundamental debt to Irving Greenberg's concept of "orienting experience": his stubbornly historical thinking has liberated me from some false philosophical abstractions. (preface) [See influence of Martin Buber pp12-13)

The Midrashic author is not unaware of the possibility of a religious flight from history. On the contrary, he first refers to Ezekiel's vision - the Biblical chapter which, more than any other, has encouraged otherworldly mysticisn within Judaism - and then exalts what the maidservants saw within history above what Ezckiel saw beyond it. (p7)

What, considered abstractly, are the characteristics of a root experience in Judaism? What are the conditions without which a past event cannot continue to make a present claim - the claim that God is present in history?

(1) According to Rabbi Eliezer, the author of the Midrash quoted at the beginning of this chapter, the maidservants at the Red Sea saw what even Ezekiel did not see. This means, on the one hand, that Rabbi Eliezer himself does not see and, on the other hand, that he knows that the maidservants saw, and he does not. If he himself saw, he would not defer to their vision -- his own being superior or equal to theirs and in any case a present standard by which to measure the past. If he did not know that they had seen, their past vision would be of no present relevance and, indeed, would be wholly inaccessible. Only because of this dialectical relation between present and past can a past experience legislate to the present. This is the first condition of a root experience

in Judaism.

(2) By itself, however, this condition (as yet far from fully intelligible) is far from sufficient as well. According to our Midrash, this condition would apply to Ezekiel's vision as much as to the maidservants' at the Red Sea. Yet Ezekiel's vision is not a root experience in Judaism. It is the experience of an isolated individual and may legislate to isolated individuals after him-those few to whom the heavens are accessible.

(3) To come to the third point, how then is Rabbi Eliezer (and the pious Jew during the Passover Seder) related to the maid servants at the Red Sea? In reenacting the natural-historical event, he reenacts the abiding astonishment as well, and makes it his own. Hence the "sole Power" present then is presentstill. Hence memory turns into faith and hope. Hence the event at the Red Sea is recalled now and will continue to be recalled even in the Messianic days. Thus the reenacted past legislates to present and future. Thus, in Judaism, it is a root experience. (p14)

God's Presence in History: Jewish Affirmations and Philosophical Reflections by Emil L. Fackenheim (1970-03-01) Hardcover

(4) At the same time, the divine Presence requires the self and its freedom in the very moment of its presence. There is no abiding astonishment unless men exist who can be astonished; moreover, the divine Presence -- saving as well as commanding -- remains incomplete unless human astonishment terminates in action. Conceivably Ezekiel's selfhood dissolved in the moment in which the heavens were opened. This is impossible when, as at the Red Sea, salvation occurs to a flesh-and-blood people; or when, as at Sinai, the divine Presence gives commandments over for human performance. (p17)

Such are the contradictions in the root experiences of Judaism insofar as they concern our present purpose. Philosophical reflection, on becoming aware of these contradictions, is tempted to remove them, and to do so by means of a retroactive destruction of the root experiences themselves. At this point, however, Jewish theological thought exhibits a stubbormness which, soon adopted and rarely if ever abandoned, may be viewed as its defning characteristic. Negatively, this stubbomness consists of resisting all forms of thought which would remove the contradictions of the root experiences of Judaismat the price of destroying them. Positively, it consists of developing logical and literary forms which can preserve the root experiences of Judaism despite their contradictions. (p18)

The Midrash affirms that at Sinai, as at the Red Sea, the whole people saw what Ezekiel and the other prophets never saw. Yet because the divine Presence is here a commanding Presence, the astonishment has a different structure. A commandment effected by a distant divine Cause would be divine only by virtue of its external sanction and inspire no abiding astonishment. If the astonishment abides, it is because Divinity is present in the commandment. Because it is a commanding rather than a saving presence, however, the abiding astonishment turns into deadly terror. Indeed, such a presenceis, in the first instance, nothing short of paradoxical. For, being commanding, it addresses human freedomn. And being sole Power, it destroys that freedom because it is only human. Yet the freedom destroyed is also required. (p15)

The Midrashic Framenork

Five characteristics will suffce for the present purpose:

(i) Midrashic thinking reflects upon the root experiences of Judaism, and is not confined to their immediate - e.g, liturgical-reenactment.

before Sinai.

No Jewish thinker can take lightly the stance of rabbinic Judaism, or dissent from it without facing unforeseen, perhaps unforeseeable, consequences. Yet simply to embrace it (as, up to a point, I once had) would be to prejudge rather than face what we have called the central question for post-olocaust thought: to make Judaism absolutely immune to all future events except Messianic ones is a priori to dismiss the challenge of contemporary events, rather than risk self-exposure. Also, it would be a relapse into a fideistic one-sidedness which, for my part, I was already in the process of rejecting. For these and related reasons I had even prior to conceiving the present work referred to Exodus and Sinai as "root experi-ences." Secular Jews may reject a miracle at the Red Sea and a revelation at Sinai but, if committed to a Jewish future, cannot reject the experience of their people. Moreover, a "root experience," as I then defined it, differs in quality from an "epoch-making event," but at the same time is not absolutely immune to its impact.

See: To Mend the World, Foundations of Post-Holecaust Jewish Thought, Emil L. Fackenheim 1994