Elephants and the Jewish Question

There are no elephants in the Jewish Bible, and also no Maccabees — but there are elephants in both First and Second Maccabees, which got me to thinking some obscure thoughts last night.

The candles I use with my menorah burn for about an hour. I like to spend that hour in some kind of discussion or study or meditation on Hanuka questions, answers, and interpretations — of which, happily, there are a million varieties. For me, they often center around the matter of which side am I on, the Hellenists’ or the Maccabees’?

So there I was, watching three candles burn and contemplating Hanuka matters for possible discussion on this blog . . .

Historical questions, like, Why did those rabbis of the Talmudic period (i.e., the first four centuries of the Common Era) fail to include the Books of Maccabees in the canonized Bible, and why did they barely mention the Maccabeean uprising in their many recorded discussions? For fear of fomenting further abortive uprisings against Rome, say some historians; because they disapproved, say others, of the Hasmonean dynasty established by the Maccabees, which had pursued conquest, forcible conversion, assassination, and other Hellenistic practices until Rome took over a hundred years later.

Then there were cultural questions, like, Why do Jews gamble with the dreydl on Hanuka? The folklore holds that when the Hellenists made the study of Torah illegal, the Jews would gather with a lookout, and if danger approached, they would be alerted to hide their scrolls and begin spinning dreydls, as in: “Officer, it’s just a game of chance! You want to sit in, maybe?”

There were political questions, like, What’s the difference between the Maccabees back then and Islamic fundamentalists today? Nothing, perhaps, except twenty centuries of human development.

There were grammatical questions, like, How the hell do you spell Hanuka-Hanukkah- Chanukah-Khanike, anyway? A: Hwvr u lik 2.

There were spiritual questions, like, Why eight days? Some kabbalists say: The eight days represent infinity (8, on its side, is the infinity symbol). While Creation took seven days (including a day of rest), represented by the seven sefirot that are accessible to human apprehension, the eighth day represents the eighth sefirah, Understanding, which is beyond human apprehension and reflects God’s Infinite Light — or something like that. (It’s all Syrian Greek to me.) I say: Eight days brings the total number of candles lit for Hanuka to 36, which is the total corps of the lamed vovnikii, the legendary 36 righteous human beings who prevent the world from shaking itself apart with grief.

Suddenly the candles flickered. Good God, was the world shaking itself apart with grief?!

No, elephants were stampeding through my brain.

The great beasts appear in the Books of Maccabees as war machines used by the Syrian Greeks against the Jewish rebels. One elephant is slain by Judah Maccabee’s brother, Elazar, upon whom it falls, crushing him to death.

Remembering this, I find myself feeling worse for the elephant than for Elazar. And when I feel that feeling, I find myself thinking, What kind of humanist am I?

Ditto, when I read about global warming: I respond more to the plight of the polar bears, who are surely beginning to drown for lack of solid ice throughout their habitat, than I respond to the prospect of human suffering from those rising seas. Both events disturb me deeply, but the helpless-victim status of the beasts, and their likely extinction, as opposed to the collective-responsibility status of human beings, and their likely suffering, moves my heart more deeply.

No, I’m not boasting about this — I’m confessing to it.

In contrast to my misanthropy, of course, all of the Bible-based religions toast human beings as the “crown of creation,” uniquely made b’tselem elohim, in God’s image. Human beings, not animals, have souls; human beings, not animals, are each precious, so that the saving of one human life, says the Talmud, is equivalent to the saving of a universe; and the world itself, and everything in it, was made for our pleasure and nurture.

Such “humanism” translates to hubris very easily. Notwithstanding various religious messages about “stewardship,” we’ve too often interpreted our “in God’s image” status to mean we are uniquely entitled, not uniquely responsible — and thus we’ve made a mess of our planet, and feel reluctant to make the sacrifices needed to fix it.

Modern science, on the other hand — especially biological and genetic science — has helped to cultivate my biocentrism, a feeling for life that goes beyond humanism. When I learn, for example, that I share 98 percent of my genes with chimpanzees, it makes me want to give the chimpanzees the space to live. When I learn that mice have feelings, too, it makes me want to use have-a-heart traps instead of poison to get them out of my house. And when I learn that elephants have joyous meeting rituals, grieve at the loss of their babies and herd members, communicate across miles with low-frequency sounds, bear grudges and accept apologies, learn from their elders, etc. etc., it makes me feel appalled by the slaughter of these magnificent creatures for ivory — and by their impressment into military service by Syrian Greeks!

Thus I become receptive to biocentric environmentalism, of the kind most eloquently expressed by Thomas Berry (in his book, The Great Work: Our Way into the Future, 1999):

“In reality there is a single integral community of the Earth that includes all its component members whether human or other than human. In this community every being has its own role to fulfill, its own dignity, its inner spontaneity. . . . Every being enters into communion with other beings. This capacity for relatedness, for presence to other beings, for spontaneity in action, is a capacity possessed by every mode of being throughout the entire universe. . . . So too every being has rights to be recognized and revered. Trees have tree rights, insects have insect rights, rivers have river rights, mountains have mountain rights.”

Nu, what's the Hanuka-Hanukkah-Chanukah-Khanike connection? Just this: For me, the world of science — the world of Hellenism, secular knowledge, nature-worship — is a far greater source of inspiration than Judaism when it comes to prompting my appreciation of creatures beyond the pale of my humanistic bias. On the other hand, Judaism’s teachings of restraint — restraint of our appetites, our lusts, our egotism, or yetzer hara (evil urge) — far exceeds Hellenistic decadence when it comes to defining a pathway to environmental sanity. The Hellenistic path of knowledge, the Jewish path of behavior — there we have a winning synthesis. Instead of the Maccabee spearing the elephant and being crushed, in turn, by its toppling corpse . . .

Lawrence Bush
Editor, Jewish Currents