Shards of Divinities: Whispers
from the Semantic Spaces within the Soul (CreateSpace, 2016) by Nissim Levy
Reviewed by Rabbi Reuven Chaim
Klein
Even though historical fiction
and reworked Midrashim is not really my genre of choice, I actually enjoyed
reading this sophisticated book. In fact, I was so taken in by this book's
brilliant premise that I was almost compulsively driven to finish reading this
work, even when I had no extra time to read.
The first part of this novel can
be characterized as historical fiction, or more accurately, speculative
fiction, as it is based on the life of the Biblical Abraham. In portraying
Abraham's life, the author uses his literary license to present a narrative
that does not completely follow that of the Bible and rabbinic tradition. If
you are offended at the thought of somebody taking such liberalities when
retelling our traditional texts, then this book is not for you.
The author tells of Abraham as a
young boy writing an essay for his entrance exam to the polytheistic priesthood
of Ur. In this composition, Abraham expresses his monotheistic belief in One
God and his reasons for coming to that conclusion. Obviously, professing such a
belief did not impress the priests who considered accepting Abraham amongst
their ranks, and the entire matter also causes a strain in the relationship
between Abraham and his father Terah. As the reader progresses in this part of
the book, he realizes that the earlier chapters were themselves that
composition that Abraham was said to write.
The saga then continues with Abraham
as an old man living in the Land of Canaan, exploring his relationships with
Ishmael and Hagar. This account touches on Abraham's struggle to come to terms
with his lack of heir through his beloved Sarah, and how he reacts to Ishmael
succumbing to idol worship in the cool desert night. But these are merely
subplots in a novel that is really about Abraham searching within himself for a
better understanding of God.
In this part of the book, I liked
how the dialogue reads like a very contemporary way of speaking, and how the
author brings out important philosophical points through the stories that he
tells. I especially appreciated some of the "Easter eggs" Levy put
into the book with allusions to Midrashim and other more esoteric sources (like
Abraham discovering Occam's Razor when Terah was shaving, or supplying us with
Abraham's mother's name based on the Talmud). The reader should look out for
some very intriguing plot twists that account for some of the perceived
inconsistencies in the story.
The second part of this novel can
be best characterized as meta-fiction. It is seemingly an autobiographical
account of the author as he wrote the novel that comprises the first part of
the book. The parallels between the author's own life and how he depicts
Abraham's life are uncanny and deliberate. There are even entire sentences and
paragraphs that Levy copies from the first part of the book to recycle them in
the second. In a book that is eerily cognizant of itself, these recurring
themes are referred to as "leitmotifs." For example, in a mirror
image of the first part of the book where Abraham deals with his lack of son,
in this part the book, Levy deals with his own "lack" of father. Just
as Abraham was born into the polytheism of Mesopotamia and eventually became a
champion of monotheism in the Holy Land, so did Levy metamorphize from an
atheist to a theist and staunch defender of the Holy Land in which he was born.
As you read what seems to be the
autobiographical section of this book, you realize that it is actually another
novel about writing the novel represented by the first part of the book. This
is revealed in the third section of the book, which is essentially a novel
about writing a novel about writing a novel. This mirrors the first part of the
book, which is a story about Abraham writing a composition, but it is actually
the composition itself! In this way, Levy's book itself highlights and
exemplifies the self-referencing ideas that the book itself speaks about. The
message becomes the medium. Levy uses multiple analogies to get this point
across, including that of a snake eating its own tail and a mirror within a
mirror, but the most poignant analogy is the book itself.
The thrust of this book is not
necessarily in the story it tells, but in the ideas discussed in conversations
Abraham has with Orofus, Khaferu, and himself, as well as in dialogue the
author puts in his own mouth in conversations with his ex-wife, later
girlfriend, fellow intellectuals, co-workers, rabbi, and more. Through these
discussions, Levy presents the reader a new way of looking at existence and
divinity.
Using a series of tautologies and
self-referencing arguments, Levy ultimately characterizes God as the
nothingness from which all of existence emanates. In his complex and often
arcane philosophical discussions, Levy provides an epistemological backbone for
his ideas about divinity by drawing on Kurt Gödel’s Incompleteness theorems,
Chaos Theory, and other scientific theories related to physics (like Einstein's
Special Theory of Relativity and Quantum Mechanics). Levy steers clear of the
heresy of Spinoza's pantheism by not equating creation with God, but
rather arguing that all of creation emanates from Him, while He is still
greater than it. This idea is typically called panentheism or perhaps even
transtheism, but Levy refers to his theory as "metatheism."
Levy seems to be totally unfamiliar
with the classical works of Jewish theology. The sort of dichotomy between
classical monotheism and panentheism (i.e. the tension between the Second Age
and the Third Age in Levy's nomenclature) is already dealt with in several
works of Jewish Philosophy (especially in Nefesh HaChaim and in Rav
Kook' writings). That said, the up-shot of that literature contends that both
elements are true in different ways.
The problem with a purely
panentheistic worldview is that if everything is equally divine (or emanates
from the divine), then that would leave no room for right/wrong or good/evil,
because everything is equally rooted in the divine. This could be reduced to a
sort of post-modernism where you can basically do whatever you want and it's
all good. Just go with the flow. The tautological and logical fallacy of “whatever
happens, happens.” The problem is that since man has Freedom of Will, then if
you say that whatever he does is good, you will come out with a very dark and
twisted world.
Obviously, man cannot practically
operate with a wholly-panentheistic mindset because this essentially gives free
license for acting evil. Therein lies the value of classical monotheism. In
classical monotheism, God can be viewed as "outside of creation," and
has certain demands for the world, especially of mankind. Those expectations
tell us what is right and wrong (and those values/behavior are reflected in the
Torah).
Judaism thus proffers two models
for understanding the Divine: classical monotheism and panentheism. The
challenge is to somehow square the circle by saying that everything comes from
God (like panentheism), yet God still has expectations for how we should act as
though we are autonomous beings independent of Him who can make our own
decisions (per classical monotheism). Both are somehow ontologically true, but
like Schrödinger’s cat, they cannot both be true according to our limited
understanding. Nefesh HaChaim accounts for this contradiction by
explaining that this is the meaning of the Kabbalistic “Secret of Tzimtzum.”
In other words, God somehow
contracts His all-reaching influence to give creation some degree of
independence, while minimizing our ability to understand the mechanism by which
He did this. This conundrum is really the central question of Jewish Philosophy
and Kabbalah, and it is impossible for us to truly resolve it under the current
conditions. Perhaps in what Levy calls the Third Age, we will find the answer.
In his work, Levy largely resists
the idea of classic monotheism. While Levy provides a sort of meta-physical
model for proving the existence of God, he ignores the implications of that
assertion. In classical monotheism, an important idea is the concept of God’s
will. Levy denies that God has His own Will in the classical sense, but still
writes that God created the world in act of Free Will, redefining Free Will as
a sort of Pseudo Determinism. Meaning, when the behavior of a complex and
chaotic system cannot be predicted by just looking at the constituents of that
system, then a reductionist model does not help and it appears as if
that system has its own Free Will. Examples of this include the Weather and the
Stock Market, both of whose behavior is comprised of so many different factors
that they appear to have their own Free Will. Levy’s god has Free will in this
sense, but not in the sense that, say, He could have actually decided not to
create existence.
What I find most disturbing in
this book is that Levy essentially calls for jettisoning all the Torah's laws
and following a sort of universal ethical code. For example, Levy makes it
clear multiple times in his book that the acceptance of deviant lifestyles is
an important creed to him. This position naturally flows from the theology of a
God who has no Will or expectations. Another major complication with Levy’s
worldview is that it presumes that there can be objective morality outside of
an appeal to a God-given code of law. Levy's god actually makes no demands on
mankind. He just is. Even as Levy disproves atheism, he still essentially
maintains that there are no consequences of the world bring a product of God.
In some ways, this book is not
just about philosophy or theology, it can also be a sort of inspirational self-help
book. Throughout his book, Levy contrasts "dancing with the divine"
versus "wrestling with the divine." The first idea refers to dancing
along with whatever circumstances the cosmos may have decreed be a person's
lot, while the latter idea entails resisting what God has in store for a
person. Both of these modalities have their appropriate time and place. Levy
connects these two ideas to the two trees within the Garden of Eden. The Tree
of Life represents the need to live life by accepting one's circumstances and
"dance" with the Divine. On the other hand, the Tree of Knowledge of
Good and Bad represents the eternal struggle between good and evil, who each
wrest for supremacy.
The author is clearly a genius or
a madman—or both. He has obviously studied ancient Sumerian/Babylonian culture
and mythology, and does a very good job of incorporating that knowledge into
the story, while also creatively making up his own ideas as well. He has a
knack for painting vivid scenes that serve as the aesthetic backdrop for his
deeper discussions.
Nissim Levy's novel is pregnant
with allusions to scientific, spiritual, and philosophical ideas and themes. As
a computer programmer by profession, Levy is able to draw on the coder's jargon
to formulate his thoughts in an ordered way and can invoke terms like
bootstrapping, feedback loops, and self-reference to better clarify his highly
abstract ideas. As a philosopher, Levy is able to think out of the box and
overcome the senselessness so prevalent within the Liberal circles in which he
moves. As a storyteller, Levy is able to clearly express his opinions,
authoring an informative and entertaining book.
