14 Jun
The Brinkmanship of Religious Piety
When reading about the tales of sexism that is so prevalent in much of the religious worlds of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, we tend to think of this development as a modern phenomenon. Actually, it is not.
Two thousand years ago, the Jewish community had an entire class of people who delighted in such feats of piety.
The Jerusalem Talmud writes, “Who is a man of piety that is a fool? “He, for example, who, if a woman is drowning, says, ‘It is unseemly for me to look at her, and therefore, I cannot rescue her. . . . Who is the pious fool? He who sees a child struggling in the water, and says, ‘When I have taken off my phylacteries, I will go and save him.’ By the time he arrives to rescue him, the child has already expired. Who is the crafty scoundrel? R. Huna says, ‘He is the man who behaves leniently toward himself, while teaching others only the strictest rules.’”[1]
“Our Rabbis have taught: There are seven types of Pharisees: the ostentatious Pharisee[2], the Pharisee who knocks his feet together and walks with exaggerated humility[3], the Pharisee is one who knocks his face against the wall rather than gaze at a woman[4] The Pharisee who feigns religious piety while constantly exclaiming, ‘What is my duty that I may perform it?’”[5]
Actually, these rabbinic passages support Jesus’ criticism of the Pharisees for their ostentatious show of religious piety (cf. Mat. 6:1-4). Of course, not all the Pharisees behaved in such a weird and strange way, but a number of them did! In every generation there are people who are genuinely pious; and then we have the imitators . . . like we see today.
The foolish Pharisees inspired their Christian cousins too. Will Durant explains in his Story of Civilization, in his volume on “The Age of Faith” writes about the ascetics of the 4th century, who did their best to escape temptation; they used to punish their bodies and live a hermetic life. The extremes to which they went in their attempts to deny gratification of “physical lusts” are by modern standards, quite incredible.
For example, St. Ascepsimas wore so many chains that he had to crawl around on hands and knees. A monk named “Besarion,” would not even give in to his body’s desire for restful sleep—for forty years he would not lie down while sleeping.
Macarius the Younger sat naked in a swamp for six months until mosquito bites made him look like a victim of leprosy.
St. Marion spent eleven years living in a hollowed-out tree trunk. Others lived in caves, dens of beasts, dry wells—even tombs.
Is cleanliness the closet thing to godliness? Well, this attitude was not always historically the case. Durant points out that the early Christian saints suffered the discomfort of filth, stench, worms, and maggots were considered to be spiritually beneficial and a sign of victory over the body . . .
Some of the most celebrated saints of this era were Simeon the Stylite of Syria and Daniel the Stylite of Constantinople. Simeon spent 37 years on different pillars, each one loftier and narrower than the last. The last pillar was 66 feet high. He died in 460, aged 72.[6] Frankly, I am amazed he managed to live such a long life and not get struck by lightning.
Not to be outdone, Daniel lived 33 years on a pillar, and was not infrequently nearly blown off by the storms from Thrace. He died in 494. I am unsure how long he lived; he might not have been as luck as his colleague, Simeon.
Alfred Tennyson wrote a poem on Simeon Stylites, “Simeon of the Pillar” by surname-Stylites among men—”was the watcher of the column till the end.”
Closed religious societies often create greater social barriers to keep their followers from discovering the outside world.
Despite Weird Al Yankovic’s musical parody, “Amish Paradise,” the Amish actually have a much more enlightened approach for dealing with the threats posed by the outside world. They allow their young people to go out and explore the outside world; more often than not, after seeing the outside world of modernity, they usually return and resume their roles as Amish believers. The Square Hasidim would never adopt a policy like that because the degree of social dysfunction is so malignant, they know full and well that their followers would never return. It takes a brave soul to leave the Hassidic cults of New York and Israel.
With the Internet and telecommunications, it is inevitable that these communities will do anything within their power to micro-manage the lives of their followers. Many years ago, at the Lubavitcher Yeshiva in Israel, I recall how issues of Time Magazine were confiscated because it had pictures of women in bathing suits. In the Haredi and Hassidic communities, all pictures of women are expunged or defaced. Recently, a scandal occurred when the Hasidim erased Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s face from appearing in the newspaper.
If you think that Ultra-Orthodoxy suffers from OCD (Obsessive Compulsive Disorder), you would most certainly be correct. I am certain that if Maimonides and the Vilna Gaon were living today, they would declare the Square Rebbe and his foolish Hasidim as certifiably “meshuga” (nuts!).
And now you know the rest of the story . . .
Notes
[1] JT Sotah 3:4, f. 19a, line 13.
[2] He behaves like Shechem, who circumcised himself for an unworthy purpose (Gen. 34) The J. Talmud explains: anyone who carries his religious duties upon his shoulder (shekem), i.e., ostentatiously (BT Ber. 14b).
[3] He walks with exaggerated humility. According to the Jerusalem Talmud: He says: Spare me a moment that I may perform a commandment.
[4] The Jerusalem Talmud explains: a calculating Pharisee, i.e., he performs a good deed and then a bad deed, setting one off against the other.
[5] He behaves as if he has fulfilled every religious obligation.
[6] Will Durant, “The age of faith: a history of Medieval Civilization -Christian, Islamic, and Judaic - from Constantine to Dante: A.D. 325-1300″ (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1950), 204.
