At the end of the last post, I argued the need for Jews to understand and support the non-Jewish quest for God. Unlike Jews who experienced the Sinaitic revelation, the non-Jewish world must come to God on their own. This is an arduous, step-by-step process, each step building on the one before. This process is encapsulated by the Chronicles of Narnia. In each book Lewis constructs an atmosphere colored by a pagan God and shows how it is merely one of a myriad of projections or manifestations of the true, one God. To know God, demands (at a minimum) an understanding of each manifestation.
This interpretation of the Chronicles, however, does not provide us with a path for creating a Jewish Narnia. If anything it appears to close down the possibility since, in the thought of R’ Lipschitz, Jews who experienced (forced) revelation, never climbed the mountain from paganism to monotheism. Nonetheless, there may still be hope of constructing a Jewish Narnia, not via the archetypes of the pagan, Roman gods, but directly via the planets or similar concepts.
The seven wandering planets and the zodiac play an important role in the workings of the Jewish calendar. Furthermore, the regularity of the path of these bodies across Earth’s sky, are demonstrative of God’s glory, and, in the view of Maimonides, provide a primary means to achieve fear and love of God. Nevertheless, the simple movement of the planets does appear to be a useful means of writing works that provide insight into God’s providence in the same way as Narnia. Instead, we turn to Jewish astrology.
The concept of Jewish astrology may be somewhat unsettling. After all, the Torah explicitly commands against magic, necromancy, and divination. Still, it is to be noted that practically until modern times there was no differentiation between astronomy and astrology. Thus, the Talmud speaks of the influence of the heavenly spheres, and the great majority of Medieval authorities (excluding Maimonides) assumed astrology to be true. Our goal is not to weigh in on this debate, but to use the Talmudic view of how God interacts with humanity via the heavenly spheres or other time-related concepts to design atmospheres for stories from which we internalize knowledge of God.
Our primary text for this astrology is a discussion in the Talmud. The Talmud tells us that some students read the following in the notebook of R’ Yehoshua the son of Levi (this is my summary of the Talmudic statement):
One born on Sunday will be completely good or completely bad, for on that day light and darkness were created.
One born on Monday will be short-tempered, for on that day the upper and lower waters were divided.
One born on Tuesday will be rich and promiscuous, for on that day vegetation was created.
One born on Wednesday will be wise and enlightened, for on that day the heavenly spheres were hung.
One born on Thursday will perform acts of kindness, for on that day the birds and fish were created (who are sustained by the kindness of God).
One born on Friday will seek out mitzvot (fulfillment of the commandments), for on that day people prepare for the Sabbath.
The thought process of R’ Yehoshua is clear. The creation story of Genesis 1 imparts a theme to each day of the week. This theme lives on to permanently color occurrences on that day Hence, any person born on that day will similarly manifest those themes.
The themes of days of the week appear elsewhere in Jewish lore. For example, the Talmud (Ta’anit 26a) discusses that the Temple service was performed by different groups in rotation every week (each group consisting of 1/24th of the population). However, only some of the population actually went to Jerusalem. The rest remained home but gathered together for special prayer services. What made them special was the reading from the Creation story and specified prayers appropriate for that day of the week. Thus, on Monday the people prayed for those on sea voyages (for that was the day the water was divided). On Tuesday the people prayed for those on dangerous land journeys (for that was the day dry land first appeared). On Wednesday the people prayed that croup should not infect children (for that was the day the heavenly spheres were hung and in Hebrew the word for light is similar to the word for a curse referring to croup). On Thursday the people prayed that women should not suffer miscarriages and that nursing women should be able to continue nursing their babies (for that was the day fish were created).
With the above we could suggest an outline for a series of books based on manifestations of the days of the week. The Sunday book would be a story of extremes: pure good versus pure evil, light versus darkness. The Monday book would highlight divisions, water, and anger. And so on for each of the days.
In our next post we’ll comment further on whether this would capture the same lessons as the Chronicles of Narnia.
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