Valiance (Part 2)

Valiance is a character trait that appears to be highly regarded by Lewis in the Chronicles of Narnia especially in the person of Reepicheep the Mouse. What is the definition of valiance and why is it important to the religious persona? Quite a while ago, we started to explore this question. Then, we noted that, minimally, one who is valiant is not scared. However, that alone is insufficient to define the term, or to explain the actions of Reepicheep, the most valiant of all beasts in Narnia. 

In this post we seek to further understand valiance by concentrating on another character conferred the title of valiant, Queen Lucy. The passage calling out Lucy’s valiance is from The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe:

But as for Lucy, she was always gay and golden-haired, and all princes in those parts desired her to be their Queen, and her own people called her Queen Lucy the Valiant.

Lucy’s valiance is manifest in that she is “always gay” and was the desire of many princes. This description of Lucy should be immediately contrasted with that of Susan. Susan is described as being, “a tall and gracious woman with black hair that fell almost to her feet and the kings of the countries beyond the sea began to send ambassadors asking for her hand in marriage.” Susan is gracious, while Lucy is gay. Susan is wanted by kings, and Lucy by princes. Why would kings want Susan and princes want Lucy? 

Lewis contrasts the roles of King and prince in the Horse and His Boy. In that story, Corin, surprisingly, rejoices at the appearance of his elder brother Cor exclaiming, “It’s princes that have all the fun.” King Lune agrees, explaining, “For this is what it means to be a king: to be first in every desperate attack and last in every desperate retreat…”

So, princes, who are out having fun and adventures would naturally want the happy and joyful Lucy. While kings, who have more serious jobs to do, would certainly rather be matched with the gracious Susan. Frankly, this comparison doesn’t look too good for Lucy. It’s almost like she’s not capable of being serious.

I think, however, Lewis has something else in mind. Lewis starts the description of the four children many years after the Great War with, “And they themselves grew and changed as the years passed over them.” Continuing with “And Peter…,” and again with “And Susan…” Then finishing with “But as for Lucy…” Why is Lucy “but” while the others are “and”? 

We are forced to say that while the other children grew and changed, Lucy did not. She remained gay and golden haired, she retained childhood. 

However, for Lewis, retaining childhood is not a negative. 

Quite the opposite, it’s valiant! 

More in my next post. 

The Role of Story (Part 2)

In my last post I conceded to Michael’s point that my attempt to formulate a Jewish Narnia in which each book is permeated with a theme of one of the Sefirot (God’s character traits as perceived by man) could not encompass the entire essence of Judaism. Nonetheless, I believe there would be great value in such a series for the reasons I will outline in this post. 

First, let me expand on the minimalist answer I suggested in reply to Michael’s comment. Jews have a tendency to try to demonstrate the truth, beauty, and, dare I, superiority of their religion and culture. As a minority living in exile this need for self-validation is certainly understandable as it is constantly necessary to identify sources of pride and arguments against assimilation. Thus, while a Jew may not dispute the intellectual greatness of Greek philosophy, the argument was made that they learned it from Jeremiah. Similarly, the beauty of Arabic poetry in Muslim Spain was a source of motivation for Jewish poets to demonstrate the beauty of the Hebrew language. 

Along these lines, we have seen in the United States Jewish religion-based versions of everything from self-help books to children’s stories. Part of the rationale for the existence of these versions is so that Jews will not be influenced by what may be perceived as the pernicious thoughts and attitudes of the non-Jewish works. Yet, some motivation is also to demonstrate that self-help, children’s entertainment and instruction and everything else must be found in Judaism. This approach is supported by the statement of Ben Bag-Bag in Ethics of Our Fathers (5:22), “Turn it (the Torah) over, and [again] turn it over, for all is therein.”

If we are to adopt this attitude, how much more so should it be applicable to a popular and deeply religious work like the Chronicles of Narnia? If Christianity can produce such a work so should Judaism.

Second, a Chronicles along the lines I suggested (if done properly) would impress upon its readers God’s multifaceted interactions with man. Though one can be a good Jew without ever having heard of the Sefirot, it is much more difficult to claim the mantle of a religious Jew without ever having considered man’s relationship with God. Our most basic liturgy speaks of God as our Father, our Master, and our King. Judaism’s most fundamental stories such as the Exodus, the Flood, and Abraham’s trials uphold God as man’s Savior, Judge, and Guide. A Jewish Narnia attempts to organize and present the basic elements of this relationship. Thus, while perhaps not capturing the entire essence of Judaism it certainly would capture an essence of Judaism. 

Finally, and perhaps this is the most appropriate response, there is a fundamental difference between Christianity and Judaism. Christianity strives to be a universal religion, Judaism does not. However, Judaism does have a universal message, one which is minimal in terms of law (restricted to the Noahide laws) but maximal in its scope: all of Creation should join together to follow His will. 

The goal of a Jewish Narnia would be to impart the universal message of Judaism and to demonstrate that universal morals and ethics come from Judaism. Jewish rituals of the kind I mentioned in the last post are not relevant for a Jewish Narnia attempting to provide a universal message. Therefore, in a sense Michael’s question is off-base (though likely due to my implications that a Jewish Narnia would be Jewish in all ways), so let me rephrase. How does one encompass and relate the universal part of Judaism? The part that is applicable to the entire world?

Stories, I believe, is now a pretty good answer, and has been shown to be so in the United States. It was the Jews wandering in the desert towards the promised land that inspired the Puritans and others. It was the eventual freedom of the Jewish slaves that gave hope to African slaves. The Maccabees, David, and Esther (see here, for example) continue to demonstrate to Americans that, in the battle of good versus evil, good can triumph even against all odds. 

So, I’m going to end this part here. I haven’t yet related to all of Michael’s comment but hopefully this is a start to help others (but mainly myself) think through these elements of religion and how to transmit them to others. 

The Role of Story (Part 1)

This post is an attempt to wrestle with parts of Michael’s comment on my summary of a Jewish Narnia. Please read the comment beforehand to put this post into its proper context. 

Michael makes a number of excellent points in his comment about my attempts to outline a framework for a Jewish Narnia. I’ll start with some in this post. 

Michael correctly points out that a good deal of the appeal of Narnia is the story, qua story, and I fail to address the importance of the story. To this I plead guilty. I do not suggest a recipe for writing a compelling story, only theological atmospheres, themes or setting. 

More fundamentally, Michael asserts that story, per se, is able to both manifest and encompass Christianity in a way that it cannot with respect to Judaism. I think this raises an interesting question, how important are stories and living life as story in Judaism? Certainly Judaism concentrates strongly on law and, Michael notes, law and interpretation tend to unravel or arrest story. Further, I would suggest, when we raise our children we teach them to follow halakha, Jewish law, and attempt to inspire them with story. I (as least) do not formulate my attempts at transmitting Judaism to my children as living the Jewish story. 

In fact, we emphasize the importance of law over that of story. Saul (and others) attempted to circumvent law in favor of what he thought was a higher good (in Saul’s case ignoring the law to destroy the animals of the Amalekites in order to bring sacrifices to God). I can see the argument Saul was making: we Jews, descendants of slaves, have been on a path of moral improvement for centuries. Through that time we have become a people of higher morals, better value judgment, and more sophisticated theological outlook. We know that God does not want the purposeless slaughter of animals. Hence, let us take these animals of the Amalekites and bring them as sacrifices to our most sublime God. That would be living a story. However, Samuel (and God) did not buy it. Samuel rebuked Saul by saying, God is not interested in your value judgments, but that you simply follow His law. 

Yet, perhaps things are not so clear. The mere fact that I quoted a story (about Saul and Samuel) to prove that we do not live a story suggests a tautology. Indeed, the Torah, even the law parts, is a story. No less a personage than Rashi formulated this question: why does the Torah not simply start with the first command given to the Jewish People? Furthermore, even in law we find story (see for example Simon-Shoshan’s “Stories of the Law”) and an actual case (story) in which a decision was rendered, as those found in responsa literature, has more halakhic weight than a theoretical test case. 

 

Still, the law would certainly get in the way of a story and especially a fantasy. In “The Frisco Kid” the protagonist refuses to ride his horse on Shabbat though trying to escape a posse. But that would be nothing compared to four kids from an Orthodox Jewish family getting into Narnia! I can see my son philosophizing over the halakhic status of talking beasts and my daughter trying to determine the proper direction in which to pray towards Jerusalem when Jerusalem is in a different universe. Can you imagine them traveling to Harfang and in the lands of the Lady of the Green Kirtle? They would have to ritually slaughter all the birds they caught. Underground, they would not know when to pray since they cannot see the sun. How would they put on tefillin every morning? And so and so on.  It would make the nightmares on the Dark Island seem tame. 

With that, I appear forced to concede that a Chronicles of Narnia like series would be unlikely to completely reflect the core elements of Judaism. Nonetheless, in my next post I will suggest why I think a Jewish Narnia along the lines I’ve described, should still be written. 

    

But, let me make one more point. Let us assume, as Michael says, the importance of story to Christianity. Is it not strange that Narnia is not known for storytelling? In fact, it is in Calormen where storytelling is an art form taught in schools. Narnia is not the land of storytelling but the land of poetry, and maybe the connection to Judaism there is a little stronger. We'll have to think about it...  

A Jewish Narnia Book 1: Ruth

Over the past several weeks I have suggested that the Sefirot would be an appropriate theme from which to construct a Jewish Narnia. Following the path C.S. Lewis discovered for us by Michael Ward, each book would create an atmosphere permeated with one of the Sefirot thus allowing the reader to “look along the beam” of that particular Sefirah and perceive God. In this post I would like to advance the idea that such a book already exists for the first Sefirah, Kindness: the book of Ruth. 

The book of Ruth is replete with examples of kindness. Let’s quickly review the main story. Elimelech, an important citizen of the city of Bethlehem in Judea, leaves his homeland due to famine and settles in Moab. He eventually dies and his two sons marry Moabite women and, after 10 years, they also die. At that point Naomi, Elimelech’s widow, decides to return to Judea having heard that the famine is over. She encourages her daughters-in-law to remain with their families in Moab, for neither she nor they can hope for a fulfilled life in Judea. Despite Naomi’s directive and the logic of her argument, one of her daughters-in-law, Ruth cleaves to her widowed mother-in-law and accompanies her home to Judea. 

In Judea, Naomi is too ashamed to be seen in public and it is Ruth who must support their needs. She does this happening upon a field where the poor are (as allowed by biblical law) collecting wheat (and later barley) that has fallen from the harvesters. It turns out that the owner of the field, Boaz, is related to Elimelech. He goes to see how the harvesters are doing and notices Ruth. He offers her food and water, and the opportunity to stay in his fields, essentially pledging support, explaining that he has heard of the great kindness she has performed for Naomi. 

Upon returning home, Naomi sees that Ruth has been incredibly successful. After hearing Ruth’s story she is galvanized to action and becomes determined to repay the kindness shown to her by arranging Ruth’s marriage to Boaz (though perhaps Naomi herself would have been better suited). Skipping over the details of her plan and its execution, Boaz agrees, though Ruth is a stranger in a foreign land. In fact, he declares that it is Ruth who is performing a kindness since her sterling character would certainly ensure she would have many credible suitors. The story ends with God’s payment in kind, blessing Ruth with a son who becomes a substitute for the two Naomi lost and is the progenitor of the Davidic dynasty. 

The major acts of kindness are obvious:

1. Ruth refusing to leave Naomi
2. Boaz’s support of Ruth
3. Naomi attempting to arrange for Ruth’s happiness in marriage
4. Boaz agreeing to marry Ruth
5. Ruth agreeing to marry Boaz
6. God blessing their offspring with the monarchy of Israel

Of course, the simple theme of kindness is insufficient to fulfill our criteria for a novel of Jewish Narnia. The book must be permeated with the atmosphere of the Sefira, and indeed it is. Subtle and small acts of kindness abound. Just to name a few: Boaz kindly greets his workers blessing them in the name of God, Ruth going home to Naomi every evening though she is invited to stay with Boaz’s clan, God granting a child for Naomi to care for in place of her own, and more. 

Beyond the acts of kindness themselves, Ruth strongly parallels Abraham, the personality most associated with the Sefirah of Kindness. Both are strangers who travel to Canaan/Israel to form a covenantal relationship with the true God. Both suffer from childlessness and are affected by famine. Once in Canaan/Israel both are rewarded with children from apparently elderly spouses eventually leading to the Jewish people and the Jewish monarchy. Of course, both exhibit acts of kindness. 

Other symbols of the Sefirah of kindness also weave their way into various parts of the story. The setting for much of the story are the grain fields of Boaz. Such fields are referred to by our Sages as “fields of white,” white being the color of the Sefirah of Kindness. Along similar lines, the Sefirah of Kindness is representative of God’s fourth utterance in Creation, “And God said, 'Let the Earth bring forth grass, the herb yielding seed…” (Genesis 1:11). Boaz offers that Ruth drink “from what the servants draw” referring to water. However, the verb drawing echoes the joyful drawing of water (Isaiah 12:3) performed during the Festival of Sukkot. There the drawing was not only of physical water but the drawing of the “upper waters,” that of divine inspiration (Jerusalem Talmud, Sukkah 22b). Finally, Ruth marries into the tribe of Judah which is represented by a lion, another symbol of the Sefirah of Kindness. 

One final point, despite the complete lack of overt miracles in the story, God’s name is constantly invoked. No doubt, this is due to God’s acts of kindness that exist “behind the scenes.” Ruth happens to end up in Boaz’s field, Boaz happens to be walking by, and so on. The emphasis on God is also to drive home that the kindness described in the book should teach us not only about human kindness, but should serve as a beam of light along which we can perceive the kindness of God. 

In summary, the book of Ruth may represent, or be a model for, the first book of a Jewish Narnia. Ruth’s main theme, side descriptions of the character's actions, and setting, all reflect the first Sefirah, Kindness, and its symbols. Furthermore, while the story can be told without invoking God as a character, God’s name is constantly mentioned, demonstrating that the book can be used to enlighten us on God’s kindness with humanity. 

Perhaps there are other sections of the bible that reflect other ones of the Sefirot and can also serve as a model for books of a Jewish Narnia. Feel free to chime in with ideas and I’ll let you know if I find any. 

A Jewish Narnia: Summary and Conclusions

Six months ago we started analyzing a question posed by Michael Weingrad, "Why is there no Jewish Narnia?" 

This question has meaning on multiple levels (for example, Weingrad himself interprets the question as to why Jews do not write fantasy and proceeds to address this issue), but our perspective was to first supplement this question with another one: "Should we care that there is no Jewish Narnia?" To this latter question I would answer emphatically, yes, we should care!  

The Chronicles of Narnia are extremely popular and not only amongst Christians. In the decades since they have been written, the Chronicles have successfully spread the ethos and ethics of Christianity to the entire world in a way that Jewish literature has not. Why the Chronicles are so popular is an important question. However, it is reasonable to assume that it is due to their portrayal of universal moral truths. C.S. Lewis presents these truths encompassed within a Christian worldview demonstrating Christianity as their natural home and thus as the source of moral clarity. A Jewish Narnia, were one to exist, would present universal moral truths from a Jewish worldview and thus present Judaism as the source of universal morality and ethics. In addition, the Chronicles of Narnia successfully convey these themes to children (they are children’s literature). A Jewish Narnia would accomplish the same. 

Having affirmed the positive elements in having a Jewish Narnia, we turned to the question of how to write one. Clearly, an avenue for answering this is to determine how Lewis wrote the Chronicles. We noted that the framework of the Chronicles was quite a mystery for several decades, finally solved by Prof. M. Ward in Planet Narnia. Ward's thesis is that each Chronicle is permeated with the atmosphere of one of the seven wandering planets (sun, moon, Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn), and the Roman gods they represent, as envisioned by the great theologians and scholars of the Middle Ages. Of course, Lewis does not believe in these Gods, but each portrayal embodies one aspect of the true God. To borrow from one of Lewis' most famous formulation, Lewis wants us to look along the beam, and see God from the perspective of each of the seven planets.

Summarizing, what Lewis accomplished in writing the Chronicles was to have his readers perceive God from each of seven different perspectives as represented by the gods of the seven wandering planets. Each of these perspectives is a universal truth in that it is how humans perceive their interactions with God. A Jewish Narnia should have similar goals, they should be an attempt to perceive God from all of the different perspectives that He relates to us. How can this be accomplished?

From a Jewish worldview, the climb from pagan religions, as represented by the Roman gods, to monotheistic religions, such as Christianity, is an appropriate one for the non-Jewish world and should be supported and applauded. However, such a transition is not appropriate for Judaism which has the benefit of revelation from Sinai. Jews did not have to struggle to find the the truths of monotheism, it was handed to them on a silver platter. Hence, while it is appropriate for Lewis and Christianity to perceive God in a way built on pagan undertones, it would improper to model a Jewish Narnia in this way.  

What then is a proper model or framework that encapsulates the different modes in which we perceive God's interactions with humanity (and/or individuals) that could serve to create different atmospheres for a series of novels? We entertained a number of different possibilities.  Our first attempt utilized the different characteristics for the days of the week. The Talmud assert that these characteristics are inherent to the day itself due to what God created on that day (as told in the first chapter of Genesis). Our second attempt, again relying on Talmudic assertion, was similar, suggesting as the framework the different hours of the day. The hours have different characteristics based on which of the seven wandering planets are in the ascendant during that hour. Both of these attempts, but especially the second, have similarities with the Chronicles of Narnia given their relationship to the seven wandering planets.

We rejected both of these attempts for the following reason. Both frameworks would require significant expansion, or even redirection, of the Talmudic narrative to properly manifest God’s interaction with His creations. The Talmud’s assertion, for example, that one born on Monday will be short-tempered is quite the opposite of God’s characteristic of being “slow to anger.” While certainly such expansion and substitutions are possible (and were raised in our posts) the framework than lacks the simple, and perhaps, inherent appeal Lewis uses in the Chronicles of Narnia.  

Our third attempt at an appropriate framework was to use the zodiac. The zodiac is symbolically invoked on a number of different levels ensuring there is enough material to create an atmosphere in a novel. These include, (1) the months of the year and, thus, the events and holidays that occurred during that month plus its astronomical constellation, (2) the 12 tribes, (3) man's life, (4) man's activities and so forth (summarized here). While requiring 12 books, this would seem like an excellent framework except for one problem. 

Despite the characteristics granted to the zodiac in Jewish literature, the Talmudic conclusion is that "Israel has no mazal", meaning Jews are not subject to any contrived astrological influences. If so, suggesting these themes as a framework with which to approach the interactions between God and man, would be off the mark. 

Our final attempt at finding a framework for a Jewish Narnia is the kabbalistic Sefirot. The Sefirot have been redefined numerous times over the centuries, and are taken to reflect God’s Will, His character traits, the forces He used in creation of the world, and the portals of the human soul which themselves mirror Godliness. Each of these Sefirot is represented by great Jewish personalities, biblical verses, a part of the Creation story, a color and more. The richness of the kabbalistic and chassidic literature guarantee a myriad of themes that could be used to build the stories. Perhaps most importantly, while a Jewish construct, the Sefirot are universal. All of humanity can resonate with the themes manifested by the Sefirot. Hence, an author could write an unmistakably Judaic series that could attract universal acclaim while teaching the foundations of how a Jew should relate to God.

We posited that each book in a Jewish Narnia reflect one the seven “lower” Sefirot: Kindness, Strength, Beauty, Eternity, Splendor, Foundation, and Kingship and made suggestions of how the different aspects of each one of the Sefirot could be utilized in a novel. 

I hope there's someone out there who can actually write such a series. I would certainly buy it!