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!
Dear Yaakov,
ReplyDeleteI’ve been following your blog with great interest over the last six months, learning much from your keen elaboration of the issues and your mapping of Ward onto Jewish sources.
I think, though, that you leave out a crucial part of Lewis’s charm, and so the recipe you offer for Jewish fantasy might yield some good books, but not good Jewish books in the way that Lewis’s are good Christian (and universal) books. I’ll lay out my thoughts here, apologizing in advance for what are likely my deficiencies in knowledge of both Judaism and Christianity.
I agree that some universal themes are engaged by the Narnia books. I am skeptical about Ward’s Planet Narnia theory of Lewis’s books, but stipulating that Ward is correct what he has done is to point out aspects of Lewis’s conception of setting and atmosphere.
Yet in addition to theme and setting, Lewis gives us Story. And I think this is part of the deeply Christian nature of Lewis’s work, and also part of what makes his books compelling even for readers who are not Christian and who may not even be aware of the Christian resonances. The Christian life well lived seems to me to be understood well in terms of Story. There is a beginning, a turning point or awakening or transformative encounter, and a desired ending. There is a necessary individual pattern of sin and salvation.
I am not sure that the Jewish life is lived as Story. We certainly have many stories, and perhaps the Jewish People is in the middle of a Story. But in contrast to the Christian, the individual Jew does not need to live a life as Story in order to engage his or her deepest reality as a Jew. Certainly, characteristic modes of our textual creativity—law and interpretation—are not inherently narrative. If anything, they arrest narrative and often complicate or unravel it.
I disagree with you that the force of a book such as The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe lies primarily in its universal themes, or its adherence to astrological symbolism in mood or setting. But more fundamentally, I would argue that its narratives of the children's passage into a new reality, of Edmund’s temptation and fall and ransom, and of their defeat of an enemy and assumption of kingship are definitive of the Christian spiritual life.
To produce a Jewish equivalent, one would have to determine not the general themes of knowing God or a scheme of symbolism to use, but what the constitutive Jewish narratives are. And I am not sure that on the individual level there are any, or at least that they make especially exciting stories. Not all fantasy is quest romance, but I think that to the extent a fantasy expresses core Jewish theological intuitions it will have a hard time being a story.
I’ve long since repudiated most of my Narnia essay, where I think I got hung up on motifs and medievalism. But going back to that question I see more wisdom in the work of Farah Mendlesohn, her Rhetorics of Fantasy, in which she notes the connection between quest-romance and Christianity.
It could be that fantasies that unravel Story, such as Peter Beagle’s The Last Unicorn or William Goldman’s The Princess Bride, are in some ways more Jewish. Not because of the ethnicity of the authors, but because they resist a concept of the life well lived necessarily being a quest narrative of sin and grace.
I’d love to know what your thoughts about this are. Perhaps two academics discussing what a Jewish fantasy book ought to be, and neither one writing it, is itself a metaphor for Jewish Narnia?
In gratitude,
Michael
Dear Michael,
ReplyDeleteThank you so much for your thoughtful comment which deserves more thought than I have given it so far. So, for the moment, I will make one suggestion which will hopefully be continued.
The essentiality of story in Judaism is, I think, an important question. On the one hand, the inclusion of so much story in the bible speaks to its centrality. On the other hand, without question, most post-biblical Jewish literature is not story-based (with exceptions of midrash, aggadic tales, etc.) but halakhic. Judaism's emphasis on law differentiates it from Christianity and therefore, I would agree with you, calls into question whether a story could ever encompass the essence of Judaism.
Still, at a bare minimum, I could argue that writing such novels is consistent with the following approach. The great medieval Sephardic poets wrote Hebrew poetry in part to demonstrate that Hebrew was at least as beautiful as Arabic. Poetry, like story, is included in the bible but is lacking in post-biblical literature. Nonetheless, I would imagine that poets such as R' Yehuda HaLevi would certainly believe poems could integrate essential Jewish themes.
So to with the suggested Jewish Narnia. From a Jewish standpoint, the writing of such novels is necessary to show that Judaism is the source of the universal themes Lewis does encompass in the Chronicles of Narnia, even the books cannot truly demonstrate the essence of Judaism.
Maybe not a great answer, but the need to show that Jews and Judaism are "just as good" as their non-Jewish surroundings certainly seems to be of the Jewish milieu.
Shavua tov,
Yaakov
PS. I have one more card (post) up my sleeve on a Jewish Narnia...
Thank you, Yaakov, that makes much sense to me. Looking forward to reading and learning more, and so glad to be in the club of Jewish CSL lovers with you.
ReplyDeleteMichael