Friday, October 14, 2005

Yom Kippur Liturgy

You cannot be comprehended by any science,
and there is no intellect that can understand and know
Anything about You and what You are like,
or how You created everything without anything.
Extra points if you know where it is from.

I think one of the facets of my current crisis is the dichotomy between early Jewish thought (e.g., Genesis), and the later stuff that tries to explain it away (e.g., the verse above). The former seems to be the foundation of our religion, while the latter seems to be nothing more than apologetics.

For example, this very verse states the obvious points about God, yet Judaism is replete with instances of explaining God (e.g., tikkun olem), and indeed understanding God is the very purpose of religion. Is that because religion has its origins in the anthropomorphic primordal soup of paganism? Certainly seems plausible.

More to come on this (I am re-reading Guide for the Perplexed, but it will take a while). That being said, I really enjoy certain moments of the Yom Kippur liturgy, most particularly the section from which this quote is taken.