What is the central creed inherited from Judaism by Christianity and Islam? It is not the characters but the reverence to the text, the idea that the world is inanimate, cold hardware and it needs a software code, an operating system, a book to boot.
Our computer driven culture lends some poignant metaphors. Yes indeed Judaism is Microsoft Windows. Just like MSFT it is a Closed Source legacy code. The code is in the hands of a few skilled system engineers, they claim that without the maintenance the world would just reverse to a useless desktop. Few wickedly fast geeks are charged with the kernel, they issue patches regularly, preventing the enormous code from crashing under its own weight, but they never introduce a new functionality. If you used a Windows computer you know that the OS is stale, yet monthly there is another “malicious removal” patch.
So how did Judaic code retained some of it’s vitally? It’s the hacks! Judaism itself, like the original DOS, was a hack at some point. The genius of poetic codifiers is unstoppable, ecstatic visions lurk under the surface, despite the grip of the corner office. A few examples of the famous Judaic hacks now packaged together with the OS are Song of Songs, Ecclesiastes, Kaballah, Hasidism, etc. And how did the contraband showed up at a bible class near you?
It’s the marketing stupid! Imagine some raving genius who seats in a tiny cubicle, inside a gray suburban office park. Overwhelmed and inspired, he writes an erotic poem a thousands years ahead of its time, he calls it Song of Songs. Like Sufi poets he can’t tell a difference between a woman and a god. His manager discovers the code, speculates that there might be some potential and forwards the file to marketing. The marketers are now faced with a daunting task of mainstreaming the outrageous sexual content. They follow a simple formula; naturally the text is not what it appears to be. They invent attribution and why not the King of Kings himself, His Highness Solomon the Great. Who can say no to King Solomon? Barabum-barabam, next thing you know it ships with the spanking new shrink wrapped OS and a perfect G rating.
And then another broodingly mad and prophetically depressed genius hacker writes Ecclesiastes and the marketing folks already rubbing their hands, they know how to do it, it’s a formula! And Kaballah was of course not a hack by some Spanish dude but was written in a cave by Rabbi Bar Yohay. Perhaps Moses de Leon himself realized that the heroic creative eruption channeled though his poetic imagination had a better chance without an attribution (as Leon de Modena, the original Venetian “blogger”, did later with his shocking and unauthorized “Voice of a Fool”, he said “somebody brought the manuscript from Spain to Italy”).
The repackaging is an important part of the mainstreaming and marketing. The original author is concealed, what he said wasn’t really what he said but what a “rashi” said he or she said. After the OS is out of the hands of the slimy marketers, the most difficult part is maintenance of the darn colossal hodgepodge. A mounting geek comes along whose task it is to make sure that all the lines of code don’t truncate but hobble along and share that drive more or less nicely. Once in while even this genius gives up and calls back the slimy marketers, who promptly create another story…
Not every hack gets uploaded to the approved plugin directory. Christianity was a Judaic hack, Islam was a Judaic hack, Shabbatians were classic hackers. But long after a hack gets rejected, the lines of the code still circulate freely if clandestinely, pulsating and breathing under the surface of every perfectly kosher motherboard. And often it is even above the surface like the division of the Torah portions introduced by a monk.
To be sure there are inspirational instances of the Closed Source, i.e. Apple. Apple controls software and hardware, complete total control of the platform and user experience. But Apple is a one giant poetic hack, an artistic expression by one man who is still conducting his symphony. Yet even Apple recognizes the inevitable need to revitalize and connect its brand to the Open Source, witness iPhone apps, etc.
Abstract textual manipulation is the most persistent Jewish talent and it is this very skill that remains curtailed and prosecuted. Many assume that Judaic ambivalence about visual arts was the obstacle to creativity when in fact it was the aversion to the Open Source, to the collaborative power of poetic imagination. This remains Judaism’s most toxic legacy. The “authoritarian” culture spread like a virus thought-out the world where fundamentalism is now a “code” word for a proprietary scripture.
Further Reading:
Why Judaism is bad for the Jews
From Post-Judaism to Post-Orthodoxy
Hendel Futerfas Code
