When Illusion Becomes Reality

8/3/2019 When Illusion Becomes Reality

http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/when-illusion-becomes-reality 1/10

When Illusion Becomes Reality: Embracing the Cold Face of Evil

Western civilization has had serious difficulty dealing with the difference between

appearance and reality.

In the very Hellenistic roots of Western culture the idea that truth inheres in surfacesrather than depths, in simplicity rather than complexity, remains a central issue.

In the classic essay “Odysseus’ Scar,” the first chapter of his seminal 1946 book

Mimesis: The Representation of Reality in Western Culture (written in Istanbul after the

author fled Nazi Germany), the German-Jewish literary scholar Erich Auerbach contraststhe Hebrew and Greek approaches to reality and illusion. Auerbach, as generations of

students have learned while reading his book, sees the split between the Hebrew Bible

and the Homeric corpus resting in this primal binarism:

It would be difficult, then, to imagine styles more contrasted than those of these two

equally ancient and equally epic texts. On the one hand, externalized, uniformlyilluminated phenomena, at a definite time and in a definite place, connected together

without lacunae in a perpetual foreground; thoughts and feeling completely expressed;

events taking place in leisurely fashion and with very little of suspense. On the other

hand, the externalization of only so much of the phenomena as is necessary for the

purpose of the narrative, all else left in obscurity; the decisive points of the narrative

alone are emphasized, what lies between is nonexistent; time and place are undefined

and call for interpretation; thoughts and feeling remain unexpressed, are only suggested

by the silence and the fragmentary speeches; the whole, permeated with the most

unrelieved suspense and directed toward a single goal (and to that extent far more of a

unity) remains mysterious and “fraught with background.”

According to Auerbach, the Hebrew Bible differs from Hellenistic epic in the manner in

which it processes reality. Presenting the very bare minimum of information in a fashion

that demands inquiry and investigation, the Biblical “reality” is fraught with complexityand multiple layers of human psychology. On the other hand, the aim of the Homeric

texts is to make “reality” precise and knowable in a strictly univocal and reductive

manner. What you see is what you get. The net effect of Homeric literary style is to

create an enchanted world of “make-believe”:

The Homeric poems, then, though their intellectual, linguistic, and above all syntactical

culture appears to be much more highly developed, are yet comparatively simple in their

picture of human beings; and no less so in their relation to the real life which they

describe in general. Delight in physical existence is everything to them, and their highest

aim is to make that delight perceptible to us. Between battles and passions, adventures

and perils, they show us hunts, banquets, palaces and shepherds’ cots, athletic contests

and washing days – in order that we may see the heroes in their ordinary life, and seeing

them so, may take pleasure in their manner of enjoying their savory present, a present

which sends strong roots down into social usages, landscape, and daily life. And thus

they bewitch us and ingratiate themselves to us until we live with them in the reality of



their lives; so long as we are reading or hearing the poems, it does not matter whether

we know that all this is only legend, “make-believe.”

The price of Greek certainty is illusion. We can “know” the “truth,” but only a “truth”

that is not at all “true” in human terms.

Central to this worldview is the centrality of image in the processing of reality.

In a brilliant formulation of the Hebrew-Greek duality, Jose Faur teaches us that the

Greeks relied on the visual while the Hebrew elevated the status of the auditory. As we

read in his indispensable 1986 study Golden Doves with Silver Dots: Semiotics and

Textuality in Rabbinic Tradition:

In Greek thought the highest expression of reality is in the realm of the visual. Greek

civilization (art, religion, etc.) emphasizes the outer aspect of reality. Literature projects

a world viewed in the third person, easily visualized. The Hebrews were concerned with

the auditory aspect of reality, specifically speech. The highest expression of reality is found in communicative speech. The outer aspect of things is unimportant.

A perfect example of this Hebrew modality may be found in the troubling story of Jacob

and the theft of Esau’s blessing. As we recall, the blessing was in dispute as Jacob“bought” the blessing for a pot of soup when Esau was hungry. But at the time of Isaac’s

death, the two sons were once again contending for the blessing.

Rebecca instructs Jacob to dress up in the clothing of a hunter – just like his brother.Isaac who was blind would not be able to closely examine Jacob and would need to make

the identification by his sense of touch. Isaac does indeed fall for the ruse, but makes a

very odd statement as he begins the blessing:

Then Isaac said to Jacob, “Come near, that I may feel you, my son, to know whether you

are really my son Esau or not.” So Jacob went up to his father Isaac, who felt him and

said, “The voice is Jacob’s voice, but the hands are the hands of Esau.” (Genesis 27:

21-22)

The text explains that Isaac needed verification before giving over his blessing. He lovedEsau because Esau was a hunter, a heroic figure, who, it can be assumed, lived a life of

the flesh. Esau, in this schema, can be seen as representing the ideal Greek type. Jacob

thus hides his own identity in order to “become” Esau. And Isaac states explicitly that heheard the “voice” of Jacob, but feels the “hands” of Esau. Jacob is the “inside,” the

internalized self, while Esau is the “outside,” a man who lives in his surface being.

Contrary to Orthodox apologia, it is important to note that Jacob’s future life turns on this

lie. The sin of externality will remain a huge problem for Jacob as he lives his adult life.

Because he lies, he will be forced to suffer the lies of others. His father-in-law Laban liesto him over Leah and Rachel, his sons lie to him about his precious Joseph, while Joseph

remains in Egypt never once informing his beloved father that he is alive.



Jacob is cursed by his transformation into Esau. Once representing the ideal of

domesticity and, according to the Sages, of the scholar, Jacob makes this one slip-up and

throws the rest of his life into upheaval.

This is the price that Hebrew tradition imposes on the “illusion/reality” conundrum.

Over time, Jewish culture is forced to confront the Hellenistic ideal. In the writings of

the Sages in the Talmud and Midrash, the Biblical conception of human reality is

reaffirmed. But in the writings of Paul in the New Testament a very odd thing happens.Rather than maintain the ancient Hebrew tradition of the dignity of man created in the

image of God (Genesis 1:27), Paul sets out a new idea, a third approach to human reality.

In this new scheme, human beings are created as imperfect creatures imbued with sin.

Therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man, and death came through sin,

and so death spread to all because all have sinned – sin was indeed in the world beforethe law, but sin is not reckoned when there is no law. Yet death exercised dominion from

Adam to Moses, even over those whose sins were not like the transgression of Adam, who

is a type of the one who is to come. (Romans 5:12-14)

The “type” of the “new” Adam is, of course, Jesus Christ. Inherent in Paul’s thinking is

the idea that human beings are compromised by the primal nature of sin and must always

be in need of “redemption.” Paul’s idea transforms the Jewish conception of individual

responsibility into a magical process that requires the intervention of Jesus, the Son of God, who is the sole means by which human beings can become righteous once again:

What I am saying, brothers and sisters, is this: flesh and blood cannot inherit the

kingdom of God, nor does the perishable inherit the imperishable. Listen, I will tell you a

mystery! We will not all die, but we will all be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of

an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound and the dead will be raised

imperishable, and we will be changed. (1 Corinthians 15:50-52)

In this complex passage Paul expands on the original idea of man’s perennial

corruptibility and the definitive deliverance brought by Jesus Christ. Makingtransformative use of the rabbinic conception of the Resurrection of the Dead – itself

influenced by Greco-Roman philosophical and theological ideas (it should be

remembered that one of the main disputes between the Pharisees and the Sadducees wasover the issue of the Resurrection of the Dead, bearing witness to the contemporary

aspect of the debate) – Paul changes the very elemental nature of human personhood.

Linking his fatalistic conception of the Law to human goodness and redemption, Paul

recalls the totalizing concepts of the Greeks who make of this world an absolute ideal.

Countering the Greek conception of a worldly paradise, Paul’s Christology transfersparadise from this world to the world-to-come.



In both Greek ideality and Pauline Christianity, human beings are primed to attain an

absolute state.

In the Jewish conception of reality, human beings are created in the image of God and are

given absolute freedom to do good or evil. This sense of Jewish freedom is beautifully

articulated by Emmanuel Levinas in his classic 1957 essay “A Religion for Adults”(included in his seminal book Difficult Freedom: Essays on Judaism originally published

in French in two volumes in 1963 and 1976, and translated into English in 1990):

The moral relation therefore reunites both self-consciousness and consciousness of God.

Ethics is not the corollary of the vision of God, it is that very vision. Ethics is an optic,

such that everything I can hear of His word and reasonably say to Him must find an

ethical expression. In the Holy Ark from which the voice of God is heard by Moses, there

are only the tables of the Law. The knowledge of God which we can have and which is

expressed, according to Maimonides, in the form of negative attributes, receive a positive

meaning from the moral ‘God is merciful,’ which means, be merciful like Him.

Levinas here re-engages the Greek-Hebrew dilemma from the standpoint of God’spresence and absence. Rather than asserting the definitive status of the present, Levinas,

squarely in the Jewish tradition, a tradition abandoned by Paul’s Christianity, marks

God’s absence as a sign of our ethical relations. God is brought into “consciousness” outof His absence by the moral deed, performing the commandments.

Levinas emphatically rejects Pauline antinomianism and its totalizing effect on

redemption. Abiding by the principles and details of the Law is the only way to bringGod’s presence into the world. To affirm the Law means that we must reject the magical

aspect of Pauline redemptive Christology.

In Levinas’ words, it means:

[T]he Justice rendered to the Other, my neighbor, gives me an unsurpassable proximity

to God. It is as intimate as the prayer and the liturgy which, without justice, are nothing.

God can receive nothing from the hands that have committed violence. The pious man is

the just man. Justice is the term Judaism prefers to terms more evocative of sentiment.

For love itself demands justice, and my relation with my neighbor cannot remain outside

the lines which this neighbor maintains with various third parties. The third party is also

my neighbor.

The ritual law of Judaism constitutes the austere discipline that strives to achieve this

justice. Only this law can recognize the face of the Other which has managed to impose

an austere role on its true nature. At no moment does the law acquire the value of a

sacrament.

Levinas in this passage addresses the perennial dilemma that separates Greek fromHebrew. While Paul sought to ameliorate the issue by transporting human ideality from



this world to the next, Levinas appropriates the Talmudic doctrine of the Law and its

efficacy to ground human relations.

What Paul and the Greeks have in common is the idea that humanity must find an ideal

state. The process of the Law in Jewish tradition understands that sin is possible but not

pre-determined. The Greek hero embraces sin in the Jewish sense; the Greek hero rapes,pillages, and creates mayhem. This behavior is consistent with the idea that for

Hellenistic thought the determinative value is that of the surface, of the obvious, of thehere-and-now. Human beings are beholden only to themselves and must seek out their

own pleasures without hesitation. Greek Epicurianism denies the vast moral and

psychological complexity of the human being.

So too does Paul reject the natural instability of human beings and the linguistic means

that we must use in order to process reality. Reality thus becomes an Idea; whether it is

the immediate “reality” of Greek ideality, or the otherworldly reality of Paul, the point isto remove human beings from the messiness of the ethical life. It means that there are no

laws that can ensure a healthy society.

Paul’s conception seems to oppose the values presented by the Gospel of Matthew in the

“Parable of the King”:

Come, you that are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the

foundation of the world; for I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you

gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you

gave me clothing, I was sick and you took care of me, I was in prison and you visited me.

(Matthew 25:34-36)

In this text we see that God wishes for human beings to treat each other with compassion,rather than apathy and scorn. Our obligation to God, as Levinas states clearly, is properly

fulfilled by our ethical relation to the Other. In this context it is not an otherworldly or

magical process that determines human goodness and redemption, but the very prosaicacts of kindness and mercy, in Hebrew Hesed, that marks the human condition and its

reality.

Strangely, the idea of man’s corruption is echoed in contemporary Orthodox Judaism. AsI was reading a book called The Human and the Infinite: Discourses on the Meaning of

Penitence (2004) by Rabbi Shimon Gershon Rosenberg (SHAGAR), an esteemed

rabbinic figure in Religious Zionist circles, I caught sight of the idea that human beingsare born in a corrupted state:

This transience is an ontological fault which constructs the individual as a flawed

creation from the outset. Man’s transience exposes, more than anything else, both his

limits and his status as a created being. However, it also reveals the eternal limitlessness

of God. For man to stand before God is for the ephemeral creature to stand before the

infinite. This in itself reflects both man’s impermanence and God’s ascendancy.



Further on in the text we learn that this corruption is in the very nature of the world itself:

The status of this world is falsity. So even this world’s truth is the truth of falsehood.

The only way for Jacob to win is through emulating Esau. Esau’s trickery is not

simplistic and unrefined. Rather, it is based on self-deception. From his own

perspective, Esau speaks truthfully. However, this is only truth at a conscious level and not inner truth. It is when Jacob comes to despair of this world’s inner falsity that he

comes to adopt Esau’s rules.

What the text is telling us reflects the same insight found in the otherworldliness reflected

in the Pauline epistles. The idea is to seek out “totality” at the expense of what Levinascalls “infinity.” This totalizing ideality is a product of apocalyptic messianism. In the

case of Paul the Kingdom is achieved solely by means of the intercession of Jesus, while

for many contemporary Jews it is to be gotten by means of settlement of the Land.

In each case, the net result is to transform the Jewish tradition from a state of being

“unredeemed” to actual fulfillment. Those who do not accept the terms of redemptionare viewed as unrepentant and as un-Godly. The new Law of the “redeemed” worldtransforms the very nature of humanity. Man is brought into union with God. Presence

is affirmed and the prosaic nature of life is rejected. In the ideal state “fallen” man is

turned into “redeemed” man where he is then able to have his corruption corrected. Manis only truly complete in this otherworldly “redeemed” state.

But what of life back here on the “corrupted” earth?

In the ideal community where human beings have transformed themselves from their

imperfect and corrupted nature, illusion has now become reality. A hierarchical society

is created where those who are “redeemed” are able to act as they please.

We have recently been witnessing two events that have laid out the problems with this

hierarchical vision of human identity, a vision that eschews the validity of the Law as anefficacious means of adjudicating human issues.

At Penn State University a child sex abuse scandal has been uncovered that allegedly

involves some extremely heinous crimes. In order to protect the integrity of the school’sFootball program these alleged acts of abuse were suppressed by the professional staff.

An ex-coach named Jerry Sandusky is accused of having molested many young boys. In

2002 one such molestation was said to be witnessed by a graduate student named MikeMcQueary who then reported what he saw to Head Coach Joe Paterno. Paterno then

informed his superior who it is alleged did nothing to alert the Pennsylvania state police

as was his moral responsibility.

The Penn State case presents to us an enraptured cult-like society where athletics rules

the roost. In addition to generating a great deal of income for the university and for thosewho work in the programs – excepting, of course, the unpaid student-athletes who

actually produce the marketable product – Penn State football has become, like other



such college sports programs, a world unto itself. It is a world of heroic surfaces straight

out of Homer’s Iliad. In this enchanted, magical world it is the iconic that takesprecedence. A cult grows up around the sport which creates a cocoon-like state that, in

the case of Jerry Sandusky, closed ranks around the potential scandal and its illegality in

a way that exposed a latent antinomianism.

Over the past few months we have also seen the emergence of the Occupy Wall Street

movement. The aim of OWS is to expose the moral crimes of firms like Goldman Sachsand AIG in the way that they have been doing business.

Central to the problem of OWS is what constitutes a “crime.” At the forefront of ournow-corrupted political system is the way in which the “Law” has been rewritten in order

to permit the sort of immoral and unconscionable behavior that has become

commonplace in a Wall Street world where ethical honesty and the Golden Rule of

“Loving thy Neighbor as Thyself” has been flushed away.

Over the course of three decades – at least – Wall Street has become an unaccountableentity that behaves as it wishes. The idea of fiduciary responsibility and moral justice is arelic of a bygone past. Since the age of Ronald Reagan and his desire to have wealth

concentrated in the hands of what we are now calling the “1%” by means of tax cutting,

deficit spending, corporate welfare, and the relaxation of government regulation of business, wealth inequality in the US has ballooned to unheard-of proportions.

OWS is a movement designed to address the vast complexity of the system in its

dysfunction and cruelty.

What unites OWS and Penn State is the way in which the underlying issues involve a

transformation of reality by means of illusion. Like the “make-believe” world of theancient Greeks as reflected in their foundational literary texts, we are now living in a

world where how things appear is more important than what they are in reality.

For a Wall Street financial manager the problems of Joe Public are of no concern. The

manager lives in a self-contained universe that resembles more often than not the ideal

world of the Greek tradition. In this world how things look is far more important than

how they are in reality. Not for the Greek tradition the messiness of human life; theGreek hero – like the modern athlete and the wealthy oligarch – is a self-contained entity

that is not to be troubled with the trifling real-life concerns of the masses.

The prescience of the great writer Franz Kafka is to be noted here. Kafka’s work

revolves around the experiences of a nameless and faceless person who was impotent in

the face of the “system.” The individual is powerless to stand up to their accusers who donot feel the need to even make formal charges against him. He is lost in what we now

call the “Kafka-esque”; a universe where moral values are jettisoned and where the

powerful remain unaccountable.



For Kafka the battle between Greek and Hebrew becomes manifest in the pain of the

individual who is tortured by a world that is unaccountable to the Law. Joseph K.,Kafka’s protagonist in The Trial, is lost in a labyrinth of a world where there is no

rationality and no ethics. Joseph K. struggles mightily to bring to the proceedings a

semblance of rationality, but he is accosted and persecuted at every turn.

It is a world that was comically explored by the great film director Ernst Lubitsch in his

1932 classic “Trouble in Paradise.” The film shows us a pair of thieves who wedgethemselves into high society in order to enable them to commit their crimes. It is vital to

their scheme that the upper crust come to see them as one of their own. The thieves

thrive on the power of illusion to perpetrate their thefts. Once they are “accepted” by therich folk, their way is assured. So too in classic films like “Gaslight” and “My Name is

Julia Ross” we see criminals seeking illicit profit concoct elaborate schemes to make

others accept them as trusted members of society when in reality they are not to be

trusted at all.

The moral person seeks to upend this idea of illusion, but is often rebuffed in a violentmanner by those living inside the bubble created by the illusion.

The reason that a situation such as is alleged in Penn State could have gone on for more

than a decade is because of the way illusion became reality. So too on Wall Street we seethe ability of the rich to do as they please at the expense of the well-being and security of

our nation. While Wall Street firms threw the US economy into a tailspin, tens of

millions of dollars continued to be lavished on executive pay at those very same firms.

The national treasury is in a state of disrepair and the national debt has ballooned, but the

illusions that now control Wall Street continue to remain firmly in place. It is not at all

surprising that Washington is filled with Wall Street lobbyists doing a brisk business onCapitol Hill. Even more grotesquely, former Wall Street titans are currently employed at

the very highest echelons of government. The game is thus completely rigged in favor of

perpetuating the illusions that have so undermined our social welfare.

One day as I was walking from the subway to the OWS encampment – since removed by

the billionaire Mayor Michael Bloomberg, once a Wall Street titan himself – I passed a

CHABAD-Lubavitch Mitzvah tank. CHABAD takes to the streets to get Jews to put ontefillin and become more aware of Judaism. So when I saw the Mitzvah tank right down

the block from the New York Stock Exchange, I decided to walk up to the CHABAD

representative. I boldly asked him to confront the Wall Street thieves walking on thisvery street and tell them that it is wrong to steal from others. In response – and I cannot

say I was shocked by this – the CHABAD representative blamed the government and not

Wall Street for the theft. He insisted that the Wall Street crowd had nothing to do withour economic woes.

In this response we can see the triumph of illusion over reality.



Just as we are seeing in the Penn State case, it is much easier to accept the new “reality”

once it is firmly established than it is to battle it. In the case of Penn State, the wheels of the Football program continued to be greased even as it is alleged that many of the

professional staff knew of Sandusky’s vile crimes. In the case of Mike McQueary, his

alleged irresponsibility and inaction with regard to Sandusky – after all he claims in the

Grand Jury testimony that he witnessed a rape and did not try to physically stop it – paidoff handsomely; it led to a plum job as an assistant coach on the team.

In the case of Wall Street it is all about the money. The system remains in place and all

attempts to change it have been stymied. Bank failures have led to enormous bailouts

which have in turn led to more executive bonuses.

For those of us who value human integrity and refuse to accept illusion as reality, the way

is often perilous. Once illusion has taken hold, the alternative reality marks those who

remain rational as mad and insane. In Kafka’s world the normal are deemed psychoticwhile the truly disturbed continue to run everything.

In the contemporary Jewish world, dominated in large part by Zionist messianism andapocalyptic thinking, the same situation exists. Those “inside” the club, a club shot

through with illusions, are guaranteed their status and their wealth. Those who are

“outside” the club are open to persecution and mistreatment. This abusive situation isconducted with complete impunity as the proverbial lunatics have taken over the asylum.

In my own Brooklyn Syrian Jewish community we have seen an outrageous scandal

involving rabbis and their financial crimes. The rabbis have pleaded guilty to thesecrimes and yet there has been no reform of the leadership. As with Wall Street, the

system of illusion becoming reality has dug in deep and has set down firm roots. Only

those who choose to fight the system are in any serious danger.

When illusion becomes reality there is no moral footing left for those of us who choose to

remain outside the new “enchanted” circle of “reality.” Such people, like Kafka’s JosephK., lose their way in this dangerous new world. They open themselves up to the criminal

abuse that is enabled by those who indirectly profit by covering up criminal behavior.

The Law becomes an irrelevant, negligible factor. Illusion has taken hold and the

individual human being is completely powerless to prevent it from damaging the actualreality that the rest of us are forced to live.

Once we have accepted that illusion has become reality, we have turned our back onmorality and justice. We have enabled moral degeneracy to become acceptable behavior.

The world we live in turns into a fetid dank, fetid sewer while its inhabitants sincerely

believe that it is a beautiful garden.

It explains to us why the good suffer while the wicked prosper.

In order for this transformation to be reversed it is incumbent upon us to make personal

sacrifices in order to fight the wicked. The heroism of the moral and the just can be seen



in the courage of the beleaguered miners in John Sayles’ brilliant 1987 film “Matewan”

where a group of oppressed workers in West Virginia band together to strike back at theheartless corporation that has made their lives a nightmare.

It is such selflessness and human courage that will ultimately force the change we need as

a society; even at the price of the great sacrifices it will take to achieve the goal of a fairand just world for all.

David Shasha

Documents

When Illusion Becomes Reality