A Remembrance of His Wonders. David I. Shyovitz
the actions of the first one. It is for this reason that [God] set the time and duration of reproduction, each animal and plant species as is customary for it, and the times of planting and harvesting, each in its proper time. And He has never changed and never will change these customs…. This is in order that one not think that there is a second God who can contradict the first God. Thus, our sages have said, “The world follows its customary course” (olam ke-minhago noheg) in all matters.42
The “supernatural” abrogation of the natural order, in this view, would threaten rather than reinforce knowledge of God’s “wonders.”
This privileging of the “customary course” which the world follows has surprising implications for the Pietistic conception of miracles, deviations from the natural order that overturn the regularity imposed by God on the physical world. With few exceptions,43 Pietistic sources minimize both the frequency and theological significance of direct divine interventions in the functioning of the natural order. Thus, Sefer Hasidim cautions that “one should seek to avoid miracles,”44 and that if one does experience a miracle, it should not be publicized to others.45 Similarly, the Pietists express discomfort with apparently miraculous events described in the Bible, and seem more comfortable with figures like Joshua and Samuel, who rarely performed public miracles, than with prophets like Elijah and Elisha, who were constantly the cause or beneficiary of interventions in the natural order.46 Indeed, in contrasting these figures with one another, Judah categorically asserts, “In times of great need, prophets may perform miracles, but only when the desired end cannot come about via non-miraculous means. When it is possible for it to come about by some other means, one must not perform a miracle. And when a minor miracle will suffice, one must not perform a great miracle.”47 Eleazar sums up this approach with a programmatic assertion: “It is not the way of God to effectuate the decrees that He is constantly effectuating through open miracles. Rather, [He brings his decrees about] through guidance of the world.”48
In cases where miracles do prove necessary, Judah emphasizes that God generally chooses to perform them in private, so as not to visibly interfere with the (spiritually resonant) typical workings of the natural order. The destruction of Dagon, the idolatrous god of the Philistines, recounted in I Samuel 5 takes place at night when no witnesses are present, as does the plague of the firstborns in Exodus 12. Even Elisha only resurrects the son of the Shunamite woman in II Kings 4 after first closing the door to his bedroom, ensuring that no one would observe the actual workings of the miraculous event. Judah interprets God’s criticism of Sarah’s laughter in Genesis 18 in this manner as well—laughing upon finding out that she would bear a son in her old age was her way of publicizing the miracle, which God in turn instructed her to avoid.49 The angelic instruction to Lot’s wife not to look upon the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah was an expression of the same desire to keep miracles hidden—her transformation into a pillar of salt was thus a punishment for her having violated the bounds of secrecy.50 The contrast with non-Pietistic interpretations of Psalms 111:4 is here particularly stark—in earlier sources, the pillar of salt into which Lot’s wife was transformed was precisely intended to commemorate and publicize God’s miraculous deeds.51 Discomfort with miraculous intervention also explains the Pietists’ conspicuous attempts to minimize the wondrousness of certain scriptural miracles. For example, the inexplicable blossoming of Aaron’s staff in the Tabernacle during Korah’s rebellion in Numbers 17 is described by the Pietists as rather mundane. In the context of a discussion of the rapidly blossoming trees of the Garden of Eden, Eleazar notes, “You should not be surprised—for Aaron’s staff produced fruit in a single night, without being planted. And truffles and mushrooms [grow] in a single day, without being planted or drawing [sustenance] from the ground. And cabbage produces sprouts, even when not [planted] in the ground.”52 Eleazar here takes an ostensibly miraculous occurrence and diminishes its significance by equating it with commonplace horticultural phenomena.
When it comes to prayer, too, miracles should neither be requested nor invoked as a means of praising God. According to Sefer Hasidim, one is prohibited from praying for miraculous interventions in the natural order53 and should not praise God for performing miracles with impunity: “‘Rejoice, oh righteous, in the Lord’ (Ps. 33:1)—but not in other joys…. This verse does not explain—what ‘joy’ is [accurate with regard to] the Holy One, blessed be He? Truth—one should not speak lies, [such as], ‘The Holy One, blessed be He, makes the heavens into earth, or the earth into the heavens, turns water into wine or honey into wormwood or wormwood into honey.’ Anything that does not usually happen should not be used to praise God.”54 In a similar passage elsewhere, Judah echoes this line of reasoning further, claiming that attributing wondrous miracles to God is not only unseemly, but also untrue. In other words, his commitment to the immutability of the natural order leads him to implicitly place limitations on God’s omnipotence. In addressing the talmudic prohibition on praising God in overly extravagant language,55 he writes: “If one were to ask: Since God is omnipotent … let us praise Him with all manner [of praises]. It is possible to respond that we ought to praise Him for those things he regularly, visibly does for humanity…. For it would not do to say that God can do anything, lest one think of things which are illogical, and thereby blaspheme the Exalted One. For instance, one might think, ‘Since He is omnipotent, why can he not make today precede yesterday, or [tomorrow] precede today?’56 For it is impossible for the past to follow the future [chronologically].”57 It is clear from these passages that both Judah and Eleazar much prefer the regularity, and even constraint, imposed by consistency and predictability over a worldview in which miracles play a destabilizing role. This antipathy toward changing the natural created order is predicated on the belief that that order is hardly haphazard—much less maleficent or antagonistic—but that it rather reflects God’s wisdom and desires.
Indeed, this conception of a consistent natural order is evident not only from the specific phenomena that the Pietists cite—the transparency of glass, the steam of one’s breath, and dust visible in a ray of sunlight—but, more broadly, from the very rhetorical agenda that their invocations of Psalms 111:4 are intended to further. In their discussions of God’s “remembrances,” the Pietists were engaged in a pedagogic and exhortatory strategy aimed at a specific audience. Particularly in the sifrut ha-yihud, Psalms 111:4 is invoked in reference to an imagined interlocutor, who raises a succession of skeptical queries regarding the nature of God. “How can I believe that there is a God in the world, when no eye has seen Him?” “How can I believe that He is found everywhere, and that nothing is hidden from Him?” and so on. The goal of the Pietists’ exoteric writings—aimed at a “lay” audience rather than a select group of initiates—is to offer convincing answers to these questions precisely by listing examples of mundane substances that, though invisible, undoubtedly exist. That is, it is the very ordinariness of the objects and phenomena, their tendency to be taken for granted, that lends the argument its weight. Drawing linkages between, say, God’s invisibility and inexplicable, supernatural phenomena would not meet the needs of the consumers of the Pietists’ writings, who were interested in comprehending theological truths about God, not in begging the question through the marshaling of even more unbelievable phenomena.
The notion that the Pietists were concerned with the spiritual edification of those whose faith was less than perfect runs counter to the conventional depiction of the Hasidei Ashkenaz as elitist and withdrawn, closed off from the broader Jewish community and its manifold spiritual failings. Indeed, the possibility that there existed medieval Ashkenazic Jews who were capable of theological skepticism altogether belies the tendency to depict Ashkenazic Jewry as a “pious community,” unshakeable in their faith and religious commitment.58 And yet, there is ample evidence in Pietistic sources that facts on the ground were considerably more fraught than the idealized Ashkenazic self-image would lead us to believe.59 Sefer Hasidim, like the sifrut ha-yihud, is rife with discussions aimed at Jews doubtful about basic theological tenets, including God’s incorporeality,60 theodicy,61 divine omniscience,62 providence,63 and so on. As in the examples cited above, the dialogic structure is consistently marshaled in these discussions, suggesting that real conversations about these issues actually