Episode #11 The God Race

In this episode, Rabbi Reinman describes the spread of paganism and discusses how it corrupted the human race and caused the decline of altruism and morality.

Chapter Eleven

The God Race

If you ask people in the modern Western world today to describe a good person, most of them by far would respond that it’s a person who helps others. But you would have gotten a different response in the pagan world. A good person in the pagan’s opinion is brave on the battlefield, works hard to provide for his family and is loyal to his friends and comrades. Altruism, unselfish regard for the welfare of others, had no place in the pagan world.

Imagine that a stranger approaches a pagan and says, “I’m seriously ill. The only thing that can save me is an expensive operation. I’m trying to raise some money. Can you help me?”

What would the pagan say?

He’d say, “I worked hard for my money. Why should I share it with you? You’re not my family, you’re not my neighbor or my friend. You’re a stranger. If you can’t afford the operation, then you should die. What does that have to do with me? Is it my fault? Did I make you sick?”

There is definitely a certain logic to the pagan’s argument. Altruism and charity were radical ideas the Torah introduced into the ancient world. “And you shall walk in His ways,”[1] says the Torah. Just as He is kind and merciful, so shall you be kind and merciful. A person should rise above self-interest. He should realize that he is not an animal in the wild driven by survival and the safety of the herd. He has a soul, and he needs to come closer to God by emulating His ways. He should have higher aspirations.

These ideas have become so ingrained in Western culture over the last three thousand years that they’ve become axiomatic, but they were radical when they were introduced. The city of Sedom and its sister cities, so famous for their lack of hospitality and kindness to strangers, were actually typical of the ancient world. They just took it to a great extreme, using sadistic measures to keep strangers away. The Mishnah in Avos says, “Sheli sheli, shelach shelach, zo midas Sedom. Saying that mine is mine and yours is yours is characteristic of Sedom.”[2]  They weren’t criminals. They just lived by the law of the wild. Survival of the fittest, and nothing more.

The term geist, as defined by Friedrich Hegel, is a general consciousness, a single state of mind common to all people. The zeitgeist of the ancient world was paganism. Let us call it paleopaganism, old paganism. In modern times, paganism appeared in a form called neopaganism, new paganism.

Two of the most influential books of the twentieth century were Ayn Rand’s The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged. Ayn Rand, who was born Alisa Rosenbaum in Russia, did not practice Judaism, to say the least. In her books, she proposed a philosophical system called objectivism, which claims that rational selfishness is the moral purpose of life. This expresses itself as extreme ultraconservatism in contemporary American politics.

Naziism was an extremist neopagan movement. In the words of Adolf Hitler, “The struggle for world domination is between me and the Jews. All else is meaningless. The Jews have inflicted two wounds on the world: Circumcision for the body and conscience for the soul. I come to free mankind from their shackles.” He didn’t mean only the Jews. He also said, “Historically speaking, the Christian religion is nothing but a Jewish sect. After the destruction of Judaism, the extinction of Christian slave morals must follow logically.” He was against the Jewish idea of altruistic morality, and he was also against the idea that a supreme God would issue laws for human beings.

There are significant differences between paleopaganism and neopaganism, which we will discuss when we get to the twentieth century. At this point, I want to focus on paleopaganism and how it affected the human condition.

Let us suppose that a race of aliens, immeasurably more intelligent and powerful than humans, has invaded the earth in our own times. Let us suppose that these aliens control the entire world, that they are so powerful it would be foolish to resist, just as it would be totally futile for an animal species to rise up against the human race. In such an eventuality, it would only be wise for the human race to reach an accommoda­tion with the new reality, to do anything to placate and appease the alien conquerors.

After such an accommodation, however, things could never go back to the way they were. The human race would no longer stand at the pinnacle of creation. It would be demoted to a servile role, a talented but inferi­or species at the mercy of its alien masters. Human beings would henceforth consider themselves like slaves and would be less inclined to live according to high standards of ethics and morality.

The Gemara says that a slave is content to live a promiscuous life.[3] Everyone understands that promiscuity demeans a person. It lowers him to the level of an animal intent above all else on satisfying his drives. The Gemara is saying that you cannot assume that a slave would love to go free unless you ask him. Freedom entails many responsibilities, and some slaves just might prefer to live on a promiscuous animal level. Slavery crushes the human spirit.

According to the understanding of the ancients, once they lost contact with the honored and holy Name, as described in the previous chapter, the world was occupied by a god race. These gods were powerful, capri­cious and unseen creatures, who controlled the destiny and fortunes of mankind. , The gods were spiritual only in the sense that they were invisible and immortal but who were material in every other sense. At their whim, the gods could pro­vide boun­tiful rains or bring famine and pesti­lence. They could strike a man dead or give him riches and success. They could look down benign­ly on human affairs or they could vent their anger with thunder, light­ning and fiery storms. In the imagination of the ancients, the gods were similar to humans but much more powerful. And there were so many of them!

In ancient Egypt, the pharaohs ruled by unques­tioned whim be­cause they were be­lieved to be de­scended from the gods. Alexander declared himself a god. The Romans deified many emperors. This practice shows not only their arrogance and conceit, it reveals their understanding of the gods. They did not see the gods as truly divine but rather as a superior race, and when a human being reached a high level of power, such as Alexander, he could claim membership in the god race, even though he was not invisible and not immortal.

Over time, men came to identi­fy and give names to their imaginary masters, the race of the gods. Mythological legends described the lives of these gods, their marriages and famil­ial rela­tion­ships and their struggles with other gods. Men paid homage and brought sacri­fices to the gods in temples erect­ed in their honor in the fervent hope that the gods would be appeased and would not bring misery and sorrow to man­kind.

Different nations had their own sets of gods and myths, although they frequently borrowed from their neighbors. War and conquest contrib­uted greatly to the fortunes of the gods, with the gods of the victors being imposed on the van­quished and the gods of the vanquished often being adopted by the victors. Even when empires crumbled and conquerors were ex­pelled, the gods they had brought with them often remained be­hind, at least in a subordinate role to the local gods. The gods did not deny the existence of the other gods. They just vied for primacy. Religious tolerance was the order of the day; there was always room for another god.

Society’s relationship with the gods became its most important feature. Govern­ments represented the authority of the gods. Incalcu­lable wealth was lavished on the temples of the gods and the priestly classes. Bejeweled golden idols repre­senting the various gods appeared in the temples and lesser idols in every household. All aspects of human life were interwoven in a tapestry of superstitions.

Yet for all their looming domination over humans, the gods were absorbed in their own lives and not much concerned with the human race. As long as they were properly appeased, the gods made virtually no moral or ethical demands on men. They did not seem to care about good and evil and had only a passing interest in the proper adminis­tration of justice; they desired no particular code of conduct. The gods enjoyed the homage and sacrifices offered up by the inferior human race and then went about their own busi­ness; they were no better than men, just immeasurably stronger. Men did not enhance their souls by contact with the gods, and any love they may have felt for the gods was the love of a dog for its master who has fed him and patted him on the head.

Relegated to the status of an inferior species, the people of the ancient world could not develop a sense of ultimate his­torical destiny or a philosophy that ad­dressed the profound questions of human existence. Men were interlopers in the domain of the gods, thankful for a modicum of peace and a moment of pleasure in a life without higher purpose or goals. The orna­ments of culture were merely for physical gratification. Litera­ture recorded heroic ex­ploits and popular myths and was devoid of ideals. Music was for merriment and diver­sion. Art was for the glorifica­tion of kings and the temples of the gods. Life was wanton and overburdened with layer upon layer of myth and superstition, a constant struggle to appease the capricious gods and curry their favor.

Within this purposeless hotbed of energy and super­stition, there arose one of the greatest men in the history of the world, a man whose clarity of thought and purity of character would have an incredible impact on all future generations, whose ideas and actions would have a more meaningful effect on the destiny of mankind than all the empires and civilizations of his time. The man was Abraham, and his legacy to the world was Judaism.

[1] Devarim 28:9.

[2] Avos 5:10.

[3] Gittin 13a.