[Avodah] The Main Idea of Judaism

[David Riceman]

RLL:
>
> It's not a form of avodat Hashem?  I think it can be.  If it isn't, 
> maybe that's something to work on.
>
You have rephrased what RAM and I are arguing about.  I advocate 
"multiple hierarchies", i.e., that human life does not have a single 
goal, towards which all actions are aimed.  RAM (and you) advocate a 
single hierarchy, i.e., that there is a common measure which can (and, 
ideally, should) subsume all of a person's actions.

You recall that Epicurus promised his followers that they would become 
like gods by following his advice, and the Buddha advised his followers 
that they would become greater than the gods (who Hindus believe are 
subject to metempsychosis).  What they meant is that by subsuming all of 
their human instincts and devoting themselves to not caring about the 
world they would cease to be human.

Frankly I suspect that any single hierarchy has the same danger.  I 
enjoy doing math, and it's a pleasant way to earn a living.  But to the 
extent that I subvert that enjoyment by by construing it as devotion to 
God I deny an important part of myself.

Admittedly you (and RAM) could cite the Ramak's construal of the mitzvah 
of yihud hashem to claim that my analysis is simplistic - - I could, you 
might claim, not be subverting my pleasure but simply be understanding 
it more deeply.  If that were true, however, than your and RAM's 
critique is moot; anyone, doing anything, is necessarily a "*total* 
oveid Hashem", and why should that status be the subject of aspiration?

David Riceman
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