Afghanistan as Allegory
The Parable as Hot Take
There’s a Hasidic line of commentary according to which Biblical characters are understood to speak on multiple levels. When Jacob calls his brother, Esau, “Adoni” (“my Lord”) he’s simultaneously ingratiating himself and speaking through him to God, or to the God-aspect of his brother. Extended to everyday life, the mystic can see things for what they are, but can also see them as symbols or expressions or signs of a cosmic drama, a theological struggle.
When I read the news of the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan followed by a flurry of takes, I couldn’t help but think of the original withdrawal described in Kabbalah, the tzimtzum or contraction of God from the world (to make room for creation; for where the Infinite is, the world is not and where the world is, the Infinite is not.)
Both tzimtzum and the war in Afghanistan are polarizing in their own way, though not along partisan lines. A major theological debate is whether the withdrawal of God is real or only apparent.
Theological reflection is the act of using one story to shed light on another so that it might be refracted back in a new way.
Here’s my attempt. What’s yours?
Modernity began when God decided to stop fighting a forever war with the demonic.
Some say God was wrong to do this; others say it was the way God did it that was problematic. All withdrawal is humiliating. But what message does it send for the Master of the World to retreat from existence like a loser? Gabriel answers the skeptics: The price of staying is untenable. We have to consider our troops. But the live-time images were unbearable, the Infinite leaving the airport and all the earthlings clinging to God’s hulking body of light, trying to get out. Are we just going to leave them out to dry? But Michael said they had their chance to fight. We can’t be in the business of God-building. At least can we welcome some refugees, asked Raphael? Akatriel said, you take them, and assume the liability; their repatriation is on you. Fine, he said. And that’s why God is called the Lord of Hosts. For it is not the multitudes that make heaven what it is but the varieties. And every time heaven seeks to leave earth, earth follows it. For it says, “Wherever you go, I will go. Your people will be my people. Your God my God.”
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