God Is Not One: The Eight Rival Religions That Run the World (56 page)

42
. Bob Cohn and David A. Kaplan, “A Chicken on Every Altar?”
Newsweek
, November 9, 1992, 79, http://www.newsweek.com/id/147404.

43
.
The Oxford English Dictionary
, 2nd ed. (New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1989) traces
Yoruba
back to 1843, and the term does seem to become fairly common in that decade, but an Internet search turns up scattered references in French and English in the 1820s.

44
. Ulli Beier,
The Return of the Gods: The Sacred Art of Susanne Wenger
(Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1975), 44.

45
. Mother B., quoted in Johnson,
Secrets, Gossip, and Gods
, 12. For all these reasons, I disagree with Miguel A. De La Torre’s characterization of Santeria as a “faith system” (in his
Santería
, 189).

46
. Soyinka, “Tolerant Gods,” in Olupona and Rey,
Òrìs¸à Devotion
, 41.

47
. Soyinka, “Tolerant Gods,” in Olupona and Rey,
Òrìs¸à Devotion
, 41.

48
. Soyinka, “Tolerant Gods,” in Olupona and Rey,
Òrìs¸à Devotion
, 36.

49
. Soyinka, “Tolerant Gods,” in Olupona and Rey,
Òrìs¸à Devotion
, 35. Later in this same article, Soyinka adds that the orisha are neither evangelistic nor jealous gods. “The
òrìs¸à
do not proselytize,” he writes. “They are content to be, or to be regarded as, non-existent” (47).

50
. Quoted in Olupona, “Study of Yoruba Religious Tradition,” 245.

51
. Baba Ifa Karade,
The Handbook of Yoruba Religious Concepts
(York Beach, ME: Weiser Books, 1994), 112. Yet Ernesto Pichardo, cofounder of the Church of the Lukumi Babalu Aye in Hialeah, Florida, claims that only about 2 percent of the sacrifices he has participated in have involved animals (Steven G. Vegh, “Santeria Worship May Be Behind Animal Killings: Macabre Evidence Found in Norfolk Beach,”
The Virginian-Pilot
, November 8, 2001, quoted in De La Torre,
Santería
, 127). Wande Abimbola observes that animal sacrifice is far more common in the New World than in Africa. “In Africa, a
babaláwo
may have attended to 20 clients in a day without prescribing one animal or fowl,” he writes in his
Ifá Will Mend Our Broken World: Thoughts on Yoruba Religion and Culture in Africa and the Diaspora
(Roxbury, MA: Aim Books, 1997), 84.

52
. Karade,
Handbook of Yoruba Religious Concepts
, 13. Matory claims in his
Black Atlantic Religion
that the rise of priestesses in Yoruba-derived religions in the New World can be traced to the influence of feminist anthropologists such as Ruth Landes (188–223).

53
. Yvonne Daniel,
Dancing Wisdom: Embodied Knowledge in Haitian Vodou, Cuban Yoruba, and Bahian Candomblé
(Urbana: Univ. of Illinois Press, 2005), 75–79.

54
. Daniel,
Dancing Wisdom
, 49, 267, 138-140. In his
Santería
, De La Torre refers to Santeria as a “dance religion” (118). In his book, also called
Santería
, Joseph Murphy calls it “danced religion,” adding that “the
orishas
are better understood as rhythms than as personalities” (Boston: Beacon Press, 1988), 131, 165.

55
. Abimbola,
Ifá Will Mend Our Broken World
, 152–53.

56
. The classic text is Oyèrónké Oye
^-
wùmí,
The Invention of Women: Making an African Sense of Western Gender Discourses
(Minneapolis: Univ. of Minnesota Press, 1997), which claims that before colonialism Yoruba culture was essentially gender blind. Classic responses include Olupona, “Imagining the Goddess,” 71–86; and J. Lorand Matory, “Is There Gender in Yorùbá Culture?” in Olupona and Rey,
Òrìs¸à Devotion
, 513–58.

57
. Rowland Abiodun, “Hidden Power: Òsun, the Seventeenth Odù,” in Murphy and Sanford,
Ò.s.un Across the Waters
, 150.

58
. Olabiyi Babalola Yai, “Yorùbá Religion and Globalization: Some Reflections,” in Olupona and Rey,
Òrìs¸à
Devotion
, 241.

59
. I am influenced here by the “theology of flourishing” of the feminist philosopher of religion Grace Jantzen, who was brought to my attention by my BU colleague Donna Freitas. See Grace M. Jantzen,
Becoming Divine: Towards a Feminist Philosophy of Religion
(Bloomington: Indiana Univ. Press, 1999).

Chapter Seven: Judaism: The Way of Exile and Return

1
. Midrash Tehillim 5.5, quoted in Joseph L. Baron,
A Treasury of Jewish Quotations
(Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2004), 66.

2
. Mary Douglas,
In the Wilderness: The Doctrine of Defilement in the Book of Numbers
(Sheffield, UK: JSOT Press, 1993), 101.

3
. This and all subsequent quotations from the
Tanakh
come, unless otherwise noted, from
The Holy Scriptures According to the Masoretic Text: A New Translation
(Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society of America, 1917).

4
. This is, of course, a subject of considerable debate among Religious Studies scholars, but F. Max Müller makes this connection in his
Natural Religion: The Gifford Lectures Delivered before the University of Glasgow in 1888
(London: Longmans, Green, 1889), 33–35.

5
. Rilke,
Rilke on Love
, 25.

6
. This teacher is Rabbi Yeshoshua ben Levi. See Elie Wiesel,
Wise Men and Their Tales: Portraits of Biblical, Talmudic, and Hasidic Masters
(New York: Schocken, 2003), 233.

7
.
Sefer Hasidim
13C, quoted in Baron,
Treasury of Jewish Quotations
, 14.

8
. Wiesel,
Wise Men and Their Tales
, 298.

9
. The classic expression is Horace M. Kallen, “Democracy Versus the Melting-Pot: A Study of American Nationality,”
The Nation
, February 25, 1915, 18–25. Kallen first uses the phrase “cultural pluralism” in his
Culture and Democracy in the United States
(New York: Boni and Liveright, 1924), 11. See also Sidney Ratner, “Horace M. Kallen and Cultural Pluralism,”
Modern Judaism
4, no. 2 (1984): 185–200.

10
. Babylonian Talmud, Tractate Aboth, 5.22, quoted in Wiesel,
Wise Men and Their Tales
, 279. This saying was also quoted by U.S. Supreme Court Justice Scalia in his dissenting opinion in
Caperton v. A.T. Massey Coal Co.
on June 8, 2009, http://www.supremecourtus.gov/opinions/08pdf/08-22.pdf, 40.

11
. Joseph Telushkin,
Jewish Literacy: The Most Important Things to Know About the Jewish Religion, Its People, and Its History
(New York: William Morrow, 1991), 120.

12
. Hanina Ben-Menahem, Neil S. Hecht, and Shai Wosner,
Controversy and Dialogue in the Jewish Tradition: A Reader
(New York: Routledge, 2005), 71.

13
. Richard Ellmann, ed.,
The Artist as Critic: Critical Writings of Oscar Wilde
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982), 433.

14
. e. e. cummings,
100 Selected Poems
(New York: Grove Press, 1994), 119.

15
. One reason Jews discourage conversion is because they have long been the objects of efforts at conversion by Christians and Muslims. Another reason is because being Jewish is hard. While Jews are to follow 613
mitzvot
, there are only seven for Gentiles: not to worship false gods, not to murder, not to steal, not to engage in illicit sex (including incest, adultery, bestiality, and male homosexuality), not to blaspheme against God, not to eat meat from a living animal, and to establish courts to enforce the other six laws (Babylonian Talmud, Sanhedrin 56a). Because these were given to Noah, who was not Jewish, they are referred to as the Seven Laws of Noah. Any Gentile who follows them is assured entrance to the world to come.

16
. There are laws in Judaism for excommunication, which actually functions more like Amish-style shunning.
Herem
is the term, and the most notorious case concerned Baruch Spinoza (1632–77), a Dutch rationalist who holds the dubious distinction of not only being excommunicated from the Jewish community but also finding his books on the
Index Liborum Prohibitorum
of the Roman Catholic Church. Spinoza was cursed and cast out of Judaism for “abominable heresies,” on such topics as revelation, angels, and the immortality of the soul, all of which he denied (Lewis S. Feuer,
Spinoza and the Rise of Liberalism
[New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers Univ. Press, 1987], 1).

17
. The “Thirteen Principles” of Maimonides affirm: the existence, unity and incorporeality of God; that God is eternal; that God alone is to be worshipped; that God speaks through prophets; that Moses was the greatest prophet; that the Torah is divine; that the Torah is unchanging; that God knows human thoughts and actions; that the obedient will be rewarded and the disobedient punished; that the messiah is coming; and that the dead will be raised.