Tuesday, January 18, 2011

4,178 Pages later I celebrate my conclusion of Harry Potter

Last פסח/Passover we were sitting at a friends table discussing the story of our peoples’ freedom and I let out a very well-kept secret: I had not read, nor did I intend to read any of Harry Potter.  Another person at the סדר/Seder, was shocked and disappointed at my statement.  How could I claim to have a handle on culture if I refused to dive into this cultural icon? Well I had no answer, and so that night that we learned of and celebrated our exodus from slavery to freedom I commenced my own exodus… This exodus was from ignorance to knowledge.  From emptiness to fulfillment… From not knowing what people were talking about, to being the one doing the talking.  What stinks is that I started far too late.  Not many people will google “Harry Potter” any longer, and so I am saddened by this fact.  But anyways, back to the celebration… We celebrate the conclusion of the study of the תלמוד/Talmud when people set to learn the whole thing.  Now the תלמוד has 5,894 folio pages, while Harry Potter has 4,178 pages, and so clearly this achievement is not on par with the study of תלמוד.  I am not even beginning to claim it is.  I am celebrating that I completed the task at hand and by way of having done so, I have fallen in love with the series. I have become a very big fan of Harry Potter and of JK Rowlings for that matter.

So how will I use this new knowledge?  I have always asserted that it is a תורה-World (well actually this is a phrase I borrow from my teacher Rabbi Shawn Fields-Meyer), and so I find Judaism and Jewish concepts in everything I encounter.  When I sit down with a book or any other media, I see it as a Jewish interaction as I am constantly picking it apart to find the Judaism in it.  So this is just my first attempt at Judaism and Harry Potter.

We shall begin with תלמוד: R. Nahman son of R. Hisda expounded: Why is the word Va-yitzer ["He formed man"] (Gen. 2:17) spelled with two yods? Because the Holy One created two yetzers ("impulses") in man--the impulse to good and the impulse to evil. (B. Ber 61a)

A basic Jewish idea is that every person has the ability to be abundantly good or evil.  This is because we all have both a good inclination and an evil one as well.  We all have both of these abilities and we all need to master them. I love that in Harry Potter there are two diametrically opposed characters: Harry and Voldemort.  But they are connected by many things, the least of which is not their wands are twins.  One chose (using the free-will that God gave us) to do great evil with that wand, and the other chose to do great good.  So poetic.

But lets examine this deeper with the three following sources:

  • Rava said: We have a tradition that the impulse to evil dominates only what its eyes see. (B. Sot 8a)
    • The mirror of erised found in book one is an illusion that shows the viewer that which s/he wants most to see.  It could betray the person’s greatest desires, and could allow for them to see beautiful things to them.  But then what does that cause them or allow for them to do?  What do they do with those hidden desires that have been made available in the mirror? As you’ll see in the hyperlinked article to this bullet-point, Harry was able to beat evil because his eyes did not desire to use the sorcerer’s stone, they only wanted to prevent evil from happening.  Also please notice the words inscribed on the mirror Erised stra ehru oyt ube cafru oyt on wohsi. Which if read backwards it demonstrates the principle: I Show Not Your Face, But Your Hearts Desire. Our eyes can lead us to great things or to terrible, it is up to us.
  • The impulse to evil yearns only for that which is forbidden to a man. (P. Yoma 6:4, 43d)
    • In Star Wars, love was forbidden to the Jedi and this led Anakin Skywalker down a path of evil and destruction.  Voldemort’s evil impulse led him to yearn for something that all humans can relate to in a way.  He yearned for the very thing that God withheld from Adam and Eve in the garden, eternal life.  We are meant to be on this earth for a finite number of days/months/years.  We are not to live forever.  Voldemort sought eternity and this led him to become the chief death eater, a person trying to end death (at least for himself).  His great fear and distaste for the most human of all things (the reality that we all will eventually die) is what created the monster that he was.  This is greatly revealed in books six and seven.
  • R. Simeon ben Lakish said: Satan, impulse to evil, and angel of death--all three are the same thing. (B. BB 16a)
    • And this brings me to this last one.  Well to begin with… Yes Jews do have Satan.  The English name is a Anglicized form of the Hebrew word שטן, the adversary.  We believe that Satan was God’s enemy that antagonized God to do some bad things to people at times.  Satan is one of the main characters in the book Job.  Well anyways… Voldemort is the embodiment of evil in this work.  His attempt to snuff out death for himself led him to murder and maim countless other people.  He goaded people on to do horrible things in their following of him, and so he was an adversary.  He was an impulse to evil and he was the angel of death to too many people. 

All of this is just a first attempt.  I will do much more work on this and create more lessons.   None of this was the authors intent in her writing these books.  It is one reader’s work in looking for ways of relating the lessons of the work of fiction to metaphysics of the world that I see.

 

All the best