Is This What Alexander Meant?

The purpose of this blog is to bring a bit of greatness to the Shabbat table... Please share...

 

Last week I asked, Is this what Ringo meant?

(Did you order the mask?)

This week it's all about Alexander the Great.

Sometime after his conquest of Western Asia ca. 333 BCE, certain Alexander the Great allegories were passed down and recorded in the Talmud in 500 CE.

Here's a sample:

He came to the door of Gan Eden. He cried out, Open the door for me. They replied, This is the gate of the Lord, [the righteous shall enter into it]. He replied: I too am a king; I am also of some account, give me something. They gave him an eyeball. He went and weighed all his silver and gold against it, and it was not equal to it. He said to the Rabbis: How is this? They replied: It is the eyeball of a human being, which is never satisfied. He said to them: How can you prove that this is so? They took a little dust and covered it, and immediately it was balanced; and so it is written, The Grave and Destruction are never satiated; [so the eyes of a person are never satiated]. - Talmud Tamid 32b

If the moral of the story is simply that human desire is never satisfied, why this long tale? And why use Alexander the Great as protagonist? How does his personality contribute to the message? And why is he barred from Gan Eden? 

The context is instructive. This sugiya (Talmudic unit) begins with Alexander debating with the "Elders of the South", which results in him taking an ill-advised trip to Africa, being intellectually-bested by a group of women and finally at the door to Paradise. In summary, the theme is: Alexander — representing Hellenism — is trying to prove that a person should simultaneously be able to achieve both massive material pleasures and great wisdom. You can have it all!

The Gan Eden eyeball is a rejection of that belief. Gan Eden represents the summit of wisdom and the eyeball represents material desire. Since material desires are insatiable, they prevent a person from achieving wisdom (because you can never have enough to satisfy it, so as long as you allow your desires to lead you — the open eye), you'll never have time or headspace to pursue wisdom.

This is like what we today call addiction — a never-ending cycle of desire fulfillment, and is equated here with Grave and Destruction.

A person dies without even half of his desires fulfilled.

You think you can have it all, but you cannot. That's the bad news.

The good news is that the past does not need to determine the present nor the future (other than having created habits).

At any moment, any day, you could decide: I'm going to find a teacher and start my pursuit of wisdom!

This week's question for your table — Who's right, the Elders of the South or Alexander the Great?


Shabbat Shalom

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