Biblical Pantheism—An Immanent Sanctity

“Everything—you, I, every particle in the universe—is infused with divinity.” So spoke a Sikh priest at an interfaith event I attended recently at a Hindu Temple.

I recall once discussing environmental issues at a gathering in a friend’s Sukkah during the Jewish Festival of Sukkot. One of the three harvest festivals mentioned in the Bible, Sukkot is also one of the three pilgrim festivals when the ancient Israelites would flock to the sanctuary to celebrate the goodness of God’s bounty. At our gathering, someone made reference to the sacredness of nature and the religious obligation to maintain that sanctity.

                                                                                                        

“That’s pantheism,” came a retort, hurled with the intensity of a four-letter invective. “We Jews don’t believe in pantheism.”

Well, maybe not, but consider this. Twice every day, Jews pray the kedusha, which includes a passage from the prophet Isaiah describing his call to prophecy. This passage is also part of the Christian hymnal. The prophet has a vision of heavenly beings appearing in the inner sanctum of the Temple declaring kadosh kadosh kadosh adonai tsevaot melo’ kol ha’arets kevodo, “Holy, holy, holy is Adonai Tseva’ot (usually translated Lord of Hosts); the earth is full of His glory.

That’s normally how this passage is translated, but I think it’s wrong. “The earth is full of His glory” would be malei kol ha’arets kevodo. The actual words, melo’ kol ha’artez would be translated “the fullness of the earth,” i.e., that which fills the earth. And while kevod is often translated glory, it comes from a root that means heavy, weighty. That which fills the earth is God’s gravitas, God’s indwelling presence on earth.

Maybe that’s pantheism… but I’m just sayin’… Maybe we should be more careful with that which fills the earth. It's infused with divinity.