Judaism

A Durkheimian Insight on Jewish Practices and Beliefs

According to Emile Durkheim, religion is in fact a sociological process that is derived from the collective needs of the clan, or society. The totem, or quasi- divine found in a plant or animal unites the society as a clan and this totem becomes their emblem or mascot one could say. Durkheim then proposes the idea that, "Thus, if the totem is the symbol of both the god and the society, is this not because the god and the society are one and the same...the god of the clan, the totemic principle, can be none other than the clan itself, but the clan transfigured and imagined in the physical form of the plant or animal that serves as the totem" (Durkheim 208). In other words through what Durkheim terms collective effervescence, or a misidentification of societal connectivity, the clan mistakes their own collective energy as a clan as the influence of a higher power. Thus the first religions were born as a unified system of beliefs and practice relative to the sacred totem, or emblem; the sacred has transcended the mere ordinary plan of existence and thus must be protected from the profane or ordinary. Hence, when one takes this idea of the sacred and societal energy and applies it to Judaism, one finds that the many of the practices and beliefs of the Judaic religion directly correlate to Durkheim's theories on totemism.

First and foremost the most apparent Jewish practice that relates to Durkheim is the practice of circumcision. When God entered into his covenant with Abraham, he required that all future generations of Abraham's family identify themselves as God's people;

'Such shall be the covenant between Me and you and your offspring to follow which you shall keep: every male among you shall be circumcised. You shall circumcise the flesh of your foreskin, and that shall be the sign of the covenant between Me and you. And throughout the generations, every male among you shall be circumcised at the age of eight days...And if any male who is uncircumcised fails to circumcise the flesh of his foreskin, that person shall be cut off from his kin; he has broken My covenant' ("Genesis" in PR 349)

Thus circumcision became not only a sign of God's covenant but an identifying mark among Jews; moreover it is a direct tie into totemism. Traditionally among totemic clans it was customary to keep an image of the totem on oneself normally tattooed onto the body. This was a way for the clan to identify other members of their society and to remain connected with the sacred of their clam. Thus from Durkheim's point of view, circumcision is merely the next step in this identification with the clan. Since the Judaic god has no tangible form, circumcision would be a way for members of the Jewish "clan" to maintain solidarity because "the totem is above all a symbol" (Durkheim 208). At the time that Abraham had migrated to Canaan, he and his people were nomadic pastoralists; therefore it would make sense that they would need an identifying mark to maintain the societal connectivity, a sacred symbol of their people.

Judaism is also a prime example of how the "clan" clearly delineates the sacred form the profane. Judaism is rife with laws, from how to dress, to what one should eat, even how one should pray. In particular the rules about priesthood were very strict; "High standards of purity were required of priests. They were commanded to be without blemish (free of diseases such as leprosy) and to avoid contact with polluting things (for example bodily fluids and dead bodies)" (PR 336). Hence women could not be priest due to being unclean form their menses. The exclusivity of the priesthood was further enhanced by restricting it to only men from the tribe of Levi (one of the twelve tribes of Israel descended from Jacob's twelve sons, the great-grandchildren of Abraham.) The Levites, as they were called, were in charge of the daily sacrifices to Yahweh, the care and keep of the Arc of the Covenant, leading prayer, basically all religious aspects of Judaic life. In essence they had been raised almost to a king like status; "If a society should happen to become infatuated with a man, believing it has found in him its deepest aspirations as well as the means of fulfilling them, then that man will be put in a class by himself and virtually deified. Opinion will confer on him a grandeur that is similar in every way to the grandeur that protects the gods"