19. Wole Soyinka, “The Tolerant Gods,” in Olupona and Rey, Òrìs¸à Devotion, 43; Soyinka, Myth, Literature and the African World, 141, 145. Soyinka is a devotee of Ogun. See also Sandra T. Barnes, ed., Africa’s Ogun: Old World and New, 2nd ed. (Bloomington: Indiana Univ. Press, 1997).
20. Soyinka, Myth, Literature and the African World, 26.
21. Thompson, Flash of the Spirit, 85.
22. William Bascom, Sixteen Cowries: Yoruba Divination from Africa to the New World (Bloomington: Indiana Univ. Press, 1980), 45.
23. Thompson, Flash of the Spirit, 5.
24. Mikelle Smith Omari-Tunkara, Manipulating the Sacred: Yorùbá Art, Ritual, and Resistance in Brazilian Candomblé (Detroit: Wayne State Univ. Press, 2006), 35.
25. Johnson, Secrets, Gossip, and Gods, 56.
26. For a spirited, book-length critique of the tendency of scholars to divide religious phenomenon into a “venerable East,” which “preserves history” and a “progressive West,” which “creates history,” see Tomoko Masuzawa, The Invention of World Religions: Or, How European Universalism Was Preserved in the Language of Pluralism (Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 2005), 4. Although I agree with Masuzawa’s skepticism about the still widespread assumption that “all religions are everywhere the same in essence” (9), I do not agree with her claim that the concept of “world religion” (however invented and sooted up in colonial desires) is beyond redeeming. I, too, am uncomfortable in the face of the inevitable value judgments that seem to follow from this phrase (e.g., Christianity the “universal” religion is better than Judaism the “ethnic” religion). But like the term religion, world religion has taken on a life of its own outside academe, so killing it is not an option. All scholars can do is bend it, which I hope to do here by joining many scholars and practitioners of Yoruba religion in arguing for the way of the orishas as one of the great religions.
27. I have been influenced on this point especially by Olupona and Rey, Òrìs¸à Devotion, and by conversations with my friend Onaje Woodbine, a PhD candidate in the Division of Religious and Theological Studies at Boston University. I am also grateful to my former Boston University colleague Wande Abimbola for subtly awakening me to the importance of this tradition. In addition to being a scholar, Abimbola is a Yoruba priest and babalawo who was installed in 1981 by the ooni of Ife as Awise Awo Agbaye (World Spokesperson for Ifa and Yoruba Religion). Finally, I am grateful to an Akan woman, initiated years ago by Abimbola, who challenged me at a public talk in Louisville, Kentucky, in 2009 to attend to African religions with the seriousness they deserve.
28. Olupona and Rey, “Introduction,” in their Òrìs¸à Devotion, 4. Other estimates for West Africa’s Yoruba population run from 20 million to 50 million.
29. Bascom, Yoruba of Southwestern Nigeria, 1.
30. Soyinka, “The Tolerant Gods,” in Olupona and Rey, Òrìs¸à Devotion, 44.
31. As Miguel A. De La Torre argues in Santería, orisha devotion also found common cause with Protestantism—“in the Jamaican groups Revival and Pocomania,” and “in the Trinidadian group known as Spiritual Baptists or Shouters” (xiv). Other Protestant carriers of Yoruba culture include “the Cumina and Convince in Jamaica, the Big Drum in Grenada, and Carriacou and Kele in St. Lucia” (Leslie G. Desmangles, “Caribbean, African-Derived Religion,” in Encyclopedia of African and African-American Religions, ed. Stephen D. Glazier [New York: Routledge, 2001], 78).
32. Private communication with Joseph Murphy, July 21, 2009. According to a 1954 study, one quarter of Cuban Catholics went to a santero or santera at least occasionally. See Agrupación Católica Universitaria, Encuesta Nacional sobre el Sentimiento Religioso del Pueblo de Cuba (Habana: Buró de Información y Propaganda de la ACU, 1954), 37, cited in De La Torre, Santería, 170–71.
33. Akintunde Akinade, “Macumba,” in Glazier, Encyclopedia of African and African-American Religions, 177.
34. “Brazil: International Religious Freedom Report 2007,” Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor, U.S. Department of State, http://www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/irf/2007/90244.htm.
35. Johnson, Secrets, Gossip, and Gods, 198.
36. Murphy, “Òrìs¸à Traditions,” in Olupona and Rey, Òrìs¸à Devotion, 472.
37. Many who toss out the 100 million figure claim that there are that many practitioners in the New World alone. See, e.g., Migene González-Wippler, Santería: the Religion: Faith, Rites, Magic, 2nd ed. (Saint Paul, MN: Llewellyn, 1994), 9; and De La Torre, Santería, xiv. The more modest estimate of 100 million worldwide appears in Kólá Abímbólá, Yorùbá Culture: A Philosophical Account (Birmingham, UK: Iroko Academic, 2005), 24. At the Congress of Orisa Tradition and Culture, held in Havana in 2003, Wande Abimbola also claimed 100 million Yoruba practitioners worldwide. See John Rice, “African Religious Leaders Pay Homage to Cuba,” Associated Press, July 8, 2003.
38. Thompson, Flash of the Spirit, xv.
39. George Volsky, “Religion from Cuba Stirs Row in Miami,” New York Times, June 29, 1987.
40. Quoted in Johnson, Secrets, Gossip, and Gods, 71.
41. See Carl Hunt, Oyotunji Village: The Yoruba Movement in America (Washington, DC: Univ. Press of America, 1979); and Kamari Maxine Clarke, Mapping Yoruba Networks: Power and Agency in the Making of Transnational Communities (Durham, NC: Duke Univ. Press, 2004). For more recent treatments, see, e.g., Ikulomi Djisovi Eason, “Historicizing Ifá Culture in Ò|yó|túnjí African Village,” 278–85; Kamari Maxine Clarke, “Ritual Change and the Changing Canon: Divinatory Legitimization of Yorùbá Ancestral Roots in Ò|yó|túnjí African Village,” 286–319; and Tracey E. Hucks, “From Cuban Santería to African Yorùbá: Evolutions in African American Orisa History, 1959–1970), 337–54, all in Olupona and Rey, Òrìs¸à Devotion. Oyotunji Village seems to be a classic example of “the invention of tradition”—in this case the invention of an ancient African tradition by a twentieth-century American. See Eric Hobsbawm and Terence Ranger, eds., The Invention of Tradition (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1983).
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, nonexistent” (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.
18. My colleague Diana Lobel informs me that in the two biblical versions of the “Ten Words” (Ten Commandments), one says to “observe” (Deuteronomy 5:12) and the other to “remember” (Exodus 20:8).
19. Debray, God: An Itinerary, 47.
20. Jacob Neusner, “Judaism,” in Arvind Sharma, Our Religions, 314.
21. Textual Sources for the Study of Judaism, ed. and trans. Philip S. Alexander (Manchester: Manchester Univ. Press, 1984), 164.
22. For a popular discussion of what historian Salo Baron referred to as “the lachrymose conception of Jewish history,” see Theodore Stanger and Hannah Brow, “Rethinking Jewish History,” Newsweek, May 18, 1992, 38. A scholarly discussion appears in Robert Liberles, “Epilogue: Beyond the Lachrymose Conception,” in his Salo Wittmayer Baron: Architect of Jewish History (New York: New York Univ. Press, 1995), 338–59.
23. Shalom Auslander, “Exodus Complexidus,” Jewish Quarterly (Spring 2008), http://heroic-media.com/jq/issuearchive/article8230.html?articleid=355.
24. Babylonian Talmud, Shabbat 31a.
25. Mary Douglas, Purity and Danger: An Analysis of Concept of Pollution and Taboo (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1966), especially the chapter on “The Abominations of Leviticus” (51–71).
26. Calvin Trillin, “Drawing the Line,” The New Yorker, December 12, 1994, 50.
27. The question of Judaism’s origins is of course contested. If Judaism is about monotheism, it goes back to Abraham. If it is about law, it goes back to Sinai. Some insist that Judaism emerges only after the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 C.E. According to literary critic Harold Bloom, Judaism is “a younger religion” than Christianity (Michael Kress, “A Year-End Chat with Harold Bloom,” http://www.jbooks.com/interviews/index/IP_Kress_Bloom.htm).
28. Wiesel, Wise Men and Their Tales, 278.
29. Neusner, “Judaism,” in Sharma, Our Religions, 321.
30. According to the United Jewish Communities’ “National Jewish Population Survey 2000–01,” January 2004, 77 percent of Americans say th
ey either hold or attend a Passover Seder, while only 72 percent report lighting Hanukkah candles and only 59 percent fasting on Yom Kippur (7). See http://www.ujc.org/local_includes/downloads/3905.pdf.
31. More than fifty million copies of the Maxwell House Haggadah are in print. See Carole B. Balin, “ ‘Good to the Last Drop’: The Proliferation of the Maxwell House Haggadah,” in My People’s Passover Haggadah: Traditional Texts, Modern Commentaries, eds. Lawrence A. Hoffman and David Arnow (Woodstock, VT: Jewish Lights, 2008), 85–90.
32. For different views on this important topic, see Alan F. Segal, Life After Death: A History of the Afterlife in Western Religions (New York: Doubleday, 2004) and Jon D. Levenson, Resurrection and the Restoration of Israel: The Ultimate Victory of the God of Life (New Haven: Yale Univ. Press, 2006).
33. Hagigah 2:1, quoted in Jacob Neusner, The Mishnah: A New Translation (New Haven: Yale Univ. Press, 1991), 330.
34. “The National Jewish Population Survey 2000–2001” United Jewish Communities, January 2004, http://www.ujc.org/local_includes/downloads/4606.pdf.
35. “The Pittsburgh Platform, 1885” in Alexander, Textual Sources for the Study of Judaism, 136–38.
36. Sanhedrin 106b.
37. “Judaism: The Atheist Rabbi,” Time (January 29, 1965), http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,839200,00.html.
38. On the United States, see Barry Kosmin, “The Changing Population Profile of American Jews, 1990–2008” (paper presented at the Fifteenth World Congress of Jewish Studies, Jerusalem, August 2009). According to this study, 37 percent of American Jews see themselves as not religious. In 2008 a study by the Israel Democratic Institute found that 51 percent of Israelis were secular. See “Study: 51 percent of Israelis Secular,” Jewish World, http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3514242,00.html.
39. The key expression is Phyllis Trible, Texts of Terror: Literary-Feminist Readings of Biblical Narratives (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1984).
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