hardly the first readers of the Bible interested in identifying the precise “remembrances” and “wonders” alluded to in Psalms 111:4. This verse was the subject of a lengthy tradition of Jewish exegesis long before the Pietists came on the scene. The interpretation most common during the medieval period approached the verse from a historical perspective, identifying God’s “wonders” with His miraculous interventions in human history. The “remembrances” of these events could vary. One approach was to define the remembrances as the practices and rituals that the Jews were commanded to observe as a means of commemorating God’s wondrous deeds. Thus, the mid-twelfth century midrashic compilation Sekhel Tov jointly lists the prohibition of eating an animal’s sciatic nerve (gid ha-nasheh), the commandment of remembering the exodus from Egypt, the prohibition of eating leaven on Passover, and the commandment of dwelling in sukkot on the Feast of Tabernacles as “remembrances” of “wonders” that God performed for the biblical Israelites.16 Passive remembrance is here allied to specific ritual imperatives, since human beings bear the responsibility of maintaining the practices that commemorate God’s miracles and activities. A wide range of biblical exegetes—both predating and postdating the compilation of Sekhel Tov—read the verse similarly. The eleventh-century French exegete Solomon b. Isaac of Troyes (Rashi), for instance, explains that the verse refers to “the Sabbath and holidays [which God] established for the Jews, about which it is written ‘and you shall remember (ve-zakharta) that you were in Egypt.’”17 The twelfth-century itinerant Spanish rabbi Abraham Ibn Ezra and the thirteenth-century rabbi Moses b. Nahman of Barcelona incorporate similar readings into their own biblical commentaries.18 The motif was utilized in other genres as well—a sermon attributed to the fifteenth-century halakhic authority Jacob Molin of Mainz (Maharil), for instance, consists of an expanded, homiletical rendering of Psalms 111:4 that takes the same historical-ritualistic approach.19
A related interpretation of this verse linked God’s historical “wonders” not with practices, but rather with objects that served as “remembrances.”20 Thus, a variety of midrashim invoked Psalms 111:4 in their discussions of Lot’s wife’s metamorphosis into a pillar of salt in Genesis 19: “When Sodom and Gomorrah were overturned, it is written ‘And [Lot’s] wife looked back’ (Gen. 19:26), and she remains a pillar of salt to this day. Why? ‘He has created a remembrance of His wonders,’ so that the generations will recite the praises of the Holy One, blessed be He.”21 Other midrashim make a similar claim regarding Noah’s ark, which they claim was preserved as a sign, lest people forget God’s miraculous flooding of the earth.22
“THE WORLD FOLLOWS ITS CUSTOMARY COURSE”
This focus on God’s role in human history, and the objects and rituals that serve to commemorate it, is dramatically different from the Pietists’ interpretive approach; indeed, their reading of the verse seems to be wholly sui generis, without precedent in earlier Jewish literature.23 Psalms 111:4 is invoked dozens of times in the writings of Rabbi Judah and Rabbi Eleazar, in a variety of different contexts.24 Generally speaking, the argumentation based on this verse is constructed in the following manner: first, a question about some theological proposition is laid out; next, a “remembrance,” an object or phenomenon found in the natural world, is presented and briefly described; finally, a correlation is drawn between the remembrance and the “wondrous” theological truth, thus answering the question presented in the first step.
In many instances, the remembrances described in the second stage of the argument are not rarities, or deviations from the natural order; rather, they are common, even mundane components of the physical world. For example, Judah argues that God’s omniscience is a tenable possibility in light of the fact that “man’s mind can think two thoughts at once, or see in one instant many different colors. He does not comprehend these things in succession, but rather simultaneously. Certainly the Creator, who sees and remembers all things [can do likewise]!”25 This passage locates spiritual resonance in the routine and prosaic, not in some wondrous exception to the rules of nature. Just as it is empirically obvious that man can think two thoughts or see two colors simultaneously, Judah suggests, it should pose no problem to accept that God can exercise omniscience. A similar line of argument is used to justify belief in God’s all-pervasiveness: “The Creator is everywhere. And if one were to ask, “‘How can I believe that He is found everywhere, and that nothing is hidden from Him?’ … He has created a remembrance of His wonders. The glass that is in a window does not block out the lights…. How much more ought we to believe in the Creator of everything, that nothing blocks Him.”26 Here, too, the mundane property of the transparency of glass is used to make sense of the fact that God can be ever-present, even if unseen by the naked eye. God’s pervasiveness can be demonstrated on the basis of other common phenomena as well. Thus, Eleazar explains that God’s supernal light can be shared among many divine beings simultaneously, “in the same manner that one can make both cheese and butter from milk, and one can boil milk and separate the curds from the whey.”27 Judah, too, compares God’s pervasiveness in the universe to the way that a liquid which is placed in one part of a block of cheese will distribute itself equally throughout the entire block.28
In other instances, the Pietists not only describe routine phenomena, but also take pains to give naturalistic explanations for why they occur: “If one were to ask: How can one believe that God exists in the world, given that no eye has ever seen Him? It is possible to respond that … in the winter, when one is indoors, or in a warm bathhouse, no one can see the breath that one exhales from his mouth and nostrils. Similarly, during the summer the warmth of one’s breath is not visible. For during the winter, man’s breath is warm and the air is cold, and when [these] two unlike things [meet] the warmth is visible; but warm air eliminates [the visibility of a person’s breath].”29 Once again, the fact that something discernable in nature can be present even though it is invisible proves that an invisible God can exist as well. Both Judah and Eleazar use similar logic in explaining another natural phenomenon, namely that dust can be seen in a beam of light coming in through a window, while dust is invisible outdoors in broad daylight. In discussing this “remembrance,” they offer up a programmatic statement about the necessity of the careful investigation of nature: “Since [the outdoor dust] in invisible, should we deny, heaven forbid, that it exists? We must not say this but rather compare one situation to another until we discover the truth.”30 Elsewhere, this same “remembrance” attests to a different theological truth, and is linked to another, equally common natural phenomenon: “I have heard concerning angels … that there are those who say they are invisible on account of the subtlety of their bodies. Behold, the fine dust that can be seen in a beam of light that enters a house through a window or crack cannot [otherwise] be seen, on account of its subtlety. Similarly, if one is far away from a spider web, one cannot see it—how much more so [angels], which are even more subtle. And [even] if a spider web is extremely large, when you gather it together it becomes very small—how much more so can spirits contract themselves and become small [as well].”31 Like the dust in a beam of light, a spider’s web is invoked not because it is wondrous, but precisely because it is not—its ubiquity allows the reader to appreciate that the existence of invisible beings is indeed a tenable proposition.
This location of theological meaning within the physical world is also evident in passages where the Pietists derive their information not from direct observation, but rather from earlier sources. In a number of contexts, the Pietists describe the visible signs that confirm the rabbinic teaching that God issued 613 commandments to the Jewish people:32 “‘He has created a remembrance of His wonders’—[the numerical value of] ‘of his wonders’ is 613, corresponding to the [365] positive and [248] negative commandments. The 365 tendons and the 248 limbs of the human body are a remembrance of this.”33 According to gematriyah, the system of letter-number equivalency that was a mainstay of Pietistic hermeneutics, the 613 commandments are encoded in God’s “wonders” (nifle’otav)—a word whose own numerical value is 613.34 And these “wonders” are literally “embodied” in the tendons and limbs
