Musings on Madeleine

Well I finished reading Code Name Madeleine and it brought up a mixture of reactions: part admiration/inspiration and part envy, (not that I would ever necessarily make her choices in my own life), and part reservation. I discussed it with someone who was taking the position of explaining Noor's choice to sacrifice herself as being the most authentic expression of who she was and of everything she believed. Here is my response to that: 

"In fact I do see what you say about Noor. My reservations doubtless have more to do with where I am on my path than with how far along she was on hers. In a sense she lived the perfect life, the life of a martyr who got to 'die young' and as a beautiful, pure human being, although she paid a terrible price in suffering to achieve that status. Since that boat has long since sailed for me, (😉), some part refuses to identify with her sacrifice; doubtless the same part which has given up on the idea of transcendence for myself and therefore looks at the 'saints' with a good deal of skepticism. I've been back to Judaism recently, (again for the nth time), I guess it was partly Shtisel and other shows and documentaries but also increasingly due to recent US and world events...I cannot resolve the conflict between the good that religious practice promises and to a certain extent achieves, and the evil fruits it also produces...One could say that religion isn't responsible for it's misuse by adherents whose 'evil inclinations' were always present. And yet, if that is true, then why isn't religious practice an effective antidote?

Noor didn't practice formal religion yet lived by a profound set of spiritual principles which she completely identified with. She is an Isaac yet so many such as myself are Ishmaels, rejected and cast out and doomed to perpetual exile. It isn't even the desire to think myself 'good' or the desire to belong but I think what I miss most is the surender which sets one free, the surrender Noor made as a prisoner of the Nazis. The having it all taken out of one's own hands. It is that awful responsibility for existence and being of which I am so tired and which causes me to be jealous of those like Noor, who were living in times and circumstances which offered them a way out. She freely and knowingly chose her path. Allegedly it is possible to make that surrender on a daily basis in the smallest ways which don't necessarily involve tring to save the world. I guess that part of myself which feels like all the years of striving and pushing myself to achieve some level of wellness and wholeness did not succeed much, resents those who somehow managed to escape or overcome the daily life, the humiliating failures, the struggle with passions, the difficult process of aging, the slow, fitful reforming of the fraught personality, etc., which makes up the spiritual path of most people who are consciously on a spiritual path." 

I also shared recent readings and discoveries regarding Judaism: The Sabbath by Abraham Joshua Heschel (famous for his involvement in the Civil Rights Movement) and a book called Degrees of Separation written by a former Lubavitcher who became a sociologist and wrote a book on individuals who left their religious communities (Satmar and Chabad Lubavitch), Professor Schneur Zalman Newfield. He was kind enough to refer me to this article dealing with the "evangelicalization" of religious Jews: 

https://tabletmag.com/sections/belief/articles/evangelicalization-orthodox-jews 

This was all in response to the original commentary on Code Name Madeleine I had shared:

 "I can't help but feel that Noor could have done better than choose the path she chose. When Simone Weil was dying she felt she couldn't let go because of all the truths she still wanted to share with the world. Then she understood how arrogant such an attitude is, no matter how pure and noble the intention behind it. Truth cannot be destroyed and God will ultimately find messengers to reveal his thoughts. Though having the purest motives, I do believe Noor threw her life away when she could possibly have served God and mankind in a more powerful way alive. Where would we be if there had been no Resistance? On the other hand, not all people are cut out for such work. When agents fail they endanger others. I find no fault in Noor at all, I only think her decision was made more out of youthful idealism and not necessarily out of having a real vocation. I'm sure you are familiar with Chris Kyle the 'American Sniper'? It could be said he kept returning to do tours in Iraq/Afghanistan because he was TOO AFRAID of the home life he would have to otherwise be living: the challenge of intimate relations with a spouse, the task of fatherhood. He was 'addicted' to war so his apparent heroism rings hollow-- he was escaping himself through battle. Dont' you think Noor was possibly avoiding a little bit also?"

 

In Simone Weil's case, she received the same call as Noor Inayat Khan to sacrifice herself and yearned to participate on the front lines in Europe as a battlefield nurse. Unfortunately poor health prevented this and she died of her illnesses in England, in 1943 almost at the end of the war. There are many spiritual paths and yet in all of human history no religion has provided the liberation of mankind as a whole: we now face the same ills that were faced by the world when Noor and Simone Weil and Etty Hillesum and countless others faced the ultimate in human atrocity. We face fascism and right wing populism threatening world-wide and especially, in America. And much of the impetus for this fascist trend comes from churches and temples and synagogues and from religious communities of every description. The Nazis were pagans and had no religion other than power. How much worse off are we now that so many religious communities themselves are following in Hitler's footsteps?

1. Noor-un-Nissa Inayat Khan 

2. The Sabbath by Abraham Joshua Heschel 

3. Schneur Zalman Newfield and Degrees of Separation

4. Simone Weil, French philosopher and mystic 

5. Gravity and Grace by Simone Weil 

6. and 7. Etty Hillesum 

8. An Interrupted Life, the writings of Etty Hillesum