The Matrix and Assimilation
Morpheus: Let me tell you why you’re here. You’re here because you know something. What you know you can’t explain. But you feel it. You’ve felt it your entire life. That there’s something wrong with the world. You don’t know what it is but it’s there, like a splinter in your mind driving you mad. It is this feeling that has brought you to me. Do you know what I’m talking about?
Neo: The Matrix?
Morpheus: Do you want to know what it is? The Matrix is everywhere. It is all around us, even now in this very room. You can see it when you look out your window or when you turn on your television. You can feel it when you go to work, when you go to church, when you pay your taxes. It is the world that has been pulled over your eyes to blind you from the truth.
Neo: What truth?
Morpheus: That you are a slave, Neo. Like everyone else you were born into bondage, born into a prison that you cannot smell or taste or touch. A prison for your mind….
The dialogue above is taken of course from the movie The Matrix (Lana Wachowski, Lilly Wachowski 1999)
The Matrix is built on the premise that what most humans experience as everyday reality is actually a highly sophisticated computer simulation—the “Matrix”—created by intelligent machines to keep humanity docile while using their bodies as an energy source. A small group of rebels awoke to the truth and lives outside the simulation, fighting to free others by unplugging them from the illusion. The story follows Neo, a seemingly ordinary man who discovers that his world is fake and that he may be “the One,” a figure prophesied to be able to manipulate the Matrix from within and ultimately challenge the machines’ control over human existence.
Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Zizek described The Matrix as follows:
“The Matrix is one of the films which function as a kind of Rorschach test, setting in motion the universalized process of recognition, like the proverbial painting of God which seems always to stare directly at you, from wherever you look at it - practically every orientation seems to recognize itself in it?”
Zizek continues to describe that his Lacanian friends see the movie as a Lacanian analysis, Frankfurt School lovers would see in it a critique of culture industry and consumer society, Marxists will see a manifestation of false consciousness and new agers and environmentalists will see it as an apocalyptic dystopia of the result of the attempt to dominate nature.
Honestly, if you think about it (and Zizek mentions it) the premise is nothing new. In his allegory of the cave, Plato already proposed the idea of living one's life in a projected reality, which is only a reflection of the true world.
So to keep with tradition, I’d like to bring the Matrix into our world of Torah and examine its idea of slavery.
Today, the Torah portion of Shemot begins the book of Exodus, which is the book that begins with slavery and ends with redemption. Our commentators debated about the reason for the Israelites slavery, generations after their “golden age” under Joseph’s rule.
Some interpreters attribute the slavery to the population boom amongst the Israelites and the practical solution of the king to make them useful due to the land’s limited resources.
"וּבְנֵ֣י יִשְׂרָאֵ֗ל פָּר֧וּ וַֽיִּשְׁרְצ֛וּ וַיִּרְבּ֥וּ וַיַּֽעַצְמ֖וּ בִּמְאֹ֣ד מְאֹ֑ד וַתִּמָּלֵ֥א הָאָ֖רֶץ אֹתָֽם׃ {פ}
“But the Israelites were fertile and prolific; they multiplied and increased very greatly, so that the land was filled with them.”
Others attribute it to the antisemitic trope that questions Jewish loyalty and the fear from the nation serve as a “fifth column” in case of war.
הָ֥בָה נִֽתְחַכְּמָ֖ה ל֑וֹ פֶּן־יִרְבֶּ֗ה וְהָיָ֞ה כִּֽי־תִקְרֶ֤אנָה מִלְחָמָה֙ וְנוֹסַ֤ף גַּם־הוּא֙ עַל־שֹׂ֣נְאֵ֔ינוּ וְנִלְחַם־בָּ֖נוּ וְעָלָ֥ה מִן־הָאָֽרֶץ׃
“Let us deal shrewdly with them, so that they may not increase; otherwise in the event of war they may join our enemies in fighting against us and rise from the ground.”
Other interpreters look towards the theological reasons of the enslavement and attribute it to the Israelites sin of assimilation to Egyptian culture.
Midrash Tanchuma Buber:
ד"א ותמלא הארץ אותם. שנתמלאו בתי טרטיאות ובתי קרקסיאות מהם, מיד גזרו עליהם לרוש מן המטה, שנאמר ותמלא הארץ אותם [וגו'].
Another interpretation (of Exod. 1:7): AND THE LAND WAS FILLED WITH THEM. Since the theater houses and the circus houses were filled with them; <The Egyptians > immediately decreed that they (the Israelites) should withdraw from the bed. So it was stated (ibid.): AND THE LAND WAS FILLED WITH THEM.
Hanatziv (Naphtali Tzvi Yehudah Berlin 1816-1893) continues this direction and even connects all of the Jewish people’s ills to their urge to assimilate:
"כל זאת בא משום שביקשו לצאת מרצון יעקב אביהם, שישבו דווקא בארץ גושן, כדי שיהיו בדד ונבדל ממצרים. אבל הם לא רצו כן… וכבר בארנו: "גר יהיה זרעך' – אשר היא הסיבה שבכל דור ודור עומדים עלינו לכלותינו, בשביל שאין אנו רוצים להיות כגרים ונבדלים מן האומות."
“All this came about because they wanted to depart from the will of their father Jacob, who had them dwell in the land of Goshen, so that they might be alone and separate from Egypt. But they did not want that... And we have already explained: "Your seed shall be a stranger" - which is the reason why in every generation they stand against us to destroy us, because we do not want to be strangers and separate from the nations.”
What the Natziv says here is very interesting. He ties slavery and calamity with the need to assimilate.
Which brings me back to The Matrix.
Any viewer of The Matrix understands the idea that our constant need to conform prevents us from asking questions which might undermine the entire existence we choose to give in to. It is always the very few who dare to dig underneath.
Fascinatingly, Zizek connects the Matrix’ idea of “the One” to a Holocaust concentration camp experience:
“Even in the social life in its most horrifying form, the memories of concentration camp survivors invariably mention the One, an individual who did not break down, who, in the midst of the unbearable conditions which reduced all others to the egotistic struggle for bare survival, miraculously maintained and radiated an "irrational" generosity and dignity…. secondly, it was not so much what this One effectively did for the others which mattered, but rather his very presence among them (what enabled the others to survive was the awareness that, even if they are for most of the time reduced to the survival-machines, there is the One who maintained human dignity).... I may be reduced to the cruel struggle for survival, but the very awareness that there is One who retains his dignity enables ME to maintain the minimal link to humanity.”
Following this, I’d like to suggest that in order to remain free, we, the Jewish people, should begin to look at one another and find out what makes our Jewish identity and where this identity might stand in opposition to the current. Perhaps acting differently is what holds the key for getting out of bondage. Maybe instead of lamenting about not being accepted, we ought to entirely give up the need to assimilate, and embrace our role as a link to a humanity which is not yet revealed in our world.
Watch Hebrew here:
