I had a really interesting encounter with an elderly man last week at Bushey shul. As I was sitting there, minding my own business, he started talking to me. He told me about his life - how he had been evacuated when he was a boy, how he had served in the RAF, how he had met his wife at a local Jewish youth club and how he had spent several years in the fur business before a chance encounter had led him to become a Taxi driver.
But what was so interesting about this man was the fact that he kept saying to me, with a huge smile on his face, 'I have met so many wonderful people in my life'. When I told him that I was getting married tomorrow he said that he had been married for 63 years and that life was all about the ups and downs you encounter and those who succeed in it are the ones who have learnt from the obstacles along the way.
And that really inspired me. Did this man say anything groundbreaking? Nope. But this man had lived. He had seen. He, a complete stranger gave me real insight into how I should see my own life.
One thing I have discovered in the past few years in my own life at least is that many questions of theory are much better answered through experience than through a thought out response.
Where is God in the world? What is my purpose in life? It seems that rather than attempt a reasoned discussion of these issues I have found them to be far better answered in the relationships I have developed and the life experiences I have had. Maybe that's why I was so moved by speaking to that particular elderly man.
And I too, the day before my wedding, think to myself: I have met so many wonderful people. I have had such great friends, experiences and companions. Thank you all.
I saw a brilliant show by Derren Brown on Saturday night. Without revealing any details, it was an excellent demonstration of how people can be made to think and do things using the power of subconscious influences. I was very impressed by the way he used his particular talents to help people feel better about their problems.
But it also showed that whilst we think we make our own choices, there in fact there are a number of factors that we are unaware of affecting our decisions (I have also started reading the book thinking fast and slow by Daniel Kahanaman which addresses the psychology behind this). More significantly, for me at least, it was also a demonstration of how particular individuals can use their personal charisma to exert an enormous influence over you, to the extent that your personality can become subsumed into theirs. That was quite a scary thought.
It also reminded me of something that I often think about when listening to popular public religious speakers and from my own experiences with charismatic individuals. How much am I being influenced by the show behind the individual's speech? It is almost impossible to disassociate the person, the climate and the feel-good effect from what is actually being said.
I remember vividly in sixth form coming home one shabbos to announce that I had heard the most incredible D'var Torah by a well known speaker in the community. 'What did he say' My Dad asked. Hmm I thought. Hard to really put into words. So I tried, and I realised that its content could be said in about ten seconds but I made sure to follow these words with 'You just had to be there, you don't understand'.
So what? You might say. Ostensibly, we are not simply drones who respond to content alone. Personality certainly becomes a part of any method of communication. But there is a more sinister element to all this. That is the question of control. Using Derren Brown-esque skills a spellbinding speaker or personality can make us do things that if we detached ourselves from the situation we would not consider. Unfortunately I can attest to personal experience in this regard.
They can make us think thoughts that, in many ways are not our own. And then we can easily lose sight of the difference between who we are and who the person who is our boss, teacher, rabbi, role model is. And in the hands of the wrong people this can lead to an extremely dangerous relationship.
There was a sad story in the news the other week about the young Conservative party member who committed suicide, seemingly after encountering horrendous bullying from his peers. Clearly, to some, the pursuit of power is a singular one which can disregard the consequences of its actions, taking advantage of someone's willingness to obey your every instruction.
The fact of the matter is that it is often people with the potential for this sort of manipulation often find themselves in positions of leadership. If the organisation in question has a particular agenda it is very easy to create a climate under the complete control of this personality.
It is certainly something to think about when you enter a position of some sort of power particularly in areas which have deep emotional sway over people such as faith. People will see you differently. You might be able to have them under a spell of sorts. You may be able to make them do exactly as you want. And to be conscious of the extent of your standing is to also be aware of the fine line between positive influence, control and even abuse.
To educate is to channel not to manipulate. This applies even if we are convinced about the rightness of our message, method or agenda; for if we don't respect the dignity of each human being and their ability to make up their own minds about things we run the risk of crushing them, scarily, without even meaning to.
The old world is rapidly aging. Please step out of the new one if you can't lend a hand for the times they are-a-changing.
Oh boy they are - I'm getting married in two weeks! As well as that being incredibly exciting the enormity of it all also means that it is quite overwhelming. There is always a challenge in facing a change in our lives that represents something unknown, regardless of how much we look forward to it. If there is one thing that we humans fear, it is the unknown. In fact, the whole of historical study grapples with the question: Why did it change? How did we get from caveman to facebook? Changes always pose the question of how we should respond to our new circumstances in, for example, jobs, relationships and health. It leads to so many questions and so many unknowns.
It is tempting and comforting to think that we can find the answers to deal with change and the future and apply them like bandages over the wounds of uncertainty - 'I'm scared mother make it go away.' And it is this issue that I think of when I consider how religious teachers in the Jewish world approach questions in general.
In popular books and Shiurim there is a glowing confidence that all your questions can be answered if you only know who to ask. What's the problem with the ultra chareidi schools, they ask? They don't let kids ask questions, so they go off the D. Let us establish a model where kids are free to ask questions which we can provide with good answers so that they'll be fine. More than that, they claim that unlike other religions such as Christianity, Judaism encourages questions. This was a frequent slogan in my teenage years and remains a fairly common go-to line in the frum community.
What wasn't added, it must be said, is the line 'until we give you the answers'. Once a teenage mind has been satisfied, it is expected to provide the intellectual backbone to last a lifetime. In many outreach organisations, there is the implicit feeling of 'we are more intelligent than the outside world' and in other religious institutions there is an attitude of, when questions become too difficult, 'Go to the Kiruv guy, he'll sort you out'. The answers themselves are seen to provide a definitive solution to life's theoretical problems.
It comes down to the issue of how we view questions in general. If we see questions as solvable problems then this widespread attitude will generally come unstuck. Because as we grow older and wiser, the problems will re-emerge, sometimes with a vengeance and the air of certainty and security that once convinced us that areas such as faith were in fact mere 'faithfulness' to the obvious comes unstuck. Time and time again, the conviction that we will always know the answers comes be viewed as part of a naive childhood mindset, and if religion is presented in this way, it will be met with the same response. It becomes relegated to the background, implicitly or explicitly, as 'grown-up' life takes priority.
But if questions are seen as a necessary and important part of the journey of life, the fact that we have difficulty in answering them won't bother us as much. We are supposed to have difficulty in answering them. We are meant to explore, embark on a quest and keep pursuing understanding and depth throughout our lives. Answers, in fact, should not mean case closed but should just sign post us to something else. That doesn't mean that every answer should be equivocal. Certainly, there are times where a confident response is needed. But it shouldn't be presented in such a way that makes it seem like there is nothing more to say.
Sometimes in life it seems that when challenges arise we must remember to play out one of my favourite few lines from the Lord of the rings documentary between Frodo and Gandalf:
Frodo: I wish the ring had never come to me. I wish none of this had happened.
Gandalf: So do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given to us.
It is also the feeling summarised by one of Dylan's most beautiful songs, Every Grain of Sand:
I hear the ancient footsteps like the motion of the sea
Sometimes I turn, there’s someone there, other times it’s only me
I am hanging in the balance of the reality of man
Like every sparrow falling, like every grain of sand
The future is both exciting and scary at the same time. It presents us will all sorts of questions which we will need to address and explore, but it can never be 'solved'. In Dylan's song, he embraces the world's beauty even as he goes through his own crisis of faith.
Rather than lulling the next generation into a false sense of religious security that dissipates gradually after the teenage years we should rather reassure that it is through the questions rather than the answers that we become more sensitive, confident and in fact religious human beings. Seatbelts on.
