Have you ever turned around and felt that guilt is far too dominant as a basis for religious life? I believe it is a product of the compartmentalised book mindset I discussed last week. The following story is a case in point from one of the most awkward car journey moments I have ever had:
It happened about four years ago; two of my friends and I were in a car with a particular rabbi, animatedly discussing an issue that bothered us about our responsibilities in Jewish outreach. All three of us were very passionate about the subject and enjoyed the opportunity to address these issues with someone older, wiser and more experienced. But at one point the rabbi stopped and turned to us with the following question: Well, we've discussed that topic - now what's everyone been learning - do you have a sefer to learn from or a D'var Torah?
The three of is froze, awkwardly. We stayed silent for about thirty seconds. Slowly, I produced a book that I happened to be carrying and started reading, agonisingly, for about ten minutes. It was awkward, painstaking and completely artificial. The rabbi smiled indulgently whilst the three of us sat there feeling mildly humiliated and guilty. The subtext was clear: "You're frum, you should be discussing words of Torah. If you aren't, you're not doing very well are you?". The perfect guilt trip and an illuminating window into the minds of our teachers.
This story has stuck in the mind as the thing that irritates me most about how most informed and educated people understand religious observance and their inability to see it holistically.
But I must approach this with a degree of humility. Perhaps I am not correct; perhaps every action I do does need to be based upon an underlying basis to be considered appropriately religious, a means to an ends. It may not be enough to enjoy something and I may think along these lines as a form of self-legitimisation. But it raises lots of questions:
For example, even in the minds of those who associate with the 'Modern Orthodox' mindset, is personal development a religious end in itself or only inasmuch as it makes me go to shul more, pray with more concentration or learn more Torah?
This week's parasha reminds me of this point. On the one hand, we have the golden calf - condemned as the deceptive intermediary between man and God, preventing the pure relationship between God and His people. In sermons this is often extended to all material goods and pleasures - be careful not to make them into a golden calf. But it is also interesting to read the ornate descriptions of the mishkan and the garments of the Kohen that surrounds this parasha. I know the discussions surrounding the relationship between the two but what if people forgot to make the link between lofty elevation of divine service and the nice shiny looking objects? They might have had an off day and then it's cow time again. Shouldn't that be avoided too?
Sanctify the mundane for holy purposes but don't let it escalate - a very thin line. It leads me to something I have thought about a lot recently: Does Judaism require me to link everything I value directly to God or not? Could I gaze at the garments of the Kohen, for example, dazzled by their splendour and enjoy their beauty or would I need to say - Wow, what an amazing creation of God's?
It is the question of whether God can or should be found in the immediate situation and experience you are encountering even if it is not directly linked to Him. Is it enough to be happy, interested, joyful or grateful? Are these positive, life enhancing sensations inherently Godly? Because personally I think that if they are not, the 'means to an ends' doesn't work very well and guilt will prevail. And if they are they should be discussed far more.
You see, when you go off to work or university thinking that the primary expression of being religious is the active involvement with a gemarah or a positive fulfilment of commandment x or y then the following scenario will occur time and time again, and it has nothing necessarily to do with the great appeal of the outside world or its temptations:
You start by happily thinking along the lines you have been taught: Look forward to the mincha, to the learning later, to the providing of a parnassah for your family. But then you find that you begin to enjoy other things. Things that don't seem prohibited but that don't seem obviously religious. Maybe it is the work, the social interaction with colleagues or just being involved in a Jewish society at University...
Then a little gremlin taps you on your shoulder saying: Shouldn't you be learning? Are you doing this for the right reasons ie. so that you can sustain something else which is actually important? Yes, that makes this important by extension but it doesn't feel that way. It becomes a competition for attention between 'you' as you see yourself and 'you' as you are supposed to want to be. Some would call it cheshbon ha nefesh. Others would say it's a lifetime guilt trip. Something's gonna give and guess what? It's rarely the thing you actually enjoy.
And somewhere along the way, the music starts to fade. Because God is only found in the 'other' thing.
In future posts I would like to link this discussion to the topic of 'Shleimut' or 'completeness' found in the writings of medieval and early modern Jewish writers linked to an ideal of personal development very similar to that found in renaissance thought.
'Never trust something if you don't know where it keeps its brain'. In Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets *SPOILER* Arthur Weasley reprimands his daughter Ginny for allowing herself to be lured into writing to an invisible stranger within a diary who turned out to be the young Lord Voldemort. Voldemort ended up possessing Ginny and were it not for Harry and Ron's heroics, would not have lived to tell the tale.
In studying Jewish texts we often don't know the brain behind the books or particularly care, either. If we study a work of halacha, a view and discussion is presented detached from life, background and personality of the people who wrote it. Some argue that this doesn't matter, it is the points that count. But to me it does - particularly when we take life lessons from the books.
How do we translate words from a page into daily life that we experience at every given moment? If we take the words too literally we can find them utterly disconnected from anything that we experience in our own lives and it is this problem that I believe lies at the heart of much rabbinic and religious leadership today - an inability to understand two domains simultaneously: The penetrating, careful and loyal engagement with our religious texts and a deep understanding of real human life; the ability to see both domains as crucial to a vibrant religious existence.
What do I mean? In Judaism our books are the source of our wisdom. Many sermons will start along the lines of : 'It says in Sefer/book x, Gemarah y etc.' But quoting a book will never enable us to gauge the human life element lying behind the words. We know that life is ever-changing, dynamic, complex and can not be reduced to a list of words. How God relates to our ups, downs and hurts can't be read to us dispassionately from a list of sources, irrespective of their sanctity.
I have noticed the disconnect between 'book world' and 'real world' when rabbis or speakers make a generalising joke about women or gay people for example, which makes many of the congregants cringe uneasily. Jokes and attitudes that were acceptable twenty years ago are off-colour today. To be truly respected by people you have to understand how they think and feel.
It may not bother them in the slightest, 'The rabbi was controversial today? Oooh what did he say? etc.' But it shows something is missing in that we have placed religion in a compartment reserved for the texts associated with it - as long as he can tell us if our pans are kosher we'll keep him, as long as he gives a good gemarah shiur etc. The book is there but where is it's brain?
The issue here is that it shows that the rabbi, who represents Judaism, is a figure who isn't associated by his community as possessing a mature understanding of human beings or society.
Too often it seems that the connection between a deep understanding of ourselves, of our place in the world and our relationship with God through the Torah is hidden rather than magnified by teachers educated in the (usually) Yeshivish world of books. Quotes - tick. Knowledge of religious material - tick. Wisdom? Insight? That's for the psychologists, for the famous scientists, maybe a particularly kind of one-in-a-million rabbi who writes famous books and does world tours. Or alternatively, 'Go and look in a mussar book for that or listen to Kiruv rabbi x!'.
Sources, sources. We love our sources. Text-based shiurim are contrasted to airy-fairy fluff. But sources are only as insightful as the one reading them, and the extent they can grasp the concepts and relate them to the broader understanding of where the source is coming from. There is so much 'Rabbi x said this Rabbi y said that' that we act as though the whole life of that person can be summarised by a line that they may have written (probably misquoted and out of context) in a book somewhere.
But we know that if we were in the same position and that's all people thought about our lives we would be very disappointed. It would be like building a profile of ourselves from our text messages or tweets. Sometimes its better to put the books down before we lose ourselves too much in a world built entirely of them. Otherwise we may end up speaking to Voldemort and not even realise it.
WHY SO SERIOUS? THE JOKER
Among Dylan's unique traits apart from being one of about ten people in the last fifty years to be able to write half-decent lyrics was the contempt he showed for journalists. Whenever he was asked about the deeper meaning of his songs he would laugh, smoke a cigarette and reply "I don't know man, you tell me what they mean".
When one of the lefty-intellectual types mentioned something he had come up with as a suggestion or interpretation for what an album might symbolise, Dylan just looked mildly amused and condescendingly congratulated him for his insight: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=guOaI6_cF10
Whether this makes him the nicest person in the world is besides the point; he couldn't stand how seriously they were taking everything he said. He could laugh at himself. It was a bit ridiculous after all, for every self proclaimed intellectual to use this 'song and dance man' as their icon and hero.
Fast forward fifty years and I find that the only people I find myself wanting to talk to about 'serious' issues are those who don't mind laughing at themselves, as if to say 'yes, who really cares, I could be completely wrong and am a slightly ridiculous person just like the rest of the world'.
Then I can respect them. Because I can see that they have the humility to realise that they are just one person and that there are many views on a particular subject. This shouldn't mean that they should not be passionate, but that it should not escalate to the point where everyone else can be presumed wrong. No this isn't a punt for pluralism. Pluralists are amongst the internet's biggest zealots. It is about a mindset that should precede the expressing of an opinion.
For me, it would be the equivalent of 'I am self-indulgently writing another blog quoting quite pretentious sources left, right and centre under the pretence of some sort of authority' - a sort of leshem yichud before each blogpost ( in-joke, sorry).
I admired a Chabad rabbi who I spoke to recently when he replied to a question of mine by stating that 'Yes, you could see it from another angle, but I am presenting the chabad position on the matter' - I respect that. He could see that his way wasn't the only way but it was the one he believed was true.
Because most conversations about religion and politics are had by those who really think they have a personal right to be listened to. Particularly with these areas, the atmosphere can become bigoted or hostile, or alternatively lots of like-minded people find a strawman to bash e.g. the chareidim or the open orthodox and inevitable schisms in Orthodoxy.
Well, you could turn around and say, of course you have to take these things seriously - sometimes these are matters of life and death or the welfare of individuals and society, these are serious issues. Agreed. They are serious issues. But you getting all serious about them is not going to resolve them any better and will probably mean that they are less likely to get addressed because once you take the 'I'm the serious one' position you have essentially blocked off one side of the argument.
It's like the whole political correctness nonsense that now pervades every University campus. The issues that are debated are all about the feelings and rights of every possible group and minority who might be offended and whilst this is admirable if it prevents persecution it can also become completely intellectually stultifying. You are so busy worried about how many things might offend people that no-one's knowledge is broadened or expanded on any topic whatsoever. It's also no fun.
Parroted words about 'discourse' and 'spaces' and 'conversations' replace challenge and debate. I would know. When I went to a school that wasn't Jewish, I had many conversations about religion which were not always comfortable, and which I didn't always know how to respond. But who cares? chill out! Learn a bit more, explore a bit more, maybe leave your comfort zone. Rome wasn't build in a day, ho ho. Either way, I often wonder if the world would be a better place if world leaders looked in the mirror and said to themselves "Which idiot put me in charge of a whole country?"
Yosef Hayyim Yerushalmi wrote a book compiling his essays on the subject of Judaism and memory in 1982; in it, he argued that academic scholarship and historical 'truth' have been disconnected from popular memory since the 19th Century. Up till then, Judaism saw history as a grand divine narrative, starting with Adam and culminating in the Moshiach. The passage of time was never seen as relevant apart from its religious meaning. Wars, plagues and tragedies were seen as essentially the same thing - a reminder from God to repent. But after the nineteenth century when secular scholars began placing historical events in their own context, the history of religion and the academic scholar permanently divided.
Amos Fukenstein critiqued this position by suggesting that a. It is difficult to describe a people as remembering in one particular way, individuals remember not people ( a classic postmodern critique which is then qualified by mentioning that there can still be many shared traditions and experiences) and this has varied over the centuries with Rambam and renaissance thinkers having more of a 'realist' view of history 2. The German Academics of the 19th century were also writing for a Jewish audience with similar aspirations to themselves, to become emancipated, enlightened and universalist in nature. They shared the popular mindset of the Reformers.
But the overall point remains strong: In classical Jewish sources until the 19th century, the importance of remembering is how to respond to God's signs in history. It is a call to action or a call to repentance. During our fast days which are held on days commemorating a tragedy, we are not told to analyse the details of the day - the kinnot are fairly thin in historical detail - but rather to cry out to our father in heaven for repentance. Memorials and silences out of respect might cause introspection but they do not contain the implication that we must or can do something about this memory.
But then comes Holocaust memorial day. The most difficult of topics to think about. In fact, one of the reasons I have avoided studying modern history is because I simply cannot grasp the enormity of the holocaust in a way which comes close to being detached (Not that any scholar is ever completely detached from their sources but there is definitely a spectrum).
The academic, prosaic mindset can't grasp it. Perhaps here are the borders of scholarship, where data and interpretation must concede that they can go no further. Here, in my opinion, is also an excellent example of the tension between traditional religion and modernity.
Many in the chareidi/ frum world have given speeches over the years about how the ignorant 'secularist' Israeli government insist on making another Shoah day whilst ignoring Tish'a B'Av. The Jewish position, they say with some justification, would be to place the holocaust in the overall narrative of Jewish suffering in history.
But to the modern mind, the indiscriminate systematic and comprehensive evil of the Shoah cannot be simply placed in a system which seems to lay blame on its victims. It can never be justified or understood by adding it to a religious narrative of history, as if this explains it. It cannot be seen as part of something else. To give explanations that focus on punishment seems so short-sighted, cruel and foolish.
And yet religion is significant only to the extent that the individual can have a personal, intimate and unmediated relationship with the divine. A God who loves us.
The mind has reached its limits. Silence now.
Thinking back to various figures who either directly or implicitly told us that we had a duty to do something to preserve the memories of those who were murdered, perhaps you didn't understand that sometimes no words can be said. That sometimes the lessons you taught are cheap and cruelly manipulative and stab us with pangs of guilt. Perhaps you should have stayed silent about that which you cannot speak.
Perhaps I can conclude in my own mind that although as a Jew painful collective memories must be used to stir us to action, sometimes it is up to us to decide the relationship between that memory and our action, for to draw links between the two implying a causal relationship assumes an omniscience that I nor any other human being can ever have.
