The blog returns: Teaching religion and science at University

Well, writing comes in fits and bursts doesn't it. I haven't been able to write very much for a while.

Partially because of my new found focus on trying to justify every sentence with a footnote and page, preferably with long citations from the bar ilan database, I think the joy just went away at some point.

Alternatively, it was an aversion to the fact that everyone seems to think they are entitled to an opinion and the old school classicist within me reared his ugly head and objected most profusely. 

December brought with it: 
Ooh Trump is a bigot, homophobe, misogynist etc. etc. we're all going to die.
Or, the left are a bunch of whiney ideologues with the emotional maturity of the average five year old. 

Those are your fun pegs on which to hang your proverbial coat and I'll let the discerning amongst you figure out which way I've drifted in the last few months.

You say it best, a great sage of the nineties once said, when you say nothing at all. 

There is no point writing a blog if you have to do something as sordid as justify your opinions. But when pressed, I didn't really know what those opinions were and it didn't seem to matter very much. 

I was also on a break from listening to Dylan after years of faithful service. In his place, the Smiths, the Kinks and Springsteen took pride of place. 

But I like writing in an informal context and have missed it. And whilst my writing has taken a break, this year I have had my first actual experiences in teaching - something I have been keen to do for a while without quite knowing the whats and whys.

And I suppose experience is a good buzzword here. 

Because I think we are very interested in how other people experience the world so perhaps this has become a new focus of mine.

Maybe because some of us share the same oddities. And oddities are what makes life fun. And I suppose creating oddity combined with a certain conviction of purpose is what life quite often seems to be about. And this is how I see it - there are serious goals, relationships and issues and there is chaos and let's just see who we can wind up today. Hmm. Psycho musings over.

So, having converted from the stagnation of a utopian let's-make-the-world-a-better-place-I'm-young idealistic-and-know-better-than-you approach to the more prosaic do things you enjoy and see how it goes attitude, I decided to try my hand earlier this year at teaching in University. 

 The first course I began to teach on was a fascinating one exploring the relationship between science and religion. My first thought was that this was going to be like the anti-Christ of the kiruv seminars I used to attend where the conclusion was that 'everything is happy and fine'; I enjoyed exploring evolving definitions of the two topics and challenges past and present. 

And I enjoyed exploring the fact that I was at a stage of my life that I could honestly say that being religious meant a great deal to me but that I wanted it to be something of a struggle so as not to get boring.

Give me some good old fashioned existential angst any day rather than  join the frum club of the great shires of north west London. 

Some students asked me how I dealt with some of the questions, particularly as I was keen to be as critical as possible on the issues. 

I replied that life is very dull if you don't have to grapple with things. So far so good. Teaching is great fun.

But I noticed something amongst many students that bothered me slightly because it is in fact one that many religious people hold themselves. 
I noticed that the attitude towards religion was very simply, if it is meaningful to you, go for it. Is it true? If it is to you then great. If not, then great. Everything is fine. Yolo.

If it makes you happy, if it is meaningful to you etc. Everything is about this wonderful term, 'meaning'. Science is true, religion is meaningful. 

You know, I generally love the live and let live approach. But in the twenty first century is there any depth left to describing religion or is it always going to fluctuate between dogmatic intensity and vacuous slogans about social action?

In fact, whenever anyone shoves meaning into every aspect of religious life it becomes incredibly irritating. Just stop talking.

Make shul meaningful? No, go away I don't want it to be meaningful I want you to be quiet.

Be inspired? Sod off. Happy twenty year old giving a long talk about what some aspect of practice really means deep deep deep down? Kiddie, what you smoking. You aint saying nufink.

People talk too much and write too many books infantalising us all trying to say that everything anyone has ever thought can be found in something Jewish and everything is ok and happy.

And yet, despite my sarcasm, to be religious is to recognise something as true in the sense that our experience life would be far poorer without it. I guess love is a parallel.  

And I suppose this is where I must conclude my returning post. Because being religious is fundamental to the part of me which says things like 'this is frum nonsense', criticises everything, becomes irritated when people call me 'Modern Orthodox', 
and flees the cholent where new ideas go to die.

 And I suppose if I keep writing things, which I might not, given the fluctuating fortunes of my thesis, I should write about how different areas of life come together in a way to build a picture that perhaps leads to God, perhaps leads to introspection, perhaps leads to your local cricket ground.  

I'm 25. And by this age, when it comes to this whole religion thing, many of my peers frankly my dear don't give a damn. The trappings are there to some extent, but either 'keep on singing for the sake of the song after the thrill is gone' or just empty shells on a well trodden shore. Money, women, family, career - these are the rock n roll Gods.

And despite my open dislike of much which makes up religious society, I do care a lot. Through my ramblings, sarcasm and self indulgence as a writer. Maybe I'll explore why.