The Real KKK

I don’t think you’ll believe this. I don’t blame you. I’m having a hard time believing it myself.

I’m sitting at the coffee house of our local bookstore waiting for an NPR download to finish. To keep from going mad from the slow pace of the download, I’m reading the local newspaper. There is an article about the Southern Poverty Law Center suing the second largest chapter of the KKK in the US over a brutal beating members inflicted on a sixteen year-old boy in Kentucky.

I think I blurted out something like, “Damn, these guys just won’t quit.” A fellow sitting behind me and I imagine reading over my shoulder said, “The KKK started here in Tennessee, you know. They meant well, though I guess they turned bad after a while, but the real KKK is even worse.”

Let me give you some advice. When someone starts to talk about the Ku Klux Klan you should smile and move away. Good advice. I wish I had taken it. Instead I said, “What’s the real KKK?”

“Kikes, Koons, and Katholics,” the man said. And then he smiled and moved away adding, “And don’t you forget it.”

I won’t. I can’t. I don’t want to. It is vitally important that we don’t forget there are people out there (in here; next door) who live off of hate.

I want to believe that people are good; that education will solve all our problems, and that someday all religions will embrace. I want to believe these things, but I can’t. People easily rationalize the greatest evil; even the most educated people can believe insanity and act wickedly—look at the terrorist doctors for the latest example; and, as the Pope has just made so clear, religions will never embrace as long as religious leaders are invested in winning the war for God’s all too limited love.

Is there something that will stop the madness? Yes, I think there is. It is learning how to question your most cherished beliefs and the authority that enforces them. So let me add a fourth and fifth K to the mix: Kafka and Krishnamurti. These are two great modern masters of wisdom. Each in his own way points to the madness that passes for sanity in our world. Each in his own way points beyond it. If you haven’t read these two geniuses, please do so. If you have read them, reread them. I know of know better way to cleanse the mind of the smugness of self-delusion.

Interview 4 of 4

[The following is the fourth part of a four-part interview I gave to a student in partial fulfillment of a class assignment.]

Q: We are talking about the Mother and your experience of God as the Divine Feminine. You recently returned from teaching in Chartres, France where the Cathedral of Notre Dame de Chartres is dedicated to the worship of Mary, the Mother of God. Was this moving to you?

R: Absolutely. Mary, Kali, Durga, Kwannon, Chochma, Sophia these are all faces of the Divine Feminine, and while God or Reality includes and transcends the feminine, and is beyond conceptualization, it is this Feminine Face of Reality that I find most moving and comforting at this time in my life.

Q: The Mother is all loving…

R: She is all consuming in her love. That is to say that she is not comforting in any conventional sense. Her love is searing, it burns away all theology, all religion, all isms and leaves you in the radical not–knowing that is Her fierce grace. To draw near to the Mother is to be stripped of all your hiding places and left as Job is left in his encounter with God, that is in a state of radical amazement, a state of wondrous and transcendently joyous silence.

Q: It sounds like a kind of escape from the world. Is it?

R: It can be. You can draw near the Mother and make camp. But if you dare to go further, if you dare to be consumed in Her love you are sent back to the world to transform it with justice, compassion, love, and humility. The flipside of the Mother’s embrace is the Father’s prophetic push back into the world. It is not either/or, but both/and. If you truly love God you cannot help but love the world, and want to heal it. Mysticism and prophetic action go together, or they don’t go at all.

Q: And this is how you see yourself? As a mystical prophet?

R: Oh goodness no. I talk about this stuff. I leave the real work to people like Andrew Harvey, Michael Lerner, and Jim Wallis.

Q: And you are satisfied with that?

R: It is who I am. Being satisfied or dissatisfied is irrelevant.

Q: OK. Just one final question. Are you hopeful of the future?

R: The national anthem of my tribe is HaTikva, The Hope. Hope is the DNA of the Jewish psyche. Hope is rooted in the deep insight that the world is an open system and not subject to the Law of Entropy. This is what Torah is saying when it reveals God’s Name as Ehyeh asher Ehyeh, “I will be what I will be.” God is unfixed, unformed, unconditioned, always surprising itself. I believe that life is evolving toward the ultimate surprise: the realization that we are God. This is not a linear evolution from A to B to Z. This is a gyre of development with Life forever circling back in on itself only to spiral out in wider and higher and more inclusive levels of engagement. When we spiral out things look wonderful. When we spiral back they look bleak. But neither wonder nor despair is the whole of the matter. The process includes and transcends them both. So, yes, I am hopeful; hopeful that creation and destruction, birth and death, peace and war, good and evil are all dancing in service to One Who is at heart pure surprise.

Interview 3 of 4

[The following is the third part of a four-part interview I gave to a student in partial fulfillment of a class assignment.]

Q: You said there are four levels of biblical understanding: literal, allegorical, imaginative, and mystical. You also said you prefer the imaginative because like an inkblot it mirrors your deeper self. Correct?

R: Yes, like an ink blot, a dream, Tarot cards, universal myths and archetypes. Right.

Q: What is your sense of the mystical level, Sod?

R: Where Drash, the imaginative level, is all about you, Sod is all about the other. Where Drash takes you into yourself, Sod takes you into God and hence the world, which is God manifest.

The revelations of Sod come in two ways. First there is the notion of kabbalah, literally “receiving;” you receive the secret interpretations and understandings of the Torah from your rebbe or spiritual master. This can be very deep and valuable material, but because it is already known and passed down from rebbe to student it is just a more subtle kind of black fire.

The second quality of revelation under the Sod category comes when your imagination is so freely, wildly at play in Drash that something totally unexpected comes through. This is true white fire, unknown to you, something radically new. This is why I like Drash the best: only in the wild play of Drash can the even wilder revelations of Sod be discovered.

Q: Can you give an example?

R: No. Anything I can offer would then be subtle black fire. What I can tell you is that my own experiences with the Sod dimension are prophetic not in the sense of telling the future, but in the biblical sense of calling me to engage the world more justly and kindly.

Q: Let’s change subjects. You often talk about God as Mother. Do you really believe that God is a woman?

R: No. Any language applied to God must be metaphoric. God is what is. God includes and transcends all reality, so God manifests as men and women, as well as dogs and elephants, but is not reducible to anything in particular.

Yet my experience of God is undeniably feminine. When the ancient rabbis spoke of hearing the word of God they used the term Bat Kol, the Daughter’s Voice. When they spoke of sensing the spirit of God around and within them they used the term Shekhinah, a feminine noun. When the author of Proverbs described the first moments of creation he said that Chochma, a feminine noun meaning Wisdom, was the first of God’s manifestations. My experience is the same as theirs. When I hear God speak, the voice is female, when I sense God’s presence it is feminine, when I see God manifest as the world is it as the Mother.

Q: I always thought Judaism was totally masculine and patriarchal, but you are saying there is something feminine and matriarchal to it as well?

R: Yes. While the power structure of Judaism the religion is historically patriarchal, the tribal wisdom is historically matriarchal. While the men defined what Jews did, it was the mother, the women, who defined who a Jew was.

On a deeper level, I believe there is a sense of Reality as Mother in the Wisdom teachings of Judaism found in Proverbs, Job, Ecclesiastes, the Wisdom of Solomon, and Ben Sirach to name a few, and it is to these books that I am drawn most powerfully. To go back to an earlier question, I would say that while I am unabashedly a Jew and proud member of the Jewish tribe and people, my religion is Wisdom in all Her forms: Jewish, Christian, Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist, Taoist, etc.

Interview 2 of 4

[The following is the second part of a four-part interview I gave to a student in partial fulfillment of a class assignment.]

Q: Can you tell me just what it is you do believe?

R: I believe that there is only one reality— call it God, Yah, Allah, Tao, Brahman, Great Spirit, Mother/Father, etc— that manifests as the infinite diversity of the universe. I believe that experiencing the One calls us to engage life justly, compassionately, humbly, and with utmost respect. I believe that the extent to which the world’s religions contain helpful means for translating these principles into action they should be honored. I believe that the extent to which these very same religions preach dualism, xenophobia, misogyny, racism, violence, homophobia, etc. they should be rejected. If I have a creed, it is this: Love God (Reality, Life) with all your heart, with every breath, with all your being and becoming; and Love your neighbor and the stranger as yourself.

Q: Which is basically what Jesus taught.

R: I added the “stranger” part, but you can’t get much more Jewish that Jesus.

Q: How so?

R: Jesus was a Jew who adapted the teachings of his people for his time. Jesus did just what I am doing, and I often look to his example for guidance.

Q: Doesn’t that make you a Christian?

R: Not at all. A Christian is one who makes a god of Jesus. For me he is a great sage, rabbi, and prophet, but not a god. When allowed to read the words of Jesus as they come down to us with the awareness of first century Jewish life under brutal Roman occupation, Jesus is clearly a son of his people, and a lover of God, neighbor, and stranger.

Q: I read that you take the Bible seriously but not literally. What does that mean?

R: I believe that the heart of the Bible is myth, and that myth is among the most powerful tools we humans have for excavating the deepest layers of consciousness where the awareness of the nonduality of God is felt most strongly. A literal reading of the Bible robs it of its mythic depth and reduces it to nonsense. While you cannot ignore the literal layer of the text— Moses encounters God at the Burning Bush not at Wal-Mart— sticking to the literal level alone has for centuries been a sign of illiteracy among Jews.

Q: I was taught that the literal reading is the only true reading.

R: This is another difference between us. The ancient rabbis taught that there are four levels to the Bible: Peshat, the literal, Remez, the allegorical, Drash, the imaginative, and Sod, the mystical. When you learn to engage with the Torah on all four levels you enter PaRDeS, the first letter of each of the four levels of literacy, which is the Hebrew word for Paradise.

Q: So the study of text is for you a spiritual practice? Which of the four levels do you find most enlightening?

R: Study is a spiritual practice if you learn to operate on all four layers. The Drash level is the one that most intrigues me. Drash is the interpretive level of reading where the imagination in the reader spins new stories from the old. The rabbis taught that the Torah is written in black fire, the fixed letters, on white fire, the spaces around and between letters and words. You have to learn how to read both. You read the black fire by seeing what is printed on the page; you read the white fire by seeing what is hidden in your own imagination.

Q: For example?

R: For example, after the near sacrifice of Isaac Abraham returns home alone; the Torah doesn’t say where Isaac goes. Abraham returning home is the black fire, the unwritten adventures of Isaac are the white fire. What happens to him? What is he thinking? What does he do? Let your imagination run with these kinds of questions and you will discover things about your self and life that the black fire cannot reveal.

Q: About myself? How does that work?

R: The Bible is myth, myth is a map of the deep levels of the human psyche. The Bible is about you. When you engage in the free flowing imaginative play that is Drash you will learn new ways to tell and understand your own story. To stick with our example of Abraham and Isaac, when you explore what Isaac does after escaping the murderous intent of his father you are bringing into consciousness your own unconscious insights into how to handle the potentially life threatening actions of your parents. Drash sees the Bible as a dream you dreamed the night before, and making midrash, imgagining new stories, is the dreamwork that reveals the deeper meanings and messages your unconscious mind is sending to your conscious mind. The Bible from the Drash perspective is, like a dream, all about you.

Interview 1 of 4

[The following is the first part of a four-part interview I gave to a student in partial fulfillment of a class assignment.]

Q: Thanks for taking the time to speak with me, Rabbi. I have followed your work off and on for years, and would like to talk with you about where you are spiritually.

R: You’re welcome.

Q: Great. In preparing for this interview I was told that you are ambivalent about your Jewish identity. Can you elaborate on that?

R: I am not at all ambivalent about being Jewish. It is one of the great joys of my life. What I struggle with is religion.

Q: But isn’t Judaism a religion?

R: Religion—formal, organized religion— is part of the complex of things that fall under the rubric of Judaism, but there are others things as well. Judaism is the way of life of a people, the tribe called Ivri or Apiru, Hebrew or the Boundary–Crossers.

At the heart of Judaism as religion is the notion that there is a Creator God who chose the Jews as His People, and Who gave them the one true revelation, the Written and Oral Torah, along with the Promised Land of Israel. I don’t believe any of this. God, for me, is not separate from creation, though God is greater than creation. God doesn’t choose people, write books, or engage in real estate deals. The religion of Judaism is simply a way to bolster the self–esteem of the Jewish people.

Q: Is that unique to Jews and Judaism?

R: Not at all. Every religion is created to advance the cause of those who invent it. I am neither surprised nor offended that Christianity reserves salvation for Christians, or that Islam believes that the Arabic Koran is the only uncorrupted revelation from God. Neither am I moved by these claims. I see formal or corporate religion as just another way we humans seek to get the better of one another. That’s why I’m not religious in the formal sense.

Q: In what sense are you religious?

R: The word religion comes from the Latin relegare, to connect. I am religious in the sense that I am connected to God as a wave is connected to the ocean. I value all teachings and practices, regardless of their religion of origin, that awaken people to the nonduality of God in, with, and as all things.

Q: But you are Jewish, right? I mean if I were to reject the core teachings of my Baptist faith or borrow ideas from some other faith, I wouldn’t be Baptist any more.

R: Right, and that is one of the primary differences between Judaism and Christianity. Christianity, in any its forms, is a set of ideas which you either accept or reject. Judaism is the way of life of a tribe into which one is born or by which one is adopted.

Q: Adopted? You mean converted?

R: Again the difference is crucial. You convert to Christianity when you swear loyalty to the Christian creed. But Judaism has no creed, and it is, in my opinion, misleading to speak of converting to Judaism as if there were some set of ideas to which one could swear allegiance. When you choose to become Jewish you are given a new name which always includes Bat or Ben Avraham v’Sarah: you literally become the daughter or son of Abraham and Sarah, the first Jews. Becoming Jewish is a matter of being adopted by the tribe. It is the tribal aspect of Judaism that allows me to remain a Jew.

Q: I am not sure what you mean by that. Can you explain that some more?

R: Being Jewish for me is like being Native American. You are born into a tribe or you are adopted by that tribe as a member. It is the same with Jews. Just as Native Americans have their own languages, customs, foods, stories, etc. so do Jews. Just as some Native Americans believe that their customs were given to them by the Great Spirit, so some Jews believe that their customs were given to them by God. And just as many Native Americans can and do honor and live their customs without that belief, so many Jews do the same. I am one of these.

Q: For example?

R: I keep kosher, for example, not because God commands it, but because for thousands of years my people have struggled to find a way to hallow and elevate the human act of consumption. I believe that kashrut (kosher) challenges me to uplift all my consumption to the highest ethical and environmental standards I can muster. Similarly, I keep Shabbat [the Sabbath], not because God commands it, but because it is the way my tribe honors work and rest by setting aside one day a week for re–creation and deep play.

I find great value in wearing a tallit [prayer shawl] and tefillin [phylacteries], and in blowing the shofar [ram’s horn] as a reminder to wake up to the call for justice and compassion. I love to study Jewish books from the Bible to Kafka, and feel that these are deeply mine even as they speak to the world as a whole.

Q: Is there one thing you can tell me that makes the Jewish tribe unique?

R: To do that I would have to know a lot more about other tribes. But I can suggest one thing that may be unique, and that is the Jewish way of learning. Jews value questions over answers and at the heart of our pedagogy is the rabbinic teaching, Elu v’elu d’vrei Elohim Chayyim, which means that no matter how diverse people’s positions may be, they are all holy if their aim is to point us toward Truth. This means that Jews are at home with dialogue, argument, and paradox. We are an ancient people with a post–modern psyche. God is too great to be reduced to one truth. For us the opposite of a great truth is not a falsehood, but an equally great truth.

Death of a Prophet

I received a call this afternoon telling me that one of my most revered teachers, Rabbi Sherwin T. Wine of the Birmingham Temple in Bloomfield Hills, MI., was killed in a car crash in Morocco earlier today.

Rabbi Wine was the founder of Humanistic Judaism, an unabashedly atheistic brand of Jewish life that never hesitated to ask the hard questions and offer even harder answers. Whether or not you were convinced by the later, you could not, and indeed did not want to escape the former. Rabbi Wine spoke clearly. You knew where he stood so you could discover where you wished to stand. I do my best to imitate his courage and his clarity.

I found in Rabbi Wine a great teacher, mentor, and prophet. While we disagreed theologically, I was and continue to be indebted to him as a powerful force in shaping my own rabbinate.

A little over a year ago I was lucky enough to visit Rabbi Wine at his office in the Birmingham Temple. I went to thank him for being my rabbi. Now that he has died so unexpectedly, that visit is all the more precious to me. It is good to seek out your teachers and let them know how important they have been to you.

I am posting this to honor the man and his memory, and to offer my condolences to all those who mourn his untimely death.

Scared Sacred

We get the gods we deserve. And so I read with sadness an essay in my local newspaper:

“Regardless of your race, gender or social status, whether you believe in God or not, you are a sinner against God. That is bad news because God will judge you once your life on earth is done. Heaven and hell are real, and they are your only two options. Where does that leave you? Guilty, separated from God and going to hell to forever pay the penalty for your sin! Do you see your problem?” (Pastor Craig Grider, Murfreesboro Post 7.17.07).

Yes, I do. My problem, our problem, is that frightened and frightening men project their fears and fantasies onto the heavens to fashion monstrous gods who delight in eternal torture, and who use the threat of such torture to control the lives of millions. The god of this Pastor Grider speaks volumes—not about God, but about the good pastor.

Humans have long imagined gods who demand the blood of other humans. The call to Abraham to sacrifice Isaac echoed this horror; the substitution of a ram put an end to it, at least among the Hebrews. Still unable to imagine a god sickened by blood and the stench of burning flesh, the ancient Hebrews at least limited their god’s addiction to the sacrifice of animals rather than humans; a step up if you were human, a step back if you were not.

A thousand years later the prophets heard a new call and discovered a new understanding of God. This God desired not sacrifice is not of the other, but of the self, the ego, the passions that can so easily poison both soul and society. This God demanded justice, compassion, and humility. This God did not seek to control through fear, but to convince through love.

Jesus, I believe, stood with these prophets and the rabbinic sages who came after them. The paradigm of sacrificing others, whether human or animal, did not suit him or reflect his experience of his Father. Yet those who made Jesus God reverted to the old ways, and resurrected a bloodthirsty deity whose wrath could be sated by eternal torment. Your only hope was the murder of the innocent Christ. God had to do what Abraham did not: kill his son. And with this murder and the theology that followed it, justice was replaced with wrath, compassion with cruelty, and humility with violent triumphalism.

Christianity, as this editorial understands it, is not a hopeful act of spiritual evolution (as I believe the actual teachings of Jesus to be), but rather a terrible act of spiritual devolution: returning us to a god addicted to blood. And if we do in fact get the gods we deserve, what does this theology say about us and the future of our planet?

Do you see the problem?

Demoncrats

President Bush visited Nashville yesterday, and I had the privilege this morning of listening to one of my neighbors weigh in on the visit. Here is that conversation as best as I can recall it.

“Yessir, the President made sure we know he’s takin’ care of business with those Mooslims in Eyerack. I bet you there wasn’t a single Mooslim or Demoncrat in the audience.”

“Demoncrat?”

“Yessir, Demoncrat. That’s what they are. They are un-American traitors who side with Mooslims ‘n their god Moohamed against us ‘n our God Jesus. They are demons, pure and simple. Honestly I don’t know how we let Mooslims and Demoncrats even become Americans.”

“You mean you can’t be an American if you aren’t Christian and Republican?”

First of all, they is the same thing, Christian and Republican. Any so-called Christian who sides with Demoncrats is not really a Christian but an anti-Christian siding with the Antichrist Moohamed. Second of all when the Puritans came to this country they came for religious freedom.”

“Right, the freedom to worship as you wish.”

“Hell no! The freedom to be a true Christian which they were not allowed to be in England.”

“Historically…”

“History has nothin’ to do with it. I’m talkin’ truth here. This here is a Christian country and there ain’t no room for Catholics or Mormans or Mooslims or…”

“Jews?”

“Actually Jews is grandfathered in cuz they are related to Jesus and we Christians owe them all our best efforts to get them to stop worshippin’ Satan and come to Jesus.”

“So you think the President is doing a good job?”

“The President is a good man in a tight spot. He listens to Jesus and Jesus is tellin’ him to wage war against Mooslims and Demoncrats and that is what he is goin’ ta do. It is a Crusade, son, pure and simple.”

Unfortunately I couldn’t agree more.

Legitimacy

The email was simple, direct, and polite:

“Dear Rabbi, From what I can tell by reading your blog and website you don’t believe in the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob; you don’t believe the Jewish are God’s Chosen People; you don’t believe Israel is the Promised Land; and you don’t believe Torah is God’s revelation— so in what way are you a Jew, let alone a rabbi?”

Good questions, though not really difficult to answer.

Jews are a tribe into which one is born or by which one is adopted. When you become a Jew you receive a Hebrew name that literally links you to Abraham and Sarah, the founding father and mother of the tribe. Judaism is the religion of the tribe, but membership in the tribe is not contingent upon adherence to the religion, nor is the religion understood in the same way by all members of the tribe. I love belonging to a tribe. I have difficulties with religion.

I am a Jew because my mother is a Jew. I am a rabbi because I met the requirements for ordination. I remain a Jew and consciously participate in the rituals and customs of my people because I find them meaningful. I remain a rabbi because I enjoy sharing what I find meaningful with others, both Jews and Gentiles.

True, my understanding of God differs from that of the mainstream. Where most speak of God as a transcendent Other, I experience God as the one and only reality that is both imminent and transcendent. True, I don’t believe Torah was written by God, but by people, and hence reflects both timeless truths and time–bound biases and falsehoods. True, where Judaism focuses primarily on Jews, I focus on primarily on humanity; and, true, where Judaism is primarily concerned with The Promises Land, I am primarily concerned with the planet as a whole; but the fact that I choose to link myself to a minority view among my people does not negate my being a legitimate part of that people.

So, while I understand why there are people who question my legitimacy as a Jew and a rabbi, my own sense of identity is clear: I am both.

By Whose Authority?

Why do you believe what you believe? There can be but one answer: you believe what you do because you choose to believe it. You—not tradition, God, parents, or convention— are responsible for what you believe. So when a person says, “I believe in this or that because the Bible (or the Torah or the Talmud or the Rabbis or the Koran, etc) tells me so” they are lying.

Who decides that the Bible (or some other book) is true, holy, inerrant, etc? Tradition or church may tell you it is, but for every church arguing one position that are others arguing the opposite position. There is no objective way to decide which position is correct. So, when you make the decision to accept one and reject the other the only authority you rely on is yourself.

The same is true when you follow the dictates of the pope or your local rabbi. You invest these people with power and authority. You are the ultimate decider of what is true, but you deny this. Why? Because to admit it is to admit that you are relying on an idiot.

This is certainly true of me. By the authority invested in me by me I decide that God doesn’t have a Chosen People, doesn’t have a Son, doesn’t talk to Moses or Mohammed, and doesn’t send people to hell for not believing in what He doesn’t do in the first place. And I have no objective way of knowing that what I affirm is true. I just affirm it.

The situation would be the same if I affirmed belief in Chosen Peoples, Virgin Births, Sonship, or Koranic revelation. Just as I can’t prove these to be false, I cannot prove them to be true. So believing is just as absurd as not believing. If I believe I do so simply because I choose to do so.

Admitting this is difficult for people. They want to believe that someone or Someone is making the choice for them, so they imagine that someone or Someone has authority over them. But who does the imagining if not they themselves? Whatever you believe, you believe it simply on your own authority. You make the pope the pope; you make a book sacred; you make a rabbi a judge. When people stop investing Jesus with power, Jesus will die just as Mithra, Zeus, and thousands of gods before him died.

Is knowing this helpful? It is to me. Knowing that I decide what is true is humbling. It allows me the luxury of not clinging to any spiritual teaching as absolute or absolutely true. This is truly en–lightening in that it lightens my load.

Religion is such a burden. And when you realize that it is one that you invest with authority, you are free to put it down and pick it up as you wish, and that is truly liberating.

Farfur

There will never be peace in the Middle East. Not because of religious, political, or cultural differences. Not because inane leaders and insane policies. Not because or blood feuds and tribal madness. There will never be peace in the Middle East because the parents of the Middle East continue to teach their children to hate, to kill, and to die.

Armies can and do stop fighting: one wins, another loses, or both are exhausted of blood and treasure. Enemies can learn to cooperate. People we support today turn on us tomorrow, while those who shot at us yesterday collaborate with us today. So the faces of friend and foe change, but the fact of friends and foes does not.

The reason for this is simple: we teach our children to fear, to hate, to kill, and to die for our ideas and ideals. There is no more chilling example of this than the Palestinian television show featuring the late Farfur, the human–sized Mickey Mouse look alike that preached hatred of Israelis and Jews to Palestinian toddlers.

When the show made the headlines, the outcry against it forced its creators to make changes. They could have written a story in which Farfur undergoes a spiritual conversion, discovering that Allah loves all life and all people, and urging Palestinian kids to reach out to Israeli kids in a spirit of friendship and compassion. What they chose to do instead is end the series by having Farfur brutally beaten and stabbed to death by an Israeli agent right before the eyes of the show’s horrified child star and the thousands of kids watching at home. These kids may not remember the civil war in Gaza or Iraq, but they will never forget the murder of Farfur.

Blaming Jews for the murder of one’s hero is an ancient tactic with an excellent track record for fomenting hate and violence. Christianity wouldn’t be what it is today if its early propagandists hadn’t shifted blame for Jesus’ death from the Romans to the Jews. Passion plays, the early forerunner of Farfur, left their audiences calling for Jewish blood, and often stopping by Jewish homes to shed a pint or two.

Myth is mightier than reality, and the fear and hatred poisoning the hearts of Farfur’s creators has now done the same to Farfur’s viewers; which was, of course, the goal all along.

As long as there are Farfurs, and his creators are already planning a new character to take up the mouse’s mantle of hate for Jews and Israelis, and by extension Americans and Europeans, there will only be more bombings, more kidnappings, more murders, more madness.

The solution? I am not sure there is one, but sunlight helps. We must continue to shine the light of reason on the madness of Farfur and his ilk. We must make it clear that hatred is learned, and do what we can to stop those who teach it.

Bravo For An Honest Pope

I love a blunt pope, so when Pope Benedict announced that Catholicism was the one true faith, that other Christianities are lacking, and that nonChristians are “gravely deficient” in the category of salvation, I applaud him.

I am tired of interfaith disingenuousness. Only one who is deliberately blind to the actual teachings of any religion thinks that every religion says the same thing, or that they all teach a universal salvation.

Jews, for example, love to quote the Talmud, “One who saves a single life saves an entire world” to show Judaism’s moral superiority. The actual text, however, says this, “One who saves a single life among Israel is as one who has saved an entire world.” The rabbis concern was the saving of Jewish life in particular not human life in general.

What all religions have in common is this: each (with the exception of certain schools of Hinduism) promotes itself and its ruling elites as the one true faith.

Again, to stick with my own faith, Judaism admits to only one revelation from God: the Torah, and the Jews got it. True the so–called Old Testament is part of the Christian Bible as well, but the rabbis taught that God’s revelation includes not only the Written Bible found in the Oral Law (Mishna/Talmud) as well, and this is uniquely the possession of the Jews. Salvation, as even such a Jew as Paul of Tarsus admits, is from the Jews. True, good people of any stripe go to heaven in the Jewish worldview, but the prime real estate is limited to the Chosen Few.

My point is simple: the Pope didn’t say anything that other religions don’t also say. The only difference is that he said it in public. Bravo!

Now that the truth is out about Catholicism I invite the leaders of other faiths to come clean as well. Then people can choose which is the true faith among the contenders. Or, and this would be my hope, they would begin to see that all religion is invention and, while graciously allowing the Pope his private delusion, move beyond religion altogether. Then, who knows, maybe some of us will stumble upon God.

Slow Learner

I am a slow learner, especially when what I to learn concerns myself. Several years ago—closer to seven years ago— Sister Jose Hobday, a Native American Medicine Woman and Catholic nun, formally, if spontaneously, dubbed me a Holy Rascal. A few years later a Native American Medicine Man gave me the title Coyote Rebbe. What both of these wonderful and wise teachers were trying to tell me was that I am at heart a shaman and a trickster.

I have heard this before. Usually the frame is, “Your humor is so disarming, yet if I listen closely to what you said that made me laugh I realize that you just pulled the rug of faith out from under me.” You can get away with a lot if you make people laugh while you are doing it.

But there is more to being a Coyote Rebbe than being funny. You also have to know how to create ritual and sacred space and time, and help people enter into it. It is a rare skill, and one that too many people claim to master. Most ritual is tedious, self–conscious, and narcissistic: feeding the ego rather than slaying it. Good ritual is good theater. Great ritual is great fun.

Play lies at the heart of what I do; sacred play, holy play, but play nonetheless. This is what my Native American teachers were trying to tell me, and this is what finally sank in this week while I was teaching in Chartres, France.

It was a week of heady learning, that is learning that took place almost always in the head. I love intellectual talk, but I don’t take it all that seriously. What I do take seriously is chant, song, silence, storytelling, and imaginative readings of sacred text. These are the core of what I do, and doing them in Chartres was a powerful experience.

As the week unfolded I realized more and more strongly that my gift is not that of a scholar or deep thinker. My gift is that of a deep player. I can, almost unconsciously, create a safe and sacred space in which people can drop the maps they follow and spend a few minutes actually walking the landscape.

I share this with you not to pat myself on the back, but to help me remember what I learned this week. It has been a long time coming.

I'm On Retreat Until the End of July

Talk

In the past Judaism was the center of my being and the focus of my becoming. I had little interest in her traditions and customs, in the distinctly tribal aspects of the game, but I did have a great passion for the philosophy, mysticism, and magic of it. Today things have changed. It is the tribal aspects of Judaism that speak to me.

I practice kashrut (kosher) and Shabbat (the Sabbath), albeit in my own way, and I continue to tell Jewish stories and read Jewish texts, especially the Bible and the rabbis strange literary reinvention of it, but wrestling with the arcane notions of Jewish philosophy and mysticism, and making them fit what I know to be true, is tiresome to me. Philosophy and mysticism seem more and more to be obfuscations of reality, like covering a mirror with a painting of yourself rather than seeing yourself reflected as you really are.

I still get calls from people eager to talk about Kabbalah, Jewish mysticism. And I can warm to the subject, but it is just a thing to talk about. Kabbalah is another linguistic pointer aiming at that to which you cannot point. You cannot point to God or Truth or Reality for you are God, Truth, and Reality. At best you can point to yourself but that is just silly. You are yourself, why point to it?

Yet I still enjoy talking and spinning lovely if not elegant systems of what Reality might be if Reality weren’t what it already is. It is a game I like playing the way I like playing chess, Go, and Scrabble. But, as with these games, its meaning is intrinsic. It matters only in the context of itself. This is not a criticism, just an observation.

More and more I return to Martin Buber’s dialogical Hebrew Humanism and Baruch Spinoza’s Third Way of Knowing (satori) as the heart of my Judaism. If I have intellectual Jewish roots, it is with these sages and their spiritual anarchy rather than Rabbi Akiva or Moses Maimonides and their halachic (legal) concerns.

It is ironic that just as I seem to be getting more and more invitations to talk the topics I am asked to address are no longer things that I really want to talk about. In fact I only want to talk about one thing: you— who you are, where you come from, where you are going, and why. And since you are God talking about you is talking about God. And since God is Reality talking about you and God is talking about Reality. What can be anything more compelling than that?

I am a Taoist

At heart I am a Taoist. I’ve known this since high school. Even as I tried to be Zen Buddhist I knew it was the Taoism behind it that really called to me. Of all the books I have written, and I have written too many, “The Wisdom of Solomon” is my favorite. It is my attempt to rewrite the Book of Ecclesiastes in Taoist terms as if King Solomon was a Hebrew Lao Tzu, which, I fantasize, he was.

There is madness to Taoism, especially the churchy and jade–eating mystical aspects of it, but the works of Lao Tzu and Chuang Tzu are among the most powerful revelations humanity has ever known. If I could take only one book with me to a desert island it would be “Surviving Alone on a Desert Island for Dummies,” but if I could take a second book it would be the Tao te Ching. If I could take a third it would be the Inner Chapters of Chuang Tzu.

What I admire about Taoism is its simplicity. Where some religions are simplistic, this one is simply elegant. Life is not complicated but it is complex. Taoism speaks to the complexity without falling into the trap of making things complicated. Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, and Buddhism love to complicate things: levels of consciousness, angels, demons, heavens, hells, saved, damned, chosen, rejected, miracles, etc. This is to say nothing of the rules. Religions love rules because it is the only way they can justify having rulers. You don’t need rabbis if you don’t follow rabbinic laws.

In the Gospel According to Matthew Jesus says, “My yoke is easy, and my burden is light” (Matthew 11:30) yet Christianity in all its thousands of forms is anything but easy and light. At least Jesus had the good sense to challenge the heavy burden of the Judaism of his day. And when you remember that the word “yoke” comes from “yoga” it is even clearer what Jesus is saying. The Way is not complicated. It is doing justly, loving mercy, and walking humbly with your God (Micah 6:8).

I am not calling for a new prophet to make Judaism easy and light. Jews seems to love things the way they are, hard and heavy. That way they have an excuse for not following it seriously. I am simply saying that true sages like Jesus and Lao Tzu just can’t take complicated systems of religion seriously. Neither can I.

I get up in the morning and I walk. Then I sit and breathe. Then I write. After a while I get tired and go out. I browse the bookstores, teach my classes, and do my best to minimize the damage I cause. Then I come home, yell with and sometimes at Lou Dobbs and Chris Matthews, read some more and go to sleep. Somewhere in there I talk with people I love, and eat, often more than I should. Nothing complicated about what I do, though it takes a great and divine complexity in order to do it.

Is what I do Jewish? Can it be labeled? Does it matter? Not to me.

FAQ

A Jew living in the heart of the Bible Belt gets asked some pretty profound questions. I used to try and answer them fully, but I realized that no one really cared. The question was for the questioner to proselytize me. So I have learned to respond briefly and quickly, and to do so in a manner that leaves the questioner without a come back short of the obvious— “F You!”

Here are some of my favorite questions coupled with some of my favorite answers. I admit that sometimes I keep the answer to myself. It all depends upon how many tattoos or Confederate flags my interlocutor is sporting.

Q: Since you don’t accept Jesus as your Lord and Savior, when he said he is the way, the truth, and the life, was he lying or just insane?
A: Why are these our only choices? I don’t think Jesus was lying or insane. I think he was speaking the truth, and that you have no idea what he really meant.

Q: Why did you Jews kill Jesus?
A: Any god that can be killed, should be killed.

Q: Why did you Jews kill Jesus?
A: Is Jesus dead? I thought he was the Son of God and alive in heaven waiting for the Rapture. When did you stop believing?

Q: Do you believe Mary was a virgin?
A: Of course. But that was before she married Joseph.

Q: Do you believe in Original Sin?
A: No, sin is imitative; there is nothing original about it.

Q: Do Jews have horns?
A: Yes, we call them shofars. They are made from antlers and we blow them to wake up to God’s call for justice and humility. That is what you meant, isn’t it?

Q: Don’t you worry about going to hell?
A: I do, actually, but try as I might I can’t bring myself to become a Muslim.

Q: Does it bother you that God doesn’t hear the prayers of Jews?
A: No. I’m proud that God trusts us to figure things out for ourselves.

Q: Do your believe the body has a soul?
A: No, I believer the soul has a body.

Q: Are you a wiseass?
A: No, my ass is no wiser than yours.

Q: You know you Jews are going to burn in Hell forever, don’t you?
A: Sure, but we love warn climates.

To Pray or to Read

I received and read with great anticipation the recent issue of The Reconstructionist, the house organ of the Jewish Reconstructionist movement with which I was affiliated for over twenty years. The issue’s theme, liturgy, is dear to me. I have written several prayerbooks and have had liturgical poems published in dozens of others.

The magazine was filled with interesting historical information, and I enjoyed reading it, but in the end I was disappointed. What I got out of it, and I am certain this is my fault and not what was intended, was this: liturgical language is so vague that we can read whatever we want into it, and hence need not go out of our way to change it.

I am all for metaphorical reading. I am all for twisting words so that they say things that the authors of those words not only didn’t mean to say, but could not even imagine saying. And yet I want something more. I don’t want to sit in synagogue and rewrite the liturgy in my head in order to feel at home. I want to read something that moves me without me having to move it first. I want something honest, clear, clean, and true.

On the other hand if Jesus (to take but one well known example) had taught us to pray thusly: “Our Father Who art a projection of our patriarchal mindset, hallowed by Thy Name. Your biases are my biases, Your prejudices are my prejudices, on earth as I pretend them to be in heaven…” I doubt people would have listened to him, despite (or rather because of) the honesty of his prayer.

I understand why rabbis want us to keep the old language. Saying what the ancients said maintains our connection to them. It is a tribal thing, and I am all for tribe. I am honored to belong to the Hebrew tribe, the Habiru, the boundary crossers. And I maintain my connection to my tribe through language, diet, myth, and legend. But when it comes to prayer I want something more. I want something that takes me out of my tribe, that allows me to stop the argument over meaning, and to see something new. I doubt words can do that. At least not for me.

I want a liturgy composed of few words, gentle rhythms, and deep silence. I want a liturgy that open me up to something greater than words. I want a liturgy that can be breathed rather than breathlessly raced through. God speaks to us in the small voice of stillness, and the chattering mind and its ever–gabbing tongue are the problem not the solution. A prayer book that runs into the hundreds of pages is a testament to a people seeking to drown out the Voice of God, not quiet the mind in order to hear it.

So I was disappointed. Perhaps I will have to publish a siddur of my own once again, and that is short, simple, and, I would hope, sweet. We’ll see.

Do All Religions Lead To God?

A church not far from my home advertises this Sunday’s sermon: “Do all religions lead to God?” I think it is safe to assume that the pastor’s sermon this Sunday will assure his flock that there is only one way to the Father and that is through the Son. Is he right?

Yes, he is. Christianity is a system of thought that leads to a clear end point: realizing the Christian god. If you define God as the Christian god then there is only one way to get to him, and that is through the proper brand of Christianity.

Of course the same logic applies to every other religion. Given the assumptions each religion makes the conclusions each draws happen (surprise, surprise) to support those very assumptions.

Judaism proves that the Jews are God’s Chosen. What else would it prove? Islam proves that the Koran is the only uncorrupted revelation from God. What would you expect it to say? Those who worship Krishna find that their faith proves the holiness of the Gita. Are you surprised by this?

Religions are brands, just like Camel, Coke, and Lexus. Each one argues that it is the best in its category. Can you imagine a church marquee announcing, “If Christ Can’t Help You, Give Krishna a Call.” Or how about a synagogue bulletin with the headline: “Not Feeling Chosen? Tried Feeling Saved.”

In the old days you could be executed for saying things like this. In some places you still can.

So, if I am right, my neighborhood pastor will tell his flock that Christianity is the only way to God. The answer is so obvious that I hope most of his parishioners stay home. They won’t though. Why? Because we love being told we are right, especially when the consequence for being wrong is eternal torment in the fires of Hell.

At the rest of my tomorrow being even hotter than today (is Hell a dry heat?) let me say quite simply that no religion leads to God. The only thing a religion leads you to is itself. Christianity leads you to Jesus, Islam leads you to Allah, Judaism leads you to Yahweh, Hinduism leads you to Krishna or Brahman, etc. God has nothing to do with any of this.

God is what is. And what is is right here and now. To be led to God implies that God isn’t already here. You can’t be led to God or away from God because God is all there is. It is like trying to find yourself. Who is doing the looking?

You can, however, be misled into thinking otherwise. You can be frightened into spending thousands of hours and thousands of dollars searching for That Which cannot be lost. And that religion does quite well.

Five Steps Toward Ending Religious Violence

An email arrived yesterday that asked a very simple question: “What can religions do to free themselves from violence?” I will try to keep my answer just as simple: Nothing.

There is nothing religion can do because religion is a concept, a series of propositions and practices that in and of itself does nothing. If we want to keep religion free from violence we have to address the question “What can people of faith do to keep themselves and therefore their religions free from violence?’ To this I would say five things.

First, people of faith must cultivate humility as the heart of faith. Religiously sanctioned violence arises when people are certain that they and only they have the truth. People of faith must learn to say, “This is what I believe to be so, but I admit that there is no way to prove that I am right.”

Second, people of faith must have the courage to critically investigate the ideas of faith. Critical studies of the Bible, Koran, Gita, etc. can, if done with an open heart as well as an open mind, deepen one’s appreciation for and understanding of the profound teachings found in these and other holy books. Literalism kills the spirit and fans the flames of war.

Third, people of faith must engage in contemplative self–inquiry, tracing the clamor of ego back to the silence of God, that field of pure consciousness in which all things rise and return. Every religion has such practices so there is no need to borrow for another faith or invent some new tool or technique. Nevertheless I would suggest the curious read Ramana Maharshi, Krishnamurti, Toni Packer, Nisargadatta Maharaj, and Gangagi to get a clear idea of what self–inquiry has to offer.

Fourth, people of faith must rid their sacred texts and teachings of xenophobia, misogyny, homophobia, God–sanctioned violence, and racisms of all kinds. Insist that we reinforce the prophetic ideals of universal justice and compassion rather than the parochial ideals of spiritual triumphalism.

Fifth, people of faith must enter into dialogue with one another. As the tag line to my One River Foundation affirms, we build community through conversation. It is vital that we hear each other’s voices, stories and experiences. If we focus on our personal practices and experiences rather than the fixed dogmas of our respective faith traditions we will find common ground on which to build a just and compassionate. society.

You may have other ideas to add to my list, and I would appreciate reading them, but this is a start. Though it is not one I expect many will take up any time soon.

God Is Alive... But We Are Dying

In 1965 Time Magazine published an issue whose cover story addressed the question, “Is God Dead?” Today, the cover would read, “Is God Deadly?””

God is alive and well. It is we who are dying by the thousands and tens of thousands in his name. Whether you are a Jew, a Christian, or a Muslim, liberal or conservative, the god of violence has his claws in you to one extent or another. You cannot read the Hebrew Bible, the New Testament, or the Koran without hearing his voice condoning acts that we would call evil if he did not endorse it.

“Ancient history,” cry the Jews about the genocide of Israel’s Bronze Age enemies. “Future retribution,” cry the Christians about the transformation of Jesus into a war god in the Book of Revelation. “Self-defense,” cry the Muslims about the Koran’s call for jihad and murder of the infidel. The truth is, however, no matter how liberal or moderate you claim to be, no matter how clever you are in spiritualizing the violence of your scripture, these texts are poisoning your soul, and sending us into what may well prove to be a century dominated by religious warfare.

Years ago I wrote an article for Tikkun Magazine in which I distinguished the Torah of Love from the Torah of Fear. The first I claimed represented true contact with the Divine, the second was an all too-human (and most often male) use of a violent god in the service of human domination and exploitation. The Torah of Love speaks of universal justice, compassion, and humility. It honors each person as the image and likeness of God, and promises a future of universal peace where swords become ploughshares, and no one is afraid. The Torah of Fear offers us a world of endless conflict, the Chosen killing the not chosen, and god killing the Chosen for not killing the not chosen effectively.

What is true of Torah is true of the New Testament and the Qur’an as well. They too pass off human depravity as divine sanctity. The world is at war because we still worship at the alter of this barbarous god of death. It is time to stop. Not next year, not next month, but now.

It is time for Jewish, Christian, and Muslim clergy to decry the madness of their respective scriptures, to affirm the human origin of sacred text, and to call on their co-religionists to reject the violence of their scripture and religions, and to seek the God of Love and the life of compassion and justice to which this God calls us.

The effort to free our texts, our faiths, and ourselves from the god of violence and violence of god will be slow and difficult. But there is no alternative.

Three Questions on Faith and Scholarship

The March/April 2007 issue of Biblical Archaeology Review asks four biblical scholars how their scholarship has impacted their faith. I found the article fascinating, and the questions intriguing. Here is my response to each.

What I know about the Bible?

First, the Bible is a human document, reflecting both timeless wisdom and time-bound bias. Second, the Bible speaks in metaphor and should be looked to for wisdom not scientific fact or unchanging sexual mores. Third, the Bible can be read to condone the greatest evil even as it can be read to uphold the greatest good. Hence the Bible is not to be separated from those who read and interpret it; it is a moving target, reflecting what the reader desires rather than what God commands.

How does what I know impact what I believe?

It doesn’t. I try to avoid belief as much as possible, rooting what I know in what I actually experience rather than in some abstract creed or system of belief.

God. There is no one vision of God in the Bible, and I do not take the Bible as theologically binding. My understanding of God is based not on my reading of the Bible, but on my experience of the Divine through contemplative practice. Rather than conforming my understanding to the Bible, my understanding shapes the way I read the Bible.

Chosen People. Scholarship tells me that the idea of chosenness is not unique to Jews. Almost every tribal society feels it is the beloved of one god or another. The fact that the Bible tells me the Jews are God’s Chosen is irrelevant; I don’t believe in a God who choses in this way.

Promised Land. Clearly the Bible claims that there is a Promised Land and it belongs to the Israelites. This is no more surprising that the Book of Mormon supporting the claims of the Mormon faith. What else would it do? I am not convinced by the Bible, and in fact do not believe in a God who values one piece of property over the rest.

So does scholarship influence my faith?

Yes, it frees me of faith altogether. I prefer to investigate What Is rather than what the Bible says there is. I do this through a variety of contemplative practices, and in the end I find the Bible all the more rich once I am free from having to take the Word at its word.

Scopes Redux

Did God create Republicans or are they descended from apes? This turns out to be a major question in the 2008 Presidential race. Why? Because when you start televising the race so early you have to find lots of nonsense with which to fill airtime.

Presidential hopefuls Sam Brownback, Mike Huckabee, and Tom Tancredo have each come out against evolution. They are not alone. According to a new USA TODAY/Gallup Poll, two-thirds of Americans believe that the world was created by God within the past 10,000 years. This is nonsense. I have no problem with God as creator, but everything we know about geology, astrophysics, biology, plate techtonics, anthropology, and archeology (not to mention Jerrasic Park) tells us that the earth is older than 10,000 years. If two-thirds of Americans are rejecting science then we as a society are doomed.

But there is hope. The same poll reveals that 53% of Americans do believe in evolution. Of course if you bother to do the math you realize that about 25% of Americans are totally confused and believe in both evolution and the Bible, which wipes out any hope the 53% number may have generated.

If someone asks me if I believe in evolution I am not sure how to answer. I do believe that humans evolved from earlier species, but I do not believe that this was a random accident. I think that the universe by its very nature evolves; that is it is forever seeking higher and more inclusive levels of consciousness. It does so by experimenting with life possibilities.

Alan Watts used to say, “Imagine aliens flying by the planet earth some billions of years ago. They would look at it and keep going: a dead rock among millions of other dead rocks. On their return some billions of years later, however, they would marvel: We were wrong, it is a not a dead rock at all, it is peopling!”

The universe in general and the earth in particular always had the potential for life, and even self-conscious life, and, I believe, cosmically conscious life. It just takes time. And a lot more time than Creationists will allow.

Senator Brownback wrote in the New York Times that “man was not an accident,” and it this conviction that causes him to reject evolution. I agree that we are not an accident, we are an experiment, and that leads me to affirm rather than reject evolution.

Would I vote for a president who rejects evolution? If, like Senator Brownback, he or she was rejecting reason, science and the scientific method, I would have a hard time voting for this person. Someone who believes the Bible is literally true, that the earth is no older than 10,000 years, is someone who ignores reason, evidence, and science when they clearly challenge or contradict faith. I don’t want a president who simply invents a reality and seeks to impose it upon the rest of us. I didn’t vote for such a person in 2000 or 2004, and I won’t do so in 2008 either.

The Pope's Other Rabbi (His First One is Jesus)

I am reading Pope Benedict XVI’s new book, Jesus of Nazareth. In it the Pope responds to Rabbi Jacob Neusner’s 1993 book A Rabbi Talks with Jesus. The issue between them is Jesus’ insistence on making himself rather than Torah the center of attention. For example, Jesus says, “If you would be perfect, go, sell all you have and come, follow me (Matthew 19:21). Jesus doesn’t say, “Follow God,” or “Follow Torah,” but “Follow me.” No other rabbi does this. The aim of authentic teachers in Israel is to turn Israel toward God and Torah not themselves.

From the Christian point of view, of course, this is precisely what Jesus is doing. Jesus is God and the Word of God. Following Jesus is following God. Rabbi Neusner cannot make this Christian leap of faith, and so respectfully declines to follow Jesus at all.

While I find the distinction clear and compelling, it is also somewhat disingenuous. Rabbinic Judaism is a radical departure from Biblical Judaism and its focus on priestly caste and animal sacrificial resting on a rabbinic invention of the Two–Fold Torah.

The authority of the rabbis rests with their own assertion, found no where except in their own teachings, that 1) God gave two revelations to Israel, the Written Torah and the Oral Torah; 2) that the Oral Torah is necessary for a clear understanding of the Written Torah, and hence takes practical precident over it; and 3) that the Oral Torah was given not to the priests but to the elders, prophets, and sages who ultimately morph into the rabbis.

Is there any real difference between the audacity of the rabbis and the audacity of Jesus? Not in my book. What differentiates the two is the rabbis’ denial that they are in fact inventing a new Torah in their image while Jesus blatantly confesses, “I say unto you.”

What Pope Benedict XVI and Rabbi Neusner have in common is a shared belief that God actually reveals eternal truth to the Jews. Where they differ is over the question of who or what embodies that truth: Jesus or the Two–Fold Torah? If the former, then the latter is irrelevant. If the latter then the former is a deluded narcissist.

Allow me to offer a third voice: God doesn’t reveal eternal truth to anyone. Rather people discover bits and pieces of it over time and record what they find in books. There are truths in the Hebrew Bible, the Gospels, the Epistles of Paul, and the teachings of the rabbis that are timeless, compelling, and universal. There are also teachings in each that are silly, false, and evil. The job of the faithful is not to get behind one system or another, but to sift through them all to find the truths each contains.

Kama Jewtra

Scott Shay’s new book, Getting Our Grove Back: How to Energize American Jewry, deals with the impending Jewish demographic disaster and how to avoid it. Here is the problem: Jews don’t marry Jews, and even when they do they don’t have enough babies, and even the babies they do have aren’t raised to be serious Jews. Mr. Shay wants to fix that. Good idea.

The first thing I did when the book arrived is to look through the index to find the words “God,” “spirituality,” “religion,” “faith,” “Torah,” and “Judaism.” They were absent. Whatever groove we Jews are supposed to get back, it isn’t the God Groove.

Mr. Shay just wants the tribe to continue not the religion that makes the tribe worthy of continuation. I assume that he assumes that if there is a critical mass of Jews we will once again produce geniuses like Marx, Freud, and Einstein. Maybe so, but we will never again produce genius like Moses, Isaiah, Jesus, or the Baal Shem Tov. If it weren’t for the latter, I suspect the former would not have emerged at all. While I in no way wish to see a return to Orthodoxy, I don’t see the point of a purely secular Jewish people lacking the spiritual iconoclasm that is at the heart of authentic Judaism.

The second thing I did was to see how Mr. Shay’s proposes we counter the demographic doom facing us. I didn’t find anything really new in his suggestions. So let me offer a few suggestions that are new. Judaism aside, here are four things we can do to rebuild the tribe.

1. Rather than spend millions of dollars sending Jewish kids to Israel, let’s spend millions of dollars in stipends to Jewish couples willing to marry, have, and raise as serious Jews five children through the age of 21. Divorce is not an option until all their children are in college.

2. Let’s reinstitute the holiday of the 15th of Av (Jewish “Valentines Day”) making it a day on which parents of any age Jewish children arrange marriages to Jewish children of a similar age.

3. Let’s build state-of-the-art shtetls in major cities throughout the United States where signage is in Hebrew, Yiddish, Ladino, and English, and Judaism and Jewish culture in all their forms are the norm rather than the exception. Costs would be subsidized so that Jews of all economic brackets could get in.

4. Let’s add a sex-ed curriculum to confirmation class that focuses not only on health, but also on sexual acumen and a Song of Songs celebration of human sexuality. Let’s make Jews the best sex-partners in the world.

I’m sure you can come up with more ideas for turning the demographic tide. Share them with your local Jewish Federations. Who knows? They may actually listen to you.

Canon Camp

My favorite television channel is CSPAN’s Book TV. They recently aired a panel on religion featuring Christopher Hitchens, author of God is NOT Great, and several other authors of religious books. I am a Hitchens fan. He is bright, concise, cutting, and seemingly incapable of seeing any gray in his black and white world of reason versus religion. His fellow panelists were all gray fellows, ignoring the dark side of religion by insisting on a distinction between religion and those who claim to follow it.

For example, Biblical Judaism promotes genocide against the enemies of the ancient Israelites, but the idea and the god who sanctions it horrify most contemporary Jews. The same can be said of animal sacrifice. Despite official prayers to the contrary, the overwhelming majority of Jews would be appalled at the renewal of animal sacrifice and reject both it and the god who requires it.

Before you accuse me of picking on ancient and long dead practices only, take kashrut and Shabbat. Most Jews do not keep kosher nor do they observe the Sabbath, yet these have been the backbone of Judaism for millennia. What is Judaism: what Jews do or what the ancient texts and traditions say Jews should do?

When I teach Judaism at the university I don’t teach what Jews do, I teach what text and tradition say they should do. Otherwise when speaking of Jewish dietary practices I would focus on the Jewish love of Chinese food rather than the avoidance of pork.

The fact that most Jews ignore most of Judaism doesn’t change Judaism; it simply reveals that Judaism is irrelevant to the lives of most Jews. Hitchens, I suspect, would argue that most Jews are irrelevant to history and only those fanatical few who take it literally really matter. His fellow panelists would argue that it is the very irrelevancy of tradition that makes religion a source of hope in the world.

I would like to offer a third option: revolution. I’m tired of honoring an ancient scroll celebrating god-sanctioned genocide, homophobia, and misogyny. I propose the establishment of a Canon Camp where college educated Jews in their twenties learn to critically study the sacred canon of Judaism (biblical, rabbinic, mystical, and liturgical) with the express purpose of producing a revised canon for their generation in line with the best ethical, historical, social, scientific, and spiritual thinking of their time.

I am too old to do this myself. Far from reinventing Judaism, my generation has mostly opted for the time–honored tradition of whining over the demise of Judaism. But I would be honored to consult with any group of serious twenty and thirty-somethings who would dare to take this on.

In the meantime, I’ll just see what’s playing on Book TV.

Staying Put

What if there is nothing to do in order to awake up to the Truth? What if prayer, meditation, chanting, contemplation, and reading sacred texts were all a distraction? What if the entire religious enterprise was busywork designed to keep you from realizing God here and now?

I suspect this is the case. I could argue my point from experience. I have tried almost every religious discipline, and I have yet to wake up. But that kind of argument is weak. I know too many people who have used these techniques successfully to argue against the tools. I simply have to admit to my own incompetence.

Yet despite my own lack of success I still feel that spiritual discipline is a kind of busywork. Is enlightenment getting something you don’t have, or is it discovering something you already have? If the former then you should expect to work hard to get it. If the latter, then working hard is a waste of time and energy.

I think that Truth is not something you learn but something you recall. It is like forgetting the name of a friend. The more you try to find the name in your memory bank the more it seems to hide. But when you give up and move on to something else, the name pops into your mind seemingly of its own accord. Did you find the name, or did the name find you?

It is the same with God. You don’t find God; God finds you. And God does so only when you stop looking. Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel’s book title God In Search of Man is exactly right: God is looking for you, but as long as you are running around looking for God you are never found. It is like a little child lost in a department store. As long as both parent and child are running around looking for one another neither will be found. But if the child is taught to stay put, eventually the parent will find her.

So perhaps the key to religion is learning to stay put. Stay put in your story. Stay put in your confusion. Stay put in your suffering. Stay put in your situation. Don’t try to change anything or be anyone other than you are right now. Just stay put. Of course you can’t make a discipline of staying put for that would be doing something other than staying put, so you have to drop the idea of doing and non–doing altogether, and then drop the idea of dropping the idea.

When you are simply OK or not OK with being OK or not OK with what is and what isn’t, then you are staying put, and then God can find you. And what happens when God finds you? It depends.

I was lost once in a store and when my mom found me she was so happy that she hugged and kissed me. Another time in another store she was so pissed I’d gone missing that she whacked my butt when she found me. So having God find you may or may not a good thing, and you will have to stay put with that as well.

What Is Interfaith?

What is an interfaith service? I use the term all the time, and so do so many of those with whom I study and work. But what do we actually mean by it?

I recently participated in an interfaith service. What made it interfaith was that there were readings from a variety of faiths incorporated into the liturgy of the service. It was, as are most interfaith services I have attended, a “service as anthology” experience. The readings were all very lovely. The choices focused on the least unique aspects of any given faith allowing a casual listener to conclude that all religions basically say the same thing. You would never know from this kind of service that most religions are mutually exclusive and easily given to contest and combat.

Interfaith services of this kind feel good, but are for the most part vapid. It seems to me that the whole point of having different religions is the hope that your religion is right and the others are wrong. There is no point to heaven if no one goes to hell. There is no point to salvation if no one is damned. There is no point to being chosen if everyone is chosen.

If the point of interfaith services is to make us feel good about not all belonging to the same religion, and to give us hope that religions can get along then they fulfill their mission. But I don’t need an interfaith service to feel good about religious diversity, and I am far too jaded about religion to trust the instincts of people of faith to love one another.

I fantasize about holding an anthology¬–type interfaith service where the chosen texts focus on each faith’s condemnation of other faiths, and the extermination or damnation of other peoples of faith. That would be no less legitimate than the more innocuous and standard style of worship, and lots more fun. No one gets excited about “Love your neighbor,” but “slaughter the infidels” might get some conversation going.

I could only offer this type of service once or twice, however, before it got really old, so what would I offer on a more regular basis? I would offer services that focus on Truth and draw from great sages, mystics, and scientists who speak to that Truth.

Of course, as the author of such a service, I would also be the one to decide what is Truth, and it wouldn’t take long before alternative services with alternative Truths would spring up in competition to mine. In time we would have to kill one another to determine whose Truth is really true, so perhaps my suggestion isn’t worth following after all. I’ll have to give this some more thought.

What Would You Die For?

My last blog got a bit of email regarding my assertion that I would not die for Judaism. Here are four selections worthy of further comment:

1. A life is not worth living without beliefs worth dying for. Honestly I cannot think of a single belief for which I would die. Given the right circumstances I would die to save the lives of family and friends and even strangers, but I wouldn’t die to save an idea. Why? First of all because I am not sure my ideas are right. Why die to uphold something that is false? Second, if all the people who thought some great idea were killed for thinking it, there would be no one left to think it and the idea would die. Ideas are only good if they are embodied in living bodies.

2. You insult millions of Jewish martyrs by not willing to be martyred yourself. Why is that true? How does my choosing differently than others insult them or their choice? And if choice isn’t allowed then martyrdom is meaningless.

3. When push comes to shove, you really aren’t a Jew if you aren’t willing to die for being a Jew. Given this logic there is no way to know if you are really a Jew unless someone threatens to kill you for claiming you are a Jew. Honestly, though, if someone put a gun to my head and threatened to pull the trigger if I claimed to be a Jew I would most likely claim to be a Rotarian.

4. You insult every brave American soldier in Iraq who was willing to die for their country. This argument, while totally tangential to my own, just bugged me. First of all the country wasn’t in danger from Iraq. Second, soldiers aren’t willing to die for their country, they are willing to kill for it. Dying is a risk not a reward. If dying were the point they could stay home and shoot themselves. On the contrary, soldiers do everything they can not to die for their country.

But I can top all of these critics by saying that while I may not being willing to die or kill for Judaism, I am willing to suffer eternal damnation on its behalf. After all there are many more millions of people who believe I am going to hell for being a Jew than there are people wishing to send me there sooner rather than later. Of course that fact that I don’t believe in hell may make my choice a bit easier, but still this has to count for something.

Why Do People of Faith Fight?

Why do religious people fight? It seems to me that the root cause of inter–religious warfare is to determine whose religion is the right religion. Think about this for a moment. How do you know that your religion is true and another’s false? You can’t find any objective criteria for proving truth claims made by any religion. There is no way to know if Immaculate Conception, Virgin Birth, and Original Sin are true or not. You either believe in these things or you don’t. Believing doesn’t make it true any more than not believing makes it false. So how do you know what you believe is worth believing?

There are two classic answers to this question: Either you get lots of people to believe as you do, or you kill even more people for not believing as you do. Ideally you do both.

What intrigues me is how you get people to kill for their religion. I have tried to get people stirred up enough about what I hold to be true that they might consider a march on Rome or Jerusalem or Mecca, but nobody takes me seriously. I can’t even get one of my stronger students to challenge the Dalai Lama to an arm wrestling contest. What am I doing wrong?

Is it that I believe less strongly than others? No, I am adamant about what I believe. I am certain I am right, or at least that others are wrong. Seriously, I have no doubt that Jesus is not the Son of God, Mohammed is not the Seal of the Prophets, and Torah is not the Word of God or the Jews God’s Chosen People. While I find great wisdom in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, I deny the basic truth claims of each, and would not die or kill for any of them. But then I wouldn’t die or kill for my ideas either.

Maybe that is the problem. I’m not willing to kill for what I believe, and have no desire to see anyone die for what I believe. Unless you are willing to kill and die for your beliefs no one takes you seriously.

While I can’t bring myself to do either of these things, perhaps I can get behind the idea that people who disagree with me will spend eternity in hell. I will work on this for a while and see if I can stomach condemning people to endless torture after they die. I suspect I will fail. Maybe I’m just not mean enough to be a real person of faith.

God's Babble

I find that lots of what passes for reasoned discourse in religious settings sounds like babble to me, but when it comes to actually babbling in church I’m all for it. Holy babble or speaking in tongues is real. It is a legitimate method for shifting from mochin d’katnut (narrow mind) to mochin d’gadlut (spacious mind).

When it comes to judging religious practices my concern is simple: does it work? Does it help me achieve a higher and more compassionate and just level of consciousness? Speaking in tongues does.

This past Sunday, millions of Christians celebrated Pentecost, the Christian parallel to the Jewish Shavuot. Where Shavuot recalls the giving of Torah to the Jews at Mount Sinai, Pentecost recalls the Holy Spirit inspiring the disciples of Jesus to speak in other tongues. For most Jews and Christians these are memorial days, that is they mark a time in history. But for some in both communities these are times of divine revelation.

Jews stay awake all night on the evening of Shavuot to purify and prepare themselves to receive Torah. Christians in many churches will surrender to the Spirit and speak as the Apostles spoke in languages they do not understand. For both groups the experience not only affirms the truth of their tradition’s history, but also takes that history out of the past and into the present. Revelation is not once and for all, but on–going.

I have spoken in tongues, and it is a wondrous experience. It sounds like babble to the outer ear, but the inner ear knows otherwise. Simply giving myself over to the out–pouring of sound, I felt God’s Presence surround and infuse me. I didn’t choose the “words” I spoke, and made no attempt to decipher them. The message of God’s presence was not carried by what I said, but by the very fact of how I said it.

Dr. Andrew Newberg in his fascinating study of the biology of religious experience, Why We Believe What We Believe, uses neuroimaging to show that speaking in tongues decreases frontal lobe activity, and leaves the speaker with a sense of being spoken through rather than speaking. This is precisely what I felt.

Speaking in tongues is not the same as meditation. When speaking in tongues I never lost a sense of separate self as I have in meditation, but I did loose a sense of willful self: not I, but God in me best describes the experience.

Most Christian churches do not accept speaking in tongues, but millions of Christians will continue to do so. We are hardwired for the experience of spacious mind. We long for it. We need it no less than we need food, water, and shelter. Try it yourself and see.

The Pope, The People, and Purification

The pope traveled to Brazil recently where he called the brutal evangelizing of millions of indigenous people purification, and said that the indigenous Indians had been “silently longing” for Christianity.

Really? Were they silently longing for the destruction of their culture, their autonomy, and the deaths of millions of their people? And what evil was purified by the forced conversion of millions of native peoples to Catholocism? Was giving up human sacrifice of some Indians worth the destruction of almost all Indians? Was loosing self–determination a good thing? Does humanity somehow benefit when the cultural diversity of our species is depleted? Maybe it does. Wouldn’t the world be a better place if we were all purified of our cultural differences and became Catholic? No more pesky Jews or angry Muslims. No more Hindus, Buddhists, or Zoroastrians. No more atheists and freethinkers. The purified world of the pope is simple, unified, and, not surprisingly, run by him.

Of course not everyone was happy with the Pontiff’s view of Catholic hegemony, and the pope did admit that “the memories of a glorious past cannot ignore the shadows that accompanied the process of evangelization of the Latin American continent.” Leaving aside the fact that Latin America is not actually a continent, and only the Catholic conquerors would call the invasion of the New World “glorious,” can we really sidestep the horrors of European colonization by claiming it was a shadow phenomenon?

Jesus urged his followers to carry the Good News to the world. His message was that God loves you, not that God wants your gold. To make sure people understood that his emissaries were not invaders Jesus instructed them to carry nothing with them on their journey: “no staff, nor bag, nor bread, nor money” (Luke 9:3). The pope’s glorious memory has nothing to do with Jesus, and the Catholic armies that invaded the Americas came not to preach but to pillage. They didn’t heal or purify, they raped and robbed. They came with swords and left with the wealth and the freedom of an entire civilization in their sacks. This may have been glorious for the conquerors, but not for the peoples they conquered.

Of course historians can point to similar genocidal invasions by Israelite, Muslim, and Protestant armies as well, but at least when the Queen visited Virginia recently she didn't call the genocide of Native Americans purification. Gotta love those Germans.

Religion At Its Best

I am not anti-religion; I only want to look into the nature of religion. People mistake an honest examination of religion with being anti-religion, which in and of itself tells you something very important about the nature of religion: it fears honest scrutiny. Why? Because at its heart religion is nothing but a series of propositions enforced by fear.

Think about this for a moment. Why do some people suffer from Original Sin and others do not? Is it ignorance on the part of the billion plus people who do not suffer, or conditioning on the part of the billion plus that do? Why do Jews and Muslims think God is displeased if they eat pork? Is this because they know God’s dietary predilections, or simply the product of thousands of years of enforced conditioning? Why do Tibetan Buddhists think there is merit in spinning a prayer wheel? Why do Hindus offer flowers and fruit to Ganesha, the elephant-headed God? Yes, devotees can invent sophisticated reasons to make these actions meaningful, but these are mere glosses. With or without a good reason you had best do the action because if you don’t something bad is going to happen to you or those you love. Religion is at root magic, but it could be so much more.

Religion could be a laboratory for investigating meaning, and realms of consciousness that materialist science refuses to consider. It could be a school for timeless ethical teachings freed from time–bound bias and bigotry. It could be a community where people support one another in times of pain and celebrate with one another in times of joy without blaming or theological clucking of tongues.

Religion is all this to some extent, but it is hampered by fear and conditioning. I don’t want to do away with religion I want to do away with fear and conditioning. I don’t want to do away with God I want to do away with theology. I don’t want to do away with clergy I want to do away with exploitation of the laity. And when there is no fear, no conditioning, no theology, and no exploitation there is a chance that you and I might peer directly into Reality as it is—and that is religion at its best.

Bushspeak

I can’t shake the notion that President Bush has hired George Orwell as his speechwriter. In a news conference held in the White House Rose Garden (I guess some people are promised a rose garden after all), the President commented that we can expect the coming months in Iraq to be bloody ones. American and Iraqi casualties will rise. And that, surprisingly, is the good news.

I always thought that winning a war meant our casualties go down while the bad guys casualties go up. But in the lexicon of Bushspeak the more attacks on Americans the more our strategy must be succeeding. By that logic we won’t have won until we have run out of soldiers to send into the field. Is anyone buying this nonsense?

The point of the surge as I understood it was to overwhelm the enemy and clamp down on violence, not to give the enemy more of us to shoot at and bomb with no lessening of violence. While I was not in favor of the strategy, I did recognize it as a legitimate idea.

As far as I can tell it isn’t working out the way I thought it was supposed to. Violence is up. American casualties are up. Al¬–Qaeda is thriving. How is this winning?

Bush is positioning himself for a no–lose response to General Petraeus’ report on the war this coming September. If Petraeus reports that violence is down, the insurgency is weakening, the civil war is lessening, and peace is coming then the President can declare victory for his strategy. If Petraeus reports that violence is up, the insurgency is strengthening, the civil war is intensifying, and peace is years away then the President can again declare victory for his strategy by claiming we are pocking at the eye of the enemy so, of course, they are stirred up. The President can’t lose. But the American people can.

This is why I suspect George Orwell is writing George Bush’s speeches and talking points. If you want to know what is going on in America today don’t rely on CNN, Fox News, or even NPR. Pick up a copy of Nineteen Eighty–Four.

Voting Christian

Forget about voting Democrat or Republican in 2008, I’m voting Christian. This way I know I am voting for a person of character, and, even better, a white male person of character. The Democrats are pitting gender and ethnic groups against one another. There is Senator Clinton, a white woman, and New Mexico Governor Richardson, a brown Hispanic, and Senator Obama, a Hawaiian. If I want to see a woman as president I have to vote against other groups I would like to see as president as well, like Hispanics and Hawaiians. So, rather than choose along gender, race, and ethnic lines, I will choose along religious lines. And since there are only Christians running, I will vote for the most Christian among them.

I thought it would be easier to vote for the Best Christian than to vote for the person with the best ideas. I find it impossible to discern where any candidate stands regarding war, poverty, immigration, energy, terrorism, homeland security, and the like. No one seems to gives a straight answer on any of these issues, but they are all pretty sure they are Christians. As it turns out, however, this isn’t so clear either.

Simply saying you are a Christian isn’t good enough. Mitt Romney says he is a Christian, but Rev Al Sharpton put the kibosh on that. Fred Thompson says he is a Christian, but uber-Christian James Dobson says no. Hillary Clinton claims to be a Christian, but most Evangelicals I know are not even sure she’s American. John McCain is trying to prove his Christian bona fides by showing how pro-fetus he has been in the Senate, but it doesn’t seem to be working among most Christians.

Russell Moore, dean of the School of Theology at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, says a true Christian is one who puts Jesus first and turns away from his or her own desires. But it is hard to believe that anyone who desires to be President of the United States has put away his or her own work in favor of Jesus, so maybe there are no real Christians running for office.

If this is true I am back where I started: do I vote for a woman or a Hawaiian? I just don’t know.

"Shumail the Shemale" or "Penis Politics in Pakistan"

This is going to get a bit complicated, so let’s take it slow.

Point One. Shumail Raj, a 31¬–year–old Pakistani male, used to be a female. Sixteen years ago she underwent sex reassignment surgery, and has signed a sworn statement to the Pakistani court that she is, and has been for most of her life, a he. A court-appointed panel of Pakistani doctors, however, denied his claim and said that he is a she.

Point Two. Shahzina Tariq, 26, has been a woman all her life. While her gender consistency may be laudable in Pakistan, just being a woman comes with its share of grief. In Shahzina’s case the trouble comes in the form of one of her uncles who wants to sell her off to pay for his gambling debts.

Point Three. To save Shahzina from a life of sexual slavery, Shumail and Shahzina got married a year ago. It seems that while an uncle can sell of his brother’s daughter, he cannot sell another man’s wife. And there’s the rub: is Shahzina another man’s wife, or is she another women’s partner?

Point Four. Given that the Pakistani court has ruled that Shumail, penis or no penis, is in fact a woman, and recognizing that same sex marriage is contrary to Islam, and seeing as how Shahzina’s father wants her marriage to Shumail annulled because it does violate said religion, it seems that Shahzina is once again for sale.

What is interesting of course is the fact that no one, not even Shahzina’s dad, is upset about selling his daughter into prostitution. Interesting but not surprising. When women are seen as chattel this is what happens.

So what shall we make of this? Is it simply an example of Islam’s madness? I don’t think so. The problem is not Islam but the medieval tribal mores that pass as Islam. While the case is extreme, the idea behind it, women as property, is not alien to strains of Orthodox Judaism or Fundamentalist Christianity. The problem Islam faces is trying to function under scrutiny of modern media. If there were reporters sharing the dirty sexual secrets of biblical Jews and medieval Christians we would find the same insanity.

It takes religion a long time to outgrow its tribalist mindset. Liberal and secular Judaisms and Christianities are very late on the scene, and Islam has yet to undergo such a revolution.

So we have two choices. We can invoke the Prime Directive and keep our liberal democratic noses out of another civilization’s business, or we can uphold a universal ethic and shine the harsh light of truth on all tribal insanities wherever they appear. I hope we opt for the latter. And in the meantime somebody please find a way to help Shumail and Shahzina move to Boston.

Priests or Prophets

I gave a speech this weekend that stirred quite a bit of controversy. It wasn’t that I said something new, only that I said it to people who were nowhere near ready to hear it. I spoke about the need to free religion to be what it is meant to be, a finger pointing to Reality rather than what it has become, a self-referential system of doctrines and creeds pointing only to itself.

So many people told me I had insulted them and their religion, that I began to wonder why something I say could have so much power. After all it isn’t that they believed what I was saying. When I suggested that taking the Bible literally made it impossible for us to hear the Word of God speaking in myth and metaphor, no one who was angry with me agreed with me. So why get upset?

If I were attending a speech where the speaker spoke passionately about how 2 + 2 equals 5, I wouldn’t get upset. I would simply determine that the speaker was wrong and ignore him. I wouldn’t feel that my beliefs were challenged or that my faith in mathematics was threatened. So why, if I suggest that the Virgin Birth is not biology but mythology, speaking not to a weird genetic miracle but to the fact that the birth of Jesus is the birth of the extraordinary, do I find the devout so incensed?

When I attend a talk, as I did recently, where the speaker insisted that every time God is mentioned in the Hebrew Bible Jesus is intended, I don’t believe him, but I don’t get angry with him either. My faith is too strong to be shaken by someone else’s belief. On the contrary, I am so certain of what is so, that I relish the opportunity to hear what others hold to be just as true. It seems to me that the proper response of people of faith to the insights of other faiths should be curiosity, not vitriol.

Yet after my talk, no one said to me, “I found what you said to be totally false, but it was interesting to entertain the idea for a moment,” No one said to me, “You know I hold a totally different view of things, and your comments helped me realize how strong my faith truly is.” All I got was, “How dare you!” and “You have insulted by faith and my God.” Honestly, any god that can be insulted isn't really God.

My suspicion is this: people who are upset by my humor and my message are people who are not very certain of what they believe, or if what they believe is true. They want a speaker to either affirm their beliefs or say something so innocuous as to leave their beliefs untouched and their minds untroubled.

I want to trouble your mind. I want to confound your theology. I want to point out that the Emperor has not clothes, and that God has no religion. And I want to hear speakers and read authors who will do the same for me. Religion shouldn’t be comforting but discomforting. This is the difference between priests and prophets. The priest offers comfort, the prophet only discomfort. I am finished with priests. I seek only prophets.

Walking Israel

[I wrote this last November while sitting on the steps overlooking the Western Wall of the Jerusalem Temple.]

I have just prayed at the Wall, slipping a number of tiny prayer sheets into the cracks in hopes that…

Wait a minute; this can’t be right. I don’t believe God is a being separate from the universe who hears prayers and grants or ignores our heartfelt requests. I believe God is the Source and Substance of all reality who manifests as and transcends creation.

I believe the power of prayer is its capacity to shift my consciousness from Mochin d’Katnut, narrow mind, to Mochin d’Gadlut, spacious mind; from selfishness to selflessness; from the part and partial to the whole and holy. I pray not to be heard, but to hear; not to be present to God but to be revealed as God, the One Who is all things.

I don’t believe in chosen peoples and promised lands. I don’t think God plays favorites or deals in real estate. But I do believe—no, I know, I experience— that there are certain places on this planet that hold deep promise for personal and planetary transformation and renewal. Israel is one of these places.

When I walk the streets of Jerusalem and allow the city to work her magic, shifting me from narrow mind to spacious mind, I walk with Solomon and feel the call to wisdom; I walk with Jesus and feel the call to love; I walk with Mohammed and feel the call to surrender.

When I walk the Baha’i Gardens of Haifa, I walk with Baha’u’llah, the 19th century Persian prophet, and hear the call to universal justice. When I walk the winding streets of Safed, I walk with Cordovero (1522-1570) and hear the call of the Ineffable.

For me, Israel is all about walking with God and God’s prophets. I am less concerned with the Israel of Ben Gurion and more with the Israel of Ben Abuyah (yes the first century heretic and iconoclast, there is nothing more Jewish than that). For me Israel is more about the Wall, the Dome of the Rock, the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, the Garden Tomb, and the Shrine of the Book than it is about politics, warfare, or the rapture.
The promise of modern Israel is the hope that it can live up to the promise of timeless Israel.

I believe that humanity is the early hours of a spiritual renaissance, and I come to Israel to hear the clock tick. I come here to be reminded of the new covenant promised by God in Jeremiah, a covenant written on our hearts revealing a God within calling us to godliness without.

I walk streets with diverse people some praying for the old times, others for the end times. I pray for the new times. So I walk and I listen and I hope that my next step will be my first step in God, with God, as God.

Religion Is Made Up

Religion is made up; all religion, not just other people’s religions.

Religion is made up. God didn’t choose the Jews, have a baby, or ask Mohammed to recite.

Religion is made up, but Reality is not. Yet religion trumps Reality in the hearts and minds of millions, maybe billions of people.

Religion is made up, but Truth is not. Yet religion blasphemes Truth with self-serving tales of power and exploitation.

Religion is made up. Once you know this it is hard to be religious. You just can’t justify all the rules and ruckus. I know because I keep trying. I keep telling myself religion matters. But it doesn’t.

You know what matters? Love matters. Compassion matters. Justice matters. Peace matters. Humility matters. Nature matters. Truth matters. Reality matters. You matter.

So what do I do when I know religion is made up? First I remember that all philosophy and literature is made up as well. Second I remember that just because Plato invented the dialogues of Socrates, and Shakespeare invented Hamlet and Lear doesn’t mean that Socrates, Hamlet, and Lear don’t speak Truth. Fiction may preclude fact, but in no way does it obscure Truth.

Religion is made up. At its best its stories have the potential to capture our imagination and feed our souls by revealing the best to which we humans can aspire. At its worst it can strip us of our humanity and invite us to make real the darkest fantasies we can conjure. Torah, Gospels, Qur’an, and Gita contain insights of such power, grandeur and wisdom that we say them come from God. They also contain the obscenely violent, misogynist, and xenophobic rants of fearful frightened men climbing to power over the dead bodies of their enemies.

We can’t free religion of either genius or madness, but we can free ourselves from mistaking them both for the Word of God. How? By realizing that religion is made up. No one goes to war over the meaning of Hamlet. No one kills another to decide whom Shakespeare loved best.

If we admit that religion is made up we can enjoy it without being abused by it. If we admit that religion is made up we can honor myth without having to flatten it into fact. If we admit that religion is made up we can shake off the fear and violence it sanctions and address its one timeless message: do justly, love mercy, and walk humbly.