Not only did I kill Jesus, and continue to mix the blood of Christian babies with my Passover matzah, now it seems that I am responsible for the collapse of the global economy.
A recent survey of Americans published in Boston Review finds that 65% of Americans think my fellow Jews and I are responsible for the Great Recession.
I know what you’re thinking (besides the thought, “He has no idea what I’m thinking,” see I told you I knew what you were thinking)—most of these people are Republicans. But no, only 18.4% of Republicans think this way, while 32% of Democrats do.
Democrats!?! Are you kidding me? But I voted for Obama! I cried at the Kennedy memorial (though mostly because the coverage pre-empted my regular programming). I am a liberal for God’s sake. Why blame me? I lost money, too. Can it really be I have to hang with Sarah Palin to keep from being hung by my fellow Democrats? Damn!
The study goes on and on, and I just couldn’t read it all. It was too scary. Bottom line: Americans are growing more and more angry, and more and more eager to blame someone for their problems, and since it is no longer kosher for anyone other than Glenn Beck to blame our problems on black people, guess whose top on America’s hit list? Yep, the Jews.
With the Catholic Church deciding it is once again time to convert the Jews (see my last blog entry), and the majority of Americans blaming Jews for the state of the economy, is it time for us Jews to consider moving on? It could be.
I’m not saying we need to pack up and run just yet, but I would definitely keep my eyes and ears open. We used to say “America is different,” and it may be. But Americans aren’t. People love scapegoats, and we Jews are no exception. In fact we invented the idea of the scapegoat. Look it up in the Bible. The only difference is we used real goats, not people.
But where would we run? Europe? Nope. Thirty-one per cent of Europeans blame the Jews for the economy, so forget Europe. Israel? Most Israelis blame Jews for their economy, but that is because they are mostly Jews, so maybe if we have to run somewhere that is where we will run. But I hate the idea of putting all Jews in one basket (as opposed to putting one Jew in one basket which is the story of Passover). Makes us too easy to blot out. So I’m thinking China. (I know last Friday I suggested we consider Amsterdam, and I am not abandoning the Netherlands, just hedging my bets.)
Why China? First, because I love the Tao te Ching. Second, because Jewish people love Chinese food. Third, because their economy isn’t as bad off as ours, so they aren’t blaming the Jews. Yet. If things go south I assume the Chinese people will suddenly discover that the ruling junta were all Jews in disguise. Scooby Dooby Jew!
Anyway, all I’m saying is that we have seen this before and it never turns out well for us. When will you know it is time to run? When it turns out that page 64,532 of the final healthcare reform bill has a paragraph that mandates the wearing of yellow Stars of David by all Jews. Then come the real death panels. Try to be packed by then.
Sunday, September 06, 2009
Friday, September 04, 2009
The Old/New Future of Catholic-Jewish Relations
In 1965 Vatican II began a long process toward Jewish–Catholic rapprochement that eventually produced the 2002 document on interfaith understanding called “Reflections on Covenant and Mission.” In this document the Church affirmed the Jewish mission in the world and the value of Judaism as a unique and authentic way to God.
Pretty radical stuff. Too radical it turns out, and the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops has just published a new statement clarifying certain ambiguities in the 2002 document.
The 2002 paper said, “both the Church and the Jewish people abide in covenant with God;” and that both Catholicism and Judaism “have missions before God to undertake in the world,” and that the Jewish mission “must not be curtailed [by Catholics] seeking the conversion of the Jewish people.”
That seems pretty unambiguous to me, but, then, I’m not Catholic. To help ambiguity prone Catholics understand the meaning of the 2002 statement, the American Bishops clarified it by saying that the only way Jews can fulfill their mission is by converting to Catholicism. And, just in case you found that clarification a bit murky, they charged every Catholic to convert every Jew “in every generation.”
Wow! I guess the 2002 document really was ambiguous, since it seemed to say just the opposite!
Then there was the equally ambiguous notion from 2002 that interfaith dialogue was for the “sharing of gifts, devoid of any intention whatsoever to invite the dialogue partner into baptism.” Clarifying that confusing statement, the Conference now tells us that it is the job of the Catholic dialogue partner to promote Catholicism and to invite her fellow partners in dialogue to follow Christ.
That really helps. I thought the earlier statement about being “devoid of any intention whatsoever” to convert the other person meant that Catholics were to be “devoid of any intention whatsoever” to convert the other person when in fact it meant that Catholics are obligated to convert the other person. I mean, talk about ambiguity!
How bad is this going to get? Before his death last year at 90 years of age, Cardinal Avery Dulles, a major American Catholic theologian, declared the Jews’ covenant with God “obsolete,” and let my people know that there is no salvation outside the Church. And earlier this year Pope Benedict XVI welcomed back into the priestly fold Richard Williamson the formerly excommunicated Holocaust denier. And last year he reinstated the Good Friday prayer calling for the conversion of all Jews. So it is safe to say that it isn’t safe anymore?
If this was 1492 and I lived in Catholic Spain under King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella, I would seriously think about moving to Amsterdam. But for now I’ll just avoid walking by a Catholic Church after Good Friday services. Still I think I’ll purchase a few open tickets to the Netherlands just in case. Spinoza, anyone?
Pretty radical stuff. Too radical it turns out, and the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops has just published a new statement clarifying certain ambiguities in the 2002 document.
The 2002 paper said, “both the Church and the Jewish people abide in covenant with God;” and that both Catholicism and Judaism “have missions before God to undertake in the world,” and that the Jewish mission “must not be curtailed [by Catholics] seeking the conversion of the Jewish people.”
That seems pretty unambiguous to me, but, then, I’m not Catholic. To help ambiguity prone Catholics understand the meaning of the 2002 statement, the American Bishops clarified it by saying that the only way Jews can fulfill their mission is by converting to Catholicism. And, just in case you found that clarification a bit murky, they charged every Catholic to convert every Jew “in every generation.”
Wow! I guess the 2002 document really was ambiguous, since it seemed to say just the opposite!
Then there was the equally ambiguous notion from 2002 that interfaith dialogue was for the “sharing of gifts, devoid of any intention whatsoever to invite the dialogue partner into baptism.” Clarifying that confusing statement, the Conference now tells us that it is the job of the Catholic dialogue partner to promote Catholicism and to invite her fellow partners in dialogue to follow Christ.
That really helps. I thought the earlier statement about being “devoid of any intention whatsoever” to convert the other person meant that Catholics were to be “devoid of any intention whatsoever” to convert the other person when in fact it meant that Catholics are obligated to convert the other person. I mean, talk about ambiguity!
How bad is this going to get? Before his death last year at 90 years of age, Cardinal Avery Dulles, a major American Catholic theologian, declared the Jews’ covenant with God “obsolete,” and let my people know that there is no salvation outside the Church. And earlier this year Pope Benedict XVI welcomed back into the priestly fold Richard Williamson the formerly excommunicated Holocaust denier. And last year he reinstated the Good Friday prayer calling for the conversion of all Jews. So it is safe to say that it isn’t safe anymore?
If this was 1492 and I lived in Catholic Spain under King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella, I would seriously think about moving to Amsterdam. But for now I’ll just avoid walking by a Catholic Church after Good Friday services. Still I think I’ll purchase a few open tickets to the Netherlands just in case. Spinoza, anyone?
Wednesday, September 02, 2009
The Jewish Problem with Prayer
The August 28, 2009 edition of the Forward, one of the great Jewish newspapers, had two articles on new siddurim (prayer books) being published by both Jewish denominations and individual synagogues.
The lead article opens with the question, “What can a new Hebrew-English Siddur do to solve the problems of prayer for modern Jews?” I have read the article several times, and I am not sure it ever answers the question, though the editor’s headline suggests one: “Even a New Siddur Can’t Close ‘God Gap.’” If the headline means that the answer to the lead question is “no,” then I agree. But agreeing or disagreeing is irrelevant unless and until someone defines what the problem is Jews have with prayer.
The answer, I suppose, is the God Gap, but that presupposes we know what God is, and I doubt that is true. So let’s try this again:
Can a new siddur solve the problem of prayer for modern Jews? No. Why not? Because the “problem of prayer” is that most Jews don’t pray. Why not? Because most Jews don’t believe in a God that merits prayer.
There are only two reasons to pray to God. Either you are praising (and thanking) Him for something He did or didn’t do, or asking Him to do something you are afraid He doesn’t want to do. In either case you are assuming God is male, self-conscious, and volitional; a being who knows you and your situation, and who actually gives a damn about it. Most Jews just don’t think this way.
How do I know what most Jews think? Just look at the statistics of synagogue attendance. One statistic I read recently (sorry, I can’t remember the source) claimed that only 11% of American Jews attend synagogue on any given Shabbat. We can assume that some of these attendees aren’t there to pray, but are simply meeting a communal or cultural obligation, but even if all them were God–fearing men and women, that still leaves 89% of American Jews in the non–praying category.
I am one of the 89%. I find Shabbat services tedious, lifeless, emotionally and intellectually vapid, and, not surprisingly, boring. And it doesn’t matter what siddur is being used.
What would bring me to shul?
First, high quality music—not cantorial pomp or silly schlock rock from some long outgrown Jewish camp experience, but deeply moving Hebrew chanting and evocative even ecstatic Hasidic music ala Rabbi Shlomo Carlebach. If you have never gone to services at the Carlebach shul in Manhattan, I suggest you do. Very moving.
Second, and this where even the Carlebach shul fails me, a liturgy that is brief and theologically compelling. No reading of the same prayers over and over. No warlord God who chooses the Jews and whacks our enemies. No ass–kissing, no thanking God for making the sunshine and keeping the stars to their orbits. No God who guarantees me success if I follow His rules. The universe is so much more grand, terrible, and awe–inspiring than Iron Age cosmology or medieval poetry can imagine. I want a liturgy that helps me feel the awesomeness of creation, and that can’t happen when we are sitting in a brick box reading out of a book. I want to pray outdoors at night under the stars, or, because I love to stay dry and avoid extremes of heat and cold, I would revamp every sanctuary to function as a planetarium. There is only one liturgy worth praying, and that is "Holy shit! This world is awesome!" Or, in the interest of the kids, I would settle for a full-bodied "Wow!"
Third, I want Torah study that is intellectually rigorous, historically accurate, and radically iconoclastic. I don’t want to discuss how Noah got all those animals on the ark; I want to discuss what kind of God drowns 99.999999999% of life on earth? I want to study the Akeida, the near–sacrifice of Isaac, in the context of child sacrifice among Jews and nonJews in biblical times. I want to read Torah as an educated adult.
Fourth, I want to experience something during services other than the urge to scream and run from the room. I want to feel awe and wonder. I want to sense my connectedness to Something Greater (call it God, Universe, Nature) that includes all beings and the cosmos as a whole. I don’t want to talk about God; I want to experience God.
And fifth, I want silence. Not a faux silent prayer that is mumbled aloud; not a half–moment of silence; not a silence filled with someone's guided meditation—actual silence. Just me and you breathing together.
No new prayer book is going to do this. And I say this as one whose liturgical poems appear in siddurim across the country and around the world. I have written several siddurim in my lifetime. I even toy with the idea of writing another, but what stops me is the knowledge that words are not our only problem. The setting is wrong. The tone is wrong. The theology is wrong. The politics are wrong. The expectation is wrong. We don't demand anything from our liturgy or our services. We expect to be bored and we are. It isn't just our rabbis and cantors fault, it is ours, the 89% of us who fail to go to shul regularly.
Yes, it is my fault that synagogue is vapid and boring. But it is too hard to change things. The people who do go like it the way it is, and I don't want to fight them. The people who lead services are proud of what they do, and I don't want to insult them. It is easier to simply stay home.
So this Shabbat I will do what I do on most Saturdays: walk in the woods, chant aloud, and allow myself to be surrendered to the reality of What Is that I call God. No book; never boring.
The lead article opens with the question, “What can a new Hebrew-English Siddur do to solve the problems of prayer for modern Jews?” I have read the article several times, and I am not sure it ever answers the question, though the editor’s headline suggests one: “Even a New Siddur Can’t Close ‘God Gap.’” If the headline means that the answer to the lead question is “no,” then I agree. But agreeing or disagreeing is irrelevant unless and until someone defines what the problem is Jews have with prayer.
The answer, I suppose, is the God Gap, but that presupposes we know what God is, and I doubt that is true. So let’s try this again:
Can a new siddur solve the problem of prayer for modern Jews? No. Why not? Because the “problem of prayer” is that most Jews don’t pray. Why not? Because most Jews don’t believe in a God that merits prayer.
There are only two reasons to pray to God. Either you are praising (and thanking) Him for something He did or didn’t do, or asking Him to do something you are afraid He doesn’t want to do. In either case you are assuming God is male, self-conscious, and volitional; a being who knows you and your situation, and who actually gives a damn about it. Most Jews just don’t think this way.
How do I know what most Jews think? Just look at the statistics of synagogue attendance. One statistic I read recently (sorry, I can’t remember the source) claimed that only 11% of American Jews attend synagogue on any given Shabbat. We can assume that some of these attendees aren’t there to pray, but are simply meeting a communal or cultural obligation, but even if all them were God–fearing men and women, that still leaves 89% of American Jews in the non–praying category.
I am one of the 89%. I find Shabbat services tedious, lifeless, emotionally and intellectually vapid, and, not surprisingly, boring. And it doesn’t matter what siddur is being used.
What would bring me to shul?
First, high quality music—not cantorial pomp or silly schlock rock from some long outgrown Jewish camp experience, but deeply moving Hebrew chanting and evocative even ecstatic Hasidic music ala Rabbi Shlomo Carlebach. If you have never gone to services at the Carlebach shul in Manhattan, I suggest you do. Very moving.
Second, and this where even the Carlebach shul fails me, a liturgy that is brief and theologically compelling. No reading of the same prayers over and over. No warlord God who chooses the Jews and whacks our enemies. No ass–kissing, no thanking God for making the sunshine and keeping the stars to their orbits. No God who guarantees me success if I follow His rules. The universe is so much more grand, terrible, and awe–inspiring than Iron Age cosmology or medieval poetry can imagine. I want a liturgy that helps me feel the awesomeness of creation, and that can’t happen when we are sitting in a brick box reading out of a book. I want to pray outdoors at night under the stars, or, because I love to stay dry and avoid extremes of heat and cold, I would revamp every sanctuary to function as a planetarium. There is only one liturgy worth praying, and that is "Holy shit! This world is awesome!" Or, in the interest of the kids, I would settle for a full-bodied "Wow!"
Third, I want Torah study that is intellectually rigorous, historically accurate, and radically iconoclastic. I don’t want to discuss how Noah got all those animals on the ark; I want to discuss what kind of God drowns 99.999999999% of life on earth? I want to study the Akeida, the near–sacrifice of Isaac, in the context of child sacrifice among Jews and nonJews in biblical times. I want to read Torah as an educated adult.
Fourth, I want to experience something during services other than the urge to scream and run from the room. I want to feel awe and wonder. I want to sense my connectedness to Something Greater (call it God, Universe, Nature) that includes all beings and the cosmos as a whole. I don’t want to talk about God; I want to experience God.
And fifth, I want silence. Not a faux silent prayer that is mumbled aloud; not a half–moment of silence; not a silence filled with someone's guided meditation—actual silence. Just me and you breathing together.
No new prayer book is going to do this. And I say this as one whose liturgical poems appear in siddurim across the country and around the world. I have written several siddurim in my lifetime. I even toy with the idea of writing another, but what stops me is the knowledge that words are not our only problem. The setting is wrong. The tone is wrong. The theology is wrong. The politics are wrong. The expectation is wrong. We don't demand anything from our liturgy or our services. We expect to be bored and we are. It isn't just our rabbis and cantors fault, it is ours, the 89% of us who fail to go to shul regularly.
Yes, it is my fault that synagogue is vapid and boring. But it is too hard to change things. The people who do go like it the way it is, and I don't want to fight them. The people who lead services are proud of what they do, and I don't want to insult them. It is easier to simply stay home.
So this Shabbat I will do what I do on most Saturdays: walk in the woods, chant aloud, and allow myself to be surrendered to the reality of What Is that I call God. No book; never boring.
Friday, August 21, 2009
Off Line until next week
I am teaching in Aspen, CO. all next week, and may not be able to post from there. Talk with you all when I get back.
Headlines
There were a number of interesting articles in this past Monday’s USA TODAY (August 17, 2009). Here are three of them:
Lutherans Consider Same–Sex Clergy.
Aren’t all clergy same–sex? Do you know any clergy people who are more than one sex?
Mormons are Less Mans?
It is the responsibility of every Mormon male to go on a mission and bring the word of the Angel Maroni to the peoples of the earth. Good for them! But whether or not you think as Glenn Beck does that President Obama hates white people (which is only fair since Kanye West told us that President Bush hates black people), the Obama administration certainly has a Mormon problem.
It seems that they have decided not to count Mormons on missions outside the United States in the next US census. According to the Census Bureau there is no way to accurately count the reported (by me) two hundred million Mormon missionaries serving overseas. According to officials in Utah, not counting missionaries has and could again cost Utah its fair share of seats in the US House of Representatives.
Why would Obama do this to the Mormons? Could it have anything to do with the fact that until fairly recently taught that all black people were cursed? Or that it used to be easier for a dead Jew to be baptized as a Mormon (a practice the Mormon church insists it has ceased to perform, though my dead bubbe keeps knocking on my door with copies of the Book of Mormon in her hand) than for a live black man to join? Could it? Huh? It’s payback time, Joseph Smith! Deal with it!
Hello, My Name is Armageddon
I was watching GPS with Fareed Zakaria this past Sunday as he interviewed the Israeli Ambassador to the United States. When asked about Israel’s stockpile of nuclear weapons (shh, no one is supposed to know they have them, though the secret is revealed to every Jewish kid who becomes bat or bar mitzvah), he insisted that Israel would not be the first country to “introduce” nukes into the Middle East.
Asked what he meant given the fact that everyone knows Israel has a couple of hundred nukes (Fareed is a Muslim, but as a kid he attended lots of b’nai mitzvah parties and must have heard this from some loose-lipped Jewish kid), the ambassador kept repeating the word “introduce, introduce” as if Fareed didn’t understand the word.
Maybe he doesn’t. What the ambassador was saying that Israel has never introduced anyone to its missiles. Like, you know, “Mr. President this is our friend Nuke and his two hundred or so brothers and sisters.” No, Israel is one rude country, and its nukes just sit in a corner ignored by almost everyone. Except the Iranians. I think the Ayatollah went to a bar mitzvah or two himself.
Lutherans Consider Same–Sex Clergy.
Aren’t all clergy same–sex? Do you know any clergy people who are more than one sex?
Mormons are Less Mans?
It is the responsibility of every Mormon male to go on a mission and bring the word of the Angel Maroni to the peoples of the earth. Good for them! But whether or not you think as Glenn Beck does that President Obama hates white people (which is only fair since Kanye West told us that President Bush hates black people), the Obama administration certainly has a Mormon problem.
It seems that they have decided not to count Mormons on missions outside the United States in the next US census. According to the Census Bureau there is no way to accurately count the reported (by me) two hundred million Mormon missionaries serving overseas. According to officials in Utah, not counting missionaries has and could again cost Utah its fair share of seats in the US House of Representatives.
Why would Obama do this to the Mormons? Could it have anything to do with the fact that until fairly recently taught that all black people were cursed? Or that it used to be easier for a dead Jew to be baptized as a Mormon (a practice the Mormon church insists it has ceased to perform, though my dead bubbe keeps knocking on my door with copies of the Book of Mormon in her hand) than for a live black man to join? Could it? Huh? It’s payback time, Joseph Smith! Deal with it!
Hello, My Name is Armageddon
I was watching GPS with Fareed Zakaria this past Sunday as he interviewed the Israeli Ambassador to the United States. When asked about Israel’s stockpile of nuclear weapons (shh, no one is supposed to know they have them, though the secret is revealed to every Jewish kid who becomes bat or bar mitzvah), he insisted that Israel would not be the first country to “introduce” nukes into the Middle East.
Asked what he meant given the fact that everyone knows Israel has a couple of hundred nukes (Fareed is a Muslim, but as a kid he attended lots of b’nai mitzvah parties and must have heard this from some loose-lipped Jewish kid), the ambassador kept repeating the word “introduce, introduce” as if Fareed didn’t understand the word.
Maybe he doesn’t. What the ambassador was saying that Israel has never introduced anyone to its missiles. Like, you know, “Mr. President this is our friend Nuke and his two hundred or so brothers and sisters.” No, Israel is one rude country, and its nukes just sit in a corner ignored by almost everyone. Except the Iranians. I think the Ayatollah went to a bar mitzvah or two himself.
Monday, August 17, 2009
What's Next
[The following questions came from a graduate student researching middle–aged clergy. The questions thoughtful, and I share my answers with you if only to get those of you who are my age (58) and older to think about how you might answer similar questions.]
What were your goals when you first graduated seminary, and how close have you come to reaching them? I had one goal when I graduated Hebrew Union College in 1981, and that was to create a Judaism in which I felt comfortable. That meant shifting from dualism (God as supernatural Other) to panentheism (God as all reality), which in turn required revisioning liturgy, holy days, and Torah to reflect that nondual theology.
I created my own synagogue to carry out my vision and achieve my goal, and stayed with that shul for twenty years. I would say the experiment was a success in that a thriving community arose around the ideas I was teaching. I have published these ideas in two books, Minyan and Open Secrets, published in 1997 and 2004, respectively.
How did mid–life impact your career, and how do you feel about it? My mid–life shift came around my fiftieth birthday in 2001. By then I had taken my synagogue work as far as I could, and I needed to do something else. I wanted to be free from communal obligations and limitations. I didn’t want to represent anything or anyone other than myself. So I left my shul and focused on my writing and speaking.
Writing has been my passion since seventh grade. I have published about fourteen books, written numerous essays and poems that have appeared in many magazines and anthologies, write a spiritual advice column for Spirituality & Health magazine, and have even had some of my short verse published as greeting cards. My writing has won several awards, and allowed me to reach thousands of people through both my books and articles, and the retreats and workshops I give based on them. So I would say the last decade has been very good to me.
What are your current goals and interests? How do plan to spend the second half of your life? Let me start with the second question. I think it is a mistake to divide one’s life in halves. Given that three of my grandparents were long–lived, and that both my parents are alive and well in their mid–eighties, I expect that, barring anything unforeseen, I will live into my eighties. That means I am not in the second half of my life, but in the final third. [Notice I have no problem with dividing life into sections, I just think three is better than two. Hindus prefer four to three, and that deserves some consideration as well.]
The first third of my life was devoted to earning the credentials that would allow me to do whatever it was I was going to do with the second third of my life. The second third was devoted to making my mark on the world these credentials opened to me. I did this by creating my synagogue, and writing books, music, liturgy—everything for which I am currently known. But the final third…. Hmmm.
Here is what I know so far:
1. I have no interest in going backwards. That is to say, I cannot foresee taking on any kind of communal responsibility. Nor do I wish to be a guru of any sort. I am a seeker, and have desire to either lead or follow.
2. While I imagine I will continue to write books, I question whether or not this is a backward move. Does the world need yet another book? Are books the right vehicle for reaching the twenty and thirty–somethings I hope to reach? The future isn’t the printed page, but the third screen—the pocket Internet platform we anachronistically call a phone. My fledgling efforts on YouTube along with my seemingly never ending Holy Rascals film project may be more indicative of my creative future than anything I have done in the past.
3. Judaism is no longer my primary focus. While I continue to study and teach about Judaism, I have long been drawn to more interfaith settings. Yet interfaith gatherings, even the larger spectacle–oriented events, are too often simplistic compare and contrast affairs that bore me. This is because I have been blessed with, and spoiled by, teachers who point toward a post-religious Interspirituality that honors one’s religion of origin even as it focuses on an unbounded quest for meaning rooted more in mythopoetics and scientific cosmology rather than in neo–tribal partisanship and pre–modern theologies.
4. This means I am searching for what’s next for me. I have made peace with being a Jew, but I refuse to let Judaism define me. I certainly don’t want to take on any other label. So where I go from here, I have no idea. Not–knowing isn’t a bad thing. It may be the blessing of the final third of life. And yet I admit to finding not–knowing anything but comforting. It isn’t that I am choosing not to know, it is that I have no choice but not to know.
So here is what I don’t know:
1. I don’t know if I will publish another book after the next two (The Angelic Way and Tanya: A Guide for Inbetweeners). And I don’t know if I care to.
2. I don’t know if I will make more short videos, though I hope to.
3. I don’t know if I will create a killer spiritual app for the iPhone or Blackberry, though I am working on it.
4. I don’t know if I will find a way a way to more deeply honor and engage with those teachers who have continued to shape my thinking since the 1960’s—Ramana Maharshi, Martin Buber, Alan Watts, and J. Krishnamurti—but I want to.
So, the bottom–line for me is this: I had goals and I achieved them. For that I am blessed and grateful. If I die today I can honestly say I did not live in vain. (Which is not to say I did not live vainly.) As for the rest—I just don’t know.
What were your goals when you first graduated seminary, and how close have you come to reaching them? I had one goal when I graduated Hebrew Union College in 1981, and that was to create a Judaism in which I felt comfortable. That meant shifting from dualism (God as supernatural Other) to panentheism (God as all reality), which in turn required revisioning liturgy, holy days, and Torah to reflect that nondual theology.
I created my own synagogue to carry out my vision and achieve my goal, and stayed with that shul for twenty years. I would say the experiment was a success in that a thriving community arose around the ideas I was teaching. I have published these ideas in two books, Minyan and Open Secrets, published in 1997 and 2004, respectively.
How did mid–life impact your career, and how do you feel about it? My mid–life shift came around my fiftieth birthday in 2001. By then I had taken my synagogue work as far as I could, and I needed to do something else. I wanted to be free from communal obligations and limitations. I didn’t want to represent anything or anyone other than myself. So I left my shul and focused on my writing and speaking.
Writing has been my passion since seventh grade. I have published about fourteen books, written numerous essays and poems that have appeared in many magazines and anthologies, write a spiritual advice column for Spirituality & Health magazine, and have even had some of my short verse published as greeting cards. My writing has won several awards, and allowed me to reach thousands of people through both my books and articles, and the retreats and workshops I give based on them. So I would say the last decade has been very good to me.
What are your current goals and interests? How do plan to spend the second half of your life? Let me start with the second question. I think it is a mistake to divide one’s life in halves. Given that three of my grandparents were long–lived, and that both my parents are alive and well in their mid–eighties, I expect that, barring anything unforeseen, I will live into my eighties. That means I am not in the second half of my life, but in the final third. [Notice I have no problem with dividing life into sections, I just think three is better than two. Hindus prefer four to three, and that deserves some consideration as well.]
The first third of my life was devoted to earning the credentials that would allow me to do whatever it was I was going to do with the second third of my life. The second third was devoted to making my mark on the world these credentials opened to me. I did this by creating my synagogue, and writing books, music, liturgy—everything for which I am currently known. But the final third…. Hmmm.
Here is what I know so far:
1. I have no interest in going backwards. That is to say, I cannot foresee taking on any kind of communal responsibility. Nor do I wish to be a guru of any sort. I am a seeker, and have desire to either lead or follow.
2. While I imagine I will continue to write books, I question whether or not this is a backward move. Does the world need yet another book? Are books the right vehicle for reaching the twenty and thirty–somethings I hope to reach? The future isn’t the printed page, but the third screen—the pocket Internet platform we anachronistically call a phone. My fledgling efforts on YouTube along with my seemingly never ending Holy Rascals film project may be more indicative of my creative future than anything I have done in the past.
3. Judaism is no longer my primary focus. While I continue to study and teach about Judaism, I have long been drawn to more interfaith settings. Yet interfaith gatherings, even the larger spectacle–oriented events, are too often simplistic compare and contrast affairs that bore me. This is because I have been blessed with, and spoiled by, teachers who point toward a post-religious Interspirituality that honors one’s religion of origin even as it focuses on an unbounded quest for meaning rooted more in mythopoetics and scientific cosmology rather than in neo–tribal partisanship and pre–modern theologies.
4. This means I am searching for what’s next for me. I have made peace with being a Jew, but I refuse to let Judaism define me. I certainly don’t want to take on any other label. So where I go from here, I have no idea. Not–knowing isn’t a bad thing. It may be the blessing of the final third of life. And yet I admit to finding not–knowing anything but comforting. It isn’t that I am choosing not to know, it is that I have no choice but not to know.
So here is what I don’t know:
1. I don’t know if I will publish another book after the next two (The Angelic Way and Tanya: A Guide for Inbetweeners). And I don’t know if I care to.
2. I don’t know if I will make more short videos, though I hope to.
3. I don’t know if I will create a killer spiritual app for the iPhone or Blackberry, though I am working on it.
4. I don’t know if I will find a way a way to more deeply honor and engage with those teachers who have continued to shape my thinking since the 1960’s—Ramana Maharshi, Martin Buber, Alan Watts, and J. Krishnamurti—but I want to.
So, the bottom–line for me is this: I had goals and I achieved them. For that I am blessed and grateful. If I die today I can honestly say I did not live in vain. (Which is not to say I did not live vainly.) As for the rest—I just don’t know.
Friday, August 14, 2009
Parental Rights and Wrongs
What limits, if any, must be placed on a parent’s “right” to raise a child? I was in Portland, OR a couple of weeks ago working on my Holy Rascals film project. The local paper was abuzz with a jury’s verdict regarding Carl and Raylene Worthington who chose to heal their 15-month-old daughter, Ava, spirituality rather than medically. Ava died. Deadlocked for days, the jury finally acquitted the couple of all manslaughter charges, and found Carl Worthington guilty of a misdemeanor.
I don’t want to argue the verdict. I want to explore the idea behind it. Are parents allowed to suffer their children to bear the burden of the parent’s faith? Ava died not because of what she believed, but because of what her parents’ believed. Do parents have the right to do this?
And what about instilling your beliefs in your child as they mature? I taught my son that he is a Jew, and along with that identity comes serious obligations. He is a member of a tribe that is often hated and hunted. He is often associated with Israeli policies with which he has no connection and shares no love. Had I not told him that he was a Jew, would any of this be true?
What about parents who instill in their children the notion of Original Sin? My son doesn’t suffer from this particular spiritual disease, and has no need of the Cure: belief in Jesus as Christ. Are those who infect their children with sin doing the right thing? Are those who tell their children there is no such thing at fault?
I know children who were told from early on that the earth is only ten thousand years old and that humans coexisted with and even road on the backs of dinosaurs. Is this not a form of child abuse? Are these kids not handicapped in a world that is rooted in what former President George W. Bush dismissively called the “reality based community”? And if it is, it is any less insane than teaching your child that wrong beliefs (i.e. beliefs that mom and dad call wrong) send you to hell? Or that God gave a strip of land to the Jews and they have a right to divest it of those who lived in it for centuries?
Do parents’ have the right to teach children whatever they please? Does the child have no right to truth? If, when it comes to the physical welfare of a child, the government is apt to intervene and at least try to hold parents responsible for their child’s welfare, why not do so when it is the child’s intellectual welfare is at state as well?
Please share your thoughts on this.
I don’t want to argue the verdict. I want to explore the idea behind it. Are parents allowed to suffer their children to bear the burden of the parent’s faith? Ava died not because of what she believed, but because of what her parents’ believed. Do parents have the right to do this?
And what about instilling your beliefs in your child as they mature? I taught my son that he is a Jew, and along with that identity comes serious obligations. He is a member of a tribe that is often hated and hunted. He is often associated with Israeli policies with which he has no connection and shares no love. Had I not told him that he was a Jew, would any of this be true?
What about parents who instill in their children the notion of Original Sin? My son doesn’t suffer from this particular spiritual disease, and has no need of the Cure: belief in Jesus as Christ. Are those who infect their children with sin doing the right thing? Are those who tell their children there is no such thing at fault?
I know children who were told from early on that the earth is only ten thousand years old and that humans coexisted with and even road on the backs of dinosaurs. Is this not a form of child abuse? Are these kids not handicapped in a world that is rooted in what former President George W. Bush dismissively called the “reality based community”? And if it is, it is any less insane than teaching your child that wrong beliefs (i.e. beliefs that mom and dad call wrong) send you to hell? Or that God gave a strip of land to the Jews and they have a right to divest it of those who lived in it for centuries?
Do parents’ have the right to teach children whatever they please? Does the child have no right to truth? If, when it comes to the physical welfare of a child, the government is apt to intervene and at least try to hold parents responsible for their child’s welfare, why not do so when it is the child’s intellectual welfare is at state as well?
Please share your thoughts on this.
Monday, August 10, 2009
Ten Thoughts
I woke up this morning and these ten thoughts just gripped my fingers and controlled the keys. Here they are as raw and unedited as they came to me. Comments welcome.
Judaism is the invention of the Jew. Different Jews invent different Judaisms. There never was, nor will there ever be, just one Judaism.
• • •
The Jew is the invention of the Torah. Torah is the story of the Jews, and there are no Jews without this story. But Torah is also the invention of the Jew. Hence the Jews invented themselves.
• • •
The Jews invented God. Well, not GOD, but YHVH, their God. Different Jews, different Gods. Priestly Jews invented a spectacle¬–hungry God who loves priestly pomp and power. Prophetic Jews invented a righteous God who hates what the Priestly God loves, and demands justice and compassion instead. Rabbinic Jews invented a lawyer God who loves legal wrangling and obedience to rabbinic law. Secular Jews invented a doubting God who denied even Himself. Zionist Jews invented a realtor God who loved land more than law, especially now—Century 21 indeed!
• • •
All gods are as real as those who invent them, as powerful as those who profit from them, and as immortal as those who worship them.
• • •
Christian Jews invented a powerless God. Can you imagine YHVH hanging from a cross? The YHVH who terrorized the Egyptians and slaughtered their firstborn sons being captured, scourged, and crucified by Romans? Of course not. Jesus was the son of a powerless God worshipped by a powerless people who, since they couldn’t save their sons, invented a God who couldn’t save his either.
• • •
The God of Jesus eschews power, for Jesus had none. And the God of his followers eschewed power until they get some.
• • •
While the early Christians embraced death and their crucified God, elevating martyrdom to the greatest mitzvah, the Jews imagined new life into their old Warlord and went to war. But imagination wasn’t sufficient, and Rome won.
• • •
This should have been the end of the Jews, but it wasn’t. They imagined differently, and YHVH went from a God who rewards those he loves to a God who tests (read allows to be hounded, hunted, brutalized, tortured, and gassed) those he loves. The Jews imagined a Divine Batterer and loved him all the more for it. Jews imagined themselves as the Bride of YHVH, and made a religion out of Battered Wife Syndrome. Maybe that’s why we invented psychotherapy?!?
• • •
Today the questions are these: Will the battered become the batterers? Can the Jewish imagination invent a new Jew, a new Torah, a new God, a new future? Or are we too old, too tired, too tied to what was to imagine what might yet be?
Judaism is the invention of the Jew. Different Jews invent different Judaisms. There never was, nor will there ever be, just one Judaism.
• • •
The Jew is the invention of the Torah. Torah is the story of the Jews, and there are no Jews without this story. But Torah is also the invention of the Jew. Hence the Jews invented themselves.
• • •
The Jews invented God. Well, not GOD, but YHVH, their God. Different Jews, different Gods. Priestly Jews invented a spectacle¬–hungry God who loves priestly pomp and power. Prophetic Jews invented a righteous God who hates what the Priestly God loves, and demands justice and compassion instead. Rabbinic Jews invented a lawyer God who loves legal wrangling and obedience to rabbinic law. Secular Jews invented a doubting God who denied even Himself. Zionist Jews invented a realtor God who loved land more than law, especially now—Century 21 indeed!
• • •
All gods are as real as those who invent them, as powerful as those who profit from them, and as immortal as those who worship them.
• • •
Christian Jews invented a powerless God. Can you imagine YHVH hanging from a cross? The YHVH who terrorized the Egyptians and slaughtered their firstborn sons being captured, scourged, and crucified by Romans? Of course not. Jesus was the son of a powerless God worshipped by a powerless people who, since they couldn’t save their sons, invented a God who couldn’t save his either.
• • •
The God of Jesus eschews power, for Jesus had none. And the God of his followers eschewed power until they get some.
• • •
While the early Christians embraced death and their crucified God, elevating martyrdom to the greatest mitzvah, the Jews imagined new life into their old Warlord and went to war. But imagination wasn’t sufficient, and Rome won.
• • •
This should have been the end of the Jews, but it wasn’t. They imagined differently, and YHVH went from a God who rewards those he loves to a God who tests (read allows to be hounded, hunted, brutalized, tortured, and gassed) those he loves. The Jews imagined a Divine Batterer and loved him all the more for it. Jews imagined themselves as the Bride of YHVH, and made a religion out of Battered Wife Syndrome. Maybe that’s why we invented psychotherapy?!?
• • •
Today the questions are these: Will the battered become the batterers? Can the Jewish imagination invent a new Jew, a new Torah, a new God, a new future? Or are we too old, too tired, too tied to what was to imagine what might yet be?
Thursday, August 06, 2009
The Danger of Difference
Two weeks ago I attended an interfaith gathering in Portland, OR. The purpose of the gathering was to introduce people to the Parliament of the World’s Religions and encourage us to attend this year’s Parliament in Australia. It was a nice enough gathering with the usual collection of well-intentioned people peppered with a smattering of socially functional schizophrenics. One conversion I had with a member of the former group proved most interesting.
A sixty-something woman who has devoted the latter part of her life to promoting interfaith understanding told me that she was tired of gatherings such as this where we all put on our most polite faces, unpacked our most humble theological positions, and pretended that all religions are rooted in and pointing toward the same truth. “I would prefer,” she told me, “to speak about the differences among the world’s religions rather than their supposed similarities.”
I smiled, nodded in a noncommittal manner, and hoped the subject would pass. It didn’t. She pressed me for an opinion. I gave her one, unfortunately it was my own.
I don’t think people who come to interfaith gatherings are really interested in learning about other religions, but only in learning how other religions jibe with their own. Isn’t it wonderful: we all want to end poverty, homelessness, inequality, and fix the environment! But do we? Look at countries like Iran, Iraq, and Israel—countries that define themselves to one degree or another by religion. Are these nations paragons of environmental health? Have they eliminated poverty, homelessness, and inequality? Or look at the United States, ostensibly a secular state, yet one with a population that describes itself as overwhelmingly religious: are we exemplars of virtue?
So even on those subjects where we pretend to take a real interest, we actually do very little. If we were to open the can of worms called “difference” would that help? If Jew were honest and admitted that Judaism’s notion that Jews are God’s Chosen People elevates Jews above all others in the eyes of God, would that help interfaith cooperation? If Christians who believed that Jesus Christ is the only way, life, and truth affirmed that faith and admitted that this means all other religions are false, would our dialogue improve? If Buddhists really made it clear that there is no soul, would those whose religions depend on the existence of souls be any more inclined to carry on a conversation? Would it improve relations between Islam and Christianity if Muslim attendees at interfaith gatherings voiced the central Muslim idea that the very thought of God having a son is anathema?
Of course not. Interfaith dialogue as most people practice it is built on a foundation of voluntary silence: everyone agrees to remain silent about the beliefs they hold when those beliefs contradict those of other religions. I suspect that if real issues of belief were broached at most interfaith gatherings the dialogue would end immediately.
Most people I encounter at most interfaith gatherings want to believe that everyone else believes just what they believe only they use different words to say it. Given this premise, there really isn’t much dialogue going on at these gatherings at all.
A sixty-something woman who has devoted the latter part of her life to promoting interfaith understanding told me that she was tired of gatherings such as this where we all put on our most polite faces, unpacked our most humble theological positions, and pretended that all religions are rooted in and pointing toward the same truth. “I would prefer,” she told me, “to speak about the differences among the world’s religions rather than their supposed similarities.”
I smiled, nodded in a noncommittal manner, and hoped the subject would pass. It didn’t. She pressed me for an opinion. I gave her one, unfortunately it was my own.
I don’t think people who come to interfaith gatherings are really interested in learning about other religions, but only in learning how other religions jibe with their own. Isn’t it wonderful: we all want to end poverty, homelessness, inequality, and fix the environment! But do we? Look at countries like Iran, Iraq, and Israel—countries that define themselves to one degree or another by religion. Are these nations paragons of environmental health? Have they eliminated poverty, homelessness, and inequality? Or look at the United States, ostensibly a secular state, yet one with a population that describes itself as overwhelmingly religious: are we exemplars of virtue?
So even on those subjects where we pretend to take a real interest, we actually do very little. If we were to open the can of worms called “difference” would that help? If Jew were honest and admitted that Judaism’s notion that Jews are God’s Chosen People elevates Jews above all others in the eyes of God, would that help interfaith cooperation? If Christians who believed that Jesus Christ is the only way, life, and truth affirmed that faith and admitted that this means all other religions are false, would our dialogue improve? If Buddhists really made it clear that there is no soul, would those whose religions depend on the existence of souls be any more inclined to carry on a conversation? Would it improve relations between Islam and Christianity if Muslim attendees at interfaith gatherings voiced the central Muslim idea that the very thought of God having a son is anathema?
Of course not. Interfaith dialogue as most people practice it is built on a foundation of voluntary silence: everyone agrees to remain silent about the beliefs they hold when those beliefs contradict those of other religions. I suspect that if real issues of belief were broached at most interfaith gatherings the dialogue would end immediately.
Most people I encounter at most interfaith gatherings want to believe that everyone else believes just what they believe only they use different words to say it. Given this premise, there really isn’t much dialogue going on at these gatherings at all.
Monday, August 03, 2009
Does Jonny Z Have Rights?
I don’t like to argue, though I do like to rant. When I found myself in a conversation on “Right to Life” issues the other day I did my best to avoid both. It went something like this:*
Him: “I’m pro-life.”
Me: “Me too.”
Him: “I believe that life begins at conception.”
Me: “Me too.”
Him: “I believe that all humans have rights.”
Me: “Me too.”
Him: “I am pro-family and I believe that children are happier being brought up by two loving parents than by one loving parent.”
Me: “Me too, though by this logic three loving parents would be even better, and four better still; and that one loving parent is better than ½ of a loving parent, or one loving parent and one abusive parent, or one loving parent and a Great Ape, or two Great Apes no matter how loving (Tarzan being the sole exception, his adopted mom being a loving Great Ape).”
This last response was a bit much, and by the look on the other fellow’s face I should have shut up. But I didn’t. God help me, I ranted:
Me: “While I agree with you on these issues, for the life of me I can’t see how these beliefs help me any when dealing with the cultural landmines of our times.
“Take our belief that a human zygote has rights. OK, what rights? Right to life. OK, what kind of life? Does it have a right to clean air, clean water? Maybe not, since zygotes don’t breathe or drink. How about the right to a decent education? No, zygotes have less consciousness than a turnip. How about the right to live in a healthy womb, and the right not to be poisoned by a mom who smokes, drinks, does drugs, breathes polluted air, and drinks unclean water? This seems basic to me, and yet mom has a right to smoke and drink, and has little control over the air she breathes and the water she drinks. So do little Jonny Zygote’s rights really matter?
“Having rights tells us very little. Jonny Zygote’s right to a smoke-free womb conflicts with Mommy’s right to smoke-filled lungs. How do we decide who wins?
“And what about the case where Jonny’s life will take mommy’s life? Why should his right to life trump her right to life? Shouldn’t the ‘last hired, first fired’ rule work in this situation, or does seniority have no meaning when it comes to the right to life?
“And what if mommy is mommy to others, and also cares for an aged and ailing grandma or grandpa? What if Jonny Z. has a birth defect that will wipe out his family’s finances? Does he have the right to rob his family of the finances they need to survive? Is it right that his need for medication and care trumps similar needs for grandma and grandpa? Or are you for socialized medicine as well as right to life?”
Him: “No socialized medicine is Communist and Canadian.”
Me: “Right, so we have to ration health care to those who can afford it, and Jonny Z hasn’t got a dime, so let’s take care of mom and her parents first. At least they’ve earned it.”
Him: “But we can’t just kill the unborn babies!”
Me: “But does that mean we have to let the unborn kill the long–ago born? Or what if Jonny Z’s condition will rob his two-year-old sister of healthcare she desperately needs? Is being two a crime? Does being unborn trump being born in every case? My point is that rights are irrelevant. When we talk about rights we have to talk about competing rights, and do you want the government deciding whose rights take precedence?”
Him: “No way. I want the government out of our lives altogether!”
Me: “Me too. So let’s just leave the government out of all moral decisions.”
Him: “Sounds good to me.”
Me: “So no more government interference with marriage, end-of-life issues, abortion, or any other matter that is really between a person and her conscience. I had no idea you were such a liberal. Must be tough living here in Middle Tennessee.”
Him:
Me: ☺
*This is based on an actual conversation, though it is recalled from memory.
Him: “I’m pro-life.”
Me: “Me too.”
Him: “I believe that life begins at conception.”
Me: “Me too.”
Him: “I believe that all humans have rights.”
Me: “Me too.”
Him: “I am pro-family and I believe that children are happier being brought up by two loving parents than by one loving parent.”
Me: “Me too, though by this logic three loving parents would be even better, and four better still; and that one loving parent is better than ½ of a loving parent, or one loving parent and one abusive parent, or one loving parent and a Great Ape, or two Great Apes no matter how loving (Tarzan being the sole exception, his adopted mom being a loving Great Ape).”
This last response was a bit much, and by the look on the other fellow’s face I should have shut up. But I didn’t. God help me, I ranted:
Me: “While I agree with you on these issues, for the life of me I can’t see how these beliefs help me any when dealing with the cultural landmines of our times.
“Take our belief that a human zygote has rights. OK, what rights? Right to life. OK, what kind of life? Does it have a right to clean air, clean water? Maybe not, since zygotes don’t breathe or drink. How about the right to a decent education? No, zygotes have less consciousness than a turnip. How about the right to live in a healthy womb, and the right not to be poisoned by a mom who smokes, drinks, does drugs, breathes polluted air, and drinks unclean water? This seems basic to me, and yet mom has a right to smoke and drink, and has little control over the air she breathes and the water she drinks. So do little Jonny Zygote’s rights really matter?
“Having rights tells us very little. Jonny Zygote’s right to a smoke-free womb conflicts with Mommy’s right to smoke-filled lungs. How do we decide who wins?
“And what about the case where Jonny’s life will take mommy’s life? Why should his right to life trump her right to life? Shouldn’t the ‘last hired, first fired’ rule work in this situation, or does seniority have no meaning when it comes to the right to life?
“And what if mommy is mommy to others, and also cares for an aged and ailing grandma or grandpa? What if Jonny Z. has a birth defect that will wipe out his family’s finances? Does he have the right to rob his family of the finances they need to survive? Is it right that his need for medication and care trumps similar needs for grandma and grandpa? Or are you for socialized medicine as well as right to life?”
Him: “No socialized medicine is Communist and Canadian.”
Me: “Right, so we have to ration health care to those who can afford it, and Jonny Z hasn’t got a dime, so let’s take care of mom and her parents first. At least they’ve earned it.”
Him: “But we can’t just kill the unborn babies!”
Me: “But does that mean we have to let the unborn kill the long–ago born? Or what if Jonny Z’s condition will rob his two-year-old sister of healthcare she desperately needs? Is being two a crime? Does being unborn trump being born in every case? My point is that rights are irrelevant. When we talk about rights we have to talk about competing rights, and do you want the government deciding whose rights take precedence?”
Him: “No way. I want the government out of our lives altogether!”
Me: “Me too. So let’s just leave the government out of all moral decisions.”
Him: “Sounds good to me.”
Me: “So no more government interference with marriage, end-of-life issues, abortion, or any other matter that is really between a person and her conscience. I had no idea you were such a liberal. Must be tough living here in Middle Tennessee.”
Him:
Me: ☺
*This is based on an actual conversation, though it is recalled from memory.
Friday, July 31, 2009
The Betrayal of the West
I have never posted something written by someone else before, but I found the following passage by Jacques Elull incredibly on point. Given the insanity of our world--an economic "recovery" where the banks we bailed out are making billions and giving hundreds of millions in bonuses while continuing to foreclose on people and driving them into homelessness, an environment that continues to collapse while we pretend it has nothing to do with us, a healthcare system and reform of same that does nothing to raise the deep questions around what is health, the morality of rationed care, and why corporations gets rich off the suffering of others, the escalations of our war in Afghanistan and the civil war that is replacing our war in Iraq (mocking the terrible sacrifices of all our brave soldiers), etc.-- Elull's words, written over three decades ago, need to be heard.
I found them (in a longer form) in this month's issue of Adbuster's magazine. I'd love to hear your responses to them.
"We see the mistakes we have made, but we continue to make them with an apparent blind obstinacy… We know the implications of pollution, but we go on calmly polluting the air, the rivers and the oceans. We know people are going mad from living in huge conglomerations, but we, like automatons, go on building them. We know the dangers of pesticides and chemical fertilizers, but we continue to use them in increasingly massive doses….
"Our speed is constantly increasing, and it does not matter where we are going. We are caught up in the madness and hubris of the dance of death: the important thing is the dance… We are no longer worried about what will emerge from it or about the void it points to. We are content to die of dancing. Our generation is not even capable of cynicism, it take a kind of terrible greatness to say, “After me, the deluge.” No one says that today; on the contrary, everyone is glutted with promises and regards the mad dance as a way to authentic renewal. Yet there is no goal, nothing transcendent, no value to light the way; the movement is enough.
"The nihilistic revolution has succeeded. Today’s political activists who still claim to be revolutionaries have nothing to put in nihilism’s place. Movement for movement’s sake, thorough study for study’s sake, the revolution for the revolution’s sake: that, they say, is the only way to escape the system. It is a remarkable thing, however, that this system renders mad not only those who are part of it but those who reject it as well. The system is now the god that makes us mad, but it is a god we have created with our won minds."
(From The Betrayal of the West by Jacques Ellul)
I found them (in a longer form) in this month's issue of Adbuster's magazine. I'd love to hear your responses to them.
"We see the mistakes we have made, but we continue to make them with an apparent blind obstinacy… We know the implications of pollution, but we go on calmly polluting the air, the rivers and the oceans. We know people are going mad from living in huge conglomerations, but we, like automatons, go on building them. We know the dangers of pesticides and chemical fertilizers, but we continue to use them in increasingly massive doses….
"Our speed is constantly increasing, and it does not matter where we are going. We are caught up in the madness and hubris of the dance of death: the important thing is the dance… We are no longer worried about what will emerge from it or about the void it points to. We are content to die of dancing. Our generation is not even capable of cynicism, it take a kind of terrible greatness to say, “After me, the deluge.” No one says that today; on the contrary, everyone is glutted with promises and regards the mad dance as a way to authentic renewal. Yet there is no goal, nothing transcendent, no value to light the way; the movement is enough.
"The nihilistic revolution has succeeded. Today’s political activists who still claim to be revolutionaries have nothing to put in nihilism’s place. Movement for movement’s sake, thorough study for study’s sake, the revolution for the revolution’s sake: that, they say, is the only way to escape the system. It is a remarkable thing, however, that this system renders mad not only those who are part of it but those who reject it as well. The system is now the god that makes us mad, but it is a god we have created with our won minds."
(From The Betrayal of the West by Jacques Ellul)
Wednesday, July 29, 2009
Tisha b'Av 5769
Tonight at sundown we Jews mark Tisha b’Av, the ninth day of the Hebrew month of Av. This is the day on which the Temple in Jerusalem was destroyed, first in 586 BCE and again in 70 CE. This is a fast day for us, and a day for reading the Book of Lamentations. It is also the day on which the Messiah is to be born.
Tisha b’Av isn’t one of my favorite holy days. I have never been a fan of the Temple. As a vegetarian, I just don’t see how the slaughter of bulls improves my standing with God. And while it is cool that out of the ashes of the Temple rises the phoenix of messianic hope, it is too easy to focus on the latter at the expense of the former.
Just think what would have happened if the Temple had not fallen, at least not the second time? Imagine the Jews were never exiled and that Judea survived as a province of Rome. Imagine that the Temple survived along with the priesthood and animal sacrifice. What would Judaism be like today?
Sure the Pharisees would have continued to challenge the Sadducees and priests for the hearts and minds of the people, but even they couldn’t call for an end to sacrifice. The Torah makes it clear that God loves barbeque. And even though the prophets try to give a different image of God, one in which God is sickened by the stench of burning bull, and demands justice and compassion rather that literal blood and guts, the God of sacrifice continued to rule the minds of the people as long as the Temple stood. Today traditional Jews continue to recount the rules of sacrifice and pray for its return on a daily basis, suggesting that if the Pharisees couldn’t defeat the priests and the Temple after the Romans did away with both, they would have failed to do away with the Temple on their own.
If the Temple had not fallen and the exile had not happened, would Judaism be a sacrificial religion more or less tied to the Temple in Jerusalem? Maybe not. With the conversion of the Roman Empire into the Holy Roman Empire under Constantine and with the establishment of Christianity as the official religion of the Empire the survival of the Temple would have been a huge challenge to the claim that Christianity supersedes Judaism. Perhaps the Christian rulers of Rome would have destroyed the Temple and scattered the Jews as a sign that they and they alone are the heirs to God’s favor.
Or, if that didn’t happen, what would the Islamic empire do when they took Jerusalem? Would they allow the Temple to stand? Probably not, the sacrificial cult would be offense to them, and hearken back to a pre-Islamic paganism that was anathema to Allah.
So, one way or another, the Temple would have ceased to function, and without sacrifice the complex would have fallen into disuse, perhaps sold to a developer to be turned into a mall or a mosque. But maybe not, maybe something else might have happened that would have allowed Jews to remain bullish for sacrifice. How long would it be before the Jews themselves simply gave the practice up? Or would they? Santeria worshippers continue to practice animal sacrifice, so why not the Jews?
Truth is, the destruction of the Temple and the exile of the Jews probably saved us. Without the Temple and its sacrificial cult we had to invent a more portable way to be Jewish. Without a homeland where we could be rounded up and slaughtered, we could be hunted but never fully annihilated.
So what shall we do with Tisha b’Av this week? Fast and pray if you like. But take some time to think about our history and how we survived, and ask yourself what is ultimately in our best interest: centralization or dispersion, sacrifice or study?
Tisha b’Av isn’t one of my favorite holy days. I have never been a fan of the Temple. As a vegetarian, I just don’t see how the slaughter of bulls improves my standing with God. And while it is cool that out of the ashes of the Temple rises the phoenix of messianic hope, it is too easy to focus on the latter at the expense of the former.
Just think what would have happened if the Temple had not fallen, at least not the second time? Imagine the Jews were never exiled and that Judea survived as a province of Rome. Imagine that the Temple survived along with the priesthood and animal sacrifice. What would Judaism be like today?
Sure the Pharisees would have continued to challenge the Sadducees and priests for the hearts and minds of the people, but even they couldn’t call for an end to sacrifice. The Torah makes it clear that God loves barbeque. And even though the prophets try to give a different image of God, one in which God is sickened by the stench of burning bull, and demands justice and compassion rather that literal blood and guts, the God of sacrifice continued to rule the minds of the people as long as the Temple stood. Today traditional Jews continue to recount the rules of sacrifice and pray for its return on a daily basis, suggesting that if the Pharisees couldn’t defeat the priests and the Temple after the Romans did away with both, they would have failed to do away with the Temple on their own.
If the Temple had not fallen and the exile had not happened, would Judaism be a sacrificial religion more or less tied to the Temple in Jerusalem? Maybe not. With the conversion of the Roman Empire into the Holy Roman Empire under Constantine and with the establishment of Christianity as the official religion of the Empire the survival of the Temple would have been a huge challenge to the claim that Christianity supersedes Judaism. Perhaps the Christian rulers of Rome would have destroyed the Temple and scattered the Jews as a sign that they and they alone are the heirs to God’s favor.
Or, if that didn’t happen, what would the Islamic empire do when they took Jerusalem? Would they allow the Temple to stand? Probably not, the sacrificial cult would be offense to them, and hearken back to a pre-Islamic paganism that was anathema to Allah.
So, one way or another, the Temple would have ceased to function, and without sacrifice the complex would have fallen into disuse, perhaps sold to a developer to be turned into a mall or a mosque. But maybe not, maybe something else might have happened that would have allowed Jews to remain bullish for sacrifice. How long would it be before the Jews themselves simply gave the practice up? Or would they? Santeria worshippers continue to practice animal sacrifice, so why not the Jews?
Truth is, the destruction of the Temple and the exile of the Jews probably saved us. Without the Temple and its sacrificial cult we had to invent a more portable way to be Jewish. Without a homeland where we could be rounded up and slaughtered, we could be hunted but never fully annihilated.
So what shall we do with Tisha b’Av this week? Fast and pray if you like. But take some time to think about our history and how we survived, and ask yourself what is ultimately in our best interest: centralization or dispersion, sacrifice or study?
Sunday, July 26, 2009
Play to Win
When it comes to religion, I just want to win. In the world of western religion winning means backing the right savior at the end of days. So I am hedging my bets until there is a clear winner. The way I figure it is this: if the end times happen during my lifetime as millions of Jews, Christians, and Muslims believe, I will look out my window and see whom it is God has sent. If it is the Twelfth Imam- I’m taking the Shahada (the Muslim affirmation of faith: There is no god, but God, and Muhammad is His Prophet). If it turns out to be Jesus—I will, without any hesitation or reservation, accept Him as my Lord and Savior. Or, if it turns out to the Lubavitcher Rebbe, I’ll burn my books by Spinoza and Mordecai Kaplan, grab my tefillin, and rush off to buy a black fedora.
You see it makes no difference to me who it is; I just want to win.
While this seems completely logical to me, many people with whom I share my strategy for salvation and eternal life in the winner’s circle find it disconcerting. Where is my loyalty? Where is my faith?
The way I look at it, there is no point in backing a looser. If I back the Rebbe, by all accounts a spiritual genius and very loving, albeit currently deceased, man, simply because I am Jewish, and then it turns out that Jesus is really God’s Son and God is really pissed at us Jews for not recognizing Him as such, God isn’t going to give me points for loyalty. He is going to roast me in Hell for all eternity. So it is better to keep an open mind.
I have some Jewish friends who are appalled by my thinking. They claim they would never accept Jesus as the messiah, but I think they are being unduly stubborn. It’s like going to the track, betting on your favorite horse, and then, after being informed that your horse has just died of a heart attack, cheering him on anyway: “Get up, boy! You can do it. Common, boy, you can still beat ‘em. Just forget you’re dead, boy, and run!” It doesn’t make sense. Bet on a different horse.
Now my analogy breaks down when you factor in the horseracing rule that says you cannot place a bet at the end of a race when the winner is clear. It is because of this rule that some of my Christian friends think my approach is doomed. God isn’t going to welcome me at the last minute. It is no great act of faith to believe in Jesus when Jesus suddenly returns to earth after a 2000 plus year hiatus. I mean that act alone sort of clinches things. But I disagree. Jesus’ parable about the laborers says that even those who come to God very late in the day receive the same reward as those who came on board at dawn. No penalty for waiting at all, so why rush things?
No, I think it is best to take a wait and see attitude: just wait and see who the messiah is, and then rush out to get His Name tattooed on your … well, I’ll leave that up to you. Anyway, I hope this little tip on avoiding eternal damnation is useful to you. After all, if you are going to play the religion game, you might as well play to win.
You see it makes no difference to me who it is; I just want to win.
While this seems completely logical to me, many people with whom I share my strategy for salvation and eternal life in the winner’s circle find it disconcerting. Where is my loyalty? Where is my faith?
The way I look at it, there is no point in backing a looser. If I back the Rebbe, by all accounts a spiritual genius and very loving, albeit currently deceased, man, simply because I am Jewish, and then it turns out that Jesus is really God’s Son and God is really pissed at us Jews for not recognizing Him as such, God isn’t going to give me points for loyalty. He is going to roast me in Hell for all eternity. So it is better to keep an open mind.
I have some Jewish friends who are appalled by my thinking. They claim they would never accept Jesus as the messiah, but I think they are being unduly stubborn. It’s like going to the track, betting on your favorite horse, and then, after being informed that your horse has just died of a heart attack, cheering him on anyway: “Get up, boy! You can do it. Common, boy, you can still beat ‘em. Just forget you’re dead, boy, and run!” It doesn’t make sense. Bet on a different horse.
Now my analogy breaks down when you factor in the horseracing rule that says you cannot place a bet at the end of a race when the winner is clear. It is because of this rule that some of my Christian friends think my approach is doomed. God isn’t going to welcome me at the last minute. It is no great act of faith to believe in Jesus when Jesus suddenly returns to earth after a 2000 plus year hiatus. I mean that act alone sort of clinches things. But I disagree. Jesus’ parable about the laborers says that even those who come to God very late in the day receive the same reward as those who came on board at dawn. No penalty for waiting at all, so why rush things?
No, I think it is best to take a wait and see attitude: just wait and see who the messiah is, and then rush out to get His Name tattooed on your … well, I’ll leave that up to you. Anyway, I hope this little tip on avoiding eternal damnation is useful to you. After all, if you are going to play the religion game, you might as well play to win.
Wednesday, July 22, 2009
Off Line until next week
I am going to Portland to teach, work on the Holy Rascals film, and attend a pre-parliament meeting of the Parliament of World Religions.
I will post again next week.
I will post again next week.
Who is a Jew, British Style
According to a new ruling by a British court, Judaism is a religion (rather than a culture or ethnic group), and who is a Jew should be determined by one’s degree of religious behavior rather than by some claim to group membership or identity.
Clearly the British judges who made this decision, one of whom was Jewish, didn’t and don’t understand the nature of Jewishness. We are a tribe. One is born into a tribe, or marries into a tribe, or is welcomed into the tribe as a blood brother/sister by one method or another. As with any tribe there are people who are more observant of tribal tradition and people who are less observant, but no one would deny either a place in the tribe itself.
It may not be surprising that in a country like England where the Queen is the head of the Church government intrusion into the life of a people to set the standards of who is and who is not a member is unacceptable, and in fact detrimental to the future of the tribe.
Tribes, whether Jewish, Native American, or any other type, are often obsessed with the question of who is in and who is out of the tribe. This is part of what tribalism is about. Especially when the tribe has casino capitalism to protect as in the United States. The British courts should stay out of tribal business.
While I do believe there are foundational principles that define Jewish behavior (kashrut, Shabbat, tzedakah, reciting brachot/blessings to name but four), I also believe it is up to the individual to determine how these principles should be lived in her or his personal life.
For me, a Jew is a person who makes the Jewish tribe her primary though not necessarily exclusive source of communal identity (American Jew rather than Jewish American). I doubt I will change my mind about this. At least not until American Jews are granted casino rights as are American Indian tribes, at which point I might tighten up my definition to protect my assets.
Clearly the British judges who made this decision, one of whom was Jewish, didn’t and don’t understand the nature of Jewishness. We are a tribe. One is born into a tribe, or marries into a tribe, or is welcomed into the tribe as a blood brother/sister by one method or another. As with any tribe there are people who are more observant of tribal tradition and people who are less observant, but no one would deny either a place in the tribe itself.
It may not be surprising that in a country like England where the Queen is the head of the Church government intrusion into the life of a people to set the standards of who is and who is not a member is unacceptable, and in fact detrimental to the future of the tribe.
Tribes, whether Jewish, Native American, or any other type, are often obsessed with the question of who is in and who is out of the tribe. This is part of what tribalism is about. Especially when the tribe has casino capitalism to protect as in the United States. The British courts should stay out of tribal business.
While I do believe there are foundational principles that define Jewish behavior (kashrut, Shabbat, tzedakah, reciting brachot/blessings to name but four), I also believe it is up to the individual to determine how these principles should be lived in her or his personal life.
For me, a Jew is a person who makes the Jewish tribe her primary though not necessarily exclusive source of communal identity (American Jew rather than Jewish American). I doubt I will change my mind about this. At least not until American Jews are granted casino rights as are American Indian tribes, at which point I might tighten up my definition to protect my assets.
Sunday, July 19, 2009
Three Paths Through Torah
What do we do with the painful, misogynist, and genocidal passages of Torah? This was my challenge as I prepared to teach Torah yesterday at Isabella Freedman Retreat Center in Connecticut.
The passage in question is the Israelite slaughter of the Midianites. Moses and God demand the death of them all, and when the soldiers spare the women and babies, Moses is furious, ordering the soldiers to murder the survivors sparing only the baby girls and virgins whom the soldiers may take for themselves.
In the course of sharing my dilemma with colleagues three options for dealing with such texts emerged:
1. The way of justification: this was a time of war when the Israelites were taking the Promised Land from its inhabitants and they needed to cleanse the land from non-Israelite influences of both blood and religion.
2. The way of denial: this isn’t history at all. It just never happened.
3. The way of allegory: the text isn’t meant to be taken literally but metaphorically. The women aren’t women; the babies aren’t babies. All the characters in this genocidal drama are aspects of ourselves with which we must wrestle.
All three ways of dealing with the text have merit, but none satisfy me fully.
The Way of Justification. It is one thing to justify the actions of our ancient ancestors and another to celebrate them by reading their story over and over again each year. Since it is anachronistic to apply today’s morality to that of biblical times, there is no point to reading this text in the context of a sacred celebration of Shabbat at all. It should be relegated to the library where other history books are stored.
The Way of Denial. If we deny the historicity of the text and claim it is just a story, why read it (and texts like it) at all? I don’t read tales of gore and horror in any other form; why read it because it is in the Bible? And even if we claim it is fiction, the calling it sacred fiction and reading it as the word of God poisons the collective psyche of our people. What is the difference between pretend history and real history when both are so honored? And if it is pretend history, why pretend at all? Why pretend we were butchers when we were not butchers?
The Way of Allegory. If we claim the story is allegory, that it is about inner spiritual warfare rather than actual warfare, why use this allegory? Couldn’t we find more effective ways to explore and perhaps free ourselves from our genocidal urges that to interpret ancient fictions? And, if the history is not history but story as the way of denial and the way of allegory attest, what does this say about our claim to the Land of Israel today? The Jewish claim to the Land in the 20th and 21st centuries is based on the fact that God gave it to us in biblical times. If these stories aren’t history then our claim to Palestine is moot.
I understand the need to both justify and escape from the horrors of the Bible. Who wants to believer they come from such a people? I can understand why we would want to deny the historicity of the text and take refuge in allegory. But doing so scares me.
If we can allegorize our genocide against the inhabitants of the Midianites (and many others), won’t the German people someday allegorize the Holocaust? “No, no,” they will insist, “The Holocaust is an allegory. Nazis represent the darker forces of our nature and Jews represent ‘the other.’ There were no real Nazis and Jews, this is just a story we tell ourselves to work through the human fear of the other.”
How many centuries will it take for Americans to allegorize slavery and the genocide of the Native American? Perhaps there will be no Jews left when Nazism becomes an allegory, but imagine if there were. Imagine if you were among them. Would you be pleased to see your suffering denied and reduced to psychological struggle within the minds of the ancestors of your oppressors? The only reason we can get away with allegorizing the slaughter of the Midianites is that there are not Midianites left to protest our callousness.
I am not saying that allegory has no place. But it cannot be used to replace history—real or imagined. If we pretend to be genocidal murderers, if we celebrate the death of our enemies and the innocents who simply happen to be in our way even if we are only imagining them, what does that do to those of us who hear these tales week after week, year after year?
I am not sure the text is history. There is much debate over this and I am inclined to follow those scholars who say this is story rather than history. But it is a story that frightens me. I don’t want to imagine my ancestors this way. So I have two choices: One is I can cease to read fiction that is so dark and evil (just as I refuse to see movies or read books about serial killers or the rape and torture of innocents), and seek more modern means for dealing with the darkside of my psyche. The other is that I can take these texts not only as an opportunity for inner exploration and healing, but also as opportunities for communal grief and soul searching.
There are many great rabbis who do the former, but I have yet to see anyone do the latter. When we read about our genocides against our “enemies” let us stop and mourn for them and for our ancestors—real or fictional—who felt the need to either do these things or pretend to do them. Let us take responsibility for our people and our stories, true or fanciful. Let us confess our sins, if nothing else the sin of wanting to be the murders we were not.
The passage in question is the Israelite slaughter of the Midianites. Moses and God demand the death of them all, and when the soldiers spare the women and babies, Moses is furious, ordering the soldiers to murder the survivors sparing only the baby girls and virgins whom the soldiers may take for themselves.
In the course of sharing my dilemma with colleagues three options for dealing with such texts emerged:
1. The way of justification: this was a time of war when the Israelites were taking the Promised Land from its inhabitants and they needed to cleanse the land from non-Israelite influences of both blood and religion.
2. The way of denial: this isn’t history at all. It just never happened.
3. The way of allegory: the text isn’t meant to be taken literally but metaphorically. The women aren’t women; the babies aren’t babies. All the characters in this genocidal drama are aspects of ourselves with which we must wrestle.
All three ways of dealing with the text have merit, but none satisfy me fully.
The Way of Justification. It is one thing to justify the actions of our ancient ancestors and another to celebrate them by reading their story over and over again each year. Since it is anachronistic to apply today’s morality to that of biblical times, there is no point to reading this text in the context of a sacred celebration of Shabbat at all. It should be relegated to the library where other history books are stored.
The Way of Denial. If we deny the historicity of the text and claim it is just a story, why read it (and texts like it) at all? I don’t read tales of gore and horror in any other form; why read it because it is in the Bible? And even if we claim it is fiction, the calling it sacred fiction and reading it as the word of God poisons the collective psyche of our people. What is the difference between pretend history and real history when both are so honored? And if it is pretend history, why pretend at all? Why pretend we were butchers when we were not butchers?
The Way of Allegory. If we claim the story is allegory, that it is about inner spiritual warfare rather than actual warfare, why use this allegory? Couldn’t we find more effective ways to explore and perhaps free ourselves from our genocidal urges that to interpret ancient fictions? And, if the history is not history but story as the way of denial and the way of allegory attest, what does this say about our claim to the Land of Israel today? The Jewish claim to the Land in the 20th and 21st centuries is based on the fact that God gave it to us in biblical times. If these stories aren’t history then our claim to Palestine is moot.
I understand the need to both justify and escape from the horrors of the Bible. Who wants to believer they come from such a people? I can understand why we would want to deny the historicity of the text and take refuge in allegory. But doing so scares me.
If we can allegorize our genocide against the inhabitants of the Midianites (and many others), won’t the German people someday allegorize the Holocaust? “No, no,” they will insist, “The Holocaust is an allegory. Nazis represent the darker forces of our nature and Jews represent ‘the other.’ There were no real Nazis and Jews, this is just a story we tell ourselves to work through the human fear of the other.”
How many centuries will it take for Americans to allegorize slavery and the genocide of the Native American? Perhaps there will be no Jews left when Nazism becomes an allegory, but imagine if there were. Imagine if you were among them. Would you be pleased to see your suffering denied and reduced to psychological struggle within the minds of the ancestors of your oppressors? The only reason we can get away with allegorizing the slaughter of the Midianites is that there are not Midianites left to protest our callousness.
I am not saying that allegory has no place. But it cannot be used to replace history—real or imagined. If we pretend to be genocidal murderers, if we celebrate the death of our enemies and the innocents who simply happen to be in our way even if we are only imagining them, what does that do to those of us who hear these tales week after week, year after year?
I am not sure the text is history. There is much debate over this and I am inclined to follow those scholars who say this is story rather than history. But it is a story that frightens me. I don’t want to imagine my ancestors this way. So I have two choices: One is I can cease to read fiction that is so dark and evil (just as I refuse to see movies or read books about serial killers or the rape and torture of innocents), and seek more modern means for dealing with the darkside of my psyche. The other is that I can take these texts not only as an opportunity for inner exploration and healing, but also as opportunities for communal grief and soul searching.
There are many great rabbis who do the former, but I have yet to see anyone do the latter. When we read about our genocides against our “enemies” let us stop and mourn for them and for our ancestors—real or fictional—who felt the need to either do these things or pretend to do them. Let us take responsibility for our people and our stories, true or fanciful. Let us confess our sins, if nothing else the sin of wanting to be the murders we were not.
Sunday, July 12, 2009
On Retreat
I will be on retreat and most likely off line until Monday the 20th. Talk with you all when I get back. Shalom.
Friday, July 10, 2009
Being God is Hell
Judaism has a saying, “Everything is foreseen, and free will is given” (Pirke Avot 3:19). This is supposed to answer the paradox of an all-knowing God and a free-willing humanity. If you are free to do what you want, God cannot know in advance what you will, and hence is not all-knowing. If God is all knowing and knows in advance everything you will ever do, then you really aren’t free to do otherwise.
Some people try and finesse this by saying that since you don’t know what you will do, you still have to make a choice, even if God already knows the choice you are going to make. This makes free will conditioned on ignorance. While you may not know what choice you are going to make, God does—not because God willed it, but because God knows the future. It might be the best we can do, and while this may solve the problem from the human perspective, it doesn’t do God any good at all.
What must it be like being God and knowing in advance everything that is going to happen? You get up one morning and plan to look in your friends to see what they are up to, but then you remember that you already know. The same is true of your enemies, the weather, politics, and cosmic disasters. You know everything that will ever happen long before it actually happens. Everything to God is a rerun. God is stuck with eternal life without a single surprise. That is hell. God is trapped in eternal boredom. Why would anyone invent a God like this?
If I were going to invent a God I would imagine one who didn’t know what was going to happen from one minute to the next. Sure s/he might make predictions based on the past, but the opportunity for surprise would always be there. This might make each day worth creating. If you knew how everyday would turn out I advance you probably wouldn’t bother making any day at all.
No, my God wouldn’t have a clue. Much like the God in the Hebrew Bible. He never seems to know what the people are going to do. And when he takes action he is often surprised at the results. Sometimes he wishes he never created humans in the first place. He loves people and he hates people, and he is having a ball blessing and cursing and saving and killing.
Free will on the part of humanity would be irrelevant to my God. All that he would have to do is make sure he didn’t know what was going to happen next. Even if we were totally pre-programmed, God’s ignorance would save him from the boredom of our programming. But it might be hard to create the world and then forget what you had in mind, so my God would create people with free will. This doesn’t mean we can do anything we want, it only means that every once in a while we do something out of character, and that makes it fun for God to watch.
It’s like NBC’s Law & Order shows: even though I know that 99 times out of 100 the good guys win, there is always that one percent where the bad guy gets away with the crime, and that makes the show exciting.
In my theological fantasy God creates the world to be entertained. God loves stories (another Jewish saying), and wants to be surprised. Loving stories only works if you don’t already know they end before you’ve read even the first chapter.
Some people try and finesse this by saying that since you don’t know what you will do, you still have to make a choice, even if God already knows the choice you are going to make. This makes free will conditioned on ignorance. While you may not know what choice you are going to make, God does—not because God willed it, but because God knows the future. It might be the best we can do, and while this may solve the problem from the human perspective, it doesn’t do God any good at all.
What must it be like being God and knowing in advance everything that is going to happen? You get up one morning and plan to look in your friends to see what they are up to, but then you remember that you already know. The same is true of your enemies, the weather, politics, and cosmic disasters. You know everything that will ever happen long before it actually happens. Everything to God is a rerun. God is stuck with eternal life without a single surprise. That is hell. God is trapped in eternal boredom. Why would anyone invent a God like this?
If I were going to invent a God I would imagine one who didn’t know what was going to happen from one minute to the next. Sure s/he might make predictions based on the past, but the opportunity for surprise would always be there. This might make each day worth creating. If you knew how everyday would turn out I advance you probably wouldn’t bother making any day at all.
No, my God wouldn’t have a clue. Much like the God in the Hebrew Bible. He never seems to know what the people are going to do. And when he takes action he is often surprised at the results. Sometimes he wishes he never created humans in the first place. He loves people and he hates people, and he is having a ball blessing and cursing and saving and killing.
Free will on the part of humanity would be irrelevant to my God. All that he would have to do is make sure he didn’t know what was going to happen next. Even if we were totally pre-programmed, God’s ignorance would save him from the boredom of our programming. But it might be hard to create the world and then forget what you had in mind, so my God would create people with free will. This doesn’t mean we can do anything we want, it only means that every once in a while we do something out of character, and that makes it fun for God to watch.
It’s like NBC’s Law & Order shows: even though I know that 99 times out of 100 the good guys win, there is always that one percent where the bad guy gets away with the crime, and that makes the show exciting.
In my theological fantasy God creates the world to be entertained. God loves stories (another Jewish saying), and wants to be surprised. Loving stories only works if you don’t already know they end before you’ve read even the first chapter.
Weather or Not
According to the National Weather Service there is a 20% chance it might rain here tonight. Do you know that means? A lot of people don’t.
A recent study of college students by the University of Washington in Seattle shows that many completely misunderstand the notion of “probability-of-precipitation.” Some imagine that a “20% chance of rain” means that 20% of their town will get rain and 80% won’t. Others understand it to mean that it will rain 20% of the day. Can we be that dumb?
To find out, I walked out among my neighbors and asked them to explain the meaning of today’s forecast. Here are just some of the answers I received:
“It means that there is a 20% chance that God is going to flood the earth tonight.”
“It means that 20% of the people want it to rain tonight.”
“It means that the weather girl only looked at 20% of the map.”
“It means that only 20% of the town will get wet.”
“It means that you are a dumb Jew-bastard who has yet to accept Jesus Christ as his Lord and Savior and who has a 100% chance of going to Hell.”
OK, I made the last one up. Well, no, I didn’t make it up exactly, I simply transposed it from another conversation to this conversation about weather. The prior conversation was about whether or not I was going to Hell, so you can see how easy it was for me to make the leap from “weather” to “whether” and from one conversation to another. Homonyms are our friends.
The Seattle study found that if the weather forecaster added the probability of no rain along with the probability of rain, people understood things better. So if you say to someone, there is a 20% chance that it will rain tonight and an 80% chance that it won’t, there is a 20% chance that the person will understand what you are saying. So I tried that and got this:
“Do I have a choice? If I do, I’ll take the 20% ‘cause we need the rain. If I don’t I’ll take the 80%. Either way it don’t rain in the Hell hole you Jew bastard is going to lest you accept Jesus as your Lord and Savior. Jew bastard.” I’m paraphrasing of course.
Now you may be as confused about the weather as the people in my survey, so let me make it simple. On any given day there is always a 50/50 chance it will rain. It will either rain or it won’t rain. On or off, that’s all there is to it. It will rain or it won’t. It will snow or it won’t. We’ll be hit by an asteroid or we won’t. Jesus will return today or he won’t. It is always 50/50. That’s why I buy lottery tickets: I always have a one in two chance of winning whether or not it rains.
A recent study of college students by the University of Washington in Seattle shows that many completely misunderstand the notion of “probability-of-precipitation.” Some imagine that a “20% chance of rain” means that 20% of their town will get rain and 80% won’t. Others understand it to mean that it will rain 20% of the day. Can we be that dumb?
To find out, I walked out among my neighbors and asked them to explain the meaning of today’s forecast. Here are just some of the answers I received:
“It means that there is a 20% chance that God is going to flood the earth tonight.”
“It means that 20% of the people want it to rain tonight.”
“It means that the weather girl only looked at 20% of the map.”
“It means that only 20% of the town will get wet.”
“It means that you are a dumb Jew-bastard who has yet to accept Jesus Christ as his Lord and Savior and who has a 100% chance of going to Hell.”
OK, I made the last one up. Well, no, I didn’t make it up exactly, I simply transposed it from another conversation to this conversation about weather. The prior conversation was about whether or not I was going to Hell, so you can see how easy it was for me to make the leap from “weather” to “whether” and from one conversation to another. Homonyms are our friends.
The Seattle study found that if the weather forecaster added the probability of no rain along with the probability of rain, people understood things better. So if you say to someone, there is a 20% chance that it will rain tonight and an 80% chance that it won’t, there is a 20% chance that the person will understand what you are saying. So I tried that and got this:
“Do I have a choice? If I do, I’ll take the 20% ‘cause we need the rain. If I don’t I’ll take the 80%. Either way it don’t rain in the Hell hole you Jew bastard is going to lest you accept Jesus as your Lord and Savior. Jew bastard.” I’m paraphrasing of course.
Now you may be as confused about the weather as the people in my survey, so let me make it simple. On any given day there is always a 50/50 chance it will rain. It will either rain or it won’t rain. On or off, that’s all there is to it. It will rain or it won’t. It will snow or it won’t. We’ll be hit by an asteroid or we won’t. Jesus will return today or he won’t. It is always 50/50. That’s why I buy lottery tickets: I always have a one in two chance of winning whether or not it rains.
Tuesday, July 07, 2009
It's All About Me, and Perhaps A Bit About Thee
Researcher George Barna’s new book, The Seven Faith Tribes, offers an interesting if not exactly surprising portrait of American Jews. Here are his main findings, and some quick reactions of my own. After reading this post your comments: Does this sound like Jews you know? Does this help you understand Jews better? If you are a Jew, does this sound like you? If you are not a Jew and this sounds like you, do you want to become a Jew?
1. Being Jewish is more about belonging to a community than adhering to a faith (p. 56). Our motto is, “Two Jews, Three Opinions.” We would never have lasted these past 4000 years if we had to agree about things. Family trumps faith almost every time (Orthodox Jews sometimes excepted).
2. Jews view themselves as tough, relish a good argument, enjoy verbal jousting (p. 61), and are more comfortable with argument than any other tribe. (p. 57) I appreciate a serious argument over issues, and find that I learn more from such discussions than from simply affirming or rejecting fixed ideas—even my own. We even delight in helping our opponents strengthen their arguments to provide us with a greater challenge. We love seeing all sides of an issue, as long as that issue has nothing to do with Israel and the Palestinians, in which case we are often blind as bats.
3. Jews score lowest of all tribes regarding happiness, joy, and feeling at peace. (p. 57) Happiness is overrated. I worry about people who are or want to be happy or joyous all the time; they seem cut off from the suffering of the world. I follow Ecclesiastes; there is a time to be happy and a time to be miserable.
4. Jews embrace education more than any other tribe. (p. 58) Education, and by this I mean critical thinking, free inquiry, and a trust in reason and logic, is far more important to me than accepting the tenets of Judaism. In fact, any religion that resists such honest inquiry is suspect in my eyes.
5. Jews are more willing to take risks than any other tribe. (p. 58). Intellectually this is true of me, but not in any other way.
6. Jews’ dominant desires are health, good education, close family and friends, personal integrity, and to be knowledgeable about the world. (p. 59) Add being able to fit into size 34 Levi’s Silvertab jeans, and I’m in.
7. Few Jews care about having a close relationship with God, (p. 59) which is why only 2% rate faith as a high priority. (p. 60) Jews are more likely to trust science, reason, and logic than ancient sacred documents or teachings based on faith. (p. 63) That’s me, for sure. Though the more I know about science I don’t trust that either. As far as God goes, it depends on how you define “God.” For me God is reality and you can’t get much closer to God than that.
8. 80% of American Jews doubt the existence of moral absolutes. (p. 60) Sure, absolutes of any kind shut down free inquiry. Of course free inquiry can become an absolute, so be careful.
9. Jews are less inclined to watch violent television or films than other tribes. (p. 60) While I am proud to belong to a people who oppose violence rather than sex in popular culture, it doesn’t fit me at all. I rate movies as good or bad based on the number of exploding space ships per minute. I want big and frequent bangs for my buck. For me, sex on the screen is just a distraction between battle scenes.
10. Jews are “notoriously liberal” in their politics, (p. 62) more likely than most Americans to be “riled up about injustice,” (p.61) and resist government policies limiting personal behavior and legislating morality. (p. 62) This finding makes me very proud to be a Jew.
11. Most Jews “perceive the Bible with suspicion.” (p. 64) Of course! We wrote it! The Bible is a human document, and all human documents should be greeted with suspicion.
12. Only 36% of Jews imagine God in ways consistent with the Torah, and most Jews do not believe God is involved in people’s lives. (p. 65) Thank God! That Guy is a Crazy Person!
13. Only 20% believe there is a satanic force in the world. (p. 66) Here I side with the minority. I do believe in evil. And while I do not believe in a separate satanic force outside of the human psyche, the evil within it is scary enough.
14. Only 25% of Jews say Judaism has been a transformative force in their lives. (p. 67) As a Jew who grew up in the synagogue I get this, and as a rabbi I am partly responsible for it. That 75% of Jews find Judaism less than life transforming says to me that we have to reinvent the rabbinate. Too bad the 25% who like things the way they are run the rabbinic institutions.
1. Being Jewish is more about belonging to a community than adhering to a faith (p. 56). Our motto is, “Two Jews, Three Opinions.” We would never have lasted these past 4000 years if we had to agree about things. Family trumps faith almost every time (Orthodox Jews sometimes excepted).
2. Jews view themselves as tough, relish a good argument, enjoy verbal jousting (p. 61), and are more comfortable with argument than any other tribe. (p. 57) I appreciate a serious argument over issues, and find that I learn more from such discussions than from simply affirming or rejecting fixed ideas—even my own. We even delight in helping our opponents strengthen their arguments to provide us with a greater challenge. We love seeing all sides of an issue, as long as that issue has nothing to do with Israel and the Palestinians, in which case we are often blind as bats.
3. Jews score lowest of all tribes regarding happiness, joy, and feeling at peace. (p. 57) Happiness is overrated. I worry about people who are or want to be happy or joyous all the time; they seem cut off from the suffering of the world. I follow Ecclesiastes; there is a time to be happy and a time to be miserable.
4. Jews embrace education more than any other tribe. (p. 58) Education, and by this I mean critical thinking, free inquiry, and a trust in reason and logic, is far more important to me than accepting the tenets of Judaism. In fact, any religion that resists such honest inquiry is suspect in my eyes.
5. Jews are more willing to take risks than any other tribe. (p. 58). Intellectually this is true of me, but not in any other way.
6. Jews’ dominant desires are health, good education, close family and friends, personal integrity, and to be knowledgeable about the world. (p. 59) Add being able to fit into size 34 Levi’s Silvertab jeans, and I’m in.
7. Few Jews care about having a close relationship with God, (p. 59) which is why only 2% rate faith as a high priority. (p. 60) Jews are more likely to trust science, reason, and logic than ancient sacred documents or teachings based on faith. (p. 63) That’s me, for sure. Though the more I know about science I don’t trust that either. As far as God goes, it depends on how you define “God.” For me God is reality and you can’t get much closer to God than that.
8. 80% of American Jews doubt the existence of moral absolutes. (p. 60) Sure, absolutes of any kind shut down free inquiry. Of course free inquiry can become an absolute, so be careful.
9. Jews are less inclined to watch violent television or films than other tribes. (p. 60) While I am proud to belong to a people who oppose violence rather than sex in popular culture, it doesn’t fit me at all. I rate movies as good or bad based on the number of exploding space ships per minute. I want big and frequent bangs for my buck. For me, sex on the screen is just a distraction between battle scenes.
10. Jews are “notoriously liberal” in their politics, (p. 62) more likely than most Americans to be “riled up about injustice,” (p.61) and resist government policies limiting personal behavior and legislating morality. (p. 62) This finding makes me very proud to be a Jew.
11. Most Jews “perceive the Bible with suspicion.” (p. 64) Of course! We wrote it! The Bible is a human document, and all human documents should be greeted with suspicion.
12. Only 36% of Jews imagine God in ways consistent with the Torah, and most Jews do not believe God is involved in people’s lives. (p. 65) Thank God! That Guy is a Crazy Person!
13. Only 20% believe there is a satanic force in the world. (p. 66) Here I side with the minority. I do believe in evil. And while I do not believe in a separate satanic force outside of the human psyche, the evil within it is scary enough.
14. Only 25% of Jews say Judaism has been a transformative force in their lives. (p. 67) As a Jew who grew up in the synagogue I get this, and as a rabbi I am partly responsible for it. That 75% of Jews find Judaism less than life transforming says to me that we have to reinvent the rabbinate. Too bad the 25% who like things the way they are run the rabbinic institutions.
Sunday, July 05, 2009
Faith & Values, Rutherford Style
The Lifestyles section of my local newspaper is subtitle, “Religion: Rutherford Faith and Values.” Rutherford is the county in which my town is located. What are Rutherford values? What is Rutherford faith? Here are few highlights from the Lifestyle section:
Under GOOD IDEAS a local pharmacist warns us that the sin of America is “the abomination it truly is to God,” and urges us to repent and follow the example of Jesus Christ. Unfortunately she doesn’t define the abomination. In this town the abomination could be abortion, homosexuality, occultism, or voting Democratic.
The main article, “Letters to God,” is about a movie being made in Orlando, FL. inspired by a Rutherford boy whose faith in God helped him and his community deal with his cancer.
Beneath the fold is an essay called “Share your faith with humility” in which we learn that “Sharing your faith isn’t an easy gig… Most of all it requires you to abandon all assumptions that you know what’s best for someone else.” Really? I thought the whole point of proselytizing is that you have the truth and the other person doesn’t. If you don’t know what’s best for me, then why bother me with your faith?
The rest of the Lifestyles section deals with various church fundraisers, Bible camps, and faith programs, a complaint to Abigail Van Buren from a guy whose girl friend wears see-through cloths and no underwear, advice on how to say “no” to a wedding invitation, the comics, a listing of 125 churches—I counted— and their upcoming worship services (the town’s mosque and Hindu Temple do not list; we have no synagogue), and the daily horoscope…
…. Wait for it… DAILY HOROSCOPE!!!!!
What kind of faith and values is this? The Bible is clearly anti-horoscope: “When you come into the land which the LORD your God is giving you, you shall not learn to follow the abominations of those nations. There shall not be found among you anyone who makes his son or his daughter pass through the fire, or one who practices witchcraft, or a soothsayer, or one who interprets omens, or a sorcerer, or one who conjures spells, or a medium, or a spiritist, or one who calls up the dead. For all who do these things are an abomination [detestable] to the LORD…” (Deuteronomy 18: 9-12)
While the constant invoking of Ronald Reagan by God-fearing Republicans might be considered calling up the dead, it is the fact that interpreting omens, which includes the stars, is an abomination to God that really matters to me.
Remember the local pharmacist’s concern about abomination and how she failed to make clear what abomination she was talking about? Now we know why she didn’t make it clear! The newspaper itself is promoting abomination by printing the daily horoscope! She clearly had the horoscope in mind, but could not say so for fear of having her “good idea” removed from the paper. If we are to repent we have to get this abomination removed from our newspapers. I don’t know about you, but I will get on this very soon.
Not today, though; my horoscope said this was a bad time for me to take up new causes.
Under GOOD IDEAS a local pharmacist warns us that the sin of America is “the abomination it truly is to God,” and urges us to repent and follow the example of Jesus Christ. Unfortunately she doesn’t define the abomination. In this town the abomination could be abortion, homosexuality, occultism, or voting Democratic.
The main article, “Letters to God,” is about a movie being made in Orlando, FL. inspired by a Rutherford boy whose faith in God helped him and his community deal with his cancer.
Beneath the fold is an essay called “Share your faith with humility” in which we learn that “Sharing your faith isn’t an easy gig… Most of all it requires you to abandon all assumptions that you know what’s best for someone else.” Really? I thought the whole point of proselytizing is that you have the truth and the other person doesn’t. If you don’t know what’s best for me, then why bother me with your faith?
The rest of the Lifestyles section deals with various church fundraisers, Bible camps, and faith programs, a complaint to Abigail Van Buren from a guy whose girl friend wears see-through cloths and no underwear, advice on how to say “no” to a wedding invitation, the comics, a listing of 125 churches—I counted— and their upcoming worship services (the town’s mosque and Hindu Temple do not list; we have no synagogue), and the daily horoscope…
…. Wait for it… DAILY HOROSCOPE!!!!!
What kind of faith and values is this? The Bible is clearly anti-horoscope: “When you come into the land which the LORD your God is giving you, you shall not learn to follow the abominations of those nations. There shall not be found among you anyone who makes his son or his daughter pass through the fire, or one who practices witchcraft, or a soothsayer, or one who interprets omens, or a sorcerer, or one who conjures spells, or a medium, or a spiritist, or one who calls up the dead. For all who do these things are an abomination [detestable] to the LORD…” (Deuteronomy 18: 9-12)
While the constant invoking of Ronald Reagan by God-fearing Republicans might be considered calling up the dead, it is the fact that interpreting omens, which includes the stars, is an abomination to God that really matters to me.
Remember the local pharmacist’s concern about abomination and how she failed to make clear what abomination she was talking about? Now we know why she didn’t make it clear! The newspaper itself is promoting abomination by printing the daily horoscope! She clearly had the horoscope in mind, but could not say so for fear of having her “good idea” removed from the paper. If we are to repent we have to get this abomination removed from our newspapers. I don’t know about you, but I will get on this very soon.
Not today, though; my horoscope said this was a bad time for me to take up new causes.
Friday, July 03, 2009
July 4th 2009, part two
Quick:
Who wrote the Declaration of Independence?
Who is in charge of the Executive branch of the US government?
What is the supreme law of the land?
How many justices sit on the Supreme Court?
These and similar questions were asked of a group of Arizona high school students in a recent Goldwater Institute survey. The aim of the survey was to find out if native-born Americans knew enough about America to pass the citizenship test given to those seeking to become American citizens. The result: 96.5% of the students failed the test.
But our kids aren’t stupid. Ask these same students to list the ingredients of a Big Mac and they do quite well, thank you very much. The issue isn’t smart versus stupid; it is a question of what really matters to them. We know a lot about what matters, and nothing at all about what doesn’t matter. And as long as McDonald’s matters more than McCarthy (Joseph, not Charlie) Americans will be driven by fat and fear for years to come.
Who took civics out of the high school curriculum? How can we raise a free people when we have no idea what freedom is, and how our system of government was created to secure and maintain it? What hope is there when you ask kids about “moon walk” and they talk about Michael Jackson rather than the Apollo astronauts?
Yesterday I wrote about the racism being preached on right-wing commercial radio. I wrote how frightening it was to hear such ignorance spewed across the airwaves and to know that the vast majority of listeners didn’t know it was ignorance. The Goldwater survey makes it is clear that this isn’t going to change anytime soon.
Tomorrow is the Fourth of July. Most of us are going to stuff ourselves with pork by-products, and “oo” and “ah” over fireworks. Fine. But let me suggest that the best way to celebrate the Fourth of July is to sit down with friends and family to read and discuss the Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights. I’d say we should read the entire Constitution, but that might be too much for one day.
I worry that the United States is well on its way to becoming a failed experiment. Democracy requires more effort, civic education, and moral courage than most of us seem to possess or are willing to pursue. True, I am a pessimist. And while I would love to proven wrong, I suspect I won’t be.
So have a happy Fourth of July. And, just for fun, see if any of your kids or friends know whose buried in Grant’s Tomb.
Who wrote the Declaration of Independence?
Who is in charge of the Executive branch of the US government?
What is the supreme law of the land?
How many justices sit on the Supreme Court?
These and similar questions were asked of a group of Arizona high school students in a recent Goldwater Institute survey. The aim of the survey was to find out if native-born Americans knew enough about America to pass the citizenship test given to those seeking to become American citizens. The result: 96.5% of the students failed the test.
But our kids aren’t stupid. Ask these same students to list the ingredients of a Big Mac and they do quite well, thank you very much. The issue isn’t smart versus stupid; it is a question of what really matters to them. We know a lot about what matters, and nothing at all about what doesn’t matter. And as long as McDonald’s matters more than McCarthy (Joseph, not Charlie) Americans will be driven by fat and fear for years to come.
Who took civics out of the high school curriculum? How can we raise a free people when we have no idea what freedom is, and how our system of government was created to secure and maintain it? What hope is there when you ask kids about “moon walk” and they talk about Michael Jackson rather than the Apollo astronauts?
Yesterday I wrote about the racism being preached on right-wing commercial radio. I wrote how frightening it was to hear such ignorance spewed across the airwaves and to know that the vast majority of listeners didn’t know it was ignorance. The Goldwater survey makes it is clear that this isn’t going to change anytime soon.
Tomorrow is the Fourth of July. Most of us are going to stuff ourselves with pork by-products, and “oo” and “ah” over fireworks. Fine. But let me suggest that the best way to celebrate the Fourth of July is to sit down with friends and family to read and discuss the Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights. I’d say we should read the entire Constitution, but that might be too much for one day.
I worry that the United States is well on its way to becoming a failed experiment. Democracy requires more effort, civic education, and moral courage than most of us seem to possess or are willing to pursue. True, I am a pessimist. And while I would love to proven wrong, I suspect I won’t be.
So have a happy Fourth of July. And, just for fun, see if any of your kids or friends know whose buried in Grant’s Tomb.
Thursday, July 02, 2009
July Fourth, 2009, part one
Driving to a lunch meeting in the Boro this morning I turned on our local FM talk radio station to learn that almost all black people hate white people, that President Obama is a racist, and a foreign-born Moslem sympathetic to Iran and jihadists, and that the primary goal of the Obama administration is to wrest power from the white race and give it to blacks and Hispanics.
I arrived at my meeting shaking with a mixture of anger and fear. Anger that such stupidity gets commercial airtime, and fear that most people listening to it do not think it stupid.
I remember the last time we had a Democrat President. Right wing radio was apoplectic, but the talk wasn’t this vile. Sure the Clintons murdered members of their administration, were secretly Communists trying to set up single-payer healthcare, and the President could not keep POTUS Jr. in his pants, but I don’t remember it being this emotionally charged. Sure, Rush kept count of how many days American had left in Clinton captivity, but this was no more absurd that Keith Oberman continuing his count of days since Bush’s Mission Accomplished moment on the aircraft carrier off the coast of Iraq.
But there is something different about the Right this time around. And, given that President Obama isn’t doing anything of things that I wanted him to do (end discrimination against the LGBT community, stop funding dictatorships, put real pressure on Israel and Palestine to make peace, withdraw from Iraq and Afghanistan, cease the bailout of today’s robber barons, put real incentives behind green technology, and a host of other things that should rightly make the right crazy) the difference can’t really be political. Obama is a centrist, but he is a black centrist and that makes all the difference.
True it is hard to argue that America is a racist country when we have a black man as president, but it isn’t hard to see that those who are so afraid of his policies are not really afraid of his policies but his color. No one suggested during the Clinton years that the President was planning to give America over to poor rural whites in Arkansas.
The guest on this morning’s radio broadcast was an African American preacher in town for this weekend’s Republican Tea Party in Nashville. See, the Right is saying, we aren’t racist. Here is a black man speaking for us. Except it was this black man who told us that almost all black people were racists. It is one thing if some honky makes this claim—I can right it off as racism—but when a black man tells me that black folk hate me ‘cause I’m white then you just gots to believe!
Not only is Obama trying to sell America out to the black race, the radio host and his guest explained, it is trying to convince good Christians that Jesus was black. This Muslim in Christ’s clothing is trying to tell us that Jesus wasn’t white! How can that be? In my neighborhood not only is Jesus white, he spoke King James’ English! The fact that Jesus was a brown skinned Aramaic speaking Palestinian Jew seems to escape everyone’s notice.
As we prepare to celebrate the Fourth of July we would be wise to remember what this country stands for: White God, White Christians, and White Power—with a couple of black folks tagging along to ease our conscience.
I arrived at my meeting shaking with a mixture of anger and fear. Anger that such stupidity gets commercial airtime, and fear that most people listening to it do not think it stupid.
I remember the last time we had a Democrat President. Right wing radio was apoplectic, but the talk wasn’t this vile. Sure the Clintons murdered members of their administration, were secretly Communists trying to set up single-payer healthcare, and the President could not keep POTUS Jr. in his pants, but I don’t remember it being this emotionally charged. Sure, Rush kept count of how many days American had left in Clinton captivity, but this was no more absurd that Keith Oberman continuing his count of days since Bush’s Mission Accomplished moment on the aircraft carrier off the coast of Iraq.
But there is something different about the Right this time around. And, given that President Obama isn’t doing anything of things that I wanted him to do (end discrimination against the LGBT community, stop funding dictatorships, put real pressure on Israel and Palestine to make peace, withdraw from Iraq and Afghanistan, cease the bailout of today’s robber barons, put real incentives behind green technology, and a host of other things that should rightly make the right crazy) the difference can’t really be political. Obama is a centrist, but he is a black centrist and that makes all the difference.
True it is hard to argue that America is a racist country when we have a black man as president, but it isn’t hard to see that those who are so afraid of his policies are not really afraid of his policies but his color. No one suggested during the Clinton years that the President was planning to give America over to poor rural whites in Arkansas.
The guest on this morning’s radio broadcast was an African American preacher in town for this weekend’s Republican Tea Party in Nashville. See, the Right is saying, we aren’t racist. Here is a black man speaking for us. Except it was this black man who told us that almost all black people were racists. It is one thing if some honky makes this claim—I can right it off as racism—but when a black man tells me that black folk hate me ‘cause I’m white then you just gots to believe!
Not only is Obama trying to sell America out to the black race, the radio host and his guest explained, it is trying to convince good Christians that Jesus was black. This Muslim in Christ’s clothing is trying to tell us that Jesus wasn’t white! How can that be? In my neighborhood not only is Jesus white, he spoke King James’ English! The fact that Jesus was a brown skinned Aramaic speaking Palestinian Jew seems to escape everyone’s notice.
As we prepare to celebrate the Fourth of July we would be wise to remember what this country stands for: White God, White Christians, and White Power—with a couple of black folks tagging along to ease our conscience.
Tuesday, June 30, 2009
Who Decides What is Judaism?
I received an email yesterday that I thought I would share with you. Rather than print the entire letter, I am highlighting the key points accompanied by my response.
1. Judaism should not be influenced by outside values and beliefs, and should stem only from God and Torah. The assumption you are making, namely that Judaism is somehow separate from the values and beliefs of the people who shaped it, is, in my opinion, false. Of course traditional Judaism claims that it comes from a transcendent source outside humanity, but history makes it clear that Judaism has changed over time, and that the changes came as the beliefs and values of Jews changed.
To site just a few examples: The use of capital punishment is rampant in the Hebrew Bible, yet anathema to the rabbis. So they changed Judaism to make the implementation of capital punishment impossible. Kosher is another example. While the Torah does lay the groundwork for a uniquely Jewish diet, the rabbis expanded this far beyond the Torah’s proscriptions. The same can be said for Shabbat and other holy day traditions as well.
Regarding more metaphysical matters, it is well established in academic circles that biblical Jews had no sense of a heaven and hell, and that it this was introduced into Judaism by those Jews who learned of it during their exile in Babylonia. The Pharisees made belief in the world to come central to their teachings, something their priestly opponents rejected as foreign.
Looking at Judaism in our own day, the role of women in Jewish life has greatly expanded not because Torah demanded it, but because the Women’s Movement became part of the mindset of most Jews and they demanded it.
To say that Judaism avoids change is false. To ignore the role the Jewish people play in changing their religion is to ignore how civilizations grow and survive. If priestly Judaism did not evolve into rabbinic Judaism there would be no Judaism at all. The fact that the rabbis insisted that they were simply applying the Oral Torah given to Moses alongside the Written Torah was a slick marketing move, but has no legitimacy outside the rabbis themselves—hence the rejection of the rabbinic innovations by their priestly competitors prior to the destruction of the Temple in 70 CE.
2. How can we ensure that in a hundred years or more there will still be Judaism or Jews if by that time we allow our morals and beliefs to eradicate all vestiges of what makes Judaism what it truly is and not some cheap, unsatisfying, self-help program? Your phrasing begs the question “what Judaism truly is,” but I understand and even share your concern. What will keep Judaism recognizably Jewish? Some would say that the only thing that keeps Judaism Jewish is that a people who call themselves Jews insist that it is. From a sociological viewpoint this may be true. I would like to add another element: Torah.
I think that any Judaism not linked to a creative reading of Torah is doomed. But as our rabbis have shown over the past 2000 years Torah can be read in many different ways to yield many different meanings and insights. Torah is a living document and must be read with deep creativity and imagination to uncover the layers of meaning needed in each generation. So what will make Judaism of the future authentic, the same thing that made the Judaisms of the past authentic: Torah and the Jews.
3. Liberal Judaism is fake Judaism that threatens to destroy authentic Judaism. The real challenge to Orthodoxy and tradition isn’t liberal Judaisms, but the rise of the sovereign self. With the coming of the modern period and now with postmodernism the individual (especially in the United States) is seen as supreme. It is becoming more and more difficult to subsume the individual into the group. We are encouraged to think for ourselves, to make moral and ethical decisions based on our individual consciences, etc. Community is more and more difficult to maintain. Can a Judaism that hopes to reach out to such highly individualized people impose law, or does it have to take another path?
It is too soon to answer this question, but the trend seems to be against halacha/Jewish law among nonOrthodox Jews. Even Conservative Jews pick and choose among the halachot, and often do so based on values that come from the secular world.
While I have no doubt that Orthodoxy will survive, it seems to do so only through greater and greater isolation from modernity. Orthodox Judaism will not (thankfully) go away, but it may (sadly) go the way of the Amish. We may admire their faith, but they are largely irrelevant to the lives of the most people.
This is my fear: that Judaism becomes irrelevant to Jews. Given that most Jews (90% if I am not mistaken) have rejected Orthodoxy, it isn’t too much of a stretch to say that Orthodoxy is irrelevant to most Jews. But, if you are correct (and you may be) that the Judaism that is immerging in a weak, self-indulgent, self-help program more geared to Jerry Springer than the Prophets we Jews are in trouble.
4. Liberal rabbis are fake rabbis who bastardize Judaism. I can only assume that “real rabbis” are Orthodox rabbis. Yet there are some Orthodox rabbis that other Orthodox rabbis consider equally fake. So how are we to decide who is the real rabbi?
If I am reading you correctly, the only real rabbi is one who rejects all change. If that is true, there are no real rabbis. Rabbinic Judaism was a radical departure from Priestly Judaism. Hillel and Akiva, to mention just two rabbis, were agents of change. And the Rambam (Moses Maimonides) even more so! The difference between these sages and some of today’s rabbis is that they insisted they were not doing what they were doing: making changes, and, in the case of Maimonides, applying the wisdom of non-Jewish cultures (Aristotelian to be specific) to Judaism. Today’s rabbinic creatives are more honest in their borrowings.
But, I too, have to cop to the notion of “fake rabbis.” There are rabbis, or people who call themselves rabbis, whom I would call “fake.” I make this distinction based on snobbishness: did they attend a yeshiva or seminary? Do they know and use Torah, Talmud, Zohar, Tanya in shaping their teachings? Are they rooted in Jewish history, tradition, and literature? No matter how innovative a rabbi may be, if they are linked strongly to these things I consider them authentic, even if I disagree with them. But if they are not so linked, I, too, fall into the trap of name-calling.
To opt for name calling as a first line of defense, however, suggests a weakness in your own argument. What could have been a fine discussion among thoughtful Jews becomes a silly spat between eight-year-olds. The only way we will know what impact rabbis (fake and otherwise) will have on Judaism is to wait and see. I imagine that if you shift your passion from attacking Jews to enriching Judaism, your Judaism will thrive. At least I hope so. In the end, as it has been throughout Jewish history, it is the Jews who will decide. They will determine what is Jewish, who is Jewish, who is a rabbi, etc.
1. Judaism should not be influenced by outside values and beliefs, and should stem only from God and Torah. The assumption you are making, namely that Judaism is somehow separate from the values and beliefs of the people who shaped it, is, in my opinion, false. Of course traditional Judaism claims that it comes from a transcendent source outside humanity, but history makes it clear that Judaism has changed over time, and that the changes came as the beliefs and values of Jews changed.
To site just a few examples: The use of capital punishment is rampant in the Hebrew Bible, yet anathema to the rabbis. So they changed Judaism to make the implementation of capital punishment impossible. Kosher is another example. While the Torah does lay the groundwork for a uniquely Jewish diet, the rabbis expanded this far beyond the Torah’s proscriptions. The same can be said for Shabbat and other holy day traditions as well.
Regarding more metaphysical matters, it is well established in academic circles that biblical Jews had no sense of a heaven and hell, and that it this was introduced into Judaism by those Jews who learned of it during their exile in Babylonia. The Pharisees made belief in the world to come central to their teachings, something their priestly opponents rejected as foreign.
Looking at Judaism in our own day, the role of women in Jewish life has greatly expanded not because Torah demanded it, but because the Women’s Movement became part of the mindset of most Jews and they demanded it.
To say that Judaism avoids change is false. To ignore the role the Jewish people play in changing their religion is to ignore how civilizations grow and survive. If priestly Judaism did not evolve into rabbinic Judaism there would be no Judaism at all. The fact that the rabbis insisted that they were simply applying the Oral Torah given to Moses alongside the Written Torah was a slick marketing move, but has no legitimacy outside the rabbis themselves—hence the rejection of the rabbinic innovations by their priestly competitors prior to the destruction of the Temple in 70 CE.
2. How can we ensure that in a hundred years or more there will still be Judaism or Jews if by that time we allow our morals and beliefs to eradicate all vestiges of what makes Judaism what it truly is and not some cheap, unsatisfying, self-help program? Your phrasing begs the question “what Judaism truly is,” but I understand and even share your concern. What will keep Judaism recognizably Jewish? Some would say that the only thing that keeps Judaism Jewish is that a people who call themselves Jews insist that it is. From a sociological viewpoint this may be true. I would like to add another element: Torah.
I think that any Judaism not linked to a creative reading of Torah is doomed. But as our rabbis have shown over the past 2000 years Torah can be read in many different ways to yield many different meanings and insights. Torah is a living document and must be read with deep creativity and imagination to uncover the layers of meaning needed in each generation. So what will make Judaism of the future authentic, the same thing that made the Judaisms of the past authentic: Torah and the Jews.
3. Liberal Judaism is fake Judaism that threatens to destroy authentic Judaism. The real challenge to Orthodoxy and tradition isn’t liberal Judaisms, but the rise of the sovereign self. With the coming of the modern period and now with postmodernism the individual (especially in the United States) is seen as supreme. It is becoming more and more difficult to subsume the individual into the group. We are encouraged to think for ourselves, to make moral and ethical decisions based on our individual consciences, etc. Community is more and more difficult to maintain. Can a Judaism that hopes to reach out to such highly individualized people impose law, or does it have to take another path?
It is too soon to answer this question, but the trend seems to be against halacha/Jewish law among nonOrthodox Jews. Even Conservative Jews pick and choose among the halachot, and often do so based on values that come from the secular world.
While I have no doubt that Orthodoxy will survive, it seems to do so only through greater and greater isolation from modernity. Orthodox Judaism will not (thankfully) go away, but it may (sadly) go the way of the Amish. We may admire their faith, but they are largely irrelevant to the lives of the most people.
This is my fear: that Judaism becomes irrelevant to Jews. Given that most Jews (90% if I am not mistaken) have rejected Orthodoxy, it isn’t too much of a stretch to say that Orthodoxy is irrelevant to most Jews. But, if you are correct (and you may be) that the Judaism that is immerging in a weak, self-indulgent, self-help program more geared to Jerry Springer than the Prophets we Jews are in trouble.
4. Liberal rabbis are fake rabbis who bastardize Judaism. I can only assume that “real rabbis” are Orthodox rabbis. Yet there are some Orthodox rabbis that other Orthodox rabbis consider equally fake. So how are we to decide who is the real rabbi?
If I am reading you correctly, the only real rabbi is one who rejects all change. If that is true, there are no real rabbis. Rabbinic Judaism was a radical departure from Priestly Judaism. Hillel and Akiva, to mention just two rabbis, were agents of change. And the Rambam (Moses Maimonides) even more so! The difference between these sages and some of today’s rabbis is that they insisted they were not doing what they were doing: making changes, and, in the case of Maimonides, applying the wisdom of non-Jewish cultures (Aristotelian to be specific) to Judaism. Today’s rabbinic creatives are more honest in their borrowings.
But, I too, have to cop to the notion of “fake rabbis.” There are rabbis, or people who call themselves rabbis, whom I would call “fake.” I make this distinction based on snobbishness: did they attend a yeshiva or seminary? Do they know and use Torah, Talmud, Zohar, Tanya in shaping their teachings? Are they rooted in Jewish history, tradition, and literature? No matter how innovative a rabbi may be, if they are linked strongly to these things I consider them authentic, even if I disagree with them. But if they are not so linked, I, too, fall into the trap of name-calling.
To opt for name calling as a first line of defense, however, suggests a weakness in your own argument. What could have been a fine discussion among thoughtful Jews becomes a silly spat between eight-year-olds. The only way we will know what impact rabbis (fake and otherwise) will have on Judaism is to wait and see. I imagine that if you shift your passion from attacking Jews to enriching Judaism, your Judaism will thrive. At least I hope so. In the end, as it has been throughout Jewish history, it is the Jews who will decide. They will determine what is Jewish, who is Jewish, who is a rabbi, etc.
Monday, June 29, 2009
Shivas Not So Regal
Shiva’s penis is shrinking. At least this is the worry of many Hindus.
Of concern is a giant stalagmite in the Amarnath cave in Kashmir, some 12,729 feet above sea level. The cave is one of Hinduism’s most holy sites because the phallus-shaped icicle within it is thought to be a representation of Lord Shiva, the God of Destruction and Regeneration, who, along with Brahma the Creator and Vishnu the Preserver, makes up the Hindu Trinity.
Sure, I know what some of you are thinking: What God in his right mind would choose to appear as a stalagmite? And I know that the True God always prefers to appear in pizzas and grilled cheese sandwiches. But we ought not to be so dismissive other people’s superstitions, even when they are so blatantly false. A stalagmite phallus, please! Every one knows God prefers dairy product incarnations. But you have to admire the faith of the Hindu.
When God appears in a grilled cheese sandwich it is usually in a person’s home where friends and family can worship the Lactose Lord with relative ease. Where is the challenge, the true test of faith? With Shiva in Kashmir, on the other hand, the faithful have to climb over two miles straight up to gaze upon the Rock of Salvation. Now that is a show of faith!
But I am missing the point. While it is great that 50,000 Hindu pilgrims have visited Shiva over the past two weeks, it is the melting of the Lord that is troubling.
Like other phalluses, the size of Shiva’s grows and shrinks over time. The Hindus believe, however, that a shrinking Shiva denotes the God’s displeasure. This too is common to most phalluses, they shrink when they are not pleasured, but while most men worship their own phallus, the fact that millions and millions of people worship this particular phallus may mean something. If numbers matter, the penis of Shiva overshadows the pizza of Christ any way you slice it.
But, once again, I am off track. What matters is that global warming is destroying the Destroyer! This is bad news. Without Shiva there is no death, and without death, life on this planet will eventually suffocate itself. If death dies, life is doomed!
The solution, however, is not to send millions of pilgrims to worship the far away phallus. On the contrary, all their body heat and prayers will make the cave even warmer and melt Shiva even faster. Pilgrims go home!
We have got to cool the planet, or at least the state of Kashmir, and cool it now. If anyone knows how to contact Al Gore, please do so now. God is melting!
Of concern is a giant stalagmite in the Amarnath cave in Kashmir, some 12,729 feet above sea level. The cave is one of Hinduism’s most holy sites because the phallus-shaped icicle within it is thought to be a representation of Lord Shiva, the God of Destruction and Regeneration, who, along with Brahma the Creator and Vishnu the Preserver, makes up the Hindu Trinity.
Sure, I know what some of you are thinking: What God in his right mind would choose to appear as a stalagmite? And I know that the True God always prefers to appear in pizzas and grilled cheese sandwiches. But we ought not to be so dismissive other people’s superstitions, even when they are so blatantly false. A stalagmite phallus, please! Every one knows God prefers dairy product incarnations. But you have to admire the faith of the Hindu.
When God appears in a grilled cheese sandwich it is usually in a person’s home where friends and family can worship the Lactose Lord with relative ease. Where is the challenge, the true test of faith? With Shiva in Kashmir, on the other hand, the faithful have to climb over two miles straight up to gaze upon the Rock of Salvation. Now that is a show of faith!
But I am missing the point. While it is great that 50,000 Hindu pilgrims have visited Shiva over the past two weeks, it is the melting of the Lord that is troubling.
Like other phalluses, the size of Shiva’s grows and shrinks over time. The Hindus believe, however, that a shrinking Shiva denotes the God’s displeasure. This too is common to most phalluses, they shrink when they are not pleasured, but while most men worship their own phallus, the fact that millions and millions of people worship this particular phallus may mean something. If numbers matter, the penis of Shiva overshadows the pizza of Christ any way you slice it.
But, once again, I am off track. What matters is that global warming is destroying the Destroyer! This is bad news. Without Shiva there is no death, and without death, life on this planet will eventually suffocate itself. If death dies, life is doomed!
The solution, however, is not to send millions of pilgrims to worship the far away phallus. On the contrary, all their body heat and prayers will make the cave even warmer and melt Shiva even faster. Pilgrims go home!
We have got to cool the planet, or at least the state of Kashmir, and cool it now. If anyone knows how to contact Al Gore, please do so now. God is melting!
Thursday, June 25, 2009
The Rain in Spain Falls Mainly on the Brain
According to the National Weather Service there is a 20% chance it might rain here tonight. Do you know that means? A lot of people don’t.
A recent study of college students by the University of Washington in Seattle shows that many completely misunderstand the notion of “probability-of-precipitation.” Some imagine that if there is a 20% chance of rain, that means that 20% of their town will get rain and 80% won’t. Others understand it to mean that it will rain 20% of the day. Can we be that dumb?
To find out, I walked out among my neighbors and townsfolk and asked them to explain the meaning of today’s forecast. Here are just some of the answers I received:
“It means that there is a 20% chance that God is going to flood the earth tonight.”
“It means that 20% of the people want it to rain tonight.”
“It means that the weather girl only looked at 20% of the map.”
“It means that only 20% of the town will get wet.”
“It means that you are a dumb Jew-bastard who has yet to accept Jesus Christ as his Lord and Savior and who has a 100% chance of going to Hell.”
OK, I made the last one up. Well, no, I didn’t make it up exactly, I simply transposed it from another conversation to this conversation about weather. The prior conversation was about whether or not I was going to Hell, so you can see how easy it was for me to make the leap from one conversation to another. Homonyms are our friends.
The Seattle study found that if the weather forecaster added the probability of no rain along with the probability of rain, people understood things better. So if you say to someone, there is a 20% chance that it will rain tonight and an 80% chance that it won’t, chances are the person will understand what you are saying. So I tried that and got this:
“Do I have a choice? If I do, I’ll take the 20% ‘cause we need the rain. If I don’t I’ll take the 80%.”
Now you may be as confused about the weather as the people in my survey, so let me make it simple. On any given day there is always a 50/50 chance it will rain. It will either rain or it won’t rain. On or off, that’s all there is to it. It will rain or it won’t. It will snow or it won’t. We’ll be hit by an asteroid or we won’t. Jesus will return today or he won’t. It is always 50/50. That’s why I buy lottery tickets: I always have a one in two chance of winning whether or not it raiins.
A recent study of college students by the University of Washington in Seattle shows that many completely misunderstand the notion of “probability-of-precipitation.” Some imagine that if there is a 20% chance of rain, that means that 20% of their town will get rain and 80% won’t. Others understand it to mean that it will rain 20% of the day. Can we be that dumb?
To find out, I walked out among my neighbors and townsfolk and asked them to explain the meaning of today’s forecast. Here are just some of the answers I received:
“It means that there is a 20% chance that God is going to flood the earth tonight.”
“It means that 20% of the people want it to rain tonight.”
“It means that the weather girl only looked at 20% of the map.”
“It means that only 20% of the town will get wet.”
“It means that you are a dumb Jew-bastard who has yet to accept Jesus Christ as his Lord and Savior and who has a 100% chance of going to Hell.”
OK, I made the last one up. Well, no, I didn’t make it up exactly, I simply transposed it from another conversation to this conversation about weather. The prior conversation was about whether or not I was going to Hell, so you can see how easy it was for me to make the leap from one conversation to another. Homonyms are our friends.
The Seattle study found that if the weather forecaster added the probability of no rain along with the probability of rain, people understood things better. So if you say to someone, there is a 20% chance that it will rain tonight and an 80% chance that it won’t, chances are the person will understand what you are saying. So I tried that and got this:
“Do I have a choice? If I do, I’ll take the 20% ‘cause we need the rain. If I don’t I’ll take the 80%.”
Now you may be as confused about the weather as the people in my survey, so let me make it simple. On any given day there is always a 50/50 chance it will rain. It will either rain or it won’t rain. On or off, that’s all there is to it. It will rain or it won’t. It will snow or it won’t. We’ll be hit by an asteroid or we won’t. Jesus will return today or he won’t. It is always 50/50. That’s why I buy lottery tickets: I always have a one in two chance of winning whether or not it raiins.
Tuesday, June 23, 2009
Conversion Competition
On Sunday (June 21, 2009) I wrote about Catholic efforts to convert Jews (Choosing the Chosen). On Monday I received a private email from a rabbi saying I was taking the matter too lightly. I agree. Converting a person from one faith to another is no laughing matter. So here are a few suggestions on the more serious side.
We ought to have reality shows featuring people of different faiths being pitched to by people of other faiths. On one show, Big Bother, proselytizers would race around a city knocking on doors trying to convert people to their way of believing. On another show, I’m a Celebrity Destined for Hell, Get Me Out of Here, famous clergy would proselytize famous Scientologists. A third show, Amazing Grace, would feature missionary teams proselytizing indigenous peoples in remote parts of Africa, Australia, or Utah.
Reality shows are only the beginning. Religions seeking converts need an all out effort at product placement. Ironically, Judaism, which has little interest in proselytizing, has a leg up on the competition with the FBI hero of the hit show Numbers going to see his rabbi for spiritual direction, and the hot Israeli Mossad agent working with NCIS on NCIS. I wonder how much the Elders of Zion spent on those gigs?
Advertising will also be important. Mormons, for example, can offer converts that cool protective underwear that claims to be God’s own brand of Kevlar®. Judaism and Islam also offer distinctive clothing: caps for men, and headscarves for women. Judaism also has the option of dressing like a 17th century Polish nobleman or noblewoman if you buy the Hasidic package, while the Muslims could counter with the burkha.
Food might be another area of competition. Christianity can promote pork over and against Judaism and Islam’s pig-free diet the way Hebrew National promotes its kosher hot dogs over nonkosher brands. Catholics can offer something unique in that they alone eat the actual flesh and blood of God. Forget trans-fat, how about transubstantiation!
Potential converts looking for value might prefer Christianity’s Three Gods for the price of one, but Hinduism and its 330 million Gods will be hard to beat on that score.
Maybe the kind of eternal life in heaven a religion offers could separate it from the pack. Hindus and Buddhists might lose out on this score since they insist on reincarnation (at worst) and the extinction of the separate self (at best), but maybe not. Jewish heaven is (for those few Jews who still believe in heaven) eternal bible study with God. Christian heaven is the endless singing of the same hymn. And Islamic heaven is an unending feast of culinary and sexual delights. Of course reading the same book, singing the same song, and eating the same food for all eternity can get pretty boring after the first few millennia. And even sex gets old. So maybe this isn’t such a good area for competition.
Anyway, I like the idea of out and out conversion campaign among the world’s religions. I think this would invite creativity, and force theologians to come up with some cool new slogans. John 3:16 is so yesterday. And it will put an end to believers killing nonbelievers since this drains the market for new converts.
In the end, though, I think Catholics will win. As the competition heats up the Church will bring back dispensations and, rather then sell them as they did in the Middle Ages, they will offer dispensational packages to people who convert and get others to convert as well. When it comes right down to it, it is hard to compete with a Get Out of Hell Free card.
We ought to have reality shows featuring people of different faiths being pitched to by people of other faiths. On one show, Big Bother, proselytizers would race around a city knocking on doors trying to convert people to their way of believing. On another show, I’m a Celebrity Destined for Hell, Get Me Out of Here, famous clergy would proselytize famous Scientologists. A third show, Amazing Grace, would feature missionary teams proselytizing indigenous peoples in remote parts of Africa, Australia, or Utah.
Reality shows are only the beginning. Religions seeking converts need an all out effort at product placement. Ironically, Judaism, which has little interest in proselytizing, has a leg up on the competition with the FBI hero of the hit show Numbers going to see his rabbi for spiritual direction, and the hot Israeli Mossad agent working with NCIS on NCIS. I wonder how much the Elders of Zion spent on those gigs?
Advertising will also be important. Mormons, for example, can offer converts that cool protective underwear that claims to be God’s own brand of Kevlar®. Judaism and Islam also offer distinctive clothing: caps for men, and headscarves for women. Judaism also has the option of dressing like a 17th century Polish nobleman or noblewoman if you buy the Hasidic package, while the Muslims could counter with the burkha.
Food might be another area of competition. Christianity can promote pork over and against Judaism and Islam’s pig-free diet the way Hebrew National promotes its kosher hot dogs over nonkosher brands. Catholics can offer something unique in that they alone eat the actual flesh and blood of God. Forget trans-fat, how about transubstantiation!
Potential converts looking for value might prefer Christianity’s Three Gods for the price of one, but Hinduism and its 330 million Gods will be hard to beat on that score.
Maybe the kind of eternal life in heaven a religion offers could separate it from the pack. Hindus and Buddhists might lose out on this score since they insist on reincarnation (at worst) and the extinction of the separate self (at best), but maybe not. Jewish heaven is (for those few Jews who still believe in heaven) eternal bible study with God. Christian heaven is the endless singing of the same hymn. And Islamic heaven is an unending feast of culinary and sexual delights. Of course reading the same book, singing the same song, and eating the same food for all eternity can get pretty boring after the first few millennia. And even sex gets old. So maybe this isn’t such a good area for competition.
Anyway, I like the idea of out and out conversion campaign among the world’s religions. I think this would invite creativity, and force theologians to come up with some cool new slogans. John 3:16 is so yesterday. And it will put an end to believers killing nonbelievers since this drains the market for new converts.
In the end, though, I think Catholics will win. As the competition heats up the Church will bring back dispensations and, rather then sell them as they did in the Middle Ages, they will offer dispensational packages to people who convert and get others to convert as well. When it comes right down to it, it is hard to compete with a Get Out of Hell Free card.
Sunday, June 21, 2009
Choosing the Chosen
In 1986 Pope John Paul II insisted that God’s covenant with the Jews (hereafter referred to as “the Only People on the Entire Planet God Chose to be His Special Bud”s) was “irrevocable.” In other words, just because a few of us helped the Romans knock off God’s son doesn’t mean that all of us are for all time on the Almighty’s Shit List.
In 2002 U.S. Catholic bishops issued a statement claiming that while it was true that the Only People on the Entire Planet God Chose to be His Special Buds (hereafter referred to as “the Jews”) had their own eternal relationship with God and would not be the target of Catholic conversion efforts, the Church would still welcome Jews who wished to become Catholics.
Seven years later, in response to challenges that earlier statements implied that there was a separate way to salvation outside the Church, i.e. Judaism, the Bishops issued yet another statement claiming that while God doesn’t “regret” His having chosen the Jews, He does want to make clear that this covenant is, in the words of Bishop William Lori of Bridgeport, CT, “fulfilled in Jesus.”
This is an outrage! Catholics affirming that Jesus trumps the Chosen? How dare they! I mean what if we Jews insisted that God chose us exclusively? What if we said that all those books that Catholics claim are the word of God are just the delusional rants of Jewish authors capitalizing on a first century trend in messianic fiction? What if we claimed that God had no son, and that virgins don’t get pregnant? Wouldn’t Catholics be outraged? Wait, hold on a minute…. Well I’ll be damned, we DO claim those things!
OK, then, forget that. It’s not as if the Church is singling out the Jews. Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, Jains, Pagans, Indigenous Religions, not to mention those pesky Protestants all have to become Catholic to win salvation. Why? Because there is no salvation outside the Catholic Church! At least according to the Catholic Church.
Personally, I have no problem with this. Being Catholic is tough, and if convincing yourself that only Catholics get saved helps keep you on track, then go for it. I know lots of Jews who, if they no longer believed Jews are God’s Chosen, would have opted out long ago. And I’m no different. If I thought my butt looked better in Lucky jeans I’d switch brands in a heartbeat.
I don’t worry about Catholics, Southern Baptists, Seventh Day Adventists, Mormons, or Jehovah’s Witness trying to convert Jews or anyone else. Nor does it bother me if some Jews choose not to be chosen and join a rival faith. And when I hear rabbis complain about this I cannot help but think that if they shifted their efforts from protecting Jews from hearing the claims of rival religions into making Judaism more compelling they wouldn’t have to worry so much.
After all what Jew would want to convert to a faith where only the senior honchos get to wear yarmulkas, and then are limited to wearing only those red or white satin ones that probably have the words “I Survived Benny Kravitz’ Bar Mitzvah” printed inside them?
In 2002 U.S. Catholic bishops issued a statement claiming that while it was true that the Only People on the Entire Planet God Chose to be His Special Buds (hereafter referred to as “the Jews”) had their own eternal relationship with God and would not be the target of Catholic conversion efforts, the Church would still welcome Jews who wished to become Catholics.
Seven years later, in response to challenges that earlier statements implied that there was a separate way to salvation outside the Church, i.e. Judaism, the Bishops issued yet another statement claiming that while God doesn’t “regret” His having chosen the Jews, He does want to make clear that this covenant is, in the words of Bishop William Lori of Bridgeport, CT, “fulfilled in Jesus.”
This is an outrage! Catholics affirming that Jesus trumps the Chosen? How dare they! I mean what if we Jews insisted that God chose us exclusively? What if we said that all those books that Catholics claim are the word of God are just the delusional rants of Jewish authors capitalizing on a first century trend in messianic fiction? What if we claimed that God had no son, and that virgins don’t get pregnant? Wouldn’t Catholics be outraged? Wait, hold on a minute…. Well I’ll be damned, we DO claim those things!
OK, then, forget that. It’s not as if the Church is singling out the Jews. Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, Jains, Pagans, Indigenous Religions, not to mention those pesky Protestants all have to become Catholic to win salvation. Why? Because there is no salvation outside the Catholic Church! At least according to the Catholic Church.
Personally, I have no problem with this. Being Catholic is tough, and if convincing yourself that only Catholics get saved helps keep you on track, then go for it. I know lots of Jews who, if they no longer believed Jews are God’s Chosen, would have opted out long ago. And I’m no different. If I thought my butt looked better in Lucky jeans I’d switch brands in a heartbeat.
I don’t worry about Catholics, Southern Baptists, Seventh Day Adventists, Mormons, or Jehovah’s Witness trying to convert Jews or anyone else. Nor does it bother me if some Jews choose not to be chosen and join a rival faith. And when I hear rabbis complain about this I cannot help but think that if they shifted their efforts from protecting Jews from hearing the claims of rival religions into making Judaism more compelling they wouldn’t have to worry so much.
After all what Jew would want to convert to a faith where only the senior honchos get to wear yarmulkas, and then are limited to wearing only those red or white satin ones that probably have the words “I Survived Benny Kravitz’ Bar Mitzvah” printed inside them?
Wednesday, June 17, 2009
The (Il)logic of Faith
Never underestimate the power of religious logic. In the May issue of Christianity Today Gregory and Christopher Fung explore the deeper meaning of Harvard Medical School’s ten-year, $2.4 million prayer study.
Called Study of the Therapeutic Effects of Intercessory Prayer (STEP), the study divided 1,802 people into three groups: Group A knew they were being prayed for, Group B was being prayed for but was unsure if that were the case, and Group C was not being prayed for and, like group B, were not told if they were or were not being prayed for.
Here are the conclusions of the study: Group A (those who knew they were being prayed for) suffered more post-operative complications than those in the two other groups, while Group C (those not prayed for) suffered the least. In other words being prayed for when ill is actually hazardous to your health.
You might think that this would lead people to stop praying over the sick, but that would be too logical. According to the Fungs, STEP “actually supports the Christian worldview… God seems to have granted favor without regard to either the quantity or even the quality of the prayers… True to his character, God appears inclined to heal and bless as many as possible. It is as if he can barely restrain himself—though he often does—from supernaturally intervening and disrupting the nature of the universe to care for those he loves, whether they acknowledge it or not.”
You have to love the Fungs. They seem to be saying that since God caused most of the people who were prayed for in the study to suffer more than those who were not prayed over proves that God can barely restrain himself from healing people. This makes no sense whatsoever, but it does demonstrate why religion will never disappear: its capacity to fool itself is endless.
Now, I’m not saying prayer doesn’t work. According to STEP it seems to work, but only in reverse: pray for those you hate and they will be more likely to suffer. What impresses me is how the Fungs turned the study inside out in order to protect their theology. This is why religion and science are fundamentally incompatible. Science (at least at theoretically) values evidence over theory, while religion values theory over evidence.
The Fungs go on to say “our obsession with whether prayer works is the wrong question. We know prayer works. The real question is, are we prepared for God’s answer?”
Yes, STEP proves that prayer works: it causes more suffering, not less. And the answer to the question “are we prepared for God’s answer” must be “no.” STEP proves that the people prayed for did worse than those not prayed for. This doesn’t show that God loves everyone equally, it shows that God loves those who leave him alone. Are we ready for that answer? I doubt it.
The Fungs’ conclusion is that “STEP encourages us to believe that God is eager to answer our prayers….” Did they read the study? STEP encourages us to believe just the opposite!
I love this! Their logic is so absent, their conclusion so vacuous, that it almost makes sense! But it is bullshit!
The only part of the Fungs’ article I found wise was their reminder that Jesus told us to pray only that God’s will be done. If God is Reality, as I understand God to be, then such a prayer is an affirmation of radical acceptance of what is, and that cannot be bad. Too bad the Fungs couldn’t stick with Jesus.
Called Study of the Therapeutic Effects of Intercessory Prayer (STEP), the study divided 1,802 people into three groups: Group A knew they were being prayed for, Group B was being prayed for but was unsure if that were the case, and Group C was not being prayed for and, like group B, were not told if they were or were not being prayed for.
Here are the conclusions of the study: Group A (those who knew they were being prayed for) suffered more post-operative complications than those in the two other groups, while Group C (those not prayed for) suffered the least. In other words being prayed for when ill is actually hazardous to your health.
You might think that this would lead people to stop praying over the sick, but that would be too logical. According to the Fungs, STEP “actually supports the Christian worldview… God seems to have granted favor without regard to either the quantity or even the quality of the prayers… True to his character, God appears inclined to heal and bless as many as possible. It is as if he can barely restrain himself—though he often does—from supernaturally intervening and disrupting the nature of the universe to care for those he loves, whether they acknowledge it or not.”
You have to love the Fungs. They seem to be saying that since God caused most of the people who were prayed for in the study to suffer more than those who were not prayed over proves that God can barely restrain himself from healing people. This makes no sense whatsoever, but it does demonstrate why religion will never disappear: its capacity to fool itself is endless.
Now, I’m not saying prayer doesn’t work. According to STEP it seems to work, but only in reverse: pray for those you hate and they will be more likely to suffer. What impresses me is how the Fungs turned the study inside out in order to protect their theology. This is why religion and science are fundamentally incompatible. Science (at least at theoretically) values evidence over theory, while religion values theory over evidence.
The Fungs go on to say “our obsession with whether prayer works is the wrong question. We know prayer works. The real question is, are we prepared for God’s answer?”
Yes, STEP proves that prayer works: it causes more suffering, not less. And the answer to the question “are we prepared for God’s answer” must be “no.” STEP proves that the people prayed for did worse than those not prayed for. This doesn’t show that God loves everyone equally, it shows that God loves those who leave him alone. Are we ready for that answer? I doubt it.
The Fungs’ conclusion is that “STEP encourages us to believe that God is eager to answer our prayers….” Did they read the study? STEP encourages us to believe just the opposite!
I love this! Their logic is so absent, their conclusion so vacuous, that it almost makes sense! But it is bullshit!
The only part of the Fungs’ article I found wise was their reminder that Jesus told us to pray only that God’s will be done. If God is Reality, as I understand God to be, then such a prayer is an affirmation of radical acceptance of what is, and that cannot be bad. Too bad the Fungs couldn’t stick with Jesus.
Sunday, June 07, 2009
Make Big Money With Small Ideas
Want to make big money in a down economy? I’ve got the solution.
People need low cost distractions from the stresses of everyday life, and what is a better distraction than a truly great attraction? Tourism is the key to success, but it has to be unique, and very affordable. And it has to be something you can set up in a few hours for very little money. So here is my idea: I’m going to incorporate “The Smallest “Blank” in the World Museum” and set it up as a franchise. For a mere $100 I will help you identify the perfect “The Smallest ‘Blank’ in the World Museum” for your area of the country.
The key to keeping costs low is to make sure that the smallest whatever is in fact invisible. For example: “The Smallest Ball of String in the World Museum” is a perfect roadside attraction you can build in your own apartment or backyard. Imagine, tourists walk into YOUR museum, plunk down $5 per person (kids under 12 months enter free) and walk into the “Amazing Global Info Center.” Here they are shown photographs of all kinds of string and introduced to the age-old argument between string, twine, thread, yarn, and rope as to which is the most authentic. The most authentic what is up to you. Be creative.
After being educated in the intricacies of string, visitors are ushered into a small booth similar to a mall photo booth where the world’s smallest ball of string is on display. Make the display attractive and inviting. What is in the display? Nothing. The smallest ball of string is so small no one can see it even with the aid of microscopes. You can even invite people to look at the ball of string through microscopes to prove that it is too small to be seen with such devices.
Of course someone will complain that there is nothing there, but that is where I come in. What you get for your $100 is a box containing a certificate of authorization proving that you are now the sole owner the World’s Smallest Whatever. This certificate will authenticate what it is you are showcasing, and that should shut up the most vocal critic.
To encourage buzz and word of mouth advertising I suggest you give each visitor a piece of the string from the ball in a special envelope with the name of YOUR museum printed on it.
Here are just some of the wonderful World’s Smallest Museum ideas I am waiting to offer you: “The Smallest Man in the World Museum,” “The Smallest Woman in the World Museum,” “The Smallest Dinosaur in the World Museum,” “The Smallest Forrest in the World Museum,” “The Smallest Bank Account in the World Museum.”
And this is only the beginning. Imagine the “The Smallest “Blank” in the Galaxy Museum” featuring all kinds of alien worlds and species. It can’t miss.
So what are you waiting for? Send me your check for $100 (no, not the world’s smallest $100 check, a normal sized check), and I will schedule a conference call with you, me, and the world’s smallest consulting team (you can’t hear them, but I can, so don’t worry that you are wasting your money; they will assure you this is a wise investment), and we will find the perfect “The Smallest “Blank” in the World Museum” for you and your community. Remember, there can only be one “The Smallest “Blank” in the World Museum” in any given subject so send your money in early to maximize your choice of museum options.
People need low cost distractions from the stresses of everyday life, and what is a better distraction than a truly great attraction? Tourism is the key to success, but it has to be unique, and very affordable. And it has to be something you can set up in a few hours for very little money. So here is my idea: I’m going to incorporate “The Smallest “Blank” in the World Museum” and set it up as a franchise. For a mere $100 I will help you identify the perfect “The Smallest ‘Blank’ in the World Museum” for your area of the country.
The key to keeping costs low is to make sure that the smallest whatever is in fact invisible. For example: “The Smallest Ball of String in the World Museum” is a perfect roadside attraction you can build in your own apartment or backyard. Imagine, tourists walk into YOUR museum, plunk down $5 per person (kids under 12 months enter free) and walk into the “Amazing Global Info Center.” Here they are shown photographs of all kinds of string and introduced to the age-old argument between string, twine, thread, yarn, and rope as to which is the most authentic. The most authentic what is up to you. Be creative.
After being educated in the intricacies of string, visitors are ushered into a small booth similar to a mall photo booth where the world’s smallest ball of string is on display. Make the display attractive and inviting. What is in the display? Nothing. The smallest ball of string is so small no one can see it even with the aid of microscopes. You can even invite people to look at the ball of string through microscopes to prove that it is too small to be seen with such devices.
Of course someone will complain that there is nothing there, but that is where I come in. What you get for your $100 is a box containing a certificate of authorization proving that you are now the sole owner the World’s Smallest Whatever. This certificate will authenticate what it is you are showcasing, and that should shut up the most vocal critic.
To encourage buzz and word of mouth advertising I suggest you give each visitor a piece of the string from the ball in a special envelope with the name of YOUR museum printed on it.
Here are just some of the wonderful World’s Smallest Museum ideas I am waiting to offer you: “The Smallest Man in the World Museum,” “The Smallest Woman in the World Museum,” “The Smallest Dinosaur in the World Museum,” “The Smallest Forrest in the World Museum,” “The Smallest Bank Account in the World Museum.”
And this is only the beginning. Imagine the “The Smallest “Blank” in the Galaxy Museum” featuring all kinds of alien worlds and species. It can’t miss.
So what are you waiting for? Send me your check for $100 (no, not the world’s smallest $100 check, a normal sized check), and I will schedule a conference call with you, me, and the world’s smallest consulting team (you can’t hear them, but I can, so don’t worry that you are wasting your money; they will assure you this is a wise investment), and we will find the perfect “The Smallest “Blank” in the World Museum” for you and your community. Remember, there can only be one “The Smallest “Blank” in the World Museum” in any given subject so send your money in early to maximize your choice of museum options.
Friday, June 05, 2009
Marquees de Sad
I love church marquees, those enigmatic sayings that are supposed to draw us to Jesus by the power of their cleverness. But sometimes the signs are so clever that I can’t understand them.
Case in point: I’m driving to a retreat center in Connecticut this past weekend and I see a church sign that reads, “Jesus. What if He never left?” OK, let’s think about that for a moment.
If Jesus never left, his body would remain in the tomb, and the resurrection would be pure fiction. Without the resurrection there is no proof of Jesus’ divinity. Without Jesus as God Christian salvation is impossible and Christianity is a sham. Why would you want to put that on the marquee of your church?
But maybe I am wrong. Maybe if Jesus never left the resurrection could still have happened but not the ascension to heaven. OK, let’s see: Jesus dies on the cross and is placed in the tomb of Joseph of Aramethea. Three days latter he is resurrected. He spends the next forty days wandering around but, since he never leaves, he never gets to sit at the right hand of the Father. Instead he’s just shuffling around the planet like a character in the Ghost Whisperer. If this is true, Christianity is still in trouble because now its God is exiled to earth for all eternity. This is the story of the Marvel comic book hero Silver Surfer, not the Suffering Servant. And, if Jesus is stuck here on earth, then the Second Coming is impossible since the First Coming never ends. But what is Christianity without the Return of Jesus? Nothing. So, again, why put this on your church sign?
Of course the sign may not refer to Jesus Christ at all. It could be an oblique reference to illegal aliens coming to Connecticut from Mexico: “Jesus. What if he never left (Mexico)? Who would cut our lawns?” A pro-immigration message like that might fly in New England, so maybe that was the point of the marquee.
Just to be thorough I tried different versions of this sign suitable to other faiths to see if they would yield any better insights. For example, a Jewish version of this sign might read, “Moses. What if we never left?” Well, if Moses never left Egypt the Jews would still be slaves, the bush would never have burned, Passover would never have happened and there would be no Judaism, Christianity, or Islam. So that doesn’t work.
How about a Buddhist version: “Prince Siddhartha. What if he never left?” OK, if Siddhartha never left home he would never have become the Buddha, Tibet would have stayed with the Bon religion and Jewish Buddhists would have had to find another religion to join.
If Mohammad never left we’d lack his Night Journey from Mecca to Jerusalem to heaven and back. If Krishna never left Arjuna would not have gone to war with his cousins and we’d have no Bhagavad-Gita. If Lao Tzu never left he’d never have written the Tao Te Ching. None of these are good things.
No, this church sign doesn’t work in any religion. It seems to me that all the founders have to leave or the religions don’t happen. So what was the sign writer thinking? Honestly, I haven’t a clue. So this one is up to you. Best answer wins a year of free drinks at your local Starbucks, but only if you can convince them to do this.
Case in point: I’m driving to a retreat center in Connecticut this past weekend and I see a church sign that reads, “Jesus. What if He never left?” OK, let’s think about that for a moment.
If Jesus never left, his body would remain in the tomb, and the resurrection would be pure fiction. Without the resurrection there is no proof of Jesus’ divinity. Without Jesus as God Christian salvation is impossible and Christianity is a sham. Why would you want to put that on the marquee of your church?
But maybe I am wrong. Maybe if Jesus never left the resurrection could still have happened but not the ascension to heaven. OK, let’s see: Jesus dies on the cross and is placed in the tomb of Joseph of Aramethea. Three days latter he is resurrected. He spends the next forty days wandering around but, since he never leaves, he never gets to sit at the right hand of the Father. Instead he’s just shuffling around the planet like a character in the Ghost Whisperer. If this is true, Christianity is still in trouble because now its God is exiled to earth for all eternity. This is the story of the Marvel comic book hero Silver Surfer, not the Suffering Servant. And, if Jesus is stuck here on earth, then the Second Coming is impossible since the First Coming never ends. But what is Christianity without the Return of Jesus? Nothing. So, again, why put this on your church sign?
Of course the sign may not refer to Jesus Christ at all. It could be an oblique reference to illegal aliens coming to Connecticut from Mexico: “Jesus. What if he never left (Mexico)? Who would cut our lawns?” A pro-immigration message like that might fly in New England, so maybe that was the point of the marquee.
Just to be thorough I tried different versions of this sign suitable to other faiths to see if they would yield any better insights. For example, a Jewish version of this sign might read, “Moses. What if we never left?” Well, if Moses never left Egypt the Jews would still be slaves, the bush would never have burned, Passover would never have happened and there would be no Judaism, Christianity, or Islam. So that doesn’t work.
How about a Buddhist version: “Prince Siddhartha. What if he never left?” OK, if Siddhartha never left home he would never have become the Buddha, Tibet would have stayed with the Bon religion and Jewish Buddhists would have had to find another religion to join.
If Mohammad never left we’d lack his Night Journey from Mecca to Jerusalem to heaven and back. If Krishna never left Arjuna would not have gone to war with his cousins and we’d have no Bhagavad-Gita. If Lao Tzu never left he’d never have written the Tao Te Ching. None of these are good things.
No, this church sign doesn’t work in any religion. It seems to me that all the founders have to leave or the religions don’t happen. So what was the sign writer thinking? Honestly, I haven’t a clue. So this one is up to you. Best answer wins a year of free drinks at your local Starbucks, but only if you can convince them to do this.
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