A Reform Response to Chabad - New Voices

Way too little, way too late, and wrongly polarizing...  The problem is that the entirety of the FFB/BH world is tacitly accepted as the holiest of the holy, the archetype of what being a pious Jew means, even by those who oppose them whether ex-BT or never observant ostensibly Reform. That is the problem in this discussion, the source of the impasse. Those who oppose the charedi (and Chabad Lubavitch are a strain of charedi no matter what they and Satmar or Breslov say about each other) a priori concede the spiritual leadership to them.

It's not different from the Christian world where the Catholics are still regarded subconsciously from before the word go as the true protectors and carriers of whatever it means to be Christian. You will notice it isn't Presbyterian ministers in those apocalypse movies who stand up to evil, it's Catholic priests speaking in semi-old Latin, and badly I might add, and tossing holy water about.

Your average Lutheran never really deals with holy water. Catholics rub it on their forehead as they enter church every Sunday. Bet your butt that the Lutheran believes that should one ever come up against a vampire, head for the Catholic church across town.

Similarly, while this rabbi makes some good points, he is way too late and mostly alone. The bulk of Judaism already sees the BH community as the archetype of Jewish spirituality and if you concede the position to your opponent in advance, then your argument is predestined to fail. It's like playing a baseball game when you have every expectation of losing and in fact intend to because you've already decided the other team is better.

Unless and until a new Jewish spirituality, a neo-Chasidut maybe, grows up and splits from the pack and redefines what it is to be religious for Jews, that argument is pointless and Chabad is already acknowledged to be right before the first argument is constructed.

Not that I oppose Chabad. I like them and the Breslovers and so on a lot. Many things are an issue for me, but I don't see the Reform as offering a lot of spirituality that can be embraced. It's a lot of purposely non-judgmental wishy-washiness that leaves way too much fill in the blanks space for people that they ultimately aren't looking for in religion. They want assurance and Orthodoxy promises that. Their mistake is they promise way too specifically and promise way too much and in the name of G-d, making him look like a horse's ass when the mortal men who shill for him fail because let's face it, you sour on Ford altogether when a bad salesman sells you a lemon. Ford had nothing to do with it, but their rep is screwed.

Hence the numbers of disaffected Catholics and Orthodox. One shouldn't set G-d up to get a bad rap that way, but the reason we do is inherent to why we make religions.

Of late it may have been noticed...

...that it my commentaries in other blogs' replies, I am much less reticent to be critical of some of the problems in Judaism today. Why? It occurred to me that joining a religion is a bit like getting married. You make a pledge to honor that which you've joined. To cherish that institution and the other party. In sickness and in health, for better or for worse.

In my marriage I've stuck to that more or less consistently and without fail in the end. It has been a rough marriage at time. Temptation was provided that was easy to go for and quite attractive given the troubles in our relationship. I didn't fall and when my wife tripped, I didn't walk away, didn't divorce her.

I am not telling you this to brag. I am not telling you this to say "look what a good person I am". I am telling you this to say that you can do this too. It is as simple as choosing something and standing by it. I had no proof things would ever go better in the future. I had every bit of evidence against that. That wasn't the point. I made a choice to make a pledge to G-d.

As we are made in G-d's image, so too then are we making a pledge to ourselves and all mankind in that moment. If we cannot even trust ourselves, who can we trust?

To give meaning to my choices, to give value and weight to them, I have to do it. I have to give that meaning. I have to give that value.

A marriage with difficulties is no different from finding disillusionment with G-d. You made a choice to believe He was and when that belief seemed challenged, you must realize that the only thing that can make it a meaningless choice, a worthless choice, a false choice, is if you abandon it.

Give worth to your choices, give worth to yourself, give yourself a chance. Though born of an eminently fallible species, you are potentially capable of so much and all any of it requires is simply making a choice. Simply pick something. It's as simple and easy as that.

I made my choice to become a Jew. That wasn't just for the food, the camaraderie, the fellowship, or just any good parts leaving the bad. It was for better or worse. If you choose to believe in something, choose to love something, choose to love people, it must be for a reason even if you are not sure what it was.

For G-d's sake, have faith in yourself that your choice had meaning and reason. Your choice to believe in G-d had reason. Your choice to practice Judaism had reason. Reason not given by others who can make mistakes and betray or disappoint you, but reason given by your own mind and heart. Reason you chose.

My reasoning is this. If something is worth doing, it is worth doing it well. If something is worth loving, it is worth standing by. If something is worth having, it is worth defending. I may see Judaism imperfect and as filled with imperfect people, but I see that religion as worth doing, I see those people as worth loving, I see that community as worth having. They are worth doing well by, worth standing by, worth defending.

What makes a Jew or anything else is choice and for a choice to have meaning, I have to give it that meaning. I must not be only a Jew when things go well and a timid gentile when other Jews discuss the problems they see. I have to discuss them too. To join in the ongoing perfection, to join in Tikkun Olam, to participate in Judaism not only when it is easy or fulfilling or uplifting but also when it is painful. Not to always agree and never disagree but express my own opinion and reason out of heartfelt love and caring for that which I prize.

So I won't be doing anything but saying the way I see it. I may not be right but to only speak when assured of being right is to not do right.

Some thoughts that came to mind while walking...

Why is Judaism as a culture so much more obsessed with Jews by Birth than Jews by Choice? Why do people default to assuming "Jewishness" of those born to other Jews, even if they are practicing Buddhists, rather than those born to Christians, even though they practice faithfully in the style of Modern Orthodoxy or even Charedi Orthodoxy?

I think it is because of the fear of choice, and a lack of confidence in being Jewish in a variety of ways.

With regard to choice, choice is a variable. Humans don't like variables such as choice unless they are not so much a choice as a guarantee in their favor. They like to choose their own dinner. They don't like other people choosing their own dinner so much. They might choose something that makes them gassy and fart during the cocktails later. Indeterminacy, flexibility, openness to change, and a wide variety of other appellations are automatically open in the fearful and pessimistic human mind to going wrong. If it can go wrong, it will.

Jews by Choice can choose differently later on. They can join now, leave later. Of course, so can a spouse, but that doesn't stop us from getting married. We enact, if we have sense but for other reasons, strong discouragement of divorce, but it is still one of those might go wrong deals. So too are welcoming converts. They might proselytize for a heretical ideal. Ooh, scary.

The other reason is of course lack of confidence as in the response which various rabbis have remarked on which goes along the lines of "are you insane? Have you seen all six hundred and thirteen mitzvot? You'd actually choose this life on purpose?"

Well, I guess you might if you didn't see it as so much of a negative burden as they do (those who make those comments).

Jews by Birth on the other hand are born to it. You don't choose your parents, you don't choose your family's traditions, you pretty much get no choice. They chose to get it on, have kids that result from getting it on. Those who come before you got all the fun choices. You got stuck with a nearsighted dad who rants at you for bad report cards before he finally sees that it was actually a B and not an F and a mom who can't tear herself away from soap operas long enough to make cookies with you.

Also, you always have the old cudgel of the familial relationship to keep you in line. You might have the ability to choose later, but for right now, until you're an adult, you have what, eighteen years to have "being Jewish" reinforced as much as Christians have?

The choices of others and their possible decisions to reverse those choices to our detriment... I think that is what makes the birth rather than choice nature so much more concentrated on. Of course, there was the message firmly beaten in by Rome, Christianity and Islam to not proselytize, and the evolutionary move from faith in miracles and G-d towards rote ritual observance in its place, but I think that fear is the big reason for obsession with birth over choice and I think its not different when it comes to immigration.

However, to those we put through the hoops, we don't usually turn on them and suspect disloyalty just because let's say a naturalized Mexican puts a Mexican flag sticker on his car the way a fifth generation American of Swedish descent puts up a Swedish flag sticker on his car. Forget to observe faithfully, and in religion, it's not so well regarded or felt harmless. Which likely has to do with the rote ritual observance thing being what we place more importance on.

One of my favorite articles online...

Not sure why...

Spring 1997 Michigan Today---The language of the desert

These conditions also may be why the religion of the Hebrews was so appealing. Mendenhall cites Judges 8: 22-3. When various tribes of Israel ask Gideon to accept traditional hereditary rule over them, Gideon replies, "I will not rule over you, neither shall my son rule over you: the Lord shall rule over you."

Yahwism emerged as a sort of peasants' revolt, in Mendenhall's view. "It prohibited graven images. But what were they? They were images of pharaohs and gods, and the purpose of the gods was to furnish authority to the kings as the embodiment of the gods." The ancient Israeli treaty, or covenant, made directly between one God and the people who accepted him, meant that the arrangements between God and the people were immune to kingly authority.

A point I've made regarding atheism versus religion. It's either a system open to challenge based on the dominant central focus, which in the case of atheism is man, which means consequently right and wrong are whatever those ambitious enough to take power and those strong enough to keep it say it is or a system closed to challenge as neither you nor I can proclaim and prove we alone have G-d's ear, despite the attempts of many holy men to claim it.

"Despite the persistence into our own time of an essentially 19th-century view that Biblical narrative is basically historically accurate and supported by the archaeological evidence," Mendenhall says, "there never was a Hebrew conquest of Palestine. But there was a religious conversion to a monotheistic faith of the existing population.

"Now I think that almost everybody has given up that 19th-century theory, but they don't have anything really to substitute for it, whereas I think I do," he continues. "That is, that Moses and a small band came out of Egypt with a new mission and a new concept of God and religious community, one bound together by a voluntary covenant rather than a monopoly of force. When political systems and empires were being destroyed all over the Near East, it really offered a very welcome alternative to populations who no longer had a community or whose communities had been destroyed."

I know that many will sneer at the idea, but what is better? The idea that G-d sent us to slaughter people the way the peoples we supplanted had done for countless centuries before? Or that G-d sent us out to deal with his great creation, free will, and win the day by overwhelming rightness of what we offered?

Interesting afterlife account, linked at Critical Judaism and Other Thoughts

Critical Judaism and Other Thoughts: Heavenly court proceedings revealed - Finally

I thought the account was... interesting. There's no other word to use that fits as I am not one to judge others' view of the afterlife in near-death experiences. They all seem to vary which fits my view that reality and mentality are not as far apart as we like to think.

To clarify, watch Star Trek: Generations and consider the concept of The Nexus or read the Dungeons and Dragons treatment of the plane of Concordant Opposition. It basically appears much in line with the expectations conscious and unconscious of the viewer, thus denying a totally common and uniform answer to the question, where do we go from here?

That seems like G-d to me.

A word on faith...

As Douglas Adams put it, and rather ironically as he was an atheist, G-d exists on faith and proof denies faith and therefore G-d cannot be proven. Man goes on to posit that the grandeur of the world proves He exists and therefore by His logic, He doesn't and goes poof.

It's a good point though. The search for proof is a search for knowing. That which you know, you have no need of faith in. I know my chair is under my ass. I have no particular faith in my chair. I have no knowledge whatsoever that my wife will find a job in her chosen field. I have faith that she will.

It isn't even that the analogue to proof is belief. It's not. It's suspension of disbelief. You can believe whatever you want. It's when you start to not believe in a specific thing that you head towards proof being needed to establish bonafide knowledge.

Let me give you the example of Star Trek. You don't know that it is real or not, but you have a lot of proof that it isn't. But you choose to suspend disbelief, the process of rejecting faith and instead requiring proof because the lack of knowledge discomfits you. In doing this, suspending disbelief by free will, you can in your mind accept that Captain Kirk is real in that assumption that he is, and get on from there to wishing you were snogging with the green Orion slave girl.

Why do we find it easier to suspend disbelief to "get into" the adventures of fictional people, and yet find it so hard to maintain faith in G-d?

Shabbat Shalom all.

Evidently Jews should not learn about the ancient temple because Muslims thinks it threatens their mosque...

Chabad Temple seminar rankles Islamists | Jewish News | Jerusalem Post

The three-part seminar, which is being held this week and next week at some 200 Chabad Houses throughout the country, comes less than two weeks before Tisha Be'av, which marks the destruction of the Temple.

"We view this as a serious and drastic move toward the fruition of extremist organizations to establish a temple in place of al-Aksa Mosque," Zahi Nujidat said. "This represents a real danger to al-Aksa."

If Islam is threatened by others practicing their religion and embracing their heritage, it is doomed. Pure and simple. Why? Lack of faith. If G-d intends for something, nothing can stop it. If G-d does not intend something, only man can make it happen. If G-d actively opposes something, no one can make it happen.

It is the height of insecurity to believe that Chabadniks learning about the fabled temple necessarily means a plot to destroy al-Aksa. That it would have to happen for the temple to be built a third time on that site is a no-brainer. That the Israeli government populated by strident Jews hasn't lifted a finger to it is also beyond obvious and telling. Namely of the intelligence, wisdom, good nature and neighborliness of those they fear so much.

The temple's strongest foundation is not stone under al-Aksa, it is the heart of the good and decent. A third temple need not be built. As the survival in Diaspora proves, a nation need not have land under its feet. Sincere and pious Jews carry the roof of the temple over the heads of all.