Joel asked Staff ago Hello.
I want to share with you the doubts, I could even call them the agonies, which have recently been my lot.
I am 30 years old and live a completely secular lifestyle. I grew up in a slightly traditional household and even learned in a traditional school based in the Conservative and Reform movements.
I see myself as a quite intelligent person. I am drawn to spirituality and have read many books about “New Age” matters and Eastern philosophies (Louise Hay, Osho, Nissim Amon, I have done a Vipassana seminar, etc.).
Two months ago a friend of mine returned to religion and began to study in a yeshiva.
A week ago I met him and since then my stomach has been turning because of doubts and struggles.
On the one hand, his lifestyle repulses me, both technically and essentially:
1. From morning to night he has assignments: prayers, studies, self-mortification. All is planned, forced, crowded.
2. This is particularly noticeable amongst those who have returned to religion: life becomes a sort of play in which everything has already been written out. Everything is expected, everything is imaginary. Everything is sacred and sticky. Everything is great, heavy, and awesome. Apocalypse now! (Incidentally, is the world about to end? Is the Messiah at the gate? Are we in the sixth millennium or something like that?)
3. There is a sort of arrogance which repeats itself endlessly in the religious: We, the Jewish people, are the chosen nation, the preferred people, the elite commandos of the nations. Only we possess the truth; it is registered in our name. Even our heaven is exclusive — no entrance for gentiles. Those poor gentiles–they try and try, but can’t even get as high up as the soles of our shoes. Aristotle’s OK, but he can’t hold a candle to Maimonides, the Ramchal, or the devil knows who. The Hindu are cool, but idiots. The Buddhist really try, but they take the sacred and make it profane. But we Jews are special; we take the profane and sanctify it. Oh…
4. The claim that everything is in the Gemara annoys me. Ask any ordinary Charedi and he will tell you that it is so. The Gemara includes all mathematics, medicine, quantum theory, computers, sex, and economics. In short, everything. About this I can only say — I doubt it….
On the other hand, and here’s the problem, it is tough to stand up to the deep and utter self-delusion of my newly religious friend, those like him, and their rabbis.
They tell you about miracles and wonders, codes in the Bible and gematrias, midrashim and legends.
The Six Day War and the Yom Kippur War? Both revealed miracles.
They have an explanation for everything:
Why was there a Holocaust? Why did G-d decide to murder six million of His chosen people in strange and unusual ways? Clear as the sun. It was because of intermarriage and Enlightenment.
Why, then, were religious Jews amongst those killed in the Holocaust? Everything has an explanation.
Why, then, were Jews slaughtered in times when there was no intermarriage? The Crusades, the European blood libels. They have an explanation for everything.
Why does an innocent little child of five get cancer? They have an explanation for everything.
I’ll say it again. They have an explanation for everything.
Has anyone ever heard Rabbi Amnon Yitzchak or rabbis like him saying “I think, it seems to me, as far as I know, as far as I understand it, if I am not mistaken…”?
I am a simple man. I find it difficult to stand up to this sort of absolutism. I am certain that nine out of ten people who would go to a yeshiva for two days would have their brains washed to the extent that they would return to religion.
Happily, a different friend gave me your website address, and since then I have calmed down some. I thank you for that.
Despite everything written above, I do think there are nice and wise things in Judaism. For example, all matters connected to family and society, to restraining sexuality and to modesty. This contrasts with the licentiousness, the wantonness, the pornography, and the debauchery of some of the Western world. The Western world is destroying its own emotional machinery and causing a dulling of its own senses by over stimulation.
My questions are simple but fateful (innocent questions, never vexatious):
1. Do you think there is a G-d?
2. If there is, is the Torah Divine and does it form a Divine command? (And if so, are all we secular sinners destined for exile in hell?)
3. Why are there no disputations between rabbis and secular philosophers (as there were in the Middle Ages)? Rabbi Amnon Yitzchak vs. Sefi Rackolevski, or Meir Shilav vs. Rabbi Motti Alon?
4. Most importantly: how can I maintain myself and not get drawn into the black hole called a return to religion? (As you know, the gravitational pull of black holes is awesome. I’ll bet they think that’s written in the Gemara…)
N.B. Why don’t the authors of this site identify themselves by name? Are they afraid of persecution by religious agents?
Thanks in advance.
Joel
jsadmin Staff answered 20 years ago
Dear Joel,
Your straightforward, emotional words illuminate, somewhat, the confused place within the public which defines itself as “secular.”
You write: “I find it difficult to stand up to this sort of absolutism.” Do you mean that it is the amount of conviction which convinces you and not the content of the words? If it is the strength of conviction which is the influencing factor, you are in a very problematic situation indeed — many ideologies and many cults are extremely adamant, even willing to die for their beliefs. In this day and age there are people who literally kill themselves for their beliefs. (Would you have difficulty in standing up to the conviction of the Islamic Jihad?)
On the same matter you wrote: “They have an explanation for everything.” What is under discussion is not whether they have an explanation, but if they have a reasonable explanation!! Thus, for example, their explanation for the Holocaust (according to what you wrote): “It was because of intermarriage and Enlightenment.” Is this reasonable? Or is this a ridiculous explanation showing they cling to their own whims until they lose all conscience, giving Hitler legitimacy as the messenger of G-d to punish the wicked? Does not their explanation contradict what is written in the Scriptures themselves, “The soul which sins is that which shall die” (Ezekiel 18:4)? Does their faith turn them insane enough to make their “G-d” into the greatest of all cruel criminals, prepared to kill innocent children because of people (the Enlightened) who, from deep thought and introspection, decided to love every man as a person, to give reason more consideration than tradition?
Look at something else you write (illustrating the confusion which the religious have succeeded in making you feel). “I do think there are nice and wise things in Judaism. For example, all matters connected to family and society, to restraining sexuality and to modesty. This contrasts with the licentiousness, the wantonness, the pornography, and the debauchery of some of the Western world.”
You confuse theoretical values and the way people put them into action. You treat religious Judaism as a theory (in truth, it is a mirage) while ignoring the actions of some believers (pedophilia, domestic violence, ideological violence against homosexuals, intolerance of the Other, not joining in the protection of society…) while you emphasis the actions of a small percentage of the Western world and ignore its theoretical values (man’s happiness, including both physical and spiritual, of the individual and the group). To make the advantages of the Western revolution clear to yourself, write out how we would live had we continued to live as Charedi — an isolated minority which invests its intellectual and physical efforts in rituals and ceremonies whose time has passed.
Now to your questions:
G-d, as a creation of man, is as clay in the hands of man, as dough kneaded by the heart of the believer. When man wants, G-d is cruel, and when he wants G-d is merciful. Sometimes man treats G-d as he who punishes “sinners” and sometimes as he who gives them success and reward, all in keeping with the time and place, to rule over the masses who follow their fears. (Thus I have also answered your second question.)
As for your third question: I would suggest you turn to the Charedi public and ask
1. Why is no rabbi willing to be hosted on the Daat Emet (Hyde Park) forum or the Hofesh forum on the Tappuz website?
2. Why aren’t the Charedi and religious forums willing to invite Daat Emet representatives to answer their questions?
These are, in fact, rhetorical questions whose answers are clear. The Charedi public is not interested in an honest dialogue, just in preaching!!! When they identify a debating partner who seriously threatens their stand they run from him as from an archer. (That is the way of the faithful. They are happy to preach, but run from critique.)
As for your fourth question, please read the site carefully and you will uncover the fiction of religion, how the religious base their faith on a frail reed (faith, which has turned reason into its handmaiden).
Sincerely,
Daat Emet