guiltfreejudaism

What if we prepared ourselves for every family event by forgiving all the perceived wrongs done to us?

 

More than that, what if we prepared ourselves by thinking of all the things we liked about each of our family members?

 

Could you even imagine what that would look like?

 

Next time we show up to a family occasion, look each of our family members in the eye, and think only about them in terms of what we like about them.

 

Peace is right there - waiting for us to grab it.

As we head into May, I have been deliberating issues of freedom and responsibility – the themes for my sermons in April, and of course, the main theme for Passover.

     Every year, we tend to bemoan even more the sinking of our American culture into a situation where people demand rights, and seem less concerned about the costs of those rights in terms of responsibility to each other and our communities. In the realm of just how we as individuals can assert our responsibilities for each other in a positive way, I recall a story I heard on NPR recently (here is the link).

     To sum it up, Julio was coming home after work and got off the subway at his normal stop en route to his favorite diner for dinner. Julio was accosted by a mugger, brandishing a knife, demanding his money. Julio, not fighting him, handed him his wallet, and as the mugger walked away asked him if he wanted his coat too. The mugger, a little stunned, asked Julio why he would do that, and Julio responded that if the mugger would be out all night robbing people, he might be cold without a coat, and subsequently invited him to dinner with him.

     The mugger accepted, and was amazed and how everyone treated Julio so nicely at the local diner. Julio explained that he comes there all the time, and the mugger continued to be shocked that Julio was even nice to the busboys. Julio said that he was taught to be nice to everyone, and the mugger exclaimed in disbelief that he didn’t think anyone actually did that. When the check for dinner came, Julio turned to the mugger and asked him to pay for it, since he had Julio’s wallet. The mugger returned the wallet, and Julio handed him $20 in exchange for the mugger’s knife.

     This kind of action, where a person stands up for their values, even in the face of violence, exemplifies the idea of responsibility that we stand to lose in this country. Julio understood that the mugger needed much more than his wallet, he needed to see himself as connected to people. When we see ourselves as more than individuals, suddenly our place in the world becomes quite clear, we are all connected.

     Americans, all of us, complain about our situations, but seldom do we realize just how much we can do about them. Julio understood that crime in the Bronx is a problem of people, not a problem that should be left to the authorities. By extending his hand to the mugger, Julio proved to the mugger that victims are people too, and that there are indeed people who live in the way that we have all been taught to as kids.

     In our community of TBY a number of people have stood up and taken responsibility in recent months – you need only look at our president’s message this month as Joel recounts all the people who are stepping up to make TBY into an even better Jewish community.

     Have you been a long time participant in one of our activities, and you would like to see it improved or more to your taste? Let us know, and we will work on it. But, if you really care about something, help out – volunteer to make that activity better not just for you, but also for all of us. Our extended family runs on participation at every level.

     Have you been coming to TBY events for a long time, but not joined as a member? Why not? Membership is not about money, it is about claiming one’s identity as a participant in our TBY family. While TBY does need membership dues, what membership really means is inclusion in the group of people that call ourselves extended family. Consider your responsibility to the privileges that TBY offers, and think about whether or not you already are a member of our family in all but name. If you would like to affirm that membership, contact anyone of us listed in this issue of the bulletin, and see how easy it is to become an “official” member of our family.

     Let us all have a spring of standing up and taking responsibility for our communities – the improvements available to us when we work together will be greater than ever.

                During the third week of April Jews will celebrate Passover, the annual remembrance of the Hebrew slaves’ liberation in ancient Egypt. This celebration of freedom, observed by 8 days of abstaining from eating any grain product that has been leavened at all, leaving Jews who observe Passover no bread products, pasta products, and for many, no rice or beans either, for a little over a week, seems odd. How do strict dietary restrictions that hail back to an ancient story of fleeing oppression without enough time for the bread to rise celebrate freedom?

                An easy answer can be found by seeing that Jews emphasize freedom through restrictions – that when we give up a little freedom, in an area as irrelevant as what we eat, then we begin to recognize how valuable our freedom is in other, much more important areas. After all, while it may feel like a big deal to rid our kitchens of all the offending bread products, and avoid them for the week following, that means little when compared to the freedom to decide all the other things in our lives – who we love, where we work, where we live, and so on. Thus a small restriction lets us see how vast and significant our other freedoms are.

                And yet, there might be other ideas in Passover’s reminders about our freedoms that we could use in our communities this April. With freedom, Judaism says, throughout the Book of Exodus, comes the responsibility to build a better society, a society that protects our freedoms, but also requires our participation. We have come into a period in American history when it often feels like the issues that face us are so huge, that we can’t imagine our input making a difference. Our sense of powerlessness, however, becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. For, when we submit that we are at the mercy of greater human powers – the government, big business, and environmental problems, for example, not to mention the little issues in our own community that we allow to progress without objection – we allow them to control our lives. Let’s aim for a different approach this April, for as Jews celebrate freedom, perhaps we can all learn about our own abilities to shape our community.

                Instead of hoping that someone else will take care of our needs, let us stand up and make it happen. If we are truly free, then we must make that freedom worth something. We must not let ourselves believe that someone else will do what needs to be done. There is no one out there who has our interests in mind like we do. If we see a lack, we must attend to it. If our community doesn’t serve us, then it may not serve others as well, and we should stand up and make it happen for ourselves and those others. If we see an injustice, we must work to right it. Not because we are obligated, but because we are free, and our freedom demands that we preserve it and exercise it.

                I hope that all of us have a spring season of freedom and action, so that our community, local and worldwide, benefits from our participation. Happy Passover!

This is a letter I wrote last week to the editor of the Tahoe Daily Tribune. You can find links to all of the articles that I reference here:

 

To the Editor,

Since August 2007, the TDT has published a “Free-Thinker’s Forum” alongside the “Minister’s Forum”, as if the one were a balance or counter-point to the other.

In the months since this began, the author of the “Free-Thinker’s Forum”, Damian Sowers, repeatedly attacked religion in general, and my writings about religion in specific, almost every time he wrote. I have delayed in responding, because I wanted my response to be thoughtful, not angry, since, as I will show, Mr. Sowers has been most demeaning to religion and religious thinkers.

In June, Mr. Sowers claimed religion to be a mere placebo for those in need of mental well-being, and hastily generalized Islam, Christianity, and Judaism into a “dogma” that was the bane of civilization. His argument quotes some of the most famous critics of religion today, Dawkins and Harris, neither of whom turn their critical eye against science like they do against religions. After all, it was misapplications of scientific views that led to the Nazi de-humanization of anyone they called “non-Aryan” – Catholics, gay men, Gypsies, the handicapped, Jews, lesbians, political enemies, Protestants, and the like. Science doesn’t always get it right either. And that’s OK – since it usually works we don’t throw it all out. If only critics of religion would admit that not every religious person is a dogmatic fundamentalist, and that many religions have been on the side of science for a long time.

In July, Mr. Sowers wrote a letter directly to me, questioning my claim that science and religion were compatible, by claiming that religious people would only do so when “backed into a corner”. I am not sure what I would do when backed into a corner, or what it would take to dos so. However, considering that I freely expressed an affinity between science and religion in response to no statements made by Mr. Sowers, and as a way of speaking about moderate religious views in general, I hardly feel that such a position could be identified as "backed into a corner" in the least.

Judaism has been open to questioning and doubt about the literal truth of text for a long time. How long? Maimonides, a physician and the foremost Jewish authority of his time, who lived in the 12^th century, over 800 years ago, wrote that “The paths of interpretation are not closed to us” (Guide for the Perplexed, 2:25), elaborating particularly with an example from the first chapter of the Book of Genesis, that if well-established knowledge were to contradict any of the story, the story could be read metaphorically. Maimonides’ words from the Middle Ages are accepted even by the most orthodox of Jews, many of whom are scientists in Mr. Sowers’ field.

Furthermore, on that particular day, Mr. Sowers also claimed that religion “requires leaps of faith, and complete obedience”. I urge him to visit a synagogue. I guarantee that when it comes to Jews, biblically identified as a “stiff-necked people”, faith and obedience do not describe us nearly as much as skepticism and doubt.

I for one do not believe in a divinity that interferes in the physical world on my behalf or in response to my prayers. I believe in scientific method, in the veracity of evolution, and in the importance of stem-cell research. In fact, rabbis and moderate ministers in the United States almost uniformly agree with me on these positions. Unfortunately, Mr. Sowers seems so dead-set against the notion that a religious person could also be a thoughtful one, he wrote me off quite completely, dismissing all of American Judaism and non-fundamentalists in the same keystroke.

In August, Mr. Sowers posited putting “religion under a microscope”, as if the last two centuries of Religious Studies haven’t done exactly that, and then equated the clash between religious sects – like Sunni and Shi-ite Muslims in Iraq, or Catholics and Protestants in Ireland – to people potentially killing each other over different interpretations of Harry Potter. Clearly, this analysis not only demeans these religious beliefs, but it also ignores the centuries of ethnic divisions that underlie many religious conflicts.

In September, Mr. Sowers presumed that only atheists confront mystery in the universe, while religious people are satisfied with a “clear-cut, supernatural anecdote”. Considering that most religious people spend a good amount of their time contemplating that mystery, not simply claiming to have solved it, I can only guess that Mr. Sowers hasn’t spoken with many of them.

When ministers have disagreed in this space, we have done so respectfully – we have even gone out of our way to communicate with each other before printing any corrections or retractions. Considering that many of us have very different world views about religion, the divine, and the universe, that has been an amazing show of courtesy and regard for each other. Mr. Sowers admits no opinion but his own, however. Please do us all the favor of re-naming his forum, since there is no Free Thinking in it. Let it be the “Atheist’s Forum” – or, perhaps more appropriately – “The I can’t stand religion and there is nothing you can tell me to change my mind about it forum”.

My sister Liz gave birth to a healthy, thank God!, baby girl, yesterday, April 8, 2008 - here's a photo: