False Gods

Jblogs come, and Jblogs go. Some are amusing, others are thought provoking, and a few others are inspiring. A whole lot of Jblogs seem to affiliate with Orthodoxy, the "Torah true" hashkafah (point of view, philosophy), according to their authors. Sometimes they tend to be the loudest, and certainly attract like minds. Then there are the questioners and the seekers, who restlessly swarm the Jblogosphere.

Why do I read? Not to be validated, not to get warm fuzzies, but to help me know where I stand, to know what I stand for. To define my place, unlike others sure of their place. There are more like me, I find - the commentors- than the bloggers.

The people who attract me are questioners- everything is on the table- I admire and love the stark and hard won honesty. Indeed, the writers I find most compelling are those where the author and commentors have lost the "faith". I see a whole lot of engagement in the minutiae of Orthodox Judaism, for example- like Science v Torah.

In that sphere I see the likes of Dovbear whom I consider the Mozart of Jbloggers- who is loyal to Orthodox Judaism, and can argue rationally about things like the belief in G-d- that we are commanded and therefore he believes. I think of Dovbear to some extent as once removed from faith (in G-d)- he has no faith that is experiential, but there is a tradition of Tradition and that is what he cleaves to and has faith in- all that has gone before; he knows his hashkafah is honourable and fits. Dovbear has defined his place vis-à-vis Judaism- he plays on the themes and constraints and freedoms of Orthodox Judaism as his own, and, thus, is always a delight.

Then there is the incisive and honest and hungry intellect that is the Godol Hador. I relate most of all to his clear-eyed questioning of everything, where nothing is sacrosanct. He does it with love. I think he is beyond brave as well. He takes the mesorah (tradition) and turns it inside out, looking for clues. Godol Hador is like this fabulous surgeon who knows where to cut and expose the vulnerabilities needing healing. I fancy him a surgeon with a deep abiding faith in the outcome, and that is why he is The Man, as far as I am concerned.

I also hang on the words of Jewish atheists, Conservative apikorses, rebels and disillusioned ba'alei tshuva and unOrthodox Jews, all who often strike me as the ones who love Judaism and what it means to be Jewish the most intensely- the ones most invested, the ones most disappointed, the ones most burnt, who are the ones willing to express and describe their disappointments in great detail, who dedicated their hearts and souls to Judaism until it let them down, intellectually- or the people who espoused it let them down. These are the ones who possess a forceful and sensitive integrity; in a sense, having gone to the wall, they are liberated, while all the while there is a part of them that grieves for home....

Fact is, all of these bloggers (and others) love Judaism and Jews, beyond compare. And that is why I read them. And I read them for resonance- I'm like a humpback whale, making the song, listening to the echo and the reply. I listen for orientation. And what has come through, over and over again, is this question: we love Judaism, but who loves G-d?

That is the issue with Orthodox Judaism and other streams as well, for us, the rank and file. Way beyond what the gedolim (Torah greats) or "liberal" leaders think or dictate, are those pesky 13 articles of faith established in tradition as a touchstone- by the Rambam (Maimonides), one of the reasons, I could not, in all good conscience, affiliate with Orthodoxy, because I do not accept some of them as written. Similarly, I see post upon post of arguments about science v Torah- people digging through the arguments, wondering, and digging further into uncomfortable and inconvenient dark places.

It makes you think.

How many people would even bother to follow halacha (Jewish law), if the fundamentals are debunked- the universe was not created in 6 days, the Torah is more than a document to be taken literally, how much is due to myth and how much is history- did Moshe write the entire Torah as dictated by G-d? The fundamentals, too, are mesorah. It makes me wonder sometimes: is the mesorah so strong that it has become something to worship in and of itself, something to cling to blindly when you get confused or challenged?

And what about reward and punishment- are we so clear on how to interpret G-d's moves ? Is there that much certainty?

The debates and arguments in the Jblogosphere have shown me that much of faith seems to be based on keeping the myth alive- up till now, it has not really been about G-d, or faith in G-d. It has been about details and about a people. About Chazal and the prominence of Chazal's authority for some. It has been about authority and the tradition of bowing down to that authority, been about those who look past the authority to their own experiences, about those going eyeball to eyeball with "tradition" and finding it rationally, lacking- and so, they reject Judaism. But what they don't address, directly, is the crisis of faith. It is not about all-or-nothing. The main issue is faith.

It really is about G-d, which embarrasses most Jews. It really is about nothing else. It, in truth, is not about having a crisis of Jewish identity, because the mesorah ensures your ethnic identity, even if you don't believe in the soul or in G-d- many Orthoprax individuals make that clear. And so do Jews who are ethnocentric and bigoted.

It is fundamentally a crisis of faith. It is akin to saying, Judaism has let me down, because it misled me about the divinity of the Torah, and I admit that I thought that Judaism is all about Torah.

No, it isn't. I think that Judaism, like all religions, is about G-d.

And Torah is the vehicle, the "blueprint", for Jews, to find their way to, and to connect with G-d. It's that simple. Even if it was not brought down by Moshe, all by himself. It does not invalidate the thought of fellow Jews that came after him. Torah is pure genius but nothing that I am willing to worship, anymore than I am willing to place the Rabbis of the past on a pedestal, though I think that often they were divinely inspired, if that's what you want to call wisdom.

Thanks to thought provoking Jblogs, I realise that I have been privileged to connect with G-d through Judaism. Judaism is my heart and my soul. It is me. Even though I don't think that G-d created the world in 6 days, or that Moshe wrote down all of G-d's thoughts, etc. Even though I don't take the Torah literally. But I have faith, in G-d. So, not Jewish, I am finding.