Blogosphere Heats Up Over Haredi Internet Rally

The non-Jewish press has taken a great interest in the Haredi internet sobfest held on Sunday.  I guess that’s bound to happen when 40,000 black-suited men take over a baseball stadium on a hot day in May and no bats or gloves are involved.

Over at Jezebel, Katie J.M. Baker and Sam Biddle have a scathing post.  Leaving aside a few of their inaccuracies (not all Haredim are Hasidim), they hit the nail on the head by identifying misogyny at the core of all of this:

According to the Guard Your Eyes organization, the so-called "number one resource for dealing with the growing problem of the struggle with/addiction to inappropriate materials on the Internet," more men struggle to "break free of lust related behaviors" than women. (But divorce is not a "proper solution" for the wives of porn addicts because "temptations are so great, it is easy for a man to get hooked.") It's easy to see why the Orthodox community would be puzzled at the idea of porn-loving women, because that would imply that women are sexual beings, a theory that doesn't fly in a community where women who are menstruating are considered so impure that they are forbidden to touch even their husbands. ...So when the Hasidic community pushed to ban women from the Asifa (Yeshivish for "gathering") because the stadium could not be divided for men and women as according to custom, few people complained.

As I’ve pointed out about a million times, it’s not just about misogyny, though it is very much also about it.  It’s about knowledge in general.  They might cite sexual imagery as their primary reason for “shrying gevalt,” but they’re just as scared (maybe more) of Talk Origins.  In Israel, where they have more power, they've even managed to get "kosher" devices that block internet and even text messaging.

One person who just doesn’t get it is Chaya Kurtz.  Blogging at “XOJane” she writes:

When you slam Orthodox Jews because you think you're defending or somehow liberating the women of our communities, you're actually doing us a huge disservice.

Hi. I'm Chaya, and I am a Chassidic Jewish woman. I am also a media professional with a degree in Women's Studies from a large, very liberal university (magna cum laude, baby!).

In the past few days, I've been reading the backlash against "the asifa," a recent mass meeting of religious Jewish men meant to draw a few boundaries around Internet use in our homes (meaning religious Jewish homes; not your house).

She goes on to talk about how wonderful life is for Haredi women and all the usual drivel you hear about that.  (See Dvora Meyers at the Forward for a rebuttal.)

Here’s what Chaya doesn’t understand.  Maybe she’s had the privilege to attend a liberal university and make up her own mind about the world.  And perhaps she’s also so wonderfully insulated from Haredi reality that no one in her shul minds that she writes for a blog that features posts about tattoos or labiaplasty.

This is not typical of most frum women’s (or men’s) lives.  And newsflash for Chaya:  The men who were screaming and crying out to the Lord for protection from the evils of the internet were talking about you.

Israeli Reform & Conservative Jews Have The Wrong Idea

One of Israel’s biggest problems is its reliance on Orthodox rabbis in matters of Jewish practice and identity.  For years the liberal Jewish religious movements have been seeking to have their say, including representation on government religious councils.  The JTA has this to report today:

After a Jerusalem-area’s religious council allowed a female Reform rabbi to participate in its proceedings, some advocates of liberal Judaism in the country are hailing their inroads into the Orthodox-dominated religious infrastructure.

The same story relates a Reform rabbi’s quest for a state salary:

...In a 6-year-old case now in front of the Israeli Supreme Court, IRAC is demanding that the state of Israel pay a salary to Rabbi Miri Gold, a female Reform rabbi who heads a congregation at Kibbutz Gezer. Like hundreds of Orthodox rabbis across the nation who receive salaries from the state, Gold performs all the duties of a rabbi for the liberal-minded residents of the kibbutz, who like all Israelis pay the taxes that fund rabbis' salaries.

This approach is a mistake.  Rather than fighting to receive all of the privileges of Orthodox Judaism, the liberal movements should be working to sever religion from the state.  

They seek equity with Orthodoxy because they are incapable of apprehending that the real problem is not Orthodoxy’s monopoly.  The real problem is that the state prefers ANY expression of Jewish belief.

No Zionist is opposed to Israel’s cultural expressions of Judaism such as designating holidays, employing certain symbols or speaking Hebrew.  But the approach of these liberal religious Jews betrays their own prejudice that Judaism is first and foremost a religion.

The state should remain completely neutral in all matters of faith.  No religious councils.  No state funding of synagogues.  No state rabbis.  

Not that long ago, certain religious types began changing the words of the IDF’s Yizkor (memorial) reading.  Instead of “Yizkor Am Yisrael...May the People of Israel Remember,” they recited “Yizkor Elohim...May God Remember.”  So the IDF had a special committee study the issue.  The original - and secularized - wording was restored.  Still Jewish, but silent about faith.

Liberal religious Israeli Jews should work with secular Jews to abolish the entire governmental religious infrastructure.  The only recognition that they or their Orthodox colleagues are entitled to should come from their followers.  If their message is so compelling, they shouldn’t need the Israeli government to fund it.

Praying Away The Internet

Sunday night 40,000 Haredi men (just men) gathered at New York’s CitiField.  They did not go to see the Mets, but to figure out how to fight the internet:

As bewildered-looking stadium staff looked on, oceans of men in black hats filled nearly every seat in the Queens, N.Y., baseball stadium to hear a series of polemics against the use of the web.

Rabbis cast the Internet as a threat to children and to ultra-Orthodoxy as a whole.

“[The people Israel] has arisen like a lioness protecting her cubs,” said Rabbi Ephraim Wachsman, a well-known Orthodox lecturer.

Ironically, many arrived with their smartphones:

Despite the rabbis’ inveighing against technology, many of those in attendance carried Blackberrys, iPhones and digital cameras. At the Carroll Street subway stop in Brooklyn...a dozen men in black hats gathered discussed the directions they had found on the online map site HopStop.

Two things are absolutely true.  The internet is here to stay and it absolutely poses a danger to the continuity of Haredi Judaism.  Wachsman summed it up:

The Internet, Wachsman said, is “changing who we are…You can see it in the ebbing eyes of the younger generation, of the jittery inattentiveness of our children, in the flippant and callous language and attitude, the cynicism … the unbelievable breaches of [modesty],” in Orthodox communities.

All I can say is that I hope their younger generation’s eyes keep “ebbing” as they are faced with more and more contact with the modern world.  I cheer on their jittery inattentiveness to superstition and their rising cynicism of the authority of their credulous elders.

I recently spoke to a young woman in the Orthodox community who told me how upset her family members and teachers are that she has been learning about science and reality.  They’d love to keep that knowledge from her.  But even tens of hours a week of indoctrination and religious practice are no match for the information that can come from one decent science site or a few good YouTube videos.

The Haredim SHOULD be worried.  Very worried.

A Great Example Of God's Connection To Morality

Speaking of religion and morality, here’s another in a seemingly endless flood of great moralist preachers calling for a great moral approach to gays and lesbians.  It’s presented to us by Charles L. Worley of Providence Road Baptist Church in Maiden, North Carolina:

Build a great, big, large fence -- 150 or 100 mile long -- put all the lesbians in there.  Do the same thing for the queers and the homosexuals and have that fence electrified so they can't get out...and you know what, in a few years, they'll die out...do you know why? They can't reproduce!

Of course, the foundation of his moral approach to this issue is that “God’s ag-in it.”  Profound.

I’m pretty sure science is not this man’s forte, but someone should tell him that the vast majority of gay people are born to straight people.  That kinda screws up his big plan.

Meet Professor Boghossian

Courtesy of a friend and the Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science (and I would hasten to add Sanity), I received a link to Bent Spoon with  a great, short interview with Peter Boghossian, professor of philosophy at Portland State University.  Sometimes we expend a lot of energy to say what can be summed up in a few words.  I certainly do.  But I was trained as a rabbi so I have an excuse.

One popular argument people use to justify faith is that, without God, the world would take a downward spiral into immorality and anarchy. How do you react to this?

...Morality exists despite religion, not because of it. The hijacking of morality by religious clerics is one of the greatest scams of history.

It’s never been clear to me what the relationship is between a god and morality. What does God have to do with morality? If the universe was created by a being that we call “God,” how does this necessitate that we should behave in certain ways? I just don’t understand this move.

If one wants to claim that God is imbued with certain characteristics, like kindness and charity, then I want to know how someone knows this. Perhaps there was a being that created the universe but it doesn’t care one iota what we do with ourselves. Again, the relationship between God and morality can’t be accepted by fiat. Just as one can’t accept by fiat that God created the universe and now it doesn’t care about us.

Anyone who thinks that there is a connection between morality and religion, God or anything supernatural is seriously disconnected from reality.

The Wholly Holey Land

I just returned from a trip to Israel where I served as tour guide for a small group of people all involved in the Society for Humanistic Judaism.  Though I travel to Israel fairly frequently, circumstances conspired to prevent me from going since 2009.  With one of my children planning to study there next year, I will probably visit at least twice in the next twelve months.

So how is the place these days?

Well, Jerusalem was a little less horrifying than I expected.  With all of the talk of the exclusion of images of women - and of women themselves - I expected worse.  I was pleasantly surprised to see the usual advertisements in all of the shop windows of women in fashionable clothing, even at the Mamilla Shopping Center just outside of the Old City.

Jerusalem has never been a favorite of mine.  Even when I studied there in the eighties I always felt that the city was closing in on me.  There’s just too much religion and religious conflict and not enough restaurants open on Saturday.  But it is a center of Jewish history and, I must admit, it’s looking fairly good these days.  The streets are clean, the trees are pretty and the stones are well lighted.  

My favorite moment there was when we happened upon a women’s demonstration in the style of a “Slut Walk.”  Unlike those protests in some other cities, Jerusalem’s version takes on additional significance in the wake of religious attacks on women.  One American-Israeli woman held a sign reading, “This is what I was wearing when you threw rocks at me.”  And believe me, what she was wearing was pretty darn conservative.  They also handed out bumper stickers that said, “How am I dressed? Dial 1-800-It’s None of Your Business.”  That one is already up in my office.

Whenever I have the freedom to plan my own group experience in Israel, I never take the traditional route of finishing up in “holy” Jerusalem.  I’d rather start there and do the history thing followed by a tour of the rest of the country, culminating in Tel Aviv.  With a group of Humanistic Jews this was the right approach.  We  began at the Western Wall and ended at Tel Aviv’s sea wall.  

Guess which one we liked the best?

You're 64 And I Still Love You

Chag Sameach - Happy Holiday!

Today is Yom Haatzmaut, Israel’s Independence Day.  It’s been sixty-four years of war and conflict and sixty-four years of growth and innovation.  

I take a lot of crap about my unrepentant Zionism.  Yesterday I sent a fairly bland email out to my own Humanistic congregation in which I celebrated Israel’s accomplishments.  Last night our entire congregation received responses about how humanists should not be “flag-waving” for Israel and all about the many, many “abuses” of the “occupation.”  As if humanists were all required to be lock-step radical leftists.  Or to deny reality.

In fact, I believe that being a humanist means approaching every situation with radical honesty.

I am fully prepared to criticize the actions of Israeli governments and groups.  I’ve written dozens of posts about the harm caused by the Israeli extreme right.  What I am not interested in pursuing is a tendentious condemnation Israel’s defense policies.

Part of approaching a subject with radical honesty is putting situations in their appropriate context.  So here is just one of the many examples of this context.  

On June 19, 1967 - just two weeks after the Six-Day Way - Israel’s unity government, which included Menachem Begin, voted to return all of the captured territories in exchange for peace and recognition.  Remember the three “no’s”?  This is from the Khartoum Agreement, passed by the Arab League on September 1, 1967:

The Arab Heads of State have agreed to unite their political efforts at the international and diplomatic level to eliminate the effects of the aggression and to ensure the withdrawal of the aggressive Israeli forces from the Arab lands which have been occupied since the aggression of June 5. This will be done within the framework of the main principles by which the Arab States abide, namely, no peace with Israel, no recognition of Israel, no negotiations with it, [emphasis mine] and insistence on the rights of the Palestinian people in their own country.

And by the way, the “insistence on the rights of the Palestinian people” was not a reference to the newly acquired territory, but to pre-1967 Israel.

From there, things just went further downhill.  The same Arab world that demonstrated less than no interest in creating a Palestinian state in those same territories during the period of 1948-1967 now turned them into the centerpiece of their continued demonization of Israel.

There was a time when, teary eyed, I applauded the signing of the Oslo Accords, believing that the Palestinians wanted the same thing that the majority of Israelis do.  Even after the horrors of the Second Intifada - a blast of merciless violence that erupted in response to an Israeli offer to return most of those territories - I was among the supporters of the evacuation from Gaza.  I believed that, given a chance at real self-determination, the Palestinians could create something wonderful.  And once again, they did not.

I know that Israel isn’t perfect and I’m not engaging in apologetics.  But Israel is an overwhelming success, built in the context of hateful hostility from within and without.

On Yom Haatzmaut I celebrate that success.

Next week I’ll be there and I’ll try to post a bit of what I see.

Getting To Know The Heirs Of Intermarriage

I just returned from a (freezing) Chicago where I participated in the 2012 Colloquium of the International Institute for Secular Humanistic Judaism (a lot of words, I know, but still shorter than my own alma mater, Hebrew Union College - Jewish Institute of Religion).  It was masterfully put together by IISHJ’s North American Dean, Rabbi Adam Chalom, and hosted by Northwestern University.

The topic was “Half-Jews? The Heirs of Intermarriage” and it was fascinating from beginning to end.  And I’m not just saying that as a partisan Humanistic Jew.  The sessions went far beyond any particularistic point of view and took a very deep look at an entire generation of self-identifying Jews from mixed backgrounds.

The conference opened with artist Maya Escobar.  She blew us away with her in-depth - and highly entertaining - review of her work about her own identity.  Another highlight for me was Paul Golin of the Jewish Outreach Institute.  He presented a highly inclusive vision of Jewish community that is rapidly becoming the standard for many Jews.  And that’s something to be both excited and grateful for.  As more than one presenter pointed out, the Jewish community is no longer talking about whether to be welcoming to all kinds of Jews from all kinds of backgrounds.  It’s talking about how.  

Golin also made a startling demographic point with some simple math.  We’ve long talked about the 50% intermarriage rate, but that translates to the fact that two out of every three new marriages involving a Jewish person involve a person from another background.  So for every one household with two Jewish partners, there are two households created with one Jewish partner.  Improved outreach means that a whole lot of them are now connecting to the Jewish community.  Translation:  Soon there will be more Jewish households of mixed heritage than those from a solely Jewish background.

In keeping with the tradition of these colloquia, the speakers were from a broad spectrum of (non-Orthodox) Jewish life.  We heard from Hillel and Birthright/NEXT professionals and from academics, too.  Our own movement’s Rabbi Sivan Malkin Maas wrapped it up with a look at Israel’s struggles with these issues.  There are over 300,000 Israeli so-called “non-Jewish Jews” whose ancestry is insufficiently matrilineally Jewish.  They are victims of the nation’s completely unethical Orthodox stranglehold on Jewish status.

Unsurprisingly, the conversation about the heirs of intermarriage was really a conversation about the boundaries of Jewish inclusivity.  As such, it was really about us all.

The Colloquium also launched the soon-to-be-released book, “A Provocative People: A Secular History of the Jews,” by Humanistic Judaism’s founder, the late Rabbi Sherwin Wine.  Adam Chalom has spent years putting Wine’s manuscript in shape for publication.  I’ll be reviewing it very soon.

Does Judaism Need God? Do Jews?

New York’s “The Jewish Week” has an article about Jews and God that presents a good short summary of some of the issues I write about frequently.  Some of the statistics are fascinating, if not surprising:  

The data [from the Public Religion Research Institute’s survey on American Jewish values, released this month] ...showed that, while about 70 percent of Jews define themselves through a religious movement — Reform, Conservative or Orthodox — the other 30 percent see Judaism as more of a cultural identity, calling themselves “just Jewish.” And when asked whether Jews of any kind believed in God, 18 percent said they did not. (Forty percent said they believed in an “impersonal God,” while 26 percent said they believed in a God they saw as “a person with whom one can have a relationship.”)

That’s a whopping 58% of American Jews who are not traditionally theistic.

Some of the people interviewed for the article made the point that Judaism was about so much more than God:

“The religion has a lot of meaning even without God,” said Asher Lopatin, an Orthodox rabbi who leads the Anshe Sholom B’nai Israel Congregation in Chicago. Lopatin, a Rhodes Scholar recently named one of Newsweek’s “Top 50 Rabbis in America,” was not advocating for a Judaism without God. But he did think Judaism, even Orthodox Judaism, was getting along just fine without a strong emphasis on one.

That’s an amazing acknowledgment of reality coming from an Orthodox rabbi. 

But, alas, there are others for whom the supernatural world is still the key to Judaism.  It will shock no one that Rabbi David Wolpe, spokesman for all things God, had this to say:

“Without God playing a central role, Judaism will collapse,” said David Wolpe, a Conservative rabbi who leads the Sinai Temple in Los Angeles. (He is also a regular contributor to The Jewish Week and topped this year’s Newsweek list.) He dismissed the idea of preserving religious rituals as merely valuable “traditions” — a common description since “Fiddler on the Roof,” if not Mordecai Kaplan.

“In the end, traditions are hard to maintain unless there’s an attempt to understand the traditions in a deep way, and that God is central to those traditions.”

The article goes on to point out that this is an idea prevalent among many younger rabbis, too.

While I do recommend the article, I am once again disappointed by the fact that not a single humanistic rabbi or spokesperson was contacted about it.  I am fully aware that we are a tiny movement, but it seems to me that if you’re going to discuss atheism or humanism in a Jewish context, you would want to hear our point of view.  I guess we’ll just have to make good use of the comments section.

Passover Greetings

I hope everyone in the Jewish community is having a happy holiday.  I celebrated two very nice humanistic seders with friends and at Congregation Beth Adam using “The Liberated Haggadah” by my colleague, Rabbi Peter Schweitzer and “The Seder” from Beth Adam in Cincinnati.

Both books tell the story of the exodus using midrashic materials and underplaying the role of God in the narrative.  In most haggadas, of course, it’s Moses whose role is minimized.  The rabbis who wrote it preferred to feature God’s role as the true redeemer of Israel.  “The Liberated Haggadah” explicitly addresses the reasoning behind minimizing God’s role, noting that while most haggadas go in the other direction, we should be elevating the roles of the human heroes of the story.  

Even if there is a shred of historicity in the story - and there’s not more than a shred - whatever occurred had nothing to do with any gods.  In our time it’s probably even more appropriate to downplay God’s role.  Too many people are still waiting around for him to make the world a better place and that’s clearly not going to happen.

No, the path to a better world and freedom for all can only be built by us.  If it helps you to believe that “God” inspires it, then go for it.  But if you’re waiting for him to get the work done, then you’ll be waiting a looooong time.

And speaking of freedom, my daughter has recently brought to my attention the fact that there are tens of millions of slaves on this planet.  I don’t mean people who are symbolically enslaved by hunger and poverty, which is definitely a kind of enslavement, too.  I mean actual slaves, some exploited by debt, others in the sex trade and others simply held against their will.  I know we have a lot of problems in the world, but it seems to me that eliminating slavery in the year 2012 could be a little higher on our agenda.

Maybe a plague or two would help the situation, but I wouldn’t count on it.

Chag Sameach!  Happy Passover!

Reform Islam?

If you’re a liberal Jew, there are denominations for you.  If you’re a liberal Christian, you’ve got them, too.  Liberal Muslim?  Not so much.  

HuffPo has a piece about how this might be changing:  

On this brisk Monday night in late October, members of Muslims for Progressive Values, a nascent American reformist organization, had gathered from around the country to celebrate a milestone: In four years, the group had grown from a few friends to a thousand members and spawned a string of small mosques and spiritual groups that stretched from Atlanta to Los Angeles.

Today, as America's Muslim leaders debate controversial topics like political radicalism inside mosques and states' attempts to ban Shariah law, this growing network of alternative mosques and Islamic groups is quietly forging a new spiritual movement.

They're taking bold steps, reinterpreting Islamic norms and re-examining taboos. While far from accepted by mainstream clerics, these worshippers feel that the future of the religion lies not solely with tradition but with them. Women are leading congregations in prayer, gay imams are performing Islamic marriages, and men and women are praying side by side.

I’ve long believed that the best opportunity for creating a liberal Islam is right here in America.  Our open society, increasingly (if slowly) offering equality to women and gays, is the perfect laboratory for this.

Like their Jewish counterparts, progressive Muslims will struggle over the relative authority of their written scripture and its oral interpretation.  Early Jewish reformers, beginning in the late 18th century, faced similar issues.  And it wasn’t until they came to America that they were able to really experiment with their new approaches.

Of course, there are naysayers:

Dalia Mogahed, director of the Gallup Center for Muslim Studies...takes a critical view of the progressives.

Muslims for Progressive Values "are little more than a footnote or a special interest," she writes in an email. "Their actual influence in the [Muslim American] community is virtually non-existent," adds Mogahed, who spent six years collecting 50,000 interviews for the book "Who Speaks For Islam? What a Billion Muslims Really Think."

That may be true now, but Reform Judaism started out in a few parlors in German households and ultimately gave birth to all of the non-Orthodox religious denominations that we have today.  

Who knows?  Maybe some day, a long, long time from now, there will even be a movement for secular humanistic Islam.  I suspect that by the time that happens they’ll be traveling to their meetings via transporter beam.

It's Lurie Versus Falick!

While Jerry Coyne has been “crossing swords” with Rabbi Alan Lurie on his site, the good rabbi and I have been engaged in a more collegial dialogue via e-mail.

You’ll recall that I’ve been a little harsh on some of Lurie’s factual claims about God, though not nearly as brittle as Coyne, who calls him the “wacko rabbi.”  In fact, he’s not wacko at all.  He’s pretty representative of most liberal rabbis.

After my most recent critique (okay, attack) over his recruitment of Einstein into theological service, he sent me a short quote by Einstein and I replied and published it.

After I received his second reply, he gave me permission to publish the whole dialogue.  It’s rather long as is befitting any discussion between rabbis, but I hope you enjoy it:

Hi Jeff,

Thanks for writing back. 

As I wrote in my blog, I was not trying to convince anyone of God's existence - this must be a personal position. As we know as Rabbis, what matters is how we treat each other. 

I was only questioning why there are those who absolutely refuse to consider the possibility of a Creator and who, like you, demean those who believe in God (as you consistently do). Of my 100+ blogs, I have only written two directed at atheists, which I regret because I fear that they only made the possibility of constructive communication worse.

What surprised and now frustrates me are the often very nasty, sarcastic responses to blogs about God - like your very personal responses to my earlier blogs, and your recent accusation that I deliberately lied - and the insistence by many that reason and faith can not exist together. This seems to me to be illogical, untrue, and demonstrates an extremist mindset. I am concerned about the overt hatred toward religion and faith, and as a Jew we should all be on alert for this. I'm also shocked by so many, again you included, who define themselves by what they don't believe in, and hover around the Religion section eager to argue. These arguments are usually based on subjective and stereotypical views of religion, and show little true understanding. 

My point in mentioning deistic and theistic scientists is to note that an intelligent, educated person can and does believe in God. I admire Collins, and his belief that Jesus rose from the dead is not a proof proposition, but is a personal orientation that is not inconsistent with his scientific commitment. 

For me, God is a living experience. I was an adamant atheist until the age of 37, when I suddenly had a “call.” Now, I do not wonder if God exists, but I explore the nature of God. If you do not feel this, that's fine, but I really do not understand why you feel the need to write aggressive blogs arguing why God is a delusion, and to define yourself as “The Atheist Rabbi.” You realize that as a Rabbi you are also considered delusional by other more militant atheists.

While we need to ensure that religion does not enter in to social policy, we must also ensure that religion is protected and that we do not fall in to an either/or extremism.

Shavua tov,

Alan

My reply:

Hi Alan:

Well, I prize dialogue and we're having one so I thank you for your thoughtful response. 

I actually spend most of my time talking about what I do believe, but it is no doubt inseparable from that that which I don't.  I've critiqued your claims about God because you state them as a matter of fact, presenting your ideas as if the fundamentalists have the wrong idea of God and you have the right one.  When you write that "...the very question of 'How could God have allowed the Holocaust?' represents a profound misunderstanding of the nature of God, creation, and the spiritual dimension, because it is based on very faulty assumptions," you're stating that hundreds of millions of people don't understand the God in whom they profoundly believe.  How is that any different than my saying that you have faulty assumptions about the very existence of a deity? You think they're wrong and I think you're all wrong, but my assertion is demeaning and yours is not?  I know some Orthodox Jews (there are many in my family) who prefer my apikorsus [heresy] over what they consider to be liberal Judaism's destruction of the authority of God.  I don't agree with them because I support liberal Judaism for re-fashioning God with a significant upgrade

This is because I believe that what you do greatly contributes to compassion in the world and I respect that.  I may have critiqued liberal religious claims, but I have saved my real attacks for beliefs and practices that are actually harmful to people, such as homophobia or misogyny.  I can hardly imagine such an issue about which you and I would disagree.  In fact I've rarely encountered a liberal rabbi or pastor who disagreed with me about the abuses of power among Orthodox Jews, Catholics, fundamentalist Protestants or radical Muslims.  But after we come to our meeting of minds, they invariably explain to me that it's because those people have the wrong understanding of God and that they possess the correct approach.  My response is that all religious people are making it up.  

I have stated repeatedly on my blog that I do not wish or hope for the elimination of liberal religion.  It is of great comfort and inspiration to many millions.  On the other hand, I do enjoy challenging the factual claims of my liberal colleagues and I have found that it usually leads them to greater clarity about the way they express their beliefs.  From them I'm just looking for a little Kaplanian-style honesty about the completely human-made foundations of their theologies.  I'm also asking them to ally themselves with us rather than the fundamentalists.  We all share the knowledge that goodness can only spread through human action even if we bicker about the source and inspiration of that goodness.

Since my "coming out" out I have met hundreds of other Jews who feel as I do.  They are very connected to their Jewish culture but also often repelled by many of our texts and traditions.  I write for them and, admittedly, sometimes I do get a little too snarky.  I understand that this is how you perceived my tone and for that I offer my apology.  I try never to attack ad hominem and I sometimes fail.

As for the militant atheists finding me delusional, I can assure you that while we argue vociferously about how we should regard religion and whether we should engage in its non-theistic practice or even in "interfaith" activities, we are on the same page about how we understand reality.  My colleague, Rabbi Greg Epstein, humanistic chaplain at Harvard, just debated PZ Myers about this very topic.  And by debate, I mean that they had a pleasant conversation about how humanists should organize and whether the enterprise of religion offers any positive value.  But make no mistake, we all regard it as a fabrication of human culture.  We simply differ on whether our relationship with it should be more critical or constructive.  (See Alain de Botton's latest book, "Religion for Atheists," for example of the latter.)

With your permission, I would like to publish the complete text - unaltered, of course - of your reply to me here and my response.  What you wrote is a powerful reminder of the importance of civility in this debate and I appreciate it.  Those who do share your faith are fortunate to have in you a model of its caring expression.

Best,

Jeff

My apology is sincere.  I’ve really been trying not to get all ad hominemy with the “critiques.”  Here’s his final reply:

Hi Jeff,

Thanks for your thoughtful reply. As you see, passions run high around issues of faith and religion. And much of this passion is based, I believe, on misunderstandings from both sides - each who truly cares about truth and peace, and each who fears that the other is threatening this vision. After writing for HuffPo for over four years my equanimity sometimes runs thin as I've read many responses - often sarcastic and dismissive - that are so far off from the intent of my blog and my actual position as to make my head spin.

My goal is to present an image of faith and religion that helps to bridge difficulties and encourage deeper thought, from one who used to be an atheist and understands the contentions. But as you noted there is always a sore toe ready to be stepped on. Of course we can challenge each other, but the conversation becomes demeaning when one denigrates the other's character and assumes bad intention or deliberate deception. I confess to have stepped over that line in moments of frustration, for which I am sorry - and human.

Jewish teaching is abundantly clear that what matters most is how well we treat each other, and that theology is meant to be a tool than encourages us to be kinder and more considerate, as we see that all humanity - and all of creation - shares a common face. When theology becomes a tool for condemning others and is used to divide and label - instead of love and heal - then it has become truly sinful.

Please feel free to post this dialogue which is, I hope, in the name of truth.

All the best and, at risk of heresy, may God bless you!

Alan

I thank Rabbi Lurie for corresponding with me.  I’ve got to face it, outside the world of freethinking non-theists, I’m the one who’s considered the “wacko rabbi.”

Tennesseans Iz Lernin

I grew up in Miami, but I spent my junior and senior years of high school in Houston, Texas.  My experiences in Jewish suburbia did not prepare me for the wacky Christianity that I would see there.  One day in my social studies class we had a guest speaker who came to “testify” about Christ.  The year after I graduated, students dedicated the yearbook to Jesus Christ.  The place was just nuts.

Like Texas, Tennessee lags behind no one in its love of faith-based everything and there is a proposed law to prove it:

The legislation would require school districts to implement a policy to create a “limited public forum” before campus events such as the beginning of a school day or before a football game. Select students would be eligible to speak freely at these forums, including about religion, and the school district would issue a disclaimer before those speeches.

...Under the bill, school districts also would require teachers to treat a student’s faith-based answers to school assignments the same as secular answers. But while the bill allows faith-based answers, those responses must be justified like any other student’s.

The first part of the proposal is a blatant end-run around the prohibition on public prayers.  But it’s the second part that intrigues me.  I’m trying to imagine how this could go in various subjects:  

Question:  What is 2 + 1?

Answer:  5, because 1 = 3.  Justification:  Matthew 28:19 shows in its teaching of the trinity that one and three are the same.

Question:  What are the basic parts of the human circulatory system?

Answer:  All parts of the circulatory system are made of mud.  Justification: Genesis 2:6-7, “And the LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground.”

Question:  What were some of the reasons for the Holocaust?

Answer:  The Jews killed Jesus.  Justification: I Thessalonians 2:14-15 and Matthew 26:57-68.

Question:  What is the process by which plants convert sunlight into energy?

Answer:  Plants don’t need sunlight for anything.  Justification:  Plants were created by the Lord on the third day and there was no sun until the fourth day as it teaches us in Genesis 1:11-19.

Really, the possibilities are endless and they’ll all get straight A’s!

Lurie, Einstein And Me

I certainly did not expect to hear from Alan Lurie about my recent post, “Lurie Redux...Now With Einsteinian Proofs!”  It wasn’t much of a reply, just this:  

Einstein quote:  

"I want to know how God created this world. I am not interested in this or that phenomenon, in the spectrum of this or that element. I want to know His thoughts; the rest are details."  

I never claimed that Einstein was religious or believed in a personal God, but he most certainly saw that there is a Creator.  

Alan  

My reply was less pithy.  Here’s my letter to him:

Alan:

There is no evidence that he believed in a creator.  He didn't know where the universe came from any more than you or I do.  He was obviously non-theistic.  So what is the point of bringing him up at all?  To show that he believed in some sort of creator?  Even if we suppose that he did, what is the practical effect of this when he certainly did not believe in any kind of caring, involved, responsive, moral or ethical creator with even the slightest regard for the goings-on here on earth?

If you want to argue that the universe has a moral direction of some kind, then demonstrate how that is true in the light of all of human experience and everything we know.  Telling people that some scientists think it's true is not an argument and it proves nothing more than that someone else agrees with you.  Francis Collins is a very great scientist who believes in the literal resurrection of Jesus.  So should we too?

I'm a supporter of liberal religion, even when I quibble about its leaders' factual assertions.  One of the things that I admire about it is that liberally religious people tend to accept the fact that since there can be no proof of God, it is better to imagine him as the embodiment of goodness and as an inspiration for moral behavior than as the angry deity, lacking in compassion, that characterizes ancient and  illiberal modern approaches.  God thus becomes an inspiration for goodness among those who believe.  Since most people possess some kind of faith, that's a noble cause.  But there are many others who do not have or desire faith and you know as well as I do that this does not, of necessity, make them less moral or ethical people.  Such people are committed to another principle articulated by Einstein when he said, "I consider ethics to be an exclusively human concern with no superhuman authority behind it."

In rabbinical school (HUC) we ran through every proof for the existence of God that anyone has ever imagined.  There was not one among us or our teachers who found any of them compelling.  Science and modernity has utterly destroyed the God of our ancestors and we are will rid of him.  The more compassionate God that has taken his place (at least for our non-Orthodox colleagues) may be a great source of inspiration, but this does not prove his actual existence or anything about the moral direction of the universe.  It just proves that good people can make adjustments to bad beliefs.  When liberal rabbis feel the necessity to make arguments for the provable existence of God, they are falling into the trap set for them by fundamentalists.  It is a futile activity and does nothing to promote goodness.

Shabbat Shalom,

--Jeff

Maybe he’ll reply and we can have an ongoing debate.

De Botton's Religion For Atheists - A Review

Most humanists and other non-theists share a world view in most respects.  Overblown as it is, the main bone of contention in this community seems to be about how much respect - if any - should be shown for religion’s role in history and society.

Alain de Botton is one of those atheists who holds religious culture in high regard.  He has just written a book called Religion for Atheists: A Non-Believer’s Guide to the Uses of Religion in which he suggests that non-believers have most of the same basic human needs as believers and should look to religion’s inventions for models of how to meet those needs.  It is a fascinating proposition and one to which I obviously subscribe.

De Botton is not proposing that atheists become people of faith.  Far from it, what he’s suggesting is that religion, which is a complete human fabrication, has figured out good ways of creating community and addressing our emotional longings.  He writes:

We continue to need exhortations to be sympathetic and just, even if we do not believe that there is a God who has a hand in wishing to make us so.  We no longer have to be brought into line by the threat of hell or the promise of paradise; we merely have to be reminded that it is we ourselves - that is, the most mature and reasonable parts of us (seldom present in the midst of our crises and obsessions) - who want to lead the sort of life we once imagined supernatural beings demanded of us.  An adequate evolution of morality from superstition to reason should mean recognizing ourselves as the authors of our own moral commandments.

The author’s critique of a harsh atheist rejection of religion is not based on whether atheists are right to cast off theology - he is an atheist after all - but in whether they are right to unsparingly write off the entire enterprise.  For while atheists may have no use for religion to explain the workings of the universe, that doesn’t mean that atheists don’t have other requirements that religious practices were designed to meet.  

At its most withering and intellectually pugnacious, atheism has attacked religion for blinding itself to its own motives, for being unwilling to acknowledge that it is, at base, nothing more than a glorified response to childhood longings which have been dressed up, recast in new forms and projected into the heavens.  This charge may well be correct.  The problem is that those who level it are themselves in a denial, a denial of the needs of childhood.  In their zeal to attack believers whose frailties have led them to embrace the supernatural, atheists may neglect the frailty that is an inevitable feature of all our lives.  They may label as childish particular needs which should really be honored as more generally human, for there is in truth no maturity without an adequate negotiation with the infantile and no such thing as a grown-up who does not regularly yearn to be comforted like a child.

Having established this argument, de Botton goes on to examine the roles - beyond the superficial worship or veneration of gods - that religions play in people’s lives.  In each case he looks at how religion answered emotional needs with practices that, while ringed with superstition, also met practical requirements.  By examining holidays, life cycle events, rituals, symbols and institutions, de Botton makes an excellent, if sometimes overstated case for atheists to steal from religion.

Along the way, de Botton also provides a scathing, and I would argue, unfair critique of the optimism of secularism.  While it is certainly true that secularists are sometimes overly sanguine about the future, it’s not necessarily a weakness.  Jewish culture, for example, has long promoted the idea that better days are coming.  There is even a robust line of Jewish thought that places the so-called “world to come” right here on an earth transformed into a better place.  And while that idea was framed with more than a dollop of supernatural magic, many Jews were moved to take matters into their own hands as they came to realize that redemption could come only through their efforts.  This required at least some optimism.

Though he does not address it in his book, de Botton is fully aware of attempts by humanists to create institutions that are both “religious” and non-theistic.  In an interview with New Scientist he addresses these efforts:

...[T]here have been attempts [to reinvent movements]. Part of what has gone wrong is that people have wanted to start new religions, or rival institutions. The point isn't so much to start replacement movements as to integrate practices, attitudes and states of mind into secular life.

I’m not so sure about that.  Many of his specific suggestions involve the radical transformation of a number of secular institutions in ways that come across more as science fiction than achievable reality.  It seems to me that an evolution is more realistic than a revolution.  But who knows for sure?  If non-theistic, humanistic communities are going to really develop and flourish we will need dozens of experiments ranging from Humanistic Judaism to non-theistic Universalist Unitarianism to Ethical Cultural to humanistic chaplaincies to who knows what. 

For those of us involved in one or more of these efforts, de Botton’s book should serve as a valuable resource.

Lurie Redux...Now With Einsteinian Proofs!

I have twice addressed Rabbi Alan Lurie’s HuffPost articles and their assertions about God.  You can find my posts here and here.  

Lurie has recently written another post there called “Why the Universe Obviously Has a Creator (and Why Some Atheists Refuse to Even Consider It).”  I’m not going to bother with it here.  Jerry Coyne at Why Evolution is True has already addressed it very adequately on his blog and HuffPost.

But I do want to address one thing that Lurie wrote in a post addressing Coyne's critique:

Some of the greatest scientists were mystics and deep believers in a Creator: Copernicus, Maimonides, Kepler, Descartes, Newton, Mendel, Einstein and Planck, just to name some giants.

First of all, Maimonides was not in any sense a scientist, certainly not any more than any other medieval physician.  Secondly, Newton also believed in alchemy so what the hell does that mean?  Finally, and this was the most irritating part, Albert Einstein was NOT a believer.  This is simply a lie.  And the one who said it was a lie was Einstein:

It was, of course, a lie what you read about my religious convictions, a lie which is being systematically repeated. I do not believe in a personal God and I have never denied this but have expressed it clearly. If something is in me which can be called religious then it is the unbounded admiration for the structure of the world so far as our science can reveal it. 

--Albert Einstein, letter to an atheist (1954), quoted in “Albert Einstein: The Human Side,” edited by Helen Dukas & Banesh Hoffman

That’s just one of dozens of similar comments that he made.

So, Rabbi Lurie, may I respectfully suggest that while you are free to make any wild claim or assertion about the “real” God that you like, you are not entitled to make such claims and assertions about actual people when they are so obviously untrue.  Please, please, PLEASE stop using Albert Einstein to justify your faith.