The English Shaving Co. (commercial)
I have an awful time shaving (which is why I usually walk around woolly), and I have been thinking of going old school with a real razor for awhile. (These links are research for an essay that I'll probably never finish writing).
As part of Julie's conversion process, the Rabbi asked both of us to write a three-page essay based on eight questions. The plan is to answer the same eight questions at the end of the year-long program to show how we've progressed. Here are my answers:
1. Please describe your background including your parents’ background and your general education and profession.
Born in Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn to Sheldon and Lidia Figatner, I was raised between two sisters in a conservative Jewish household. Both my parents were Jewish, but my mother’s family was more observant, and we tended to reflect her family’s traditions: We attended Shul on the high holy days and life events; I studied and participated in a bar mitzvah; we hosted Seder dinner each Passover; and we kept a Kosher household of convenience, the type where you had three sets of dishes: one for dairy, one for meat, and the paper one for take-out. I grew up with mostly Jewish friends in public schools, and attended five years of Hebrew school and an Orthodox Jewish day camp for over ten years.
I went to college at SUNY Binghamton, where I received a B.S. in Computer Science and a B.A. in Philosophy. After a year as a computer programmer in Washington, D.C., I enrolled in graduate school at Syracuse University, where I graduated in 1999 with a J.D. and a M.S. in Computer Engineering. I worked in a law firm in NYC for a few years, moved to Houston, Texas for an in-house counsel job (where I met Julie), and am now working in Redmond, Washington as a legal counsel for a software company.
2. Please describe the process that led you to undertake serious study of Judaism.
I was an inquisitive and restless child, and besides the social aspects, I did not much understand or enjoy Judaism. The Jewish services bored me, involving much standing and sitting, and the chanting in a language that while I could sound out and pronounce, I never understood or developed the desire to understand. I was at best an adequate student at Hebrew school, and while I tended to enjoy the more spiritual discussions, I grew frustrated with the underlying acceptance of God, which I felt should not be glossed over as a given. Then as now, I wanted the question of God’s existence to be the focus of discussions. As a typical teenager boy, I worshipped at the altar of logic and found it difficult to fit the concept of God in with this mega-rational view of the world.
When I look back at my childhood, I realize that I learned much about the traditions and history of Judaism at home, in Hebrew school, and particularly during my time at the orthodox day camp. Even while uninterested, I absorbed many of the teachings, as philosophies, arguments, and basic understanding tend to stick in my head like popcorn in one’s teeth.
At around 13 years of age, my father died of cancer. My mother claims that his death turned me away from Judaism. There is certainly truth to that, but not in the way that she thinks. While we sat Shiva, the local rabbi gave me the purple- and black-colored book On Death and Dying, an explanation of the Jewish way of dying, which focused on the Jewish ceremonies and beliefs around death. Again, the book failed to cover what my teenage mind most craved: an understanding of the why’s and what’s of Judaism at the spiritual level. I was a voracious reader, and although I devoured the book, it helped little in answering my real question: I wanted to understand faith and belief, and, underlying it all, meaning. At the same time, I was not ready to discuss my feelings about my father’s death, all of which conspired to keep away any possible spiritual development.
In college, I continued to cling to logic as the answer to life’s questions. I studied philosophy and became adept at questioning and debating. I developed an argument about the existence of God that I honed to a razor’s edge. Let me see if I can still remember it: in most faiths, God is omnipotent (all-powerful). To be omnipotent God must live outside of time, since living within time’s flows (here, I would provide examples of single- and multiple-branched timelines), would be limiting to an all-powerful God. Another aspect of being omnipotent, however, is the ability to make changes. Since change is a function of time (for example, changing from sunshine to rain, or the separating of the Red Sea, both of which can only happen in a timeline), God, existing outside of time, is incapable of making those changes. To further clarify, change presupposes an original state of being followed by a new state of being; something a being living outside of time could not accomplish since he would necessarily be stationary in the timeline, unable to change in any way or exert his influence, since both change and influence happens only in time. Thus—I would proclaim with a triumphant egotism only available to the college-aged who know too much about too little—God cannot be omnipotent and affect change, and therefore cannot exist.
Thanks in part to my relationship with Julie, I have grown to understand my feelings better, and I now believe that life cannot be explained through pure reasoning. I still, however, feel a vast emptiness in the spiritual reaches of my life. Over the years, I have continued to read Jewish texts and participate in Jewish study groups, all in the hope of finding connections and understandings. I believe that Julie’s conversion process is another step in my journey. It gives me the opportunity to learn and question with her, and provides me with a beautiful set of eyes that will look on Judaism with a virgin understanding and hopefully explain to me truths that I can no longer see because of my scarred vision.
3. What are the beliefs and values in Judaism that you find most appealing and persuasive?
Judaism has many wonderful aspects. First, as I discussed above, I hope to find spiritual answers that will help me understand better existence and purpose. Second, since leaving school, I have missed the debate and study offered by challenging concepts and meaningful conversations. I believe that Judaism’s focus on learning through debate—particularly as it relates to spiritual aspects and to a lesser extent as it relates to the purely legal aspects (something I see too much of because of my profession)—will allow me to reignite my intellectual pursuits. Third, I’ve always been impressed by the charitable teachings of Judaism, including Suduka and community support. And, finally, when done properly, Judaism provides a wonderful sense of community, something that, outside of my family and far-flung friends, I have not known.
4. What experience do you have with mitzvoth and Jewish practices? Have you incorporated any specific Jewish Practices into your life at this time?
After growing up with a quasi-Kosher lifestyle, I have moved away from many of the Kosher aspects of life. I have begun making conscious efforts to begin reintroducing some of those aspects back into my life, including watching more particularly what I’m eating, spending more time discussing and studying Judaism, attending more Shabbat services, and learning with Julie about Judaism. As we continue to learn and practice, I hope to incorporate more of the mitzvots into our lives.
5. What is your web of Jewish relationships? Do any of your friends or family mentor you in Jewish life or discuss with you Jewish issues and concerns? Are you currently involved with a Jewish organization or synagogue?
I have not affiliated with any synagogues since leaving Brooklyn. I hope that during this process I will find a synagogue and community that Julie and I feel comfortable living, praying, and studying in. For obvious reasons, my family is supportive of the road on which Julie and I are embarking.
6. In what ways do you feel that Judaism answers questions that were unanswered before you started on this path? If you were previously associated with another religious community, why did you decide to leave that community?
All something I hope to discover during this journey.
7. What aspects of Judaism do you find challenging? How do you want to approach them during the coming year?
There are many aspects of organized Judaism that I find challenging. Briefly (because I’m rapidly approaching that three-page limit—even though I already cheated by changing the spacing), Judaism’s belief that it is the chosen people disturbs me. I believe that this sense of elitism has dogged the Jewish people throughout its existence and resulted in much of its history of persecution (it also, I admit, was one of the main reasons for the success of Judaism—as I like to say, all religions have different “survival characteristics” (and here, I usually invoke a comparison between religions and viruses). Besides monotheism, Judaism’s great survival characteristic is its belief that god chose its own people). Additionally, Judaism, because of when it developed, tends to be sexist. In the Shul I grew up with, woman were not counted in the minyan and were not allowed to be rabbis or read from the Torah. There are also aspects that I see as unappealing in enjoying modern life, including many of the dietary rules, which tends to create very separate community for Jews and non-Jews. And, finally, growing up, I felt a sense that the practice of Judaism relied too heavily on money, e.g., my Shul collected tickets during the high holy days (refusing the opportunity to pray to those without), and allowed payment for the remembrance of the dead, a practice that I still find dirty.
8. Do you know which stream of Judaism is most appealing to you? Why?
Having grown up as a Conservative Jew, I am interested in learning more about the other aspects of Judaism, and particularly the Orthodox movement. In my experience, Orthodox Judaism tends to approach Judaism from a more vigorous intellectual and spiritual standpoint. I have my reservations, of course, and this is something I look forward to exploring with Julie, and perhaps pursuing in the future.
Here is Julie's essay on her thoughts on her conversion to Judaism.
I was born in Taipei, Taiwan and moved to Dallas, Texas at the age of six in 1983. My parents are entrepreneurs and both have business backgrounds. I am the oldest of three daughters. My sisters are currently on the East coast. My middle sister is studying for her PhD in International Relations, while my younger sister is a third-year undergraduate student at Harvard, majoring in anthropology with an interest in education.
I didn't grow up with any religious affiliation but in the 1990's, my parents became involved with the local Dallas Buddhist Association. The sect of Buddhism focuses on Buddhism more as an education and daily way of life, than as a religion. Buddhist values of compassion, filial piety (respect for elders and teachers), and rationalism are embodied by different Buddhas and Boddhisatvas. The statues of Buddhas and Boddhisatvas serve as reminders to embody those virtues in daily life, rather than as idols of worship. My parents are now currently in Taiwan, and have established a TV satellite station devoted to teachings of Buddhist saints and sages.
After graduating from high school in Dallas, I attended Stanford University for my undergraduate education. I then studied medicine at The Baylor College of Medicine in Houston. I met David during my last year of medical school. After a couple of months of dating, he told me about his impending job transfer to Oslo, Norway. So I then decided to leave Houston for my family medicine residency at the University of California, Irvine. David's transfer, however, fell through and we continued to see each other and accumulated miles flying between Houston and Irvine. About a year ago, David moved out to the west coast and is currently working as a licensing attorney in Seattle. On June 7, 2005, David and I got engaged. I have six more months of residency in California, and then plan to move to Seattle in July 2006. I will then start my fellowship in geriatrics.
I want to convert to Judaism to feel closer to the Jewish community and to share a religion with David. I also feel that it is important our future children be raised in the Jewish tradition, for family unity and harmony. I have participated in Jewish celebrations with David's family, including the lighting of the menorah on Hannukah and Passover Seder, and I enjoyed the family gatherings and hope to continue those traditions in my own home. Since our engagement, I've made contacts with the Jewish community in Irvine and have attended Shabbat at a conservative synagogue. I've also attended a monthly noon series with a Chabbad Rabbi at the hospital where I work, and have been invited to Shabbat dinner by an Orthodox couple I met through the Chabbad series. I've done reading on my own and with David, including Embracing Judaism by Rabbi Kling and Becoming a Jew by Rabbi Lamm.
One of the beliefs and values in Judaism that is most appealing is Chesed, the act of loving-kindness. In my work as a physician, I treat my patients with compassion. I also have a soft spot in my heart for the elderly which is why I decided to pursue specialized training in geriatrics. I did a month's elective in Seattle and enjoyed caring for the elderly in a variety of settings, including nursing homes and assisted living. I also find Judaism appealing in that it focuses on our current life, and not so much on afterlife as in Christianity, or in leaving the life cycle to achieve Nirvana as in Buddhism. Life is short and precious and I want to learn and experience as much as I can in this life. What I also find fascinating in Judaism is the emphasis on questioning. Through questioning and debate with one another, one can arrive at a deeper understanding of the Torah. This is in contrast to traditional Chinese way of thinking which is to accept what you are taught.
Aspects which may be challenging as I convert to Judaism include my relationship with my family. I've discussed with my parents and my sisters about my decision to convert to Judaism. My parents are open to other religions and are generally accepting of my decision. My mom was surprised though that there was a formal conversion process which would take about a year to complete. My sisters were mixed in their responses. My younger sister was more critical as she had grown up with Buddhism more than I or my other sister had, and asked if the conversion was really necessary. I explained to her that my future children will not only know about Judaism but will be exposed to their Chinese heritage by attending Chinese school to learn Chinese. They may also learn about Buddhist philosophy and education if they so choose when they are older. I think it will be a continual process of reassuring my younger sister that I'm not turning my back on my Chinese background. My middle sister, on the other hand, was more receptive and said she supports my decision to convert, as long as I feel that it is important to me.
Other aspects I find challenging is whether I will ever really feel Jewish. Because of my ethnicity, I will not easily blend into a Jewish congregation. I wonder if people will be accepting of me as a convert. I suppose with time and with observing mitzvot and shabbat more regularly, I will feel more Jewish. And with attending a synagogue more regularly, I will come to be accepted as a Jew.
Conservative Judaism is most appealing to me. I don't feel comfortable with the sexism apparent in Orthodox Judaism. Prior to meeting the Chabbad Rabbi, I was forewarned that he wouldn't shake my hand because I am female. I've also read that women do not count as part of the minyan in Orthodox Judaism, and only males can be ordained as Rabbis in the Orthodox tradition. There are appealing aspects to Orthodox Judaism such as the strong sense of community. Reform Judaism is almost too lax in their requirements for conversion and for their congregation. Also, a reform conversion would not be recognized by Conservative or Orthodox Jews. As David's family is Conservative, it makes more sense for me to undergo a Conservative conversion and to belong to a Conservative congregation later. Also, I find appealing that Conservative Judaism still holds the Torah as binding but evolves with time, such as egalitarianism in Conservative synagogues.
I've read and heard that the conversion process is a life-altering experience and I look forward to that experience. I look forward to the learning and the discussions and the new friendships I will forge along the way.
Because I’m not good at these essay things—I tend to get distracted, and after a hard night of writing, I find it impossible to continue where I left off, leaving me with a quarter-written essay, which I can touch and retouch but can never actually finish or conclude or somehow turn into something that people will want to read to discover what it says—I’ve decided to take the poor man’s route and turn this exercise into a transcription of a conversation on Judaism and conversion I had with my sister Randy yesterday (as in the day before I started writing this essay—who knows when and if I’ll finish it). There are problems with transcriptions (and, yes, I am adding these asides and throat clearing explanations for good and fine reasons, and, no, they aren’t because I don’t want to actually start writing and I figured it would be easier to explain the methodology rather than apply it; but good thinking, nonetheless), and in particular me transcribing, viz., I don’t have much in the way of a memory. Most of what I remember usually happened over the last five minutes. With that said, I’ll admit right up front, much of the remembering will be fictionalized by me—being the writer and, in case you’ve forgotten, an arrogant S.O.B. (no offense, mom)—as the hero in each and every scene.
Speaking of scenes, it’s raining outside (I’m in the recollection portion now—the rain miraculously wasn’t falling when I initially typed this, but, through the miracles of Seattle weather (and multi-day writing), is now falling, as it has been over the last 27 days, only five days short of some type of unholy Weather Record in these parts), a light mist in an otherwise warm day, and I’m walking in the dark after a not terribly busy day at work. I take a vanpool across the lake each morning and evening, and walk about fifteen minutes between the Castle and the vanpool drop off. As usual, after I leave the van, I dial the Julies. I’ve long since grown bored of the scenery, and since few people walk in Seattle—not counting the joggers, who are only interesting when I have to dodge a pack of them, but counting the dog walkers, whose strange habits and careful picking up of their dog’s poop intrigues me in a disturbing-to-admit way—there’s not much to look at but non-Castley houses, dark lawns, and lots of cars, most filled with people at the end of their dark and wet night commutes.
This is my first day back to work after the New Years’ vacation, and I’m chatting with the Julies when my call waiting clicks. The number is Private, and after mumbling a goodbye, I switch over. It’s my sister Randy. She asks if I have time to chat, and I explain that since I’m walking home from the van, I have nothing but time.
“I read the essay Julie wrote for the Rabbi,” Randy says. Both Julie and I wrote an essay as part of the first assignment in our Jewish conversion class. I was born Jewish, and by Jewish laws and customs, I don’t need to convert. Even a non-practicing person born of a Jewish mother (let’s say Jewish by genetics for now, I will explain the distinction between a converted and born Jew later) is considered Jewish, even if they (the person or their mother or their mother’s mother) practice or believe in Catholicism or Voodoo or Witchcraft or atheism. Judaism is not something you do or believe, it’s something you’re born into. (Randy once dragged me to a rabbi she was studying with. She introduced me as the brother who asked many questions and believed in little. Unlike other religions, Judaism thrives on questioning, although, to be fair (to me), most of the questioning revolves around explanations of the Jewish laws, e.g., “rabbi, why do we not eat the fat of the pig, which, when cut in thin slices and wrapped around a piece of fish, makes even dry and flaky fish delicious?” The very first question the rabbi asked me (before I could get into the bacon-wrapped fish query) was, “Do you have to believe in God to be Jewish?” I thought for a moment before answering simply, “No.” The rabbi looked at my sister and said, “I thought you said he was contentious?”) Julie was not born Jewish, and therefore needs to convert to pass on Jewish-ness to our children, something that is very important to my family, and, surprising even myself, important to me.
Returning to the phone call, Randy continues, “and I wanted to talk about the last paragraph, the one where Julie pointed out that Orthodox Judaism was sexist.” In case you didn’t get a chance to read the essays, the last question the rabbi asked us related to which type of Judaism we wanted to practice. Before continuing (okay, starting, really) on the conversation with my sister, I need to fill you in on the difference between Orthodox, Conservative, and Reform Judaism.
The first thing the uninitiated needs to understand is that unlike some religions (say, Catholicism), Judaism does not have a central authority, there is no pope, no ultimate, all-powerful rabbi or committee who makes decisions for the religion. There was a time before the destruction of the Second Temple in Jerusalem (we Jews are nothing if not systematically oppressed—I have my theories about that as well, but I’ll save that for another essay) where there was such a body. With that said, there are committees of rabbis who do opine on certain matters, and their opinions, while not exactly law, are followed by their communities. These Rabbinical Assemblies (I’m guessing on the name here) are further broken down into three major sects. There may be one or two others, but I’ve decided to talk about the Big Three because growing up these were the only ones I knew about.
You can think of Judaism as a spectrum, across which there are varying degrees of observance and belief in the laws of our ancestors. The strictest reading of these laws is, not surprisingly, the Orthodox Jews. They believe that God handed the Torah to Moses, and their Rabbinical Assemblies are very strict with the interpretation of these laws as they relate to the modern world. For example, an Orthodox Jew will not drive on the Shabbot or eat non-Kosher food (e.g., the bacon-wrapped fish). Orthodox Jews refer to themselves as Observant Jews, in that there is no real difference between an Orthodox Jew and a Conservative Jew—if you’re born Jewish, you are a Jew. Period. There are only different levels of observing the Jewish laws.
The middle ground for Judaism is the Conservative Jews. I was raised Conservative and because of that have the firmest understanding of their practice. Like the Orthodox Jews, the Conservative Jews believe in the laws of Moses, but they also believe that some of the laws need to be reinterpreted because society has changed an awful lot since the time of Moses. For example, while Orthodox laws would never allow a woman rabbi to lead prayers, most Conservatives (with the congregation where I grew up an exception), allowed woman Rabbis, and provided woman with the same opportunities as men in prayer. With that said, I find that Conservative Jews tend to be less observant in other more meaningful ways. A good way to judge observance is to see when people attend services (group prayer) at temple. By way of example, when Julie and I visited a Conservative temple in the OC, during Kiddush (food plays a big role in all Jewish activities, and the Kiddush follows the Saturday morning service with cake and wine), we sat at a table munching away on our food with another couple. The other couple pointed out—and this seemed almost defensive in nature, almost as if they needed to get this out before we could have a conversation with them—that they did not normally attend Shabbot services, but because their son was being Bar Mitzvah’ed (i.e., celebrating his 13th birthday and, by Jewish law, his becoming a man—which, incidentally, goes completely against my monster theory, that states that children stay children until they turn 26) the following weekend, they decided to attend. For prayer and observance, most Conservative Jews attend services during the high holy days (three days every year) and for life events.
And, finally, there is Reform. I know the least about the Reform movement because I was never exposed to it. From what I do understand, Reform Jews pick and chose the laws that suit them, a smorgasbord, if you will, of rules for the choosing. With that out of the way, we return to my phone conversation.
Ah, I mentally rub my hands, Randy wants to have a religious discussion. “Before we get started,” I start in, “Julie’s comment was based mostly on my descriptions of some of the Orthodox laws related to woman, and how they seem awfully old-fashion and—and I think I used this word exactly to describe it—sexist.” Although true, I did this to deflect the blame away from the Julies. Julie has been incredibly good about the conversion process. She has been doing lots of reading (while Julie is a good student, she isn’t always the best reader, e.g., see how few of these paragraphs (outside of the sentences with her name in it) she reads—which, when I think about it, probably has more to do with what I’m writing and how I’m writing it than her desire or enjoyment), reaching out to rabbis and attending Shabbot dinners and Orthodox and Conservative services, in other words, she’s being more Jewish (regrettably, only in the “observant” way and not in the being Jewish way—if only it were that easy) than me.
“Some of the Jewish laws relating to women are quite beautiful,” Randy says. By this time I’m walking down the hill that leads to Wilson avenue. This is a tricky hill as the ground is wet and it is steep enough for a construction sign warning “Snow Route Do Not Enter” to be leaned against the Stop Sign, ready to be deployed in the rare Snow Event in Seattle. There is also some over-brush, which I have to duck and maneuver my head around, which is difficult because a rain hood obscures my vision and the brush blocks the light so I end up running into low-hanging branches, some of which have dangerous curved spikes.
“Beautiful but sexist,” I say. “Just look at the laws involving covering the body, or the that-time-of-the-month laws, or the keeping house laws, or the not going to temple laws, or the separation of men and woman at temple laws, or the having children, lots and lots of children, laws. Where do you want to start with defending these laws and showing how they’re not sexist?” Just so we’re on the same page, I’ve studied Judaism, but I am in no way an expert or even someone who is terribly knowledgeable about it. I can’t quote the Mishnah or the Talmud, or tell you who begot Rachel (the biblical Rachel, not my beautiful niece, of whose parentage I’m fairly certain), or whether removing the stopper of an ancient water jug would be considered work prohibited on the Shabbot, the day of rest. There are many things I don’t know, so take everything I say (and the words I put into Randy and my mouth) with a large chunk of good old NaCl.
“Where do you want to start?” Randy asks. She doesn’t give me an opportunity to answer. “The laws are beautiful when you understand them. Do you know why Orthodox men are not allowed to touch women?” This was one of the laws that Julie learned when she met a Chabad rabbi during a Jewish class in the OC. Before the class, her friend—a Jewish coworker who has been helping Julie experience the California version of Judaism—warned her that the rabbi would not shake the hand of any woman at the class. When Julie asked me why, I explained:
“Cooties.”
“Close, but not exactly,” Randy says. “Orthodox men do not touch woman other than their wives out of respect for those other women.”
“Respect in that the other women are protected from the groping hands of the lecherous Orthodox men? Do you see how the Jewish religion has no respect for women? It thinks that if an Orthodox man touched another women, he would—or is it she would?—be unable to resist her charms, analogous to how rape is the ‘woman’s fault.’”
“Let me finish before you judge,” Randy says, warming up to the debate. “For two weeks of each month, a married woman may not be intimate with her husband.”
“Ah, this one I know is about the cooties and how unclean the woman is during her cycle.”
“No, again, you’re not seeing the beauty. It’s not about being unclean, it’s about desire and the increasing of the sexual desire of the married couple.”
The hill is steep and I end up walking much faster than I realize until at the bottom the sidewalk widens into a semicircle, which provides a runway to work off the extra speed and complete the turn. Wilson avenue is busier, and after turning, I switch the phone to protect it from the cars zooming by.
“When you don’t see Julie for a few weeks, how do you feel when you see her again?”
I don’t answer because it’s a trap. I see where she’s heading, and it’s nowhere good. She wants me to admit that desire is increased by absence, and, hence the Jewish law makes sense, and everything is right with the world. In situations like this, I find it’s better not to answer, to change the subject or, in this case, to pretend bad cell phone coverage.
“You feel more . . . attracted to her, don’t you?” Randy prompts me. “It’s the same way with the Jewish two-week period. By not touching each other for two weeks, the couple enjoys heightened desire for each other. You’re probably now going to ask what this has to do with a man not touching another woman.”
“You seem to be doing great without me.”
“During the two-week period, the woman is not allowed to touch any man. Another beautiful aspect of this law is privacy. It is considered rude for someone outside of the marriage to inquire about the woman’s time of the month. Because a man doesn’t know, and can’t ask, when a woman is in her two-week cycle, he assumes that she always is, and therefore never touches any woman but his wife, to protect the other woman from having to either disclose the timing of her cycle, or to disobey the Jewish law.”
“Before you go any further,” I say, “take a step back and realize who is making these laws. While they may appear beautiful to you—and for now I won’t argue their intrinsic beauty—understand that this was not a cabal of Jewish woman sitting around deciding what was best for woman. Instead, this law—as well as all Jewish law—was written by men, interpreted by men, and enforced by men, men, I should add, who were mostly older and had a thing for long scraggily beards. I’m not one to judge a person by his facial hair, but there you have it.
“What happened to it being God’s law?”
“Don’t get me started on this line, or we’ll never move beyond this. Suffice to say—and this is only the tip of the proverbial iceberg—there were many authors of the Torah, the five books of Moses. To think that Moses would transcribe the words of God, and then use different voices, tenses, tones, and, more particularly, styles in a single work boggles my mind. So many wasted opportunities for proving or at least supplying additional evidence, even outside of faith, for the honesty and authorship of the Jewish works. Let’s stay in the realm of provable and good, as in these laws are good for a good reason, and not because God said they were good. With that said, I imagine a cranky group of old men dressed in black sitting in a small room and deciding what is best for woman. Even if we assume that God wrote the Torah, it has been interpreted by rabbis, and by rabbis, I’m again speaking of male rabbis. Why weren’t woman involved in this?”
“Women are inherently closer to God,” Randy says, “and don’t necessarily need the study and prayer that men do to understand God.”
“Hogwash. That is a man’s excuse for excluding woman from important religious decisions, and keeping the woman barefoot and pregnant. But let’s move on. Let’s continue with the inherent goodness of these laws. What about the modesty laws? Why must Orthodox Jewish woman cover themselves from their heads to their toes?”
“They don’t cover themselves from head to toe. Their face shows.”
“We’ll get back to that after you set the groundwork,” I say, enjoying setting her up to be knocked down later.
“Fine. Woman cover their body out of modesty, and—and the idea here is similar to the prohibition on sexual relations during the two-week cycle—this rule again increases the sexual desire of the couple. Everything that you keep hidden makes it that much more exciting and special when it’s finally revealed. When you see bathing suit-clad woman, are you even attracted to them anymore? There’s nothing hidden.”
“I can assure you I am.”
“Anyway, the hiding is what makes it appealing. Think how much more appealing a woman is when you don’t see flesh all day every day.”
Walking down Wilson avenue,
Walking on the street. Crossing the next hilly road.
Sending Julie a book.
Crossing the road that leads up to the driveway.
Getting to the Castle, checking the mail, turning off the alarm.
I consider myself rather eloquent when I work myself into a lather. Passion brings it out in me, the lather, that is. I can talk hours about something I’m passionate about, continuing to speak long after my overly developed conscience would normally have stopped me (one of my notable features is that I am very empathetic of what other people are thinking when I speak—i.e., I’m always watching the listeners for some sign of either boredom or contempt. This consideration usually takes the form of imagining me in the listener’s place and considering what I would be thinking if I were they. I know this is terribly inaccurate since I have a much lower threshold for pain (of the ennui-type) than most normal, well-adjusted people, but I cannot bring myself to end this practice, similar to how I still cannot watch the climax of most situational comedies, imagining me in the place of the confused stooge who is about to realize that he has completely misunderstood the situation, think Jack in any episode of “Three’s Company”). And the Jewish conversion process has me up in arms now. I thought I’d write a short essay to share some of my early understandings of it, explain the ins and outs of some of its particulars, and, in general, to peel things from my chest.
Journey every day. Something you see and deal with and have to like a habit get used to. Like my daily walks to and from the van. It’s a habit, and that’s what Orthodox Judaism demands of its converts. Conservative demands love, and love is an awfully important part. But Orthodox takes it the next step. They want you to follow the mitzvots, the Jewish laws, and the way you follow the laws is to do them every day. You don’t teach children to cross the street by explaining the concept of Safe Street crossing. Instead, every time you cross the street with them, you grab their hand, look both ways, and show them how it’s done, until they start emulating and eventually crossing the street as you do. It’s the same with Orthodox beliefs.
Little old man in the airport. What type of monster am I?
Because I’m not good at these essay things—I tend to get distracted, and after a hard night of writing, I find it impossible to continue where I left off, leaving me with a quarter-written essay, which I can touch and retouch but can never actually conclude or somehow turn into something that people will want to read to discover what it says—I’ve decided to take the poor man’s route and turn this exercise into a transcription of a conversation on Judaism and Jewish conversion I had with my sister Randy. There are problems with transcriptions, and in particular me transcribing, viz., I don’t have much in the way of a memory. Most of what I remember usually happened over the last five minutes. With that said, I’ll admit right up front, much of the remembering will be fictionalized by me—being the writer and, in case you’ve forgotten, an arrogant S.O.B. (no offense, mom)—as the hero in each and every scene.
So we’re on the same page, I’ve studied Judaism, but I am in no way an expert or even someone who is terribly knowledgeable about it. I can’t quote the Mishnah or the Talmud, or tell you who begot Rachel (the biblical Rachel, not my beautiful niece, of whose parentage I’m fairly certain), or whether removing the stopper of an ancient water jug would be considered work prohibited on the Shabbot, the day of rest. There are many things I don’t know, so take everything I say (and the words I put into Randy and my mouth) with a large chunk of good old Kosher salt.
It’s raining outside, a light mist in an otherwise warm day, and I’m walking in the dark after a not terribly busy day at work. I take a vanpool across the lake each morning and evening, and walk about fifteen minutes between the Castle and the vanpool drop off. As usual, after I leave the van, I dial the Julies (yes, we’re still—and probably always will be—in the silly name stage). I’ve long since grown bored of the scenery, and since few people walk in Seattle—not counting the dog walkers, whose strange habits and careful picking up of their dog’s poop intrigues me in a disturbing-to-admit way—there’s not much to look at but non-Castley houses, dark lawns, and lots of cars, most filled with people at the end of their dark and wet night commutes.
This is my first day back to work after the New Years’ vacation, and I’m chatting with the Julies when my call waiting clicks. The number is Private, and after mumbling a goodbye, I switch over. It’s my sister Randy. She asks if I have time to chat, and I explain that since I’m walking home from the van, I have nothing but time.
“I read the essay Julie wrote for the Rabbi,” Randy says. Both Julie and I wrote an essay as part of the first assignment in our Jewish conversion class. I was born Jewish, and by Jewish laws and customs, I don’t need to convert. Even a non-practicing person born of a Jewish mother is considered Jewish, even if they (the person or their mother or their mother’s mother) practiced or believed in Catholicism or Voodoo or Witchcraft or atheism (this may not be technically true: I have read that a Jew can only push their beliefs so far before losing their Jewish-ness, but this is the basic understanding). Judaism is not something you do or believe, it’s something you’re born into.
Randy once dragged me to a rabbi she was studying with. She introduced me as the brother who asked many questions and believed in little. Unlike other religions, Judaism thrives on questioning, although, to be fair (to me), most of the questioning revolves around explanations of the Jewish laws, e.g., “rabbi, why do we not eat the fat of the pig, which, when cut in thin slices and wrapped around a piece of fish, makes even dry and flaky fish delicious?” The very first question the rabbi asked me—before I could get into the bacon-wrapped fish query—was, “Do you have to believe in God to be Jewish?” I thought for a moment before answering simply, “No.” The rabbi looked at my sister and said, “I thought you said he was contentious?”
Julie was not born Jewish, and therefore needs to convert to pass on Jewish-ness to our children (Jewish-ness passes down through the mother), something that is very important to my family, and, as I thought more about it, surprising even myself, important to me.
Returning to the phone call, Randy continues, “and I wanted to talk about the last paragraph, the one where Julie pointed out that Orthodox Judaism is sexist.” In case you didn’t get a chance to read the essays, the last question the rabbi asked us related to which type of Judaism we wanted to practice.
I need to provide a bit of background to explain the different flavors of Judaism before jumping into my answer. The first thing the uninitiated needs to understand is that unlike some religions (say, Catholicism), Judaism does not have a central authority, there is no pope, no ultimate, all-powerful rabbi or committee who makes decisions for the religion. There was a time before the destruction of the Second Temple in Jerusalem (we Jews are nothing if not systematically oppressed—I have my theories about that as well, but I’ll save that for another essay) where there was such a body. There are now committees of rabbis who do opine on certain matters, and their opinions are codified and followed by their communities. These Rabbinical Assemblies (or Beit Dins) are further broken down into three major sects. There may be one or two others, but I’ve decided to talk about the Big Three because growing up these were the only ones I knew about.
You can think of Judaism as a spectrum, across which there are varying degrees of observance and belief in the laws of our ancestors. The strictest reading of these laws is, not surprisingly, done by the Orthodox Jews. They believe that God handed the laws (both the written Torah—otherwise known as the first five books of the Old Testament, and the oral tradition, which is Moses’ interpretations and explanations of the laws) to Moses and, to a lesser extent, the sages and prophets who followed Moses, and their Rabbinical Assemblies are very strict with the interpretation of these laws as they relate to the modern world. For example, an Orthodox Jew will not drive on the Shabbot (the day of rest, which starts on Friday night and ends on Saturday night) or eat non-Kosher food (e.g., the bacon-wrapped fish). Orthodox Jews refer to themselves as Observant Jews, in that there is no real difference between an Orthodox Jew and a Conservative or Reform Jew—i.e., if you’re born Jewish, you are a Jew. Period. There are only different levels of observing the Jewish laws.
This is a bit disingenuousness on the Orthodox Jew’s part: while if you’re born a Jew, they consider you Jewish, if you choose to become Jewish—i.e., a Jew by Choice (some Orthodox Jews do not believe in “conversion,” per se. They believe that a Jew by Choice was accidentally born not Jewish and is returning to their true nature), which is allowed (but not encouraged) by all flavors of Judaism—you are only considered a Jew at the level of your conversion. Hence, when Julie converts with a conservative rabbi, the Orthodox Jews will not consider her Jewish, but the Conservative and Reform Jews will.
The middle ground for Judaism is the Conservative Jews. I was raised Conservative and therefore have the firmest understanding of their practice. Like the Orthodox Jews, the Conservative Jews believe in the laws of Moses, but they also believe that some of the laws need to be reinterpreted because society has changed an awful lot since the times of Moses. For example, while Orthodox Jews’ laws would never allow a woman rabbi to lead prayers, most Conservatives (with the congregation where I grew up an exception), allow woman Rabbis, and provide woman with the same opportunities as men in prayer. (The Orthodox Jews argue they do the same, and to some extent this is true. While any woman may pray and study like a man in an Orthodox temple, the Orthodox do not believe that parts of the prayer—and to a lesser extent, study—are mitzvahs for woman, i.e., commandments from God. To take an example, the Orthodox Jews do not allow woman to lead prayer service because, since time-based prayer is not a mitzvah for women, it would be insulting to the men to say that out of all the men in the temple who could fulfill the mitzvah, none of them were learned enough to lead the temple service, and only a woman, who is not commanded, was capable.)
I find that Conservative Jews tend to be less observant in other more meaningful ways. A good way to judge observance is to see when people attend services (group prayer) at temple. By way of example, when Julie and I visited a Conservative temple in Orange County, during the Kiddush (food plays a big role in all Jewish activities, and the Kiddush follows the Saturday morning service with cake and wine), we sat at a table munching away on our late breakfast with another couple. The other couple pointed out—and this seemed defensive in nature, almost as if they needed to get this out before we could have a conversation with them—that they did not normally attend Shabbot services, but because their son was having his Bar Mitzvah (celebrating his 13th birthday and, by Jewish law, becoming a man—which, incidentally, goes completely against my monster theory, which states that children stay children until they turn 26 because of the mushy consistency of their brains) the following weekend, they decided to attend the services. For prayer and observance, most Conservative Jews attend services during the high holy days (three days every year) and for life events, with the only exception being the Conservative rabbis, who, it should be pointed out, usually live an Orthodox Jewish life in most respects.
And, finally, there is Reform Judaism. I know the least about the Reform movement because I was never exposed to it. From what I do understand, Reform Jews pick and chose the laws that makes sense to them, a smorgasbord of laws, if you will. As far as I understand, they do not believe that the Torah was the word of God. Therefore, the laws themselves lose authority, except for those that they choose to follow. (Again, my description may only be partially accurate. I have read about the movement but have no firsthand experience.)
With that out of the way, we return to my phone conversation. Ah, I mentally rub my hands, Randy wants to have a religious discussion. “Before we get started,” I start in, “Julie’s comment was based mostly on my descriptions of some of the Orthodox laws related to woman, and how they seem awfully old-fashion and—and it was me that used this word first—sexist.” Although true, I did this to deflect the blame away from the Julies. Julie has been incredibly good about the conversion process. She has been doing lots of reading (while Julie is a good student, she isn’t always the best reader, e.g., see how few of these paragraphs, outside of the sentences with her name in it, she will read—which, when I think about it, probably has more to do with what I’m writing and how I’m writing it than her desire to read), reaching out to rabbis, and attending Shabbot dinners and Orthodox and Conservative services, in other words, she’s being more Jewish (regrettably, only in the “observant” way and not in the being Jewish way—if only it were that easy) than me.
For me, one of the best part of Julie’s conversion process, has been looking at Judaism through her eyes. It’s been refreshing and reinvigorating to my study of Judaism. If there is such a thing as fate—and if there were, I still wouldn’t believe in it—you could argue that but for Julie’s conversion, I would not have begun exploring my religion. For example, if I had a married a Conservative Jewish woman, I would have continued on my ignorant way, not learning more about my religion, but instead arguing as I always do against it, in my semi-intellectual and -knowledgeable way, which is, by far, the most dangerous type of arguing since it is not about the pursuit of truth but about the act of arguing, and to argue effectively (at least at a superficial level), I need very little in the way of knowledge or understanding.
“Some of the Jewish laws relating to women are quite beautiful,” Randy says. By this time I’m walking down the hill that leads to Wilson avenue. This is a tricky hill as the ground is wet and it is steep enough for the city to lean a construction sign warning “Snow Route Do Not Enter” against the Stop Sign, ready to be deployed in the rare Snow Event in Seattle. There is also some over-brush, which I have to duck and maneuver my head around, which is difficult because the rain hood obscures my vision and the brush blocks the light so I end up running into low-hanging branches, some of which have dangerously curved spikes.
“Beautiful but sexist,” I say. “Just look at the laws involving covering the body, or the that-time-of-the-month laws, or the not going to temple laws, or the separation of men and woman at temple laws, or the having children, lots and lots of children, laws. Where do you want to start with defending these laws and showing how they’re not sexist?”
“The laws are beautiful,” she says, “but only when you understand them. Do you know why Orthodox men are not allowed to touch women?” This was one of the laws that Julie learned when she met an Orthodox rabbi during a Jewish class in the OC. Before the class, her friend—a Jewish coworker who has been helping Julie experience the California version of Judaism—warned her that the rabbi would not shake the hand of any woman at the class. When Julie asked me why, I explained:
“Cooties.”
“Close, but not exactly,” Randy says. “Orthodox men do not touch woman other than their wives out of respect for those other women.”
“Respect in that the women are protected from the groping hands of the lecherous Orthodox men? Do you see how the Jewish religion has no respect for women? It thinks that if an Orthodox man touched another women, he would—or is it that she would?—be unable to resist her charms, analogous to how rape is the ‘woman’s fault.’”
“Let me finish before you judge,” Randy says, warming up to the debate. “For two weeks of each month, a married woman may not be intimate with her husband.”
“Ah, this one I know is about cooties and how unclean the woman is during her period.”
“No, again, you’re not seeing the beauty. It’s not about being unclean, it’s about increasing of the sexual desire of the married couple.”
The hill is steep and I end up walking much faster than I realize until at the bottom, the sidewalk widens into a semicircle, which provides a runway to work off the extra speed and complete the turn. Wilson avenue is busier, and after turning, I switch the phone to my outside ear to protect it from the cars zooming by and the wind blowing over the lake and up the hill.
“When you don’t see Julie for a few weeks, how do you feel when you see her again?”
I don’t answer because it’s a trap. I see where she’s heading, and it’s nowhere good. She wants me to admit that desire is increased by absence, and, hence the Jewish law makes sense, and everything is right with the world. In situations like this, I find it’s better not to answer, to change the subject or, in this case, to pretend bad cell phone coverage.
“You feel more . . . attracted to her, don’t you?” Randy prompts me. “It’s the same way with the Jewish two-week waiting period. By not touching each other for two weeks out of every month, the couple enjoys heightened desire for each other. You’re probably now going to ask what this has to do with a man not touching another woman.”
“You seem to be doing great without me,” I say as I dodge a pack of female joggers, who I don’t touch, but I do covet in that spandex-covered way.
“During the two-week period, the woman is not allowed to touch any man. Another beautiful aspect of this law is privacy. It is considered rude for someone outside of the marriage to inquire about the woman’s time of the month. Because a man doesn’t know, and can’t ask, when a woman is in her two-week cycle, he assumes that she is always in her cycle, and therefore he may never touch any woman but his wife or members of his family. This is to protect women from having to either disclose the timing of their cycle, or disobey the Jewish law.”
“Before you go any further,” I say, “take a step back and realize who is making these laws. While they may appear beautiful to you—and for now I won’t argue their intrinsic beauty—understand that this was not a cabal of Jewish woman sitting around deciding what was best for woman. Instead, this law—as well as all Jewish law—was written by men, interpreted by men, and enforced by men, men, I should add, who were mostly older and had a thing for long scraggily gray beards, not to mention funny black hats. I’m not one to judge a person by his facial hair or taste in fedoras, but there you have it.
“What happened to it being God’s law?” she asks.
“Don’t get me started on this line, or we’ll never move beyond this. Suffice to say—and this is only the tip of the proverbial iceberg—reading the Torah, it becomes apparent (at least to me) that it was written by more than one author. To think that Moses transcribed the words of God, and that God chose to use different voices, tenses, tones, and, more particularly, styles in a single work boggles my mind.”
“And now you’re quoting Julius Wellhausen,” she says. “That’s not very original, and, furthermore, has been disproven many times over the years. There are reasons the Five Books of Moses may sound disjointed, and it does not have to be because they were written by different authors. We cannot understand all of God’s plans.”
“Be that as it may,” I continue, “Moses also seemed quite skilled with writing about his own death—more so than most narrators I know. The bible has so many wasted opportunities to prove or at least supply additional evidence, even outside of faith, for the honesty and authorship of the Jewish works. Just drop a few lines of Einstein’s relativity theory or Darwin’s natural selection theory, or anything that man discovered after ancient times.
“But let’s stay in the realm of provable and good,” I continue, “as in these laws are good for a good reason, and not because God said they were good. I imagine a cranky group of old men dressed in black sitting in a small room and deciding what is best for woman. Even if we assume that God wrote the Torah, it has been interpreted by rabbis, and by rabbis, I’m again speaking of old male rabbis. Why weren’t woman involved in this?”
“Women are inherently closer to God,” Randy says, “and don’t necessarily need the study and prayer that men do to understand God.”
“Hogwash. That is a man’s excuse for excluding women from important religious decisions, and keeping them barefoot and pregnant. But let’s move on. Let’s continue with the inherent goodness of these laws. What about the modesty laws? Why must Orthodox Jewish women cover themselves from their heads to their toes?”
“They don’t cover themselves from head to toe. Their face shows, and sometimes their lower legs, at least for the younger women.”
“We’ll get back to that after you set the groundwork,” I say, enjoying the opportunity to set her up for a later knock down.
“Fine. Woman cover their body out of modesty, and—and the idea here is similar to the prohibition on sexual relations during the two-week cycle—this rule again increases the sexual desire of the couple. Everything that you keep hidden makes it that much more exciting and special when it’s finally revealed. When you see bathing suit-clad woman, are you even attracted to them anymore? There’s nothing hidden.”
“I can assure you that I am.”
“Anyway, the hiding is what makes it appealing. Think how much more appealing a woman is when you don’t see flesh all day every day.”
The cars’ lights on Wilson avenue reflect the increasingly diagonal rain. I cover the phone with more of my fingers. Only a few houses away from the Castle, I quicken my pace, and turn toward my house. I avoid stepping on the wooden slabs of my oversized stairs, where the rain has mixed with healthy algae to create a perfect slippery surface. I juggle the phone and my bag to grab the mail from the mailbox and shake myself dry after opening the door. The alarm beeps and I jab at the buttons with my wet fingers.
“. . . more to it but we need to understand it at a lower level,” Randy says after I manage to get the phone back to my ear. I make noises about calling her back from my home phone, knowing that cellular reception in the Castle is terrible at its best. I peel off my rain shell and grab the phone to continue our conversation.
“What is Judaism about?” Randy starts in. “What does it mean to be Jewish?”
“We know its not all about believing in God,” I respond. “Maybe it’s obeying God’s laws?”
“But why? If we believe God is all-powerful, then why do we need to follow God’s laws? God doesn’t exactly need us to do anything, does he?”
“Very good question,” I say. “If he really is omnipotent, then God shouldn’t need our obedience. He can change the world anyway he desires.”
“Bingo. It’s not about God, it’s about us. God gave us his laws because he wants to help us. Besides creation, the laws are the greatest gift he could give us. He’s letting us share in his creation. He wants us to create ourselves as better people. He gave us the blueprint for creation, and wants us to improve ourselves.”
“And that’s what the laws are? A path to self-improvement?” I sense the trap, but I can’t see where she’s heading with this argument.
“Think about it this way, we were talking about how women are on a different level than men. If you look at the order of creation, God went from the least advanced to most advanced, and ended at women. That should give you an idea of what the Jewish people think about women.”
“I’m not sure if being created from the rib bone of man translates into more advanced,” I say, providing the rote counter to her statement.
“Let me explain it differently. You mentioned before that God’s law requires women to have lots of babies. That’s not exactly true. God only commanded men to be fruitful and multiply. It’s not a mitzvah for women to have babies.”
“But women do all the work!” I complain, feeling like a man who tries to defends women, but finds he cannot because, well, he’s not a woman, and everything he says appears self serving in one way or the other.
“Ah, and here we have it.” I can hear the smile in her voice. I sense the anvil approaching, and like the coyote at the bottom of the valley, I know I was the one who set the anvil teetering. “The Jewish laws are about self-improvement, and women do not need for childbirth to be a mitzvah. We have a closer connection to children and a desire to have children that men do not share. God doesn’t need to command us to want children because we inherently do. Men, on the other hand, would rather sit around all day watching television and not have children, if it was completely up to men. God’s laws are designed to complete and improve us. Having children is an important part of the growth of men and women. And without the commandment, men might miss out on it, on the joys and learning that come from children.”
I sit on the green couch to give her words a moment to set. The purpose of Judaism is self improvement? I had not thought about this angle and it sets me spinning.
“I’ll tell you what,” Randy says. “I’ll send Julie a good book on the role of women in Orthodox Judaism. I think she’ll like it. It explains things much better than I can.
“I think she’d like that.”
“Judaism is a very beautiful religion, with wonderful laws that mostly make sense once you delve deep enough into them. I don’t pretend to understand all of them, but some do make sense. I’ll mail the book to Julie and then we can all talk about it.
Like most journeys, I find that the quest for religion isn’t always epic. It’s usually tiny and repetitive, like my walk from the van to the Castle; it consists of small journeys of understandings, which pile up and sometimes manage to put a spotlight on truth. The Jewish people describe themselves as a people who always question. Judaism does not duck away from the harder questions by demanding rote answers. Every day in a religious person’s life is a day of questioning and thinking about larger meaning. I am trying to do this (the questioning and thinking, not as of yet much religious living). I try not to respond and belittle Judaism automatically. I still argue with some of its tenets and try to better understand it, but I consciously try not to come from a place where it’s my job to prove what’s wrong. Instead, I find myself trying to show what’s right. For both Julie and me, this is an important beginning on a quest that I hope will take us through our lives together.
I spent the day with Eileen and her children. I’m now in my hotel room relaxing. I have a mug of yummy caffeine from the bucks of stars next to me and a few hours to pound away before Julie wakes up. I haven’t had much time to talk with her over the last few days. She’s been very busy in Hong Kong and Taiwan while I’ve been busy with the NYC family and friends thing. With the time difference (which is even more extreme on the east coast), our schedules haven’t overlapped much. Hopefully that will change tonight. This leaves me still a few hours to wander around in my empty head to see if anything stuck over my fun-filled day (expect niece photos when I return).
I spoke with Julie after finishing the first paragraph (I misjudged the few hours thing). When she called she was halfway between sleep and wakefulness. After chatting for a bit, she decided to return to sleep. I don’t know what that says about me.
The coffee isn’t doing much for me tonight. It was a long day. Tomorrow promises to be longer with the continuing education class. I chose a topic I know nothing about this year. I’m hoping that it will be more interesting because of that. In the past I usually chose topics that I was intimately familiar with from work, hoping that the class would add knowledge that would help me at work. Every one of those classes was terrible. We’ll see if attending classes with topics outside my comfort area will improve my concentration or interest, or if these types of classes in general are a natural waste of time (so says the David, he who is too smart to learn anything new. All hail the brilliant David).
Still nothing: no new ideas flirt with me. If I was an idea, I’m not sure how much flirting I would want to do with me either (can’t you just taste the overcomplicated sentence and what that means for my word padding?). Things are quiet in the hotel room except for the neighbor’s monsters. The monsters are the loud squealing type. When I’m not paying attention I don’t hear them. Give me a moment of quiet reflection, where the words stop flowing and an oversized cork wedges itself between my brain and my fingers, and I hear the monsters’ squeals and screams echoing through the halls and throughout my room.
My lips are chapped. I’m not used to the New York cold and I meant but failed to buy chapstick. I’ll rectify that tomorrow and report on all the waxy goodness. (Does my randomness ever end?)
Speaking of randomness, overall I’ve been happy with my writing output. I wish I wrote more stories and synopses, but overall it feels good to write something every day, even if that something is bland recordings of non-happenings or endless consternations about how terrible a writer I am and always will be. I figure when I run out of things to say about the day and the weather (which was surprisingly warm in NYC today) and the rest of the useless things I include in these silly musings, I’ll get back to the business of the day, storying. The television beckons me but I know better to resist than be drawn into its clutches this early in the night. I guess it’s not that early anymore if I look at east coast time.
I’m very popular today. I just got off the phone again. This is not conducive to my early word count. I’m heading into the final stretch, however. And I did think of something to write about. For better or worse I included all this filler before the meat. Mmm…filler filled meat.
Before heading to Eileen’s house this morning, my mother and I stopped along Coney Island Avenue to buy a menorah for the Castle. I haven’t owned a menorah in some time, since shifting away from Judaism in high school and then college. (My mother kept pushing menorahs on me, which I placed at the top of various closets in my geographically challenged homes.) As I’ve written about before, since Julie and I have been going through the conversion classes, I’ve been slowly rediscovering my religion. Buying a menorah for the Castle was only the next step in this rediscovery.
The area we visited around Coney Island Avenue is a very Orthodox Jewish (or Observant Jewish, depending on who you speak to) area. The Jews there very much believe the old teachings of the ancient rabbis. They live a very orthodox life, e.g., the men, even the non-rabbis, wear yarmulkes (head coverings), pray three times a day, and the woman wear wigs or hats and long skirts, and usually have a cadre of children running around in skirts and dark suits. This is very similar to the much smaller community near where I live in Seattle (except for the suit thing—somehow the suit tradition didn’t make it to the west coast).
When we entered this five or so block radius (after struggling to find parking—that’s one thing I don’t miss about NYC, the constant circling and hunting for a place to stick your car for an hour), it’s like we entered a different world. All the restaurants, delis, butchers, i.e., any place that served food, was certified glatt kosher. As I’ve been experimenting with eating kosher (moving from a “kosher lite,” which included not mixing milk and meat together, and eating kosher-style meats (e.g., no pork), to a more heavy “kosher lite,” which includes only eating certified kosher meats, which means I eat only fish and dairy out in restaurants now and save my carnivore impulses for Castle meals), it was strange to see so many places that served kosher food. In Seattle, there are only a handful of kosher restaurants or even grocery stores that have a small section for kosher food. Here was an entire neighborhood that followed these strange and old rules and ideas.
My mother and I shopped in Eichler’s Juadaica store for the menorah. It’s a weird experience to be around so many Orthodox Jews, and only partly because I felt everyone of them as judging me (yes, I know that not one of them probably gave me a second thought—not everything revolves around me, me, me). Here were people who chose to live their lives in a specific way according to rules and customs set down thousands of years ago by rabbis. With my ego and authority problems, I’m not sure I can ever do that. I mean, who are these ancient rabbis who know more than the great and powerful David. (Down, ego. Down!)
The store had a decent sized book collection. What was not surprising was that every book they carried (at least as far I was able to determine) supported their world view. While I didn’t expect a section devoted to Christian teachings, it would have been interesting to have a section devoted to non-traditional Jewish teachings. The Judaica section in a mainstream bookstore is larger than Eichler’s store because it carries the works of not just Orthodox Jews but all Jews.
The Orthodox Jews live a very insular existence. I’ve done a lot of thinking about that choice. I don’t have any answers, though. Their insular existence protects them from the outside world and its very negative influences. There are many positives about this way of life, and I can see how the outside world threatens it. One of the books I thumbed through seemed to emphasize this point. I don’t remember the title, but the point of the book was to discuss the children of Orthodox Judaism who were moving away from the orthodoxy, and what to do about this modern exodus. My point isn’t to belittle or judge the Orthodox Jews’ choice but to understand it.
I didn’t arrive at where I wanted to go with this anecdote. There were so many questions and discussions ricocheting around in my brain about theology, and I didn’t touch any of it. It is getting late and I have an early class tomorrow. Maybe I’ll reach some of these issues later in the week. Or, better yet, turn some of these issues into a poorly written story. Wouldn’t that be swell?
After my weekly Judaism class, I came up with these two jewels of—what’s the opposite of wisdom?
My biggest problem with Orthodox Judaism: the myth of infallible rabbis. There is a belief in Orthodox Judaism that it is wrong to challenge a rabbi’s ruling on halacha (Jewish law). Once the rabbis (usually in a group) decide on the Jewish law, it is very difficult for the community to change that law. They believe that the law has been decided with utmost care, and that care must be respected. Almost counter intuitively, the closer that decision was made to the time of Moses (i.e., the further back in time), the more the decision is respected. This has to do with the Orthodox Jew’s belief that Moses was given the written Torah and the oral Torah at Mount Sinai. The Oral tradition provides the interpretation of the Torah. Therefore, the closer the decision is made to the time of Moses, the more accurate the interpretation of the laws. To me, this seems to go against the countervailing argument that Jewish philosophy and theology has benefited greatly from the outside influences, viz., the Greeks’ influence on Judaism’s philosophies and interpretations. Our understanding of the law should be stronger now than hundreds of years ago.
Thinking about this more, my problem in this area is part an authority problem, and part a rigidity problem. If the halacha was flexible and capable of changing as Judaism learns more about itself, I would be more willing to believe and accept it. It is clear, at least to me through the literature I’ve read, that our understanding about God and Judaism—or at the very least our ability to convey our understanding—as a whole seems to have improved from an intellectual if not only a spiritual sense.
And then there’s my second problem for my spiritual growth: how can I remain humble and be right at the same time? This may be the biggest thing holding me back from accepting Judaism. This is very closely related to the issue I have around my ego, and how I can give up my free will to either the divine or the rabbinical authorities.
Once again I demonstrate my weakness when it comes to organizing and sharing my thoughts. There’s more to these point, but I’m not able to covey it. I did want to get my cloudy thoughts out there so I can see how unformed and inexact they are. Another related truth: it’s very difficult to argue against three thousand years of systematic and intense Jewish thought. If nothing else, the system of Judaism is internally consistent.
One of my van buddies gave me a book yesterday: The Challenge of Creation: Judaism’s Encounter with Science, Cosmology, and Evolution by Rabbi Natan Slifkin. My Moleskine is full of a page’s worth of notes on the introduction and first chapter, which I finished in the van this morning. (I didn’t get through all of my notes, ending at the introduction. Fatigue found me and beat me repeatedly over the head until I gave up and posted and went to bed.)
I spoke recently about how insular the Orthodox Jewish community is. On my visit to Eichler’s Judaica store in Brooklyn to buy a Menorah, I mentioned how I thumbed through the book section (a very large section), and noticed that all the books had a certain philosophical point of view, which seemed to feed exclusively to the Orthodox teachings. There were no dissenting voices in the section. I didn’t expect to find a book on the Kabala movement (I’m thinking of the one that snared Madonna, which is far outside mainstream Jewish thought), but I did expect to see books on Jewish mainstream beliefs, such as conservative and even reform Jewish thought. (There was one book that I found particularly interesting: a book discussing why some of the younger Orthodox people were leaving the movement, and how to ebb that flow.) I didn’t find any such books.
In the introduction to Challenge, Slifkin begins by addressing by describing his thesis: there doesn’t have to be a conflict between modern scientific thought and Orthodox Jewish beliefs. To orient you, there are many within the Orthodox community who believe as the Christian Fundamentalists. They read the story of Genesis (the first part of the Torah—or Old Testament as Christians call it) literarily. They believe that the creation of the world happened as it is described in the first chapter: by God over six days. And this creation happened, when you trace back the starting point of the first day of creation from the details given in the Torah (at least according to the rabbis), around five thousand years ago, give or take a few hundred. This seems to be at odds with what the scientists are teaching today with respect to evolution, the big bang, and their attempts to find a theory of everything.
Slifkin’s goal in Challenge is to reconcile the Orthodox Jewish teachings with the newer scientific views. He admits in the introduction that none of the arguments he presents are original thought (OT). It is all borrowed and summarized from other great Jewish, scientific, philosophical, and theological thinkers. It is an attempt to fit the Jewish teachings within the secular world. To reach people who either (like me) were not raised within the Orthodox community (and, seemingly, therefore grew up questioning these fundamental conflicts), or were raised in an Orthodox community, but delved deep enough into science to question how their scientific learning reconciled with the Orthodox Jewish teachings.
This isn’t Silfkin’s first attempt to reconcile these teachings. It is clear from his introduction that his first attempt did not go over very well. He received much criticism and even hate mail from within the Orthodox community. Similar to most traditional (I resisted the “conformist” tag here) organizations, there’s a desire to keep new thoughts that seemingly conflict with the traditional thoughts away in the hopes of protecting members of the flock (and, yes, I’m using a Catholic term here). When there are teachings that threaten a traditional outlook, people in authority tend to form up in ranks and shout down the teachings. Think of the flat earth, the sun revolving around the earth, the teachings of creationism verse evolution.
What I did not realize was that this conflict was happening within my very own religion. Even in my atheist days (and I’m still not too far away from those days), I did not think of my religion as anti-science. I didn’t imagine that there were well-educated Jews who questioned the theory of evolution. Only silly fundamentalist Catholics did that. His introduction to this book disillusioned me of my (elitist) thinking.
There’s an anecdotal in the book that perfectly captures this dichotomy: an Orthodox school teacher brings her class to a natural history museum. When she arrives in the halls of the dinosaur, she stands in front of her students with the dinosaur skeletons looming over her, and tells her students in no uncertain tones that there is no such thing (and there we never such a thing) as dinosaurs. That it was all lies. The ridiculousness of her position while standing in the halls of the dinosaur must have been very funny, if it wasn’t so pathetic.
For what it’s worth, I checked, and Silfkin’s book is not available for purchase at Eichler’s. Whether that means he’s treated as an apostate or just someone outside of the main Orthodox thought remains to be seen. It might be available at other Orthodox bookstores. I will not judge the Orthodox movement by the book list of one of its stores.
There is much more I want to say about his introduction and first chapter. But I’m not going to get there today. Hopefully I will return to this discussion. (Hopefully is the key term.)
I need to take a step backward in analyzing Challenge. There are some Jewish foundational truths that my rabbi keeps trying to drill into my head. I’ve recorded many of these in my Moleskine, but most of them have not made it into my musings. I’m very easily influenced by what I read, and because I’m reading Slifkin’s book about the interaction of traditional Judaism and science, I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about Judaism. (Similar to when I was reading Kafka’s Metamorphosis, I was doing a lot of thinking about bugs.) Since I want to spend time recording Jewish thoughts, I need to explain this learning before continuing.
And my usual disclaimers apply: I’m an idiot trying to decipher and record the words of much smarter people than me. I probably don’t understand any of these topics well enough to write about them, but I do need to make Goal, and this is how I decided to Goal today. Blah, blah, blah, inadequate, only two readers, smelly feet, blah, blah, blah.
It turns out that I was not able to finish this discussion today. I made Goal but the parts I wrote still need much more work before I post them. I will (hopefully) return to this tomorrow, polish it off, and post the completed entry. As you can see I redefined the Goal slightly: it’s about writing 1,000 words a day, not necessarily posting those words in public form (I did post it in secret form to keep myself honest). Let’s see if I return to them.
1. God doesn’t need anything from us. This is a biggy, and was the first lesson my rabbi learned when he started studying in Israel. (He was raised in a Reform home, and “found” religion when he was in college. He dropped out of an architecture bachelor program and spent the next ten years in Israel studying traditional Judaism.)
God by definition cannot need anything from us because we cannot give anything to an infinite being (see number 2 for a discussion of what an infinite being is).
This is one of the big understandings that Judaism provided the world when it introduced monotheism.
Paganism was a response to nature. Humans lived in perpetual fear of nature. Pagans believed that they could appease nature (in the form of their gods) by sacrificing, praying, and praising these gods. The gods in return received pleasure from this worship and according to their whims may answer some of these prayers. Since there were many gods, pagans believed there was jealousy among the gods as they fought one another for power.
The Jewish God does not need those things because as an infinite being he (I’ll use the masculine pronoun because that’s what most people do—obviously he’s neither male nor female nor a thing—see number 2) does not have needs. Additionally, there’s nothing that we could provide an infinite being that he doesn’t already have. That’s the nature of infinity. (Of course, there’s a huge paradox called the creation paradox, one of many paradoxes when you begin discussing an infinite being: how can we and creation exist outside of God if God is infinite. Wouldn’t everything necessarily be part of God and therefore infinite? And, no, I don’t have any answers to that.)
Some examples: When Jews praise God, they do not praise him because God needs or even enjoys their praises. They praise him because it is the humans that need to praise God to understand whom they stand before. The last part relates partly to humility, and is more complicated and a very interesting but separate discussion related to prayer and principle number 3 below.
I use the next example because it is so foreign to modern peoples. When Jews presented animal offerings at the holy temple (which was destroyed many thousands of years ago), they did not present the offerings because God liked the smell of burning animals or because the slaughtering of animals amused God. Instead, it was the humans that needed this offering. This is an even more interesting discussion that I can only provide a taste for. According to Orthodox belief, at the time of the Messiah, there will be a return to animal offerings. The Orthodox firmly believe this and even pray for it to happen. The rabbis explain that the term “sacrifice” was mistranslated form the Hebrew. It is not a sacrifice because the animal offerings are not for the benefit of God. This is a departure from the Pagan belief, where the Pagans were providing the sacrifices to appease the Gods and nature.
2. The only thing humans can know about God is that he is infinite.
I probably should have started with this one. While Jews may describe other aspects of God, we usually do that by referring to human characteristics, e.g., merciful, good. This is because we have a limited view, not because God is human. There are huge ramifications to God being infinite. God’s infiniteness is the basis of God being one because to be infinite means there can only be one.
I’ve written about this before, but during college I came up with what I thought was a strikingly original and deep insight into the existence of God. First premise: since most people believed God was omnipotent (all powerful), he should be able to do anything. Second premise: since most people believed God to be infinite, God must exist outside of human’s perception of time. If you think of time as a physical timeline, God would be floating above that timeline. Contradiction: If God exists outside of time then he cannot “do” anything, since “doing” something involves changing from one state to another. And changing states requires existing within a timeline. Conclusion: An infinite, omnipotent God does not exist.
because he is an infinite being. Going further, God doesn’t do anything because “doing” involves existing within our perception of time.
he is infinite and therefore outside of our conception of time. But I’ll return to that in a moment.
3. The meaning of life is an opportunity to move close to the infinite.
I’ve had a few friends confide in me that they suffer headaches. I’m glad to hear this. It’s not that I wish anyone pain (except the Road Runner—never have I hated a cartoon character so much, the moronic look, the earsplitting beep-beep, the placidity in the face of extreme odds, the arrogance of a bird that doesn’t even fly[1]), it’s that I’m glad to find others who suffer from headaches. My gladness is a bit on the selfish side: in the silly putty I call my mind, the more people who have headaches, the less likely it is that I have a brain tumor. My reasoning being that brain tumors are relatively rare, and if there are plenty of headaches to go around, then it is unlikely that my headache is a strong indication of a brain tumor. This is good because brain tumors are very bad. They eat away at what makes you the person you thought you were.
[1] According to Wikipedia, the roadrunner, while capable of flight, spends most of its time running along the ground at speeds up to 15 mph.
Brain tumors also provide a strong counterargument to the question of a soul: if your personality (and by extensions the choices you make, which is one of the ways Judaism defines the functions of the soul) are so drastically affected by a breakdown of brain material, perhaps the two and half pounds of brain is who you are after all. The rabbis respond by saying that a person with a disease is not liable for their actions, since their decisions are not their own. God therefore does not judge diseased people. This only gets the rabbis around the ethical problems with judging people who are incapable of controlling their choices. It does not explain why so much of your personality and choices are tied to the proper functioning of your brain. If the soul had that great an influence over a person, then even with the breakdown of the brain, a sick person’s choices would still be soul inspired (which sounds suspiciously like a groovy 70s song). It’s at this point that the rabbis usually stare me down and explain slowly and patiently and using very small words that the soul in an imperfect vessel cannot fulfill its mission on earth (which is to grow closer to God—more on that in my elusive Jewish essay). And that is why it is important to explain that God does not judge sick people, similar to how God does not judge children, as they have not fully developed their ethical senses (which, again, begs the question of why this sense needs to be developed if its innate in the soul—but I digress and pound away).
This week I took four tablets of ibuprofen. Today was the second set of tablets. I say this as a cathartic confession. I have a rule about ibuprofen: four tablets a month. I used to pop ibuprofen daily. Then I learned about rebound headaches. Since I’m a recovering rebound headache-er, I have to be very careful when I take too many pills in a short time. I did sleep in this morning as I woke up in the middle of a heavy snowfall and learned that the van had been cancelled. I drove in to work after two additional hours of sleep (I always wake up tired, and it's not until I leave the Castle that I lose the desperate need to crawl back under the covers, especially when the Julies is sleeping away). Too much sleep is a trigger for my headaches. At the peek of my headache, at around 4pm, I decided that there was no need to chop my own head off—I should grab some medicine from the handy-dandy corporate medicine cabinet and deal with the consequences. (According to the Chinese herbalist Julie visits, he can tell a person who takes too many ibuprofens by blackness on their fingertips.)
I’m not sure you can tell, but I’m feeling great—almost P.H.D. great. After finishing this short essay, I’m going to see if I have another doodle in me. Julie likes my little guy, and I’m going to see what my Wacom tablet has in store for me today.
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This Jewish essay has been sitting on my computer a long while. I sat down to finish it, trying to make sense of my scribbles. If you remember, I wrote this essay to lay down principles about Judaism that have been coalescing in my little brain from my Jewish reading and classes. My plan was to apply these principles to my analysis of the Silfkin book, which I have not been reading because I wanted to finish this essay first.[1]
[1] I amaze myself with my convoluted logic. It’s as if when I procrastinate on one project, all related projects somehow attach themselves to that procrastination. I guess it’s true what they say: procrastination has many arms. (Okay, I made that up, and I’ll stop babbling and get back to writing the essay so I can return to analyzing chapter 2 of the Silfkin book with these principles in mind.)
I realized as I went through the principles that this exercise was much more useful for me than just a way to discuss the Silfkin book. These principles present a very interesting view of the world that is slowly bringing order to the world for me. A gentile friend of mine who is converting to the orthodox-brand of Judaism told me that what was amazing about Judaism’s laws and customs was how internally consistent they were. The more you dig, the more sense they make. While I don’t agree that this is always the case, these principles and my readings and discussions are forcing me to rethink what I believe about my religion and about God.
As always, remember, this essays my fabrication from my Jewish readings and my rabbis’ teachings. I’ve taken what they taught and pulled at the edges, tugged at the middles, and for the most part misinterpreted and misunderstood the real teachings. I’m very dense, and I doubt any of this is close to accurate or reliable or useful to anyone except me—and even that is questionable. (Humility is a mitzvah that I’m trying to cultivate. And that winking you imagine me doing when I write this is all part of your highly active and very wrong imagination.) Either way, here it is, in all of its throat-clearing glory.
Principle #1. God doesn’t need anything from us.
My rabbi, who was a late bloomer when it comes to religious study, learned this at his first Jewish lesson in Israel. God does not need anything from us. This is not obvious.
Here’s one basic explanation of this: God does not need anything from us because (a) God is infinite; (b) an infinite being is by definition complete because he has no end or limitation; and (c) a complete being has no need of anything. This is a somewhat simplistic argument as it contains many premises. God is unlike humans because he is infinite. God is not human and he does not share our characteristics. (That “man is created in God’s image” is a lot less literal than it seems.) God does not grow angry or judge or throw lightning bolts. God does not have emotions (or logic for that matter). God doesn’t do anything. But more about that later.
There is a very powerful conclusion that you come to when you accept that God doesn’t need anything from us. What you realize is that we cannot provide anything to God. He doesn’t need our prayers or (and this is sometimes misconstrued, particularly by the newfangled religions), he doesn’t need us to “fix the world.” If he wanted the world fixed, he could do it quite easily through that whole omnipotent thing that God has going for him.
We do not follow God’s commandments for him; we follow his commandments for us. Judaism introduced this basic understanding along with monotheism. (There is a debate as to whether Judaism introduced monotheism or merely popularized it).
Before monotheism there was paganism, which was a human response to man’s inability to understand nature. It was a way for early man to understand a pattern in something chaotic. Humans’ are very good at this: we apply patterns to observations to arrive at explanations.[1] Think of being an ancient person when an earthquake or volcano explodes or the crops die because there are no rains. It’s not only that you can’t do anything to prevent these catastrophes (modern man can’t do much in either case), it’s that you don’t understand why these events happened. Ancient humans lived in perpetual fear of nature. Fear is often more about understanding than it is about control.
[1] While humans are good at creating patterns to explain observations, they are not good at selecting the correct pattern. We can see this by our natural inability to grasp statistics. As a simple example, how often do you find yourself surprised that a person you’ve just met shares the same birthday as you? Many people believe that fate places a heavy bearing on this coincidence[2] (my older sister and her husband share the same birthday—I’m not sure how much of that relationship was based on this simple pattern, but I’d bet that a small part was). The truth is that there are only 365 days every year. From a statistical analysis, that means that one in every will share you exact birthday. Think about that: for every people you meet during a day, __ of them will have your birthday. That’s a rather big number.
[2] Judaism does believe strongly in Divine Providence, or that God’s will influences all events in the world. To observant Jews, a coincidence is not a coincidence, but a divinely influenced event. You will hear observant Jews say, “Baruch Hashem,” or blessed God, often. They say this not to ward off evil, but to acknowledge that God controls every event. In their worldview, there is little in the way of coincidences. (The last part is my understanding based on being around observant Jews, but I’ve never heard them describe it exactly this way.)
Pagans believed that they could appease nature in the form of their gods, by sacrificing for, praying to, and praising them. In return, the gods would not rain misfortune on them. Where paganism differed from monotheism is that the gods enjoyed or gained something from the praying or sacrificing or praising. It was a form of appeasement: you give me five dollars and I don’t punch you in the nose. If you didn’t need the five dollars, then you wouldn’t make the deal.
One of the understandings that monotheism brought to the world was that God does not need anything we can provide him because he infinite. We do not pray or praise or present offerings (the difference between a sacrifice and an offering is important) for his benefit. Everything we do in his name, we do not do for him, but for us. He does not need our five dollars. Counter intuitively, he still wants our five dollars, but it’s not for his benefit but ours.
Some examples: When Jews praise God, they do not praise him because God needs or even enjoys their praises. They praise him because it is the humans that need to praise God to understand whom they stand before. The last part relates partly to humility and partly to our relationship to God and the “meaning of life,” which is discussed at length in principle number 3.
I use the next example because it is so foreign to modern peoples. When Jews presented animal offerings at the holy temple (which was destroyed many thousands of years ago), they did not present these offerings because God enjoyed the smell of burning animals or because the slaughtering of animals amused God. Instead, it was the humans that needed this offering. According to Orthodox belief, at the time of the Messiah, there will be a return to animal offerings. The Orthodox pray for this to happen. The rabbis explain that the term “sacrifice” was mistranslated form the Hebrew. It is not a sacrifice because the animal offerings were not for the benefit of God but for our benefit (why this was they don’t have as good an answer for—it’s something “you have to experience to understand”). This was diametrically opposed to the Pagan sacrifice, where they sacrificed to appease their gods.
This brings us to the obvious question: If God doesn’t need anything from us, then why do we bother praying to him. Before we get there, we need to know more about God.
Principle #2. The only thing humans can know about God is that he is infinite.
I probably should have started with this one. While Jews may describe other aspects of God, we usually do that by referring to human characteristics, e.g., a merciful God, a good God. We use these words because we’re human and we can only understand things in human terms. We do not use these words because they’re an accurate representation of God. (This is somewhat true. The Jewish understanding of God is a merciful, loving, good God. He has those characteristics, just not in the way that we understand them.)
There are huge ramifications to God being infinite that the early Jews realized (the patriarchs and matriarchs of Judaism). First, by being infinite, God must be one. There cannot be two infinite powers in existence.
Additionally, there’s nothing that we could provide an infinite being that he doesn’t already have. That’s the nature of infinity. (Of course, there’s a huge paradox called the creation paradox, one of many paradoxes when you begin discussing an infinite being: how can we and creation exist outside of God if God is infinite. Wouldn’t everything necessarily be part of God and therefore infinite? And, no, I don’t have any answers to that.)
I’ve written about this before, but during college I came up with what I thought was a strikingly original and deep insight into the existence of God. First premise: God is all-powerful. Second premise: God is infinite. First argument: Since God is infinite he must exist outside of the human perception of time. If you think of time as a physical timeline, God would be floating above that timeline. Second argument: If God exists outside of time then he cannot “do” anything, since “doing” something involves changing from one state to another. And changing states requires existing within a timeline. Third argument: God has no power because he cannot change anything. Conclusion: God does not exist because of a contradiction between the first premise and the third argument. Therefore, an infinite, omnipotent God does not exist.
because he is an infinite being. Going further, God doesn’t do anything because “doing” involves existing within our perception of time.
he is infinite and therefore outside of our conception of time. But I’ll return to that in a moment.
Principle #3. The meaning of life is an opportunity to move closer to the infinite.
There you have it. I’ve solved all of your dilemmas, all of the big ticket questions out there. The big question, the one everyone ponders about: according to Jewish tradition, there’s a very simple answer. What we’re on this planet for (and it’s more than just the planet—it’s our entire existence) is to move closer to God. Think of this way: you’re on earth for, what, 70 or 80 years? We’re finite beings with very finite lives. What Judaism teaches is that during that lifespan, you have one real job: to learn about and grow closer to the infinite.
Every challenge in your life is an opportunity to do just that. It’s not that God is testing us. It’s not about testing because God already knows the results (how that meshes with free will is a bit more complicated). God provides the challenges to give you an opportunity to grow closer to him. And when you stand up and meet those challenges? You are rewarded with a chance to move closer to the infinite. The closer you are to the infinite, the more your finite life doesn’t matter as much. It’s not that you die and go to heaven (although the Jews do believe in a variant of that). When you die, it’s your body that dies and your soul goes on. Your soul is a piece of God, and depending on how well your soul and body did while living together, that is how close you’ve moved to God.
This is an important concept, and I don’t think I’m explaining it that well. The world after death isn’t a punishment or reward. It’s a reality. It’s about how close you moved your soul in its direction based on the challenges that God picked out for you during your lifetime. The next world is not the reward, the next world is the reality: your soul can only understand God based on its experiences in this world. The closer it grew to God on this world, the better its understanding of God in the next world after it sheds its body. (Again, there’s so much stuff here to talk about, but at the time of the Messiah, your soul will be reunited with your body, only your body will be different. No longer will it weigh against your soul’s desires to move close to God. It will assist you in that goal. But by then free will is gone and I guess you are left with whatever level your soul reached. There’s no more moving closer at this point. Of course, to move closer to God, something of which you are a part of, is contradictory in and of itself. But that’s for another time.
My rabbi tells a story about a Chassidic rabbi. It’s relevant to this discussion, so I’ll try to capture its essence. A religious Jew visits a famous Chassidic rabbi, and watches him throughout the course of the day. People visit the Chassidic rabbi and he wishes them well, listens to their problems, and occasionally provides tidbits of Jewish wisdom or advice. The religious Jew is not impressed. The advice he gives in common, the type of advice he himself could give. When there’s a break, he goes up to the rabbi and asks him what makes him so special. The Chassidic rabbi pulls on his long gray beard (although I added that part, all Chassidic rabbis have long gray beards), and tells the religious Jew this: “When you walk outside and you see a beautiful apple tree, you pray to Hashem [one of God’s names] and thank him for the beautiful tree. You then walk over to the tree and pick an delicious look apple. You say a prayer and eat the apple. When I see a beautiful tree, I pray to Hashem and thank him for the beautiful tree. I then walk over to the tree and say a prayer. And because I said a prayer, I have to eat the delicious apple.”
It’s a subtle story. What it explains is that the truly pious Jew understands that his job is to improve his relationship with God, and every opportunity he gets to pray to God or follow one of God’s mitzvahs, is an opportunity for him to grow closer to God. It’s not about eating the apple, but being given a reason to talk to God, the infinite and only power in the universe. The pious Jew understands that he is given only a short time on earth and wants to make the best of it. He wants to overcome the challenges God, through divine providence, puts in front of him.
This is what is some comforting: once you die, you do not disappear. You exist and always will exist as part of the infinite. At its core, this is what most religions try to explain and reassure its followers.
4. The Big Plan
A Jew’s relationship with God makes sense at almost a visceral level. There is a bigger part of it. Something I’m only beginning to see and appreciate. There is a strong ethical problem with God. There is a lot of unhappiness. The religious Jew believes that as you move closer to God, through prayer and following the mitzvahs, your life is blessed. There’s a direct correlation between the two. The more piousness, the more blessing. Of course, this does not seem true and any level. There are plenty of worthy and good people who are killed by very bad people. And many of those bad people never get their just rewards. So why aren’t these bad people judged on earth, like tough in the Torah? This is where we tie back to the third principle.
Speaking of plans, there is something that I have not yet put my mind around and therefore probably doesn’t belong on this list. It relates to the purpose of creation—which is a separate question from the meaning of our individual lives. This is a macro question, something that we need to expore.
With Sukkot fast approaching, Julie and I scavenged wood from last year's attempt to reform our Sukkah. As always, my plan was better than my execution. After buying new roofing materials, and additional wood, I managed to get the walls and ceiling sort of done. Once again, I question the sturdiness of the roof, and worry that the 2x2x4s that hold up the roofing will come falling on our head one evening.
Today was Halo 3 launch day. Julie and I met up with Steven for many hours of playing the co-op campaign. Julie is a bit of a novice when it comes to FPS games, but she held her own. The game played wonderfully, with only a bit of lag caused by my sub-optimal DSL connection.
I decided to post a bit out of order because of my back log of Horribles, I keep missing date-relevant doodles. We'll return to my massive collection of Ziggy-related posts soon.
The conspiracy guy returns. It's been too hot to draw anything lately. I dread going to into the study. Thankfully, the evenings are beginning to cool down and the temperatures are dropping over the next few days.
I had substantive things I wanted to write about this doodle. Then I remembered I don't write substantive things.
It’s another warm day. The heat is passing as the early evenings cool quickly and the unbearable becomes merely uncomfortable and then rather pleasant.
When I am on television I pretend that I’m sensitive. I’m not really on television (although I have a childhood friend who is). My sister told me she read my musings and found me sensitive. She was disappointed that I use sensitivity in a derogatory sense. After looking up “derogative” I assured her I did no such thing. I explained that however great she believes sensitivity is in a guy, there is a reason most men are not sensitive: it leaves us wide open for all sorts of attacks. And as we all know men have a low threshold for pain.
Julie sat on the couch with me. We’re in her parents’ house for dinner. They’re in town for a couple more days, along with her sister who arrived today (although Jennifer stayed in New York). I turned the screen around so Julie can’t see what I’m typing. It turns out I can’t see it either. I’m ashamed of words as I type them but I want people to read them. When I was younger I used to write and leave my words on my desk or in obvious places so my mother would find them. I wanted her to read them but I didn’t want to give them to her. It’s a little known fact that bad poetry reads better when it is stumbled upon rather than presented.
Julie’s gone now. She’s off to help her parents cook and I can turn the screen around. It’s facing me and I can see what I’m typing. It’s better that way. There’s always the risk that if I type without looking it won’t record the words. That’s a horrible thought: spending time writing words that aren’t recorded. It shouldn’t be so terrible.
I went through a bit of a Jewish phase this past year. The hardest part for me with Judaism (or any religion for that matter) is the praying. I don’t understand it and it doesn’t do anything for me. I did have an interesting realization on this last go around, however. I realized that praying was like writing without recording. When I started the prayer exercise (my experimentation lasted a couple of months), I would fret that I was saying all of these interesting things without recording them. I worried that I would run out of words and some of my best works would be whispered to a being that I wasn’t even sure existed.
It took me a while to accept that I could enjoy speaking without writing. It was freeing to think and speak without worrying about how the ideas would look once recorded. An important part of copyright law is that the material must be placed in a fixed medium to be protectable. Once you fix your work you own the copyright in that work. If you just share words but don’t place them in a fixed medium, then you do not have a copyright in that work. In other words you do not own those words. Praying felt the same way for me at first: the words that I spoke in silence (in Jewish prayer, you actually speak the words loud enough so only you can hear them) were not mine. I had no way to recover them. It was frightening at first before becoming strangely freeing. I could think and say and then pray without ego. The ego cares only about the ownership. It doesn’t care about words that nobody else hears.
I did get off the prayer boat. I think it happened when we got the dogs. Something in my morning routine had to break and it was the twenty minutes I spent trying to pronounce the Hebrew words. I miss it sometimes but not enough to start the habit again. Maybe when I’m older or when I figure out what it means to me. Or perhaps not. I’m relatively happy—as happy as someone prone to blues and depression and mighty headaches can be (especially since I limited the time I play video games alone). I worry that prayer may change this balance.
I sent this NY Times article to a couple of people who are having trouble in their marriages (via kottke). I don’t know what it is about mid-life crisis in men, but I can’t wait to have one. It’ll probably involve a motorcycle and a deep and heart-felt depression. You can reserve your tickets at the counter. I figure once I’m wearing my chaps and letting what’s left of my hair grow long, Julie can refer to the article to get through the period. That and take plenty of Wellbutrin.
There are two small dogs barking in the backyard behind the house. They sound like our dogs only they’re not. Unlike children, it turns out that barking dogs are annoying regardless of whose dogs they are. (I hear that you don’t mind crying children if they’re yours. While I will reserve judgment, I find it a bit incredulous.) We surrounded our house with an invisible fence, and our dogs bark when they see a neighbor or person nearby. Their barks cross the sanity mark when they see another dog. They’re relatively quiet dogs, but my guess is they think of our Villa as their home and they bark to defend it from intruders. It works especially well against mean UPS deliverymen (although the nice one always brings them treats). It turns out liking a dog has nothing to do with having a tolerance for its barking. Barking dogs are annoying. No two ways around it.
At dinner Julie’s family shared stories of raising gerbils in their old house in Dallas. At first this was a consensual arrangement. That is until they found out the hard way that the two male gerbils were in fact a female and a male. There were tiny gerbils everywhere and one cold evening their housekeeper let the gerbils out. I’m sure she had good and valid reasons for this action, and soon the gerbils took over the house. Julie’s sister claims that the gerbils somehow mutated by breeding with the rat population to form a gerbil/rat hybrid. I imagine it looked something like a large puff ball with a particularly pointy nose and ruddy eyes. They chased Julie’s family out of their house. Literally. They ended up trading their Gerbil-infested house for a new one. The mutant nest was located under the refrigerator, but to keep my PG rating, I’ll spare you the gory battles that followed.
It’s almost time to head home. It is cool outside and I expect sleep will come quickly after our big dinner. Until next time.
I like to pop this to the top every so often. It's my way to track the changing of the seasons.
2009-3-2: Julie thinks I should check the photos before choosing my Friday night sweater. It's just that my sweaters get stuck in a rotation, which results in the same sweater worn on Fridays. She needs to get over it.
