-
Shop at Amazon?
Click the logo below and a percentage of your purchase will automatically help support our online congregation.
Choose Freedom! By R.D. Gold
This essay was adapted from R.D. Gold’s important new book, Bondage of the Mind: How Old Testament Fundamentalism Shackles the Mind and Enslaves the Spirit – Toward a Better Understanding of the Religious Experience (Aldus Books). Rabbi Jacob Neusner, a leading scholar on Judaism, calls Bondage of the Mind “the most important book of its kind in the last hundred years.” For more information, please go to www.aldusbooks.com.
CHOOSE FREEDOM!
By R.D. Gold
Nov. 28, 2008
Most progressive Jews in the United States are aware of the Great Debate that is unfolding across the country, pitting reason against revelation. We need look no further than the last two presidential elections to see how religious fundamentalists have elbowed their way into a prominent position on the American political landscape.
I consider religious fundamentalism to be one of the most noxious forces in the history of mankind. Hardly a day passes that we don’t witness Islamic fundamentalists wreaking havoc somewhere in the world (as I write these lines the horrible drama in Mumbai continues to unfold). Evangelical Christianity, albeit essentially non-violent today, has doubtless become a powerful political force in America, with potentially far-reaching, deleterious consequences.
The forces of Jewish fundamentalism are no longer benign, either. Possibly as a reaction to their fears that assimilation and intermarriage pose a serious threat to Jewish survival, the Orthodox Jews have stepped up their “outreach” efforts to convert non-Orthodox Jews, to recruit them to become “returnees.” Following the dictum that the end justifies the means, they totally disregard the trauma such a conversion often brings to the liberal Jewish families involved. But there is little public discussion of this more aggressive Orthodox behavior, perhaps for fear of being labeled an anti-Semite. I am a Jewish American myself, but I don’t like the forces of Orthodoxy attempting to turn Israel into a Jewish Iran any more than I like the evangelicals trying to turn the United States into a Christian Iran.
Like fundamentalists everywhere, Orthodox Jews maintain the unshakable conviction that it is they, and they alone, who are in sole and certain possession of The Truth, and, therefore, the exemplars of a divinely ordained moral behavior. They claim that progressive Jews, whom they disdainfully call “secular,” are abandoning the Torah and, by so doing, they are betraying the true Judaism.
But are they really? Are the doctrines of Orthodox Judaism really true?
I spent the better part of two years researching the latest archeological, historical and textual evidence to be able to answer this question. And all – and I repeat, all – the credible evidence points to the unmistakable conclusion that the dogma of Orthodoxy is not true. It is false. The exodus described in the Torah never happened. There was no “nation of Israel” wandering in the Sinai desert for forty years. There was no revelation at Mount Sinai witnessed by two million people. Perhaps most revealing of all is that there was no conquest of Canaan. It turns out that the Israelites were living peacefully in Canaan all along and, indeed, were Canaanites themselves.
A key tenet of the Orthodox belief system is that Jewish law is God-given and reflects his will. As such, it is timeless and binding on all Jews, present and future. But since the doctrines of Orthodoxy are demonstrably false, it makes no sense at all for liberal Jews to exchange much of their personal freedom for the straightjacket of enforced obedience to strict religious law. Far from being the immutable law for time immemorial that the Orthodox claim, the doctrines of Orthodoxy – like fundamentalist dogma everywhere – are an anachronistic absurdity in this day and age. They spawn a pious ignorance that subverts independent thought.
Does this mean that one must reject Judaism? Not at all. Orthodox Judaism is not authentic Judaism, as the Orthodox claim, any more than Christian fundamentalism is authentic Christianity, as the evangelicals claim. One does not face a choice that is limited to fundamentalism (I believe all of it) or atheism (I believe none of it). Piety is not a license to run other people’s lives, but if one so chooses, religion can play a positive role in one’s life – sociologically, philosophically, and psychologically. Athens and Jerusalem need not be at loggerheads.
While I am not a Reconstuctionist, I find a great deal of truth in the humanistic Judaism of Mordecai Kaplan, whose forward-thinking ideas led the Orthodox authorities to excommunicate him (just as they did 400 years earlier to another forward-thinking Jewish thinker, the brilliant Dutch philosopher Baruch Spinoza). In much the same way that Abraham Lincoln envisioned America as a nation of the people, by the people, and for the people, Kaplan argued that the Jewish religion came from and should serve the Jewish people, not the other way around as the Orthodox would have us believe. Kaplan also held that Judaism is a civilization that values the well-being and moral excellence of its people, rather than what some self-styled sages interpret to be the word and the will of God.
In the final analysis, isn’t this what being a good Jew is really all about? Not what you believe about God, the cosmos, and the like, but the moral standards by which you choose to live your life. For me, the choice between the personal freedom embedded in Western democratic values and embraced by humanistic Judaism, and the bondage of a fundamentalist religious law based on fallacious Orthodox dogma is a no-brainer. I choose freedom. I hope you do, too.
Movie Review: “The Devil Came on Horseback”
Review of the movie “The Devil Came on Horseback”
By Rabbi Ana Bonnheim
After you read this, please login and comment to share your thoughts.
Although the genocide in Darfur has been raging for years, it was only in 2007 that a film that explained the history of the conflict in Sudan was made. The Devil Came on Horseback makes a strong moral case for our action. This film was not created by a large studio or politician but by the drive and passion of one man, Brian Steidle.
Steidle is a former US Marine Captain who spent considerable time in the Darfur region. He never intended to become the star of a film or a spokesman for Darfuris. But in 2004, Steidle spent six months in the region as a military observer for the African Union. What he saw was terrifying and heartbreaking.
Steidle didn’t know how to cope with what he was seeing in Darfur. The savagery and murder was so horrifying to him that he did not know how to convey what he was seeing to his family and friends back home. He also thought that the United States must not really know what was happening in Darfur, because otherwise, there would be significant action.
So in the midst of his disbelief, Steidle did something that felt natural: he got out his camera and began taking pictures. He photographed razed villages, refugees, and piles of murdered bodies. Steidle’s photos are sickening, and they provide much of the content for the film. The Devil Came on Horseback is a tough movie to watch, but it must be seen. Suddenly, the people and events that seem so foreign in newspaper articles or the occasional news photograph seem real.
In the past year, most major news networks devoted only a couple of hours of coverage total to the crisis in Darfur. In the weeks before the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing, some organizations and reporters focused on China’s connection with giving arms to the Sudanese Janjaweed militia, but they reached very modest readership. The games still began without a real change in China’s relationship with Sudan.
We can all agree that it’s imperative to “save Darfur.” Political leaders across the spectrum agree that the region is war-torn. It’s easy to join a Facebook cause group or forward an email about the atrocities in Darfur. It’s easy to wear a t-shirt or think about Darfur in a prayer.
Yet, all this agreement has not led to enough action. In fact there is a term for this kind of toned-down action: “slactivism.” Slactivism is a new word coined from the combination of “slacker” and “activism” to denote the kind of email forwarding or cause-joining that feels good but doesn’t necessarily make a difference.
In a world where it can be easier to be a “slactivist” than an activist, the message of The Devil Came on Horseback is that our world can’t afford slactivism instead of activism. The film itself is a model for real activism. Steidle’s conscience pushed him to share his photos and his story to raise awareness and bring about political action.
The film itself documents the rise of the Janjaweed militia in Sudan, their incursions into the Darfur region, the plight of Darfuri families (some of whom are now impoverished refugees in Chad), and the American political response (or lack thereof).
The Devil Came on Horseback is no doubt a heart-wrenching film to watch, because everything it documents is not only real but continues to happen today. It’s a film that children and teens should see, not because it’s entertaining but because it needs to be seen. It’s a film that should lead to discussions, and then, ideally, to action-whether that action be continuing to promote awareness, sending financial aid or supplies to the region, or becoming involved in the political process.
New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof, one of the most vocal individuals about the crisis in Darfur who has committed his column to be a call to action, wrote a 2005 column about Brian Steidle. Steidle can be a model of action, but unless we choose to involve ourselves, the film was made in vain. Kristof concluded the column with the following haunting words, “If our leaders are acquiescing in genocide, that’s because we citizens are passive, too. If American voters cared about Darfur’s genocide as much as about, say, the Michael Jackson trial, then our political system would respond. As Martin Luther King, Jr. put it: ‘Man’s inhumanity to man is not only perpetrated by the vitriolic actions of those who are bad. It is also perpetrated by the vitiating inaction of those who are good.’”
Questions to consider:
- What drove Steidle to take photographs? How did he become a spokesman for this cause? What can we learn from him?
- Who is complicit in the violence perpetrated against the Darfuris? How did we allow this to happen?
- How can we make a difference in this ongoing tragedy? In what ways are you a slactivist? How can you transform your energy into real activism?
Book Review: The Dinner Diaries (and other reflections on food)
A review of The Dinner Diaries: Raising Whole Wheat Kids in a White Bread World and other reflections on food.
By Carrie Vogel, Rabbinic Student
After you read this, please login and comment to share your thoughts.
Books about food have always been popular, but recently books about a certain way of eating have become extremely fashionable. As we become more invested in living “green” lives, there has been a discernable change in the way we relate to our food. Recently, I read several books about healthy, organic, sustainable eating, including Betsy Block’s The Dinner Diaries: Raising Whole Wheat Kids in a White Bread World. My parents were determined to raise whole wheat kids, even though all of our friends were happily living in a white bread world (who knew my parents were such trendsetters?!), so I admittedly brought with me years of whole wheat bread angst.
The gist of this genre of books is simple: organic, locally grown food is better for us and the environment. But in practice, it is not so easy – not when I was growing up and definitely not now. Most of us do not have space or time for a garden, let alone a farm. We may not have expendable budgets with which to pay others to farm our organically grown, local vegetables. We may live in parts of the country where our options for locally grown fruit and vegetable are extremely limited for a large part of the year. And, what about the fact that sometimes the things which are best for us to eat are the ones we do not find to be the most delicious?
In The Dinner Diaries, Block acknowledges all of these difficulties from the beginning and attempts to work around them to change the course (ha!) of her family’s eating patterns. She spends chapters reflecting on some of the most challenging aspects of healthy eating: factory farming, eating locally in cold-weather climates, fair trade items such as coffee and cocoa, the constant presence of junk food and perhaps most challenging: picky eaters. Every couple chapters there is an “At the Table” section where the things she and her family have learned are put into practice.
In many cases, Block succeeds in getting her family to incorporate locally grown fruits and vegetables, healthier fish and non-hormone injected chicken and beef into their meals. In fact, the greatest challenge she faces is the extraordinary amount of information available, much of it conflicting. In one chapter she struggles to determine how much milk her children should be drinking, whether it should be hormone free, organic or pasteurized and, in the end, whether they should even be drinking it at all. She faces the same challenge when it comes to creating a list of fish which are healthy for us but not raised under, dare I say “fishy,” standards. She does sort through much of it and provides the reader with a number of helpful lists and websites.
Many food authors and chefs encourage us to think about eating food in a deeper way. All of our senses should be tuned in to the item we are choosing to give us sustenance, nutrients and of course, happiness. In Judaism, laws for keeping kosher are, in part, there to force people to think about what we put into our bodies on a regular basis and to associate both holiness and Jewishness with the meals we choose. Some would say that the laws of keeping kosher make food “Jewishly holy,” but I would like to put forth the idea that these alone do not make our food holy. These books (and others like them such as The Omnivore’s Dilemma and In Defense of Food by Michael Pollan) encourage us to think about the potential for a holy relationship between us, our food and the world. In another fascinating book on this topic (Animal, Vegetable Miracle: A Year of Food Life), Barbara Kingsolver writes, “Eaters must understand, how we eat determines how the world is used” (pg. 211). Is knowing your chicken was raised without steroids, holy? Is eating an apple picked from a tree in your own state, holy? Is eating food which has not been grown in soil brimming with pesticides, holy?
Questions to consider:
- What is the greatest challenge for you when it comes to eating more organically or locally (or both!)?
- What is one change you would be willing to try?
- Do you think about the food you eat? Does it occur to you to consider who the person was who cared for it before it landed on your plate? How might eating organically or locally be holy or powerful for you – or not?
What does Judaism from a humanistic perspective mean to you?
Both OurJewishCommunity.org and Congregation Beth Adam view Judaism from a humanistic perspective. What does that mean to you? How does it inform how you view the world, religion, or yourself? What does it inspire in you – or not?
Israel
Jews, Israel…? Discuss amongst yourselves.
Jews and Affiliation
Jews are voting with their feet.
- Among American adults whose religion is Judaism or who indicate they are of Jewish parentage or upbringing, only 44% say they are members of a Jewish congregation. (“American Jewish Identity Survey,” Egon Mayer, Barry Kosmin, and Ariela Keysar.2001)
- Among non-Orthodox Jews between the ages of 25-39, only 19% of singles and 51% of unmarried Jews join synagogues (“Uncoupled: How our Singles are Reshaping Jewish Engagement” by Steven M. Cohen and Ari Y. Kelman, p. 11.).
Why are so many Jews not joining synagogues?Is this a problem?Do we need to provide alternatives – and what are they?
Register, login, and post your comments.
Barr’s Banter
Here’s your chance to comment on Rabbi Barr’s podcasts, also known as Barr’s Banter.What are you reactions?What do you agree and disagree with?Have you heard his recent podcasts on Palin’s Decision, Practical Jokes and the Democratic Convention, and Phelps and Einstein?Comment on those or others here.
Register, login, and post your comments!
What should OurJewishCommunity.org offer?
OurJewishCommunity.org is not only a website – it’s a community.Just like healthy congregations are built over time with the involvement of congregants, so too will OurJewishCommunity.org be built.We want your ideas, suggestions, feedback, content, and more.What would you like to see here?What could an online congregation offer you?
Register, login, and post a comment.
-
- — Baum's Blog on Facebook Adds Organ Donation feature
- — Baum's Blog on Memory and Independence
- — Learn how to make a map of Israel with ice cream and candy
- — Barr's Banter on what the Boy Scouts can Learn from Conservative Judaism about Inclusion
- — Join us for streaming Shabbat every Friday at 6 PM Eastern Time