A-Z OF JEWISH VALUES

A-Z OF JEWISH VALUES -

B FOR BELIEF

“God is angry. The world is being punished for wrongdoing – be it people’s needless hatred of each other, lack of charity, moral turpitude… The tsunami is an expression of God’s anger with the world and we must pray more and beg for mercy.”

These were the words of Shelomo Amar the Sephardi Chief Rabbi of Israel.

It is a point of view which does not agree with the outlook of Reform Jews. It has been expressed before in other contexts: the Holocaust has been viewed by the exponents of this opinion as a punishment – Reform Judaism itself has indeed been cited as a cause of this punishment. You may recall some years ago a bus accident in Israel in which a number of children lost their lives, was seen as a divine punishment. On that occasion the Israeli Chief Rabbi even went to the extent of blaming it on the fact that people did not have their mezuzahs checked regularly.

Not only is this not the position of Reform, but neither is it the position of Modern Orthodoxy as represented by the Chief Rabbi Dr. Jonathan Sacks.

He stated, regarding the tsunami that “Natural disasters are an intrinsic element of the physical world and the meaningful question for the religious believer is not ‘why did this happen’ but rather what can we do to help those who suffered.” This I’m sure you would agree is what we would say too.

My message for today is on the subject of Belief. What, if anything, can we say is the value we place upon beliefs as Reform Jews?

In this series I have started week by week which I call the A-Z of Reform Jewish Values the aim is to identify what is important for us as Reform Jews, to make it into a positive statement of our own.

Let me refer you back to the passage I read earlier from the writings of Abraham Joshua Heschel on faith. Heschel was not a Reform Jew. He was the philosopher of the American Conservative Movement. They are different from us (the differences I’ll leave for another time) but they have more in common with us than does Orthodoxy. And it’s most unlikely that Heschel would be quoted positively, if at all, in an Orthodox shul.

Heschel said ‘Faith does not detach man from thinking.’ Thinking, in a certain rationalistic way is a hallmark of Progressive Judaism. Let me give you a beautiful illustration of this from the children of our own cheder.

Last Sunday I was asked to visit a younger class than the one I usually teach, to answer questions raised by the Tsunami. Much of it was about God. One of the boys asked why does God not talk to people today like God talked to Moses? After some discussion, a ten year old girl said: perhaps God speaks to us through what we learn in science. Apart from that being a very profound and mature statement from a young lady her age, it would be a Reform position. It can be traced back to the 17^th century Jewish philosopher Spinoza (who was ostracised by the orthodoxy of his time as a freethinker) and it became a Reform viewpoint in the early 19^th century.

For many of us this approach works in trying to understand the miracles, like the 10 plagues in our Torah reading today. For example the Plague of Darkness it has been suggested, could be explained by the eruption of the volcano on the island of Santorini, the volcanic ash from which blotted out the sun’s light over a wide area though not over all Egypt so that in Goshen the Israelites could have had light. These rationalistic explanations only serve to satisfy our common sense; they fail, however, to do justice to the finer points of the story, that God, Nature and People are all bound up as one and interact. Reform would be less interested in the Power of God here, than in the fact that it wasn’t just Pharaoh the tyrant who suffered but the whole society who were complicit in the evil. And the sentence ‘it was so dark one man could not see his neighbour’ has a spiritual meaning too.

So, does that justify the Israeli Chief Rabbi’s statement about the Tsunami? No – there is a world of difference between a narrative such as the Exodus – which bears spiritual lessons (even if the Exodus did not take place as described in the Torah) and an individual professing to read the mind of God.

What other values do we have in respect of belief?

As I have said – my aim is not to pontificate but to invite responses. On Friday evenings we are having weekly discussions on this A-Z project.

And we’re up to B for Belief. Last week a young lady in her 20’s said Belonging is more important for me than Belief. She meant that there might be a diversity of beliefs around her but what brings her to schule is a sense of belonging. There was disagreement, another member said: I like to know what the beliefs are which the group I belong to subscribes to.

UJIA has just produced this little booklet called Beyond Belonging. As you might expect the statistics it quotes show that belonging rates a lot higher with British Jews than beliefs. Among the case studies it gives there is one of a Reform Jew. It says: Aaron and his wife are members of a large Reform synagogue. He is a proud and partisan Reform Jews. However his denominational affiliation has less to do with strictly theological considerations than a bad family experience with an orthodox synagogue. (p.41) In his interview it reads as follows (p.43) Q ‘Where does God come in, anywhere? A: ‘I was wondering when we were going to get to that… the answer is I don’t disbelieve, but I don’t believe in the concept of some supernatural being…I don’t see any reason why there should not be a superior or higher force within the universe that has some guiding principles. Whether that is an intelligent force, in the sense that it actually guides deliberately, I’m not clear about that one’

I think this is a fairly typical point of view. The question is: is it positive enough as a reflection of Reform Judaism?

However important is belonging – our starting point is Jewish beliefs.

And Reform teaching has tended to follow Martin Buber’s famous I-Thou philosophy. Buber says that with every Jewish belief as with every mitzvah the deciding factor is how I relate to the Eternal Thou through it.

What makes it an authentic belief is not that it is Jewish and that I make an effort to accept it even if my experience and thinking and knowledge are at odds with it. What makes it authentic is that it flows from my experience and thinking and knowledge.

Buber also said that: faith varies, like love. Remember that wonderful inscription found on the walls of the cellar of a synagogue in Cologne where Jews hid from the Nazis : “I believe in the sun even when it is not shining; I believe in love even when feeling it not. I believe in God even when God is silent.”

Reform demands honesty. It also demands personal independence rather than believing because it is demanded by other in high authority in spite of oneself.

One again what I am dealing with are not the beliefs themselves but with the values behind them. The value here is Autonomy – which you may remember is the concept I was trying to bring across to the Bar Mitzvah last Shabbat.

It is a human value, you might say even a humanist value. We have only human experience and reasoning to go by. And I suppose that’s why there’s a natural tendency to ascribe to God human thoughts and feelings. But if we do that we have to be aware that we are projecting ourselves on to God – creating God in our own image as again one member of our congregation put it to me before the service last week.

Psychologically, those who say that in a natural disaster God has let us down or God is punishing us, are importing an idea of parenthood into their religious belief (which may arise from their own childhood experience of abandonment or heavy-handedness from a parent).

Of course our prayers use human images of God, parental images, (eg. Avinu Malkenu, our Father our King). Maimonides, who says we cannot possibly ascribe human emotions to God (like anger or pleasure), explains the human forms of address in the prayers as metaphors. They are like poetry. We address God as if God were a person.

New Reform translations of the Siddur by the way, which use expressions like The Eternal, are not just trying to be egalitarian and politically correct in not addressing God as a man, but being more philosophically correct in not addressing God as a person in the sky. The value here is philosophical integrity, consistency between what we say religiously, with what we actually think.

There is also a readiness to admit that we don’t have all the answers. The booklet ‘What is Reform Judaism’ contains this statement: “We prize our Jewish tradition of questioning. We understand doubt and unbelief. We know that answers are often provisional, fragmentary, glimpses on a journey towards a living truth and reality that is always before us.”

When a person converts to Judaism through Reform they are issued with a certificate in which the Beth Din states that the person coming before them has accepted upon him/herself the yoke of the kingdom of heaven. And that he/she makes a commitment to fulfil to the best of his/her ability the sacred obligations which devolve upon all members of the house of Israel

Where we belong religiously is expressed both by what we believe and what we practice.

If you have a computer and you use the web: search out a website called beliefnet.com. There you can enjoy yourself answering 20 questions which they promise you even if you don’t know what faith you are, beliefnet can tell you. And they have a high success rate among the long list of faiths and denominations.

It challenges you to state what kind of concept of God you hold, a personal God or a supreme force or spirit or none, or not sure or it doesn’t matter. What do you believe about the origins of life, or does that not matter. What happens after death if that’s important to you. Why is there so much suffering in the world.

You don’t have to think – you’re given multiple choice answers by beliefnet.com and you just tick what closest represents your belief and then rate your answer high low or medium strength. Then you’re asked about worship – how much it matters to you

I have found something interesting by the way: a number of our members who would not confess to having any strong beliefs feel extremely strongly about the form of our services!

Beliefnet.com asks you about the importance for you of doing good works, where you stand on issues such as abortion, homosexuality, roles of men and women, marriage and divorce. How fundamental are social betterment programmes in your belief system? How fundamental is revering nature?

Especially in the latter, the areas of action Reform Judaism places strong value. We believe that our role in the world is of the highest importance. Some might place an even higher value on it than theological belief.

[The Kotzker Rabbi said that God supports atheism. He quoted the line ‘if only they would forget me and keep my commandments! Meaning: if you see a poor man assume there is no God to help him. You help him.]

If you would like to try the test but can’t find it, I can give you a printout.

I think it’s worth us all trying it – to know where we stand. One word of caution. We don’t have to define our Judaism according to Beliefnet.com

If you come out as a Humanist or a Buddhist or a Quaker, come and talk to me before your resign your shul membership.

I suppose you’d like to know how I scored. 100% Reform Jewish I’m relieved to say.