World of Truth

Abandon the notion that there is a world and there is a G‑d. It is as fallacious as thinking there is a story and there is a storyteller.

There is only the storyteller, expressing himself in the story he tells. There is only the Unknowable, expressing Himself as a world.

R’Tzvi Freedman

Not many will doubt that religion has taken the back seat in regards to our modern day youth, not to mention the collective societal consciousness. This view is one that I myself have not been foreign to. Religion is often portrayed as the stumbling block between regress and progress, primitive and modern, irrationality and intellectualism, love and hate. With certainty I can say that many of these claims contain some validity to them. However, I would like to argue that there are 2 primary reasons why religion is viewed as such. The first being the hypocrisy of many ‘religious’ individuals who deceive, hurt and malign a fellow human being in the holy name of G-d. The second being the lack of/mis-education of the secular world (which bleeds ignorance).

An uneducated individual who witnesses a desecration of G-d’s name in the name of G-d, not being able to distinguish between the good and the bad, the truth and false hood, is certainly doomed to the religious phony. Therefore, the combination of religious hypocrisy and the uneducated child is a recipe for disaster. Being someone who has swam in the ocean of secularism and later dove in the pit of religiosity, the current situation is deeply unfortunate, harmful to the human personality, and extremely unauthentic. I will attempt to demonstrate why this is so and hopefully enlighten the curious souls in search of their Divine heritage.

No doubt that the most influential religious figure who has walked our earth is none other than the father of the monotheist creed, Abraham. A man who has forever changed the course of humanity. A man whose story is a particular example of the journey of souls in a climate of hostility. His life is an example of a man who walked through the valley of the shadow of death and triumphed with dignity.The first introduction to my forefather is in the book of Genesis where at the age of 75, he is told by the Mysterious Other to leave his land, his relatives and his fathers house hold and become a wanderer on earth. Leaving your comfortable surroundings is no easy task. Many will shun the opportunity to leave their birth place to become a stranger. However, Abraham did. But this was only the beginning. The lonely stranger encountered many hardships that frighten and attack the depths of the human soul.

Throughout his wanderings, his wife is taken by a prominent king, he fought wars with a multitude of kings to save his nephew, he is promised to have a child in and old age, he is commanded to circumcise himself at the age of 99, he is told to send away his first son, he is commanded to sacrifice his second son, the one whom he deeply loves, his wife later dies, he mourns for her and buries her. There is much more to his story that will not be mentioned, but the message is clear: Here is a man whose life was filled with contradictions, challenge, hardship and suffering. Yet, he always remained close to his G-d. He was and remained deeply religious.

Religion is meant to be a constant encounter with the Divine. Religion is a system of living that addresses the totality of Man. His intellect, his emotions, his dreams, his sexuality, his personality, his joys, his sorrows, his victories and failures. An authentic religion wouldn’t dare deny the human personality. A human being is a complex entity, a religious philosophy should not only be aware of this complexity, it should embrace it, and allow the human personality to share his whole self with G-d. Your dreams, hopes, personality, and life should be sanctified, made special and unique. In a sense, religion is an authentic expression of the self.

The story of Abraham makes this point clear. His whole life was sanctified to G-d. He went to war to prevent an injustice, he circumcised himself not to deny his sexuality, but to sanctify it, he argued with his G-d to practice justice and he fed strangers because he realized the importance of kindness. Life was constantly challenging him. But he confidently demonstrated that regardless of which challenge my come his way, he will walk with his G-d, he will be a living embodiment of the Divine. However, it wasn’t an easy task. Nevertheless, his will to live was stronger than the kiss of death. So much so that G-d had become aware of him. Not only is G-d aware of him, G-d has an immense love for him.

Genesis 18:19 – For I have known/loved him, because he commands his children and his household after him that they guard the path of the Eternal G-d, doing charity and justice.

Judaism, being the living testimony of Abraham, recognizes his calling to life. Judaism doesn’t surrender Man to the absurdity of evil, the horror of suffering and the darkness of fate. Judaism declares that Man make himself holy, redeem his life, face the challenges, and make yourself known to G-d and allow G-d to be known in all of your life.

Man’s task in the world, according to Judaism, is to transform fate into destiny; a passive existence into an active existence; an existence of compulsion, perplexity, and muteness into an existence replete with a powerful will, with resourcefulness, daring, and imagination. -Fate & Destiny, pg. 6, by Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik

I think that one of the more difficult situations that exists in the Jewish world of today, especially, in my humble opinion, in the Diaspora, is the widening disconnect between the vast bulk of the population and the rabbinic leadership. While there are many rabbinic pronouncements on the minutiae of Jewish law, customs and observance there is very little that is said and heard about the major problems that face the Jewish world – the security of the Jewish state, the dire financial situation that threatens the entire system of Jewish education, the astounding rate of poverty and unemployment (voluntary and involuntary) in religious Jewish society, children at risk because of one-size-fits-all educational institutions, growing rates of divorce and family dysfunction, an unhealthy and misogynic system of dating and marriage, growing anti-Semitism and a seemingly unstoppable rate of assimilation, secularization and intermarriage that guarantees a shrinking Jewish population in a few generations.

Rather than address these terribly difficult issues, Jewish leadership is engaged in fighting over – again – the battles that destroyed the Jewish world of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Whether we like it or not, whether it is theologically acceptable to us or not, the State of Israel is a reality where six million Jews live. The predictions by many Jewish leaders made in the 1950s that the state would not survive for twenty, thirty or fifty years have all proven to have been incorrect.

We have no choice but to support the state with all of our might, prayers, talents and resources. So why don’t we hear that call from our leadership, whether it be from any grouping of the Jewish people? The disconnect from reality is truly astounding!

The tuition rates for attending Jewish schools are rapidly reaching the breaking point. A small percentage of parents – those who pay full or almost full tuition at schools – are subsidizing the rest of the parent body who cannot afford the astronomical amounts that are termed full tuition. But that group of people – those who can and do pay full tuition – is a rapidly diminishing breed. Instead of addressing this problem – the true time bomb that threatens the future of Torah education – we spread our wealth so thin that we are unable to help the situation.

It may be important to help a father of a daughter to raise many thousands of dollars to buy an apartment for her and her prospective husband in Israel but it certainly is more important to provide for Jewish education to one’s own children and for one’s own community. This is part of the current disconnect – the inability to view the forest and remain fixated on the trees or even the bushes.

The fact that there is an enormous proliferation of small yeshivot, all of which are basically similar in curriculum, method and purpose is not only very inefficient and enormously costly but it has yet to prove that its educational accomplishments and scholarship are in any way superior to a large institution that would prove much less costly per student to maintain. Part of the problem is that there is such a surplus of kollel “graduates” who have no other employment potential except for yeshiva teaching so that somehow there have to be many such institutions simply to absorb some of this surplus of talent and scholarship. This is also part of the disconnect that exists in our world.

Having just recently completed the production of a documentary film about the Jewish world of the 1930’s, I am very concerned about the similarities of the anti-Semitic mood of the present decade to that past decade. It is much more insidious today because this anti-Semitism is encased in the pious cloak of anti-Israel rhetoric and policy. And unfortunately there are many Jews who are themselves entrapped in this self-destructive dance. And many of these Jews live in Israel!

But again all voices against this threat are muted and very little leadership is exhibited to address the problem. This is not merely a matter for the Anti-Defamation League to fight. We are all in a precarious and vulnerable position. Our leadership should warn us about this situation.

Again, silence is a great example of the disconnect that afflicts us. We should demand more from those that claim the ability and knowledge to lead us. Connection to the true large problems that face us is and should be a basic requirement of leadership and serious opinion.

Shabat shalom.

Berel Wein
Source: http://www.rabbiwein.com/Jerusalem-Post/2011/11/661.html
Hat tip: Daat Torah blog

Source: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/11/21/steve_jobs_made_us_sad/

Key quotes:

“The consumer society was laid down by the late Steve Jobs coming down the mountain with two tablets, iPad one and iPad two, and the result is that we now have a culture of iPod, iPhone, iTunes, i, I, I,” .

“When you’re an individualist, egocentric culture and you only care about ‘I’, you don’t do terribly well.”

“What does a consumer ethic do? It makes you aware all the time of the things you don’t have instead of thanking God for all the things you do have

“If in a consumer society, through all the advertising and subtly seductive approaches to it, you’ve got an iPhone but you haven’t got a fourth generation one, the consumer society is in fact the most efficient mechanism ever devised for the creation and distribution of unhappiness”

Interestingly, the office of the Chief Rabbi had to issue a clarification: See here:
http://www.jta.org/news/article/2011/11/20/3090363/sacks-blames-steve-jobs-for-selfish-society

At the end of the day, I find his comments rather spot on. And this is unrelated to the fact that I don’t have the latest iPhone….

Intolerance lies at the core of evil. Not the intolerance that results from any threat or danger. Not the intolerance that arises from negative experience. Just intolerance of another being who dares to exist, who dares to diminish the space in the universe left for you. Intolerance without cause.

It is so deep within us, because every human being secretly desires the entire universe to himself. Our only way out is to learn compassion without cause. To care for each other simply because that ’other’ exists. – R’Tzvi Freeman