Recently
my teacher and dear friend Vicki Hoffer shared with me the following
observation. “Judaism,” she said, “is the closest thing to
atheism.”
If
I pursued the thought with her, I confess to not remembering the
details. The comment, though, has stayed with me. You see, I was
raised an atheist. I remember as a small boy, my father answering
our kitchen phone one evening. We could tell from the long pauses
followed by the clipped, one word responses that he was answering a
survey. One of those answers he gave was “atheist.” It didn't
take much imagination to guess the question.
My
father lived with cancer for three years. Terminal illness did not
change his take on religion, and he lived out his final days with the
same gentleness and humor and philosophical good will he showed all
his life. In the years after his death, as I found religion myself
and ultimately wound up a rabbi, I have felt at some pains to
understand this teshuvah – this returning of mine – not as
a rejection of my father's atheism, but as an affirmation of myself
as his son. Such an affirmation gets at the heart of the question of
what it means to be a Jew – a question that I have been pondering
for some time now, and one I will address tangentially tomorrow, but
in greater detail on Yom Kippur.
Hence,
when Vicki suggested that Judaism was the closest thing to atheism, I
was more than ready to agree. But what does this actually mean?
In
my understanding, Judaism is astonishingly based on reason rather
than faith. Pretty much everything in the Torah – the plagues, the
parting of the sea, the revelation at Sinai, the manna and all the
miracles – can all be understood equally profitably as
interpretation or as metaphor. Indeed, 800 years ago Maimonides
went so far as to insist that if something in the Torah appears to
conflict with what we know of natural law, the Torah has to be
reinterpreted as metaphor. To my way of thinking, Judaism requires
us to make but one real leap of faith: it requires that we believe
that somewhere – on the other side of the Big Bang – stands God
putting this all in motion; and that somehow He communicated this
truth to all of us. This is, to me, Judaism's one great claim on our
powers of belief. And if it is a claim that cannot be supported by
reason, it is, nevertheless, the claim that furnishes the reason to
our dearest hopes and darkest pains. Let me try and explain.
Judaism's
minimizing of the role of faith comes at a steep price. While the
notion of Olam Ha-Bah – the world to come, in which all the
righteous will have a share – is an important part of Judaism, its
actual nature and meaning is not a matter of religious doctrine but
rabbinic speculation. To put it quite simply, our Christian
neighbors have a more definite idea of what awaits them beyond the
grave then we do. This uncertainty, together with Judaism's natural
emphasis on this life, leaves the idea of salvation beyond the grave
very much an open question for us, and one which good and faithful
Jews can answer quite differently.
Judaism's
uncertainty about life after death has led to the canonization of two
remarkable books. Koheleth, better known as the Book of
Ecclesiastes, is in essence an extended exhortation to enjoy the
sensual pleasures that life has to offer, because what lies beyond
those pleasures is both unknowable and, perhaps, futility itself.
And the Book of Job is one innocent man's pained lament that
God is under no obligation to treat human beings according to their
just deserts.
And
that brings me to the message I wanted to share with you this evening
as we begin our High Holiday odyssey together. There has been much
pain in our congregation of late. Kathy Schacht's tragic loss of her
sister Mary Beth a couple of weeks ago was mirrored just just weeks
earlier when our prayer leader, our cantor Nancy Huber lost her
sister Sherry. This morning, almost unbelievably, I found myself
attending the funeral of the sister of another dear friend who also
died suddenly. Often times such tragedies strike at moments when a
person is most vulnerable – when life is already presenting them
with challenges enough. As I have done my inadequate best to help
these friends of mine in this terrible moments, my mind has drifted
back repeatedly to a single line in the Book of Job. Three
messengers come to tell Job of a series of horrible disasters that
have carried off all of his wealth. Then a fourth messenger comes to
bring him news of the deaths of all his children. The arrival of
each subsequent messenger is announced with the same words: zeh
m'daber v'zeh bah vayomar – this one was still talking when
this one came and said . . .
Our
worst nightmares conjured up in five words: zeh m'daber v'zeh bah
vayomar - this one was still busy upending my world, when this
one came and made it all so much worse. Personal tragedy is always a
challenge to our faith in a benign and benevolent God. But tragedy
upon tragedy is a challenge to our faith in justice, mercy and
ultimately, meaning. The Book of Job and, in its own way The
Book of Ecclesiastes, force us to face these challenges. That
Judaism has chosen to canonize these books – that it has taken such
honest confrontations with the greatest challenges to faith and
declared them holy – is testimony to my friend's assertion that
Judaism is the closest thing to atheism. And it has immeasurably
deepened my faith in my religion and my God.
Since
my younger daughter went off to college, an odd thing has happened in
my life. The alarm rings in the morning, I make Terri her breakfast
and she sets off for work. And I am left alone. Everything in my
life that I hold dearer then life itself is beyond my reach. I walk
into my office. I pull on my tallis, and I pray. I pray because as
a father and husband, that gnaw of anxiety for my wife and children
never leaves me. I pray because as a rabbi, I have promised my
prayers to a lot of people who are in pain, and I have seen what
comfort they gain from knowing someone cares enough to think about
them every day. I pray because as a man, I am conscious of the many
blessings in my life and I need to acknowledge them. But mostly, I
pray because, as a Jew, I am obligated to do so. It is that sense of
mitzvah – that sense of commandment – that fills my life with a
sense that behind it lies a purpose and meaning that goes beyond my
own pleasure and my own pain.
Zeh
m'daber v'zeh bah vayomar – after all the messengers had come
and had their say, after God further tested Job by inflicting him
with boils from head-to-foot and reducing him to scraping at his
sores with a shard of pottery – Job's wife comes to him and tells
him to curse God and die already. Job is incredulous: gam et
ha-tov n'kabeyl mai-ait ha-elohim, v'et ha-rah lo n'kabeyl he
asks. Can we receive only the good from God and not receive the bad?
I hear in Job's words something far deeper then the simple message
that we have to take the bad with the good. To me, he is saying that
without God, there is no bad or good and this pain that I feel, this
grief that I suffer is meaningless. God in His absolutely
unfathomable Will, can take everything from me. But so long as I
still have Him, I still have meaning. In that moment of ultimate
pain, such a message may seem of small comfort. In the constant
uncertainty that surrounds my life, and all of our lives, I am trying
to live as though that were the greatest comfort there can be.
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