Secular Jews and Religious Jews - Critique of Rabbi Eric Yoffie's Huffington Post Article

I was going to excoriate Rabbi Eric Yoffie for his comments about secular Jews in the attached article, but I won't.  Inspired by my friend Chana, who writes at The Merely Real, I am making an effort not to participate in a call-out culture that is fundamentally counterproductive to the projects of humanity and understanding.  Instead, in an effort to steel-man R' Yoffie's argument, I have tried to understand him to be calling for solidarity among progressive Jews.  R' Yoffie is the former head of the Union for Reform Judaism, and is invested in securing the Jewish future, and securing the voice of progressive Jews as a part of Jewish continuity.

NB: I do not subscribe to the binary of secular vs. religious.  Nor do I subscribe to the binary of atheist vs. religious.  In order to simplify my take on R' Yoffie's position and cultivate a charitable attitude toward his arguments, I am borrowing the binary of secular vs. religious for the sake of the below alone.  There are plenty of people who consider themselves secular who have deep religious sensibilities and vice versa.  Please also note that R' Yoffie equates atheism with secularism in his article.  Although I find that a much more problematic standpoint, I use the term secular below to denote secular atheist when not obvious from the context.

On the face of it, R' Yoffie argues that community involvement and cultural identification are tantamount to believing in God.  Perhaps he just didn't have the benefit of a great class on Durkheim's The Elementary Forms of Religious Life like I did, because he confuses what is holy with what is sacred.  Read the book for the background; I promise it's worth it.  Religious folks can learn much from the way secular folks and atheists revere religious spaces as sacred in the Durkheimian sense.  Secular folks view religious practices as set apart, or sacred.  They view cultural and national identities as important, like most people.  And they know that part of identity is not determined by them, but by the society around them.  Rather than fight against a Jewish identity, secular Jews claim the term Jew, almost better than their religious counterparts, because they choose to maintain a problematic, persecuted identity without believing that Mr. Deity will have their back.  Many secular Jews not only participate in Judaism through national, ethnic, and cultural identity but also through the system of ethics that comes out of what religious Jews see as religious Judaisms.  Of course, there are secular Jews who are assholes, but there are also religious Jews who are assholes.  R' Yoffie sees identification with the Jewish people as a form of belief in God because it takes strength and a belief that maintaining that identification, especially in the face of persecution, is important and more beneficial in the future.  But that belief is not equivalent to believing in a supreme being.  It is rather akin to the belief that the high probability that the earth will keep revolving around the sun and not spin off its orbit can be translated effectively to an always.  However, I digress.  And to get distracted by R' Yoffie's conflation of the two ideas is to miss the good point he could have made if he weren't so distracted by theology.

Judaism and Jewish culture are meant to be progressive.  If you don't believe me, ask my teacher, Rabbi Benay Lappe, who will gladly explain how radical the early rabbinic tradition was.  The ultra-orthodox voice in Judaism has a voice much bigger than its market share in America and Israel, the biggest centers of Jewish life.  Progressive religious Jews and progressive secular Jews should not see themselves as opposed but rather as a joint force against the coopting of a radically interpretive tradition by those who would like to see it stay static and oppressive.  R' Yoffie is right that secular Jews and progressive religious Jews aren't so different, but it isn't because secular Jews actually believe in God like religious Jews do.  It's because secular Jews act similarly and care about similar things as do progressive Jews.  The common view of mentschlichkeit and of viewing Judaism as valuable and meaningful beyond an all-or-nothing list of rules including not mixing wool and linen is something that progressive Jews, religious or secular, should unite in promoting.  Then will we be able to put our actions where our mouths are in terms of pluralism.

So, Rabbi Yoffie, if you were intending to deride the practice of secular Jews as inconsistent, recognize that inconsistency is part of the human condition.  But if your aim was to say that we need to talk about Judaism in all the ways it manifests, then I join you in saying:

יש יותר מדרך אחד להיות יהודי

Life of the Mind and Care of the Body

My alma mater, the University of Chicago, recently abolished its requirements for physical fitness, swimming competency, or physical education and swimming classes.  I'd say I don't like to play the nerdier-than-thou card or the back-in-my-day card, but I love to play them both, especially in conjunction with each other.  So, back in my day, when the University was actually filled with nerds, we were required to display physical competency and knowledge of swimming or to take courses (for no academic credit) in swimming and physical fitness or physical activities.  For my part, I passed the swim test, but took Conditioning and Yoga.  And the party line was that in order to cultivate the life of the mind, one must recognize that your mind is not a brain in a vat (or at least does not seem like one).  Rather, your mind is connected to your body, and learning to train your body helps your train your mind.  That party line is a good one because it's true.

John Boyer, perpetual Dean of the College, who has been elected to yet another term in the position, argues that the physical education requirement was not established until 1953 and never was associated with academic credit, so the abolishment of required courses (or testing out of them) is really preserving the overall character of the university.  Furthermore, offering a wider variety of voluntary courses is good for students.  However, this hides the athletic roots of the place, and ignores the truth that left to our own devices, we don't choose gym courses. The University was home to the finest coach in football history, Amos Alonzo Stagg, and the first Heisman Trophy winner, Jay Berwanger.  One of our most revered scholars, Edwin Hubble, was most known in his college days as a track star and a basketball champion.  A U of C - affliated astronaut brought a game ball with him on a mission to repair the athlete's namesake.  (http://www.nasa.gov/images/content/437780main_image_1629_946-710.jpg)  And before varsity sports were abolished in the College in 1939, the culture of athletics was so pervasive it was problematic.  Walking into Bartlett hall, you see the IM records of the early days of the university, and a banner "For the Glory of Manly Sports".  When the physical education requirement was established, enough time had passed for athletics to be missed on campus.  In fourteen years, complacency about the care of the body had afflicted the life of the mind.  Must we afflict the life of the mind again?

Reform Judaism and Obligation(s)

The Reform Movement in Judaism has wonderful discourse about a variety of topics, and fantastic justified pride in its discourse about some.  Reform Jews are great at discussing ethics, meaning, freedom, choice, and equality.  Reform Judaism has been involved in larger discussions of racism, sexism, and homophobia.  Reform congregations talk a good game about inclusion and welcoming interfaith families, Jews-by-choice, and same-gender couples.  But we do a horrible job about discussing personal and communal religious practice and obligations.

I grew up steeped in Reform Movement formal and informal education.  I learned that Reform Judaism is not bound by halakhah the way Orthodox and Conservative Judaisms are.  I learned that I get to choose my own religious observance level based on intellectual and emotional meaning in particular observance.  I learned that if I don't find a practice meaningful, I don't have to do it.  And I learned that this process is called "choice through knowledge."  This child-friendly naming of something I've since recognized as informed consent is a great slogan and gets people to learn about religious ritual and ideas in a way they would not experience otherwise.  However, this policy unchecked allows for moral relativism in a way that most Reform Jews would abhor.

I believe Reform Judaism as a whole and Reform Jews individually have a concept of right action.  I know I do, and sometimes I do things that are not personally meaningful or fulfilling because they are right or obligated.  And these may not have been things that I have chosen to do for myself through research and trial in previous situation.  And my religion on which I base my actions has no way of talking about that.

I call my parents once a week before Shabbat.  Sometimes, I want to talk to them, but mostly, I feel obligated to tell them once a week that I'm alive and not dead and listen to what's going on in their lives.  I wish them Shabbat Shalom, and I feel yotzei on the mitzvah of honoring my father and mother even when I don't find the practice meaningful or fulfilling.  By a rubric of informed consent, I know that talking to my parents, most of the time, will frustrate me.  But I do it anyway.  And the Reform Jewish framework has no term for this, even though the experience is a common one.

We need to be comfortable talking about obligation and obligations and being obligated even outside of a halakhicly-binding framework.  We cannot resign ourselves to be so morally relativistic we have no ground to stand on.  We need to be able to speak about actions that compel us to do them as well as actions we find compelling, and we need to have a philosophical viewpoint that means something other than hedonism.

Anyway, rant over.

Tisha B'av

Perhaps it is problematic that I associate Tisha B'av with haunting music and books - two of my favorite things.  But Eichah trope and other reflective music moves me.  At camp, we used the occasion of Tisha B'av to bury old unusable books with the tetragrammaton in a genizah.  The reverence for books in the Jewish tradition is one that my nerdy self also loves.  The pain of needing to dispose of a book as national pain was a wonderful lesson to learn as a child. Books are powerful and words have the capability to kill or to save lives.

On Tisha B'av, both Temples were destroyed.  Jews were expelled from England, France, Spain, and Portugal on the date.  World War I started on the date.  The rounding up of Jews into ghettos in Poland started on the date, and the deportation from the Warsaw ghetto also happened.  Whether some of these dates were actually on Tisha B'av is unknown, but the commemoration becomes a container for our anguish.

This Tisha B'av, I'm trying to recognize national and personal pain and also the hope of leaving that pain behind.  Tisha B'av starts a season of reflection, self-improvement, and t'shuvah, and we read at the end of Eicha a prayer for God to facilitate our process of t'shuvah.  I'm grateful that in the depths of our sadness, we have hope of a better world.

Memory

Memory is a funny thing, and I feel like I've been stuck in it all day.  Memories of my love have been swirling around me and popping up, and her brother asked me when I was going to stop being weird.  I was hanging out with some friends today to avoid spending all day alone in my apartment, and one was talking about James Taylor, so I mentioned that our song was "You Can Close Your Eyes."  I remembered her singing it to me for so long before I picked up on why she was doing it.  When I realized it, I felt stupid.

When today has been too much for me, I've tried visualizing the Beit Teva at Tzofim at OSRUI in my head.  It is the place I sought refuge at camp whenever I needed to.  I'm trying to see myself sitting on a stump surrounded by woods, with fewer mosquitos, of course.  And trying to get to that refuge in my head has helped when I feel like I need to escape.