Religious Faith

You Don’t Need God To Be Jewish

Are you there, God? Its me, Yehudis.
Are you there, God? It's me, Yehudis.

This is the topic of much debate when Jews decide they don’t believe in God. Can’t Jews be atheists, non-theists or anti-theists? Is there a discriminatory principle according to which Jews cannot not believe in a supernatural power, just like Jews once could not own property or hold certain jobs? Don’t Jews have absolute liberty of thought like everyone else?

Most people would say yes, of course they do, but once they stop believing in God (if they ever did) they thereby stop being Jews. Baloney. Here’s an example of what I’m trying to convey:

I’m on vacation in Virginia, where I went to college. Whenever I’m in the States I watch a good amount of television in order to tap back into the lifeblood of my countrymen and women. My sister’s television has six-hundred channels, and when I get tired of giggling at Fox News and ogling the Food Network I go channel surfing until I hit the Good News stations. Every evening I watch as faith healers knock down their congregations in the spirit of Jesus, heal blindness, exorcise demons and rearrange human bones in living bodies–all on television. Of course, I don’t believe a word of it, and neither should you. Tonight I even heard a preacher tell the devil to leave his congregation’s bank accounts alone. No shit. This is unbelievable stuff–not the least bit supernatural, but still kind of incredible.

There’s even a Jewish life channel (called, imaginatively, Jewish Life). By the above-stated rule that Jews are defined by their belief in a supernatural God (curiously, not the same one that defines Christians and Muslims), one would expect Jewish Life to be full of programs about Hasidism, Kabbalah, Talmud-Torah, or whatever might interest Jewish believers. Well, tonight I jotted down what they broadcasted in the three-or-so hours I was watching while flipping back and forth between the televangelists. Here’s what I saw: a concert clip by Israeli singer Shlomo Artzi, a documentary on Birobidzhan, an endorsement for a Jewish outreach network, and some arbitrary footage of Israeli life: windsurfing on Lake Kinneret, Tel Aviv by night, Masada and people walking, praying and looking generally suspicious in Jerusalem. Add to this last night’s documentary on the Exodus (the ship, not the book), and so far not a measly mention of the man upstairs on an entirely Jewish television network.

I don’t wish to make prophecies. I don’t know if the Jewish people can survive the next three-thousand years if they were all miraculously to go secular. Then again, I don’t know if any of us will survive that long. I doubt such a scenario is possible–though it may be desirable. I am making a case in the here and now for the Jews as a people with a very complex historical identity, of which the Jewish religion plays a significant–but not dominant–role.

You don’t need God to be Jewish.

Meanwhile, These People Are Insane

From The Jerusalem Post:

Thousands of haredim took to the streets of Jerusalem on Saturday evening, in violent protests against the Karta parking lot in the capital opening on Shabbat to accommodate Old City tourists.

According to initial reports, rocks were thrown and policemen trying to disperse crowds were pushed and shoved. Crowds of haredim also tried to break into the parking lot.

The protesters, demonstrating in the main haredi neighborhood of Jerusalem, Mea She’arim, claim to be pained by the desecration of Shabbat. Many of the ultra-orthodox Jews were apparently chanting, “Shabbat desecrators will die,” and vowed to hold further demonstrations next week.

Eyewitnesses said that protesters had formed a human chain to prevent police from dispersing crowds, while police set up road blocks around the area.

In similar protests last weekend, 57 haredim were arrested for disturbing the peace, according to Jerusalem Police spokesman Shmuel Ben-Ruby. The detainees were taken to the city’s Russian Compound jail, where they were held overnight until their remand hearing the following day.

I hope God doesn’t read my blog. It’s still shabbos in Rome.

p.s. It’s hard to tell from the article if “Saturday evening” is still technically shabbos.The article was updated at 8:05 (Israeli time) this evening, which is less than one hour ago by my watch.It’s still light out in Rome. So weren’t the haredi themselves desecrating the sanctity of shabbat with their inane rock-throwing? Or did they find some talmudic loophole through which to crawl?

The End of Faith by Sam Harris

In a publishing universe saturated with an onslaught of books arguing vociferously both for and against religion, Harris’s view stands out because it rails not just against God, but against faith itself. And not only against the faith of extremists, but that of religious moderates, who Harris snubs as unfaithful yet unwilling to abandon faith.

So-called moderates actually function, according to Harris, as padding for religious extremists, making the latter untouchable by the tenets of modern critical discourse. We live in a world where everything is debatable and deflatable except religious belief. Sam Harris asks why.

A belief, Harris argues, is “a lever that, once pulled, moves almost everything else in a person’s life.” Thus one who believes that 72 virgins await him in heaven if he murders a bunch of Israelis in a pizzeria is propelled by his belief to do what for a skeptic in his position would be unthinkable. Harris follows this logic to its natural conclusion, outlining many of the familiar proofs along the way: the inconsistency of scripture with itself, the incompatibility of “revealed religions” with each other in an increasingly volatile world, the societal evolution of morality and the pursuit of happiness as humankind’s ultimate goal.

Harris lets nobody off the hook, except perhaps the Jain, as they are extremists only in non-violent tendencies. Christianity and Islam are the primary culprits, as both are religions based on revelation, ultimate truth and the promise of heaven (and hell). Judaism receives a lighter treatment, partially due to its historical inability to inflict much damage on its self-declared taskmasters.

The writing throughout is precise, the book is well-sourced and the arguments are convincing. The last chapter examines whether spiritual experiences are attainable in ways divorced from dogma. Hint: read the footnotes.

Published in The American

Have They Really Found St. Paul?

Pope Benedict XVI thinks so.

Back in 2006, MSNBC published a piece about the excavation of St. Paul’s tomb beneath the homonymous basilica in Rome:

Vatican archaeologists have unearthed a sarcophagus believed to contain the remains of the Apostle Paul, buried beneath Rome’s second-largest basilica.

The sarcophagus, which dates at least as far back as A.D. 390, has been the subject of an extended excavation that began in 2002 and was completed last month, the project’s head said this week.

So why is the pope chiming in only now about the veracity of these “findings?” Because today is a big holiday here in the Eternal City. It’s St. Peter & Paul’s Day, the city’s Catholic patriarchs, on the liturgical calendar.

Listen to the pope’s “scientific proof” that the remains are actually Paul’s:

…human bone fragments going back to the first or second century, red incense powder and linen cloth. “This–Pope Benedict XVI declared–seems to confirm the unanimous and unopposed tradition the what we have here are the remains of the apostle Paul.”

So of all the human folk living in Rome in the first few centuries CE, the presence of incense and linen absolutely and incontrovertibly indicates that these are the bones of Saul of Tarsus, or Paul the Apostle? How did they narrow it down? Oh, it’s because they have always maintained that this was the case, which is usually how the Vatican ratifies its miracles. Outrageous, unfounded claims about history and the nature of the universe, fake skepticism and the dispatching of Vatican “officials”, then unopposable “proof” of the miracle or relic in question. Then, alas, a sanctuary and the opening of a tchotchke shop selling plastic replicas of holy relics.

The great irony here is that the Vatican feels the need to back up its claims with science. Otherwise, they realize very few people would be stupid enough to fall for this mishaguss. After all, we aren’t living in the Middle Ages any longer.

Are we??

Boxing Christopher Hitchens

Shmuley Boteach has a worthy rebuttal to Christopher Hitchens in today’s JPost.

As far as the New Atheist lawfirm Hitchens, Harris, Dawkins and Dennett goes, the one I’ve always been half-hearted about is Hitchens. He is an excellent writer, and it is hard not to be persuaded by him, but sometimes he comes out with such screeds that you just want to say, “Stick a sock in it, Hitch!”

Then again, free speech is to be defended.

And I believe Shmuley Boteach would agree.

Chain Mail

We call them chain letters. In Italy they’re referred to as “St. Anthony’s letters”, and I’m sure there’s a perfectly good explanation as to why (but I don’t know it). They arrive at your inbox, usually with a subject like, “URGENT: READ AND PASS ON” or “THIS EMAIL WILL CHANGE YOUR LIFE.” Then there is the ubiquitous promise that if you send said message to five ten twenty-five fifty people, good fortune will befall you. Or at least you will have a nice day.

Today’s message reads, “The most beautiful email you will ever read.” Then it goes on to postulate a very probable situation: you are driving home in your car. On the radio you hear of a death on the other side of the world, but you think nothing of it. The next day you hear of more deaths, still far away but closer than before. Suddenly it appears an epidemic is threatening your country–and with it, the entire world. There is only one answer: create a vaccine that can be used to cure the sick. But, since almost everyone is infected and dropping like flies, good blood is hard to come by. Finally, they find someone with the kind of untainted blood they need, and he is your son. You are asked to choose: either humanity extinguishes itself as we know it from a preventable disease, or you authorize the doctors to draw your son’s blood–all of it–for the necessary vaccine to save the world. It is a question of child sacrifice. I think you can see where this is leading.

The tale ends with a tear-jerker: Would you be able to turn your son over to the doctors, while he cries, “Mommy, daddy, why are you abandoning me?”

OK, you get the point. The parents authorize the doctors to drain their son of blood, vaccinating all of humankind (yeah, sure) against the horrible virus, but the people of the world are too caught up in their own lives to notice the selfless sacrifice. The parents cry out: “Our son died for you! Don’t you care?!”

And then the little story dips into the real message: “God sacrificed his son for you! And you don’t care!!”

Man, do I dislike chain letters.