If I was forced at gun point to choose a religious order, it would probably be either Judaism or the Jesuits. Only because they honor learning as opposed to the evangelicals who claim only to take the Bible literally (which is a lie, for they cherry pick what they like and ignore the rest. If they followed the Bible literally most of the money they make would go into helping the poor and not into big houses for its rich preachers.)
But this learning entails questioning everything and questioning leads to leaving the leap of faith behind. James Joyce left the Jesuits. His commitment to truth and art (and sex) lead him to literature instead of the Eucharist. Noah Feldman writes of his slight excommunication from modern Jewish Orthodoxy in a superb article in the New York Times magazine.
Feldman married someone outside of the fold and for that he was taken out of the school reunion picture and his accomplishments are never recorded in the alumni newsletter. Small matters indeed, but Feldman questions it, analyzes it and ends up with more questions than answers, which is in accordance with his religious teachings.
What he ends up with is the dichotomy that haunts every religious person: how can I resolve my belief in outdated religious writing and live in a modern world? We see this battle with varying levels of failure. The radical Muslims, who want to institute Sharia law and repress women, retard science and technology and destroy non-believers, will lose this battle. You cannot return to a medieval state in a modern world. All you will do is increase suffering. The evangelicals, as Feldman points out, oppose stem cell research and push for creationism.
Feldman brings several interesting examples of trying to straddle Orthodox Judaism and contemporary life. They seem like failures of living in the modern world to me. For instance in the kosher diet:
The dietary laws of kashrut are designed to differentiate and distance the observant person from the rest of the world… The category of the unkosher comes unconsciously to apply not only to foods that fall outside the rules but also to the people who eat that food — which is to say, almost everyone in the world, whether Jewish or not. You cannot easily break bread with them, but that is not all. You cannot, in a deeper sense, participate with them in the common human activity of restoring the body through food.
Another example is when a doctor, who was visiting Feldman’s school, stated that he would save a non-Jewish person on the Sabbath not because of keeping the peace with the gentiles but because he was a human being deserving medical attention:
This appealing sentiment did not go unchallenged. One of my teachers rose to suggest that the doctor’s attitude was putting him in danger of violating the Torah…if…you intended to save the patient out of universal morality, then you were in fact guilty of violating the Sabbath, because the motive for acting was not the motive on the basis of which the rabbis allowed the Sabbath violation to occur.
Later, in class, the teacher apologized to us students for what he said to the doctor. His comments, he said, were inappropriate — not because they were wrongheaded, but because non-Jews were present in the audience when he made them. The double standard of Jews and non-Jews, in other words, was for him truly irreducible: it was not just about noting that only Jewish lives merited violation of the Sabbath, but also about keeping the secret of why non-Jewish lives might be saved. To accept this version of the tradition would be to accept that the modern Orthodox project of engagement with the world could not proceed in good faith.
Which leads me to wonder, when one does engage with the world, does one have to cast off certain religious principles? The answer is yes, if the principle is one of exclusion. Exclusion is more than just not treating the goyim or eating kosher, it’s also viewing unbelievers as beneath you, such as when a Catholic believes the apostate will go to hell, or a Muslim thinks exposing a woman’s face as sinful. The price for modernity is to let people be.
Of course the reason people are religious is comfort. To belong is a treasured feeling. Feldman talks of the joy when reading the Book of Esther with is children. But in belonging, you need to set rules and exclude those who don’t conform, just as Feldman and his children are excluded from the newsletter. And that leads to sorrow. Feldman married out of love, I assume. To leave the Orthodox religion when he could have easily married a nice Jewish girl certainly points to romantic choice. But he obviously feels conflicted. And what about homosexuals who are excluded from the start? Do these people have to suffer for an outdated religious belief?
Feldman acknowledges, correctly I believe, that we live in contradictory lives. We are paradoxical men and women. And religion is not going to go away. Some of us must straddle that line between ancient beliefs and modern living. Just don’t think you’re outdated beliefs will rule over me.
But this learning entails questioning everything and questioning leads to leaving the leap of faith behind. James Joyce left the Jesuits. His commitment to truth and art (and sex) lead him to literature instead of the Eucharist. Noah Feldman writes of his slight excommunication from modern Jewish Orthodoxy in a superb article in the New York Times magazine.
Feldman married someone outside of the fold and for that he was taken out of the school reunion picture and his accomplishments are never recorded in the alumni newsletter. Small matters indeed, but Feldman questions it, analyzes it and ends up with more questions than answers, which is in accordance with his religious teachings.
What he ends up with is the dichotomy that haunts every religious person: how can I resolve my belief in outdated religious writing and live in a modern world? We see this battle with varying levels of failure. The radical Muslims, who want to institute Sharia law and repress women, retard science and technology and destroy non-believers, will lose this battle. You cannot return to a medieval state in a modern world. All you will do is increase suffering. The evangelicals, as Feldman points out, oppose stem cell research and push for creationism.
Feldman brings several interesting examples of trying to straddle Orthodox Judaism and contemporary life. They seem like failures of living in the modern world to me. For instance in the kosher diet:
The dietary laws of kashrut are designed to differentiate and distance the observant person from the rest of the world… The category of the unkosher comes unconsciously to apply not only to foods that fall outside the rules but also to the people who eat that food — which is to say, almost everyone in the world, whether Jewish or not. You cannot easily break bread with them, but that is not all. You cannot, in a deeper sense, participate with them in the common human activity of restoring the body through food.
Another example is when a doctor, who was visiting Feldman’s school, stated that he would save a non-Jewish person on the Sabbath not because of keeping the peace with the gentiles but because he was a human being deserving medical attention:
This appealing sentiment did not go unchallenged. One of my teachers rose to suggest that the doctor’s attitude was putting him in danger of violating the Torah…if…you intended to save the patient out of universal morality, then you were in fact guilty of violating the Sabbath, because the motive for acting was not the motive on the basis of which the rabbis allowed the Sabbath violation to occur.
Later, in class, the teacher apologized to us students for what he said to the doctor. His comments, he said, were inappropriate — not because they were wrongheaded, but because non-Jews were present in the audience when he made them. The double standard of Jews and non-Jews, in other words, was for him truly irreducible: it was not just about noting that only Jewish lives merited violation of the Sabbath, but also about keeping the secret of why non-Jewish lives might be saved. To accept this version of the tradition would be to accept that the modern Orthodox project of engagement with the world could not proceed in good faith.
Which leads me to wonder, when one does engage with the world, does one have to cast off certain religious principles? The answer is yes, if the principle is one of exclusion. Exclusion is more than just not treating the goyim or eating kosher, it’s also viewing unbelievers as beneath you, such as when a Catholic believes the apostate will go to hell, or a Muslim thinks exposing a woman’s face as sinful. The price for modernity is to let people be.
Of course the reason people are religious is comfort. To belong is a treasured feeling. Feldman talks of the joy when reading the Book of Esther with is children. But in belonging, you need to set rules and exclude those who don’t conform, just as Feldman and his children are excluded from the newsletter. And that leads to sorrow. Feldman married out of love, I assume. To leave the Orthodox religion when he could have easily married a nice Jewish girl certainly points to romantic choice. But he obviously feels conflicted. And what about homosexuals who are excluded from the start? Do these people have to suffer for an outdated religious belief?
Feldman acknowledges, correctly I believe, that we live in contradictory lives. We are paradoxical men and women. And religion is not going to go away. Some of us must straddle that line between ancient beliefs and modern living. Just don’t think you’re outdated beliefs will rule over me.
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