As a leader of a liberal religious movement, I spend much of my time fighting the forces of religious fundamentalism in my own tradition. An epic battle between fundamentalist religion and progressive religion is raging in America and throughout the world; it is found in Christianity, Islam and Judaism. In the last few months in particular I have been consumed with a struggle, played out on many fronts, with those in the Jewish community who oppose modernity, resist reason, and reject as inauthentic the progressive religious values that I espouse.
At times like this -- in fact, especially at times like this -- I find myself searching for common threads that bind me to those who are known as ultra-Orthodox or Haredi ("God fearing") Jews. I find myself asking: What do I admire in those whose Jewish practice and belief are, in so many ways, radically different from my own?
I am not impressed by the fervor and apparent simplicity of their faith. For me, faith involves a complicated and difficult battle to overcome doubt; faith that is not filled with struggle is not faith at all. Neither am I impressed by their devotion to their religious leaders; this is a devotion that, in my eyes, often comes perilously close to replacing the worship of God with the worship of man.
But I am deeply impressed by the community building and mutual caring that I find in the Haredi world. I am struck by the sense of religious obligation that leads them to respond to those in their midst who are in distress. I see how promptly they reach out to community members who are ill, or in mourning, or have experienced a family tragedy. The ultra-Orthodox do not wait for the government to respond or for a social service agency to act. They have established institutions of their own, and what these bodies are unable to do is done by the extended family, or by neighbors, or by the synagogue. The alienation of modern life that eats away at our spiritual wellbeing and our sense of wholeness has, in large measure, passed over the ultra-Orthodox world.
I don't mean to suggest that only the ultra-Orthodox are engaged in these good works. Liberal and progressive Jews also embrace the needy in their midst. Our congregations are better than they have ever been, and they often succeed in creating an organic sense of living community. Nonetheless, as head of a large liberal movement, I am troubled by the stories that reach my desk of liberal Jews who sit home alone on the Sabbath or on a Jewish holiday, who suffer in silence from a personal loss, or who feel isolated and abandoned despite their synagogue affiliation. Being thoroughly modern, our congregations must balance caring and human concern with respect for the privacy, independence, and individuality of our members. Getting that balance right, we have learned, is far from easy.
In short, there are things that we have to learn from the ultra-Orthodox about living community.
But, then again, there are many things that they have to learn from us. And chief among them is our insistence that caring, compassion and justice must be extended not only to our own narrow group, but to all Jews and to all humankind. This is an effort that is required by the sacred teachings of our tradition. Rashi, the great medieval Biblical commentator, points out that Moses told the spies, about to be dispatched to the Land of Canaan, that if they saw the inhabitants of the land living in walled cities, it was proof that they were weak. If they lived in open cities, they were strong. The ultra-Orthodox, with rare exceptions, do not understand the importance of being open to the world, and we do.
Who knows? Despite the vast differences between us, perhaps there are things that the liberals and the fundamentalists can learn from each other.
Frank Schaeffer: God vs. Women
Some women and of course plenty of men subscribe to the nutty anti-woman religious view held by fundamentalists. You'd think women wouldn't go for this stuff or this "God." But that's not the case.
Jewish fundamentalism - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Jews and Fundamentalism - Samuel C. Heilman
Confessions of a Jewish Fundamentalist - Torah.org
Jewish Fundamentalism? - Jewish Identity
Jewish fundamentalism (Israeli religious movement) -- Britannica ...
Fundamentalist Jews Attack Funeral of Rabbi Moshe Hirsch ...
Some conservatives are able to find commonality with people of different identity-groups (English speakers with Spanish speakers, Christians with Muslims and Buddhists, etc) and identify with a larger group of "all humans" (and then God help the non-human world). Some liberals are able to recognize the importance of allowing an individual to have and preserve their own group identity, and the strength that strong identity-groups provide for the entire community. The greatest need we all have is the humility to accept that we all need each other, and sometimes the other guy is right.
Rabbi Yoffie's statement regarding faith especially resonates with me. As Jews, struggling with God is essential.
We live in an era that God's relevance is being challenged. And maybe that means as believers we need to something more than just feed the hungry and be moral. Even atheists can do that. Perhaps we are all, liberal and conservative, being asked to discover just what spiritual power and understanding of God offers us all.
Even when one doubts something for the sake of it, or doubts a new concept - it is the implied faith in the older concept which makes one doubt. So I don't talk of this phony doubt. I talk of a doubt which makes man deny all constructs of mind through understanding and putting away, not through blind faith in something else.
What I am saying is there may be no such thing as truth. All that our philosophical questions may not be actual questions at all. They may be merely answers given by others which we have accepted, and now we are on a quest to verify the answers. This is the nature of mind, so solve problems, the mind is incapable of seeing that the problems are actually planted by the mind (over millions of years), this incapability of the mind to perceive this fact is made worse by additional ideas about faith.
I have no knowledge of truth, but my actions are based on its existence. isn't that the root of all confusion, confusion between what is and what I imagine it to be.
Fundamentalists are *inherently *unfair.* *
lovely sentiment, rarely adheared to here.
And so the seeds of doubt are planted in the minds of children, through not just the scriptures/writings, but the doctrines and rituals. Gardners of suffering. Scriptures and doctrines, and rituals of hopelessness, insanity, obsessive compulsive disorders. And, when they become obsessive, or hopeless, or insane, first blame them for lack of faith, laziness, eh? Of course that shames them, and so the vicious cycle continues. Wow. Aren't you the good guy.
"Liberal and progressive Jews also embrace the needy in their midst."
And? They helped create them. I suppose it could be said that they needed something to do in their spare time, eh? No kudo's from me.
Abusive, or the truth hurts?
Get a grip on the truth. How many degrees of separation do you think exists between struggle and suffer? A broken hip, a black eye, a stoning, a lynching, a crucifixion, more crucifixions, wars, rumors of wars, Holocausts. On and on it goes. "Keep the faith", eh? Struggle, suffer; teach it, preach it, call it God, good for the soul. Allow the insanity of patriarch religions to thrive.
If that is what liberal or progressive Jews, Christians, Muslims Buddhists, etc are.............no thank you. You won't get no pats on your back off mine. No kudo's from me.
And who are you saying created the needy? Again your comment is unclear. Certainly all communities, be they religious or not, have people who are in financial straits and physical pain and disability. And people depressed by the loss of a loved one. In short, what exactly is your point.
including pushing prayer in schools, demanding the allegiance WITH "one nation under god," lobbying for religious laws (including legislation that would have made 2010 the year of the (Christian) bible), trying to place Christian religious symbols on government-owned land, over indulging in their tax-free status, recruiting and training little known political candidates with strong conservative leanings and even stronger religious beliefs to release religious-based laws clearly against the Constitution (think George Bush, Jr., or Jan Brewer), operating shill organizations to funnel campaign and special interest monies, THE FAMILY, ..you name it.
I feel as much for a fundamentalist as I do for a piece of grass.
The whole point of evolving past what is only good for you or only for your particular tribe is in fact the point of acquiring a set of spiritual beliefs. Anyone should be motivated to help their own - it is in their own best interest. That is a very low bar. To allow yourself to empathize with those not like you- to be able to allow more than just your tribe to be "human" to you, is a harder, voluntary task. No one can make you do that. The world becomes "more evil" or "more loving" as YOU add the love, you don't add the love.
Fundamentalism is not based on reason. It is a set of prescribed beliefs in search of proof for what is already a belief, so the believer in that set of beliefs is not persuaded by facts- he or she finds facts that suit the belief. The writer of the article was trying to find common ground between these approaches.
We know that the civilization that we now experience is a revision of simple groupishness, where openness to the other and trade and commingling of learned technology is the driver of our ubiquity upon the earth. The isolated tribal man is invariably "backward", not in thought or deed or morality, but in the capacity to accumulate technology. The ability of the human brain to consider the "what if", and not just the "what is", transforms life on earth. But objectively the groupish man is no better or worse than the technological man. Since he does not have an atomic bomb to kill his enemies, but only a spear, then perhaps he is better. The universe only cares that we replicate.
The tendency for primates to separate into "group" and "other" is so basic that psychologist have been unable to create experiments with a "control group" that doesn't have it--the instant you separate humans into groups, "our" group is better than "theirs"! The progress of humanity is not "the elimination of groupishness" -- it is the process of smaller groups being incorporated into bigger groups. We can be loyal to our own family and also see our family and other families as part of the same neighborhood; our neighborhood and others as part of the same town; our town and others as part of the same country; our country and others as part of the same world.
It is easier for liberals to make a place in our worldview for fundamentalists than it is for fundamentalists to make a place in their world for us--so we're going to have to be the first to do it. If we want them to ever be able to do it, we have to demonstrate that it can be done.
They do not believe in multiple ways - they do not support diversity - they will outlaw those that do not believe they way they feel if allowed.
By this definition, since Judaism frowns upon proselytizing people of other religions, there are hardly any fundamentalist Jews.