Question

To Rabbi Michael Abraham
Hello,
I am a kollel fellow (27) from Jerusalem. I read your books eagerly (Kurzatt + 3), and I feel that you are an appropriate address for my thoughts.
I spend a lot of time thinking about Jewish beliefs and ideas. Over the years I’ve formed positions on many of these issues, and I felt whole, understanding, and identified with the world in which I live and act.
Recently, a more general and broader thought came up and took shape for me. On the one hand it is superficial and does not come to ask for specific explanations, but on the other hand I feel it is far more dramatic and many times more critical. It comes to examine the rationale behind the whole enterprise.
I’m writing this דווקא at a stage when I have no concrete questions, precisely when I have all the answers and excuses in hand. Now I’m trying to stand to the side and examine the whole business from an overall, not focused, perspective.
 
My feeling lately is that for a Jew in the 2000s, religion is completely disconnected from his personality and emotions, if he understands it rationally. Because our whole life, our whole way of thinking, simply does not walk hand in hand with the “atmosphere” of the Torah, with its structure.
One could go on at length about every single detail, every commandment; I’ll include here, by way of example only, a few general points.
We do not look at ISIS people as two-legged beasts because they believe something different from us, but because we truly do not think killing is a way of life—even as measure for measure against someone who killed. All the more so, we are incapable of thinking that a person who lit a match on the Sabbath deserves to be stoned to death. And not only in the “serious” matters—even in the “light” ones, we do not live in a way that if someone skipped one letter in reciting the Shema he has not fulfilled his obligation. We are capable of understanding this as “religion,” capable of explaining it—“morality is relative,” “the commandments were given only to refine people.” Fine. But in no other area of life do we live this way, and therefore it will never be part of us. Maybe once people also behaved this way in everyday life, but for a Jew in 2016 this is a religion completely detached from life, from day-to-day existence.
We can recite again and again that we believe in the Messiah and await him, but the ones who really believe that are those who never tried to think. Someone who believes this is clearly detached from reality. No one lives in any other area of his life with the feeling or hope that suddenly the heavens will open and everything will change. We go on with business as usual not because of a “lack” of faith, but because no one really thinks something is going to change. In my opinion there is no one who truly believes in the coming of the Messiah; there are people who say they believe.
Trust in God and human effort are the refuge of the desperate. Anyone who has something he can do to set his life in order in any area will do it. Only when you’ve finished doing everything in your power—or when there is nothing at all you can do—do you “hang onto” faith. “If you walk in My statutes—and I will give…” is a slogan completely disconnected from our lives. And again, not because of a “lack” of faith. We truly and sincerely live and believe in a world without miracles and without shortcuts. If there is something you can do, that is what will help. If there isn’t, you can pray—you certainly won’t lose by it.
“With God’s help” and “God will help” are no more than lip service for all of us. If you or someone you know can help, then do it. Only when the doctors throw up their hands do we begin to “really” pray. And no, it’s not that only now we “remembered” the Holy One, blessed be He, but that now it really is the only thing left to do. Maybe once people believed there were things in the world that happened “on their own”—stars, spirits, and gods. Today you can grasp this only as “religion,” never as “life.” Is there anyone for whom the phrase “Behold, the Guardian of Israel neither slumbers nor sleeps” or “Unless the Lord guards the city…” is more than an empty mantra? Does anyone feel safe when he is not standing behind a fully armed soldier, or behind a developed army deployed around the whole country???
Human nature causes us to cling to the unknown. Most of the world believes in “something,” believes and hopes that suddenly things will be good. But we will never succeed in turning that into more than hope. We will never really manage to think that prayers are effective. We simply do not live that way. Nothing in our world moves because of prayers. Only once upon a time did the anger and joy of the gods control the weather….
And again, it’s important for me to clarify the point. I know the answers very well: “Prayer is not give-and-take but only a declaration of beliefs,” “God does not oversee everyone, only individuals,” “He does not always have to help and human effort is needed,” and so on and so on. I’m not speaking on the micro level but precisely on the macro level. Fine, we managed to arrange everything with rational explanations—but the final feeling, of everything together, of this whole pile of “rationales,” is that all of this is disconnected from our lives, that we act, live, and believe in completely different things.
How can one go on with the clichés of “the chosen people,” of “reward and punishment,” of “in every generation they rise against us to destroy us and He saves us from their hand,” when whole ages of history shatter before your eyes? We surrounded ourselves with quantities of excuses and apologetics: “to deduct his reward from the World to Come,” “to increase his reward,” “to destroy us” specifically He does not permit, “exile,” “hiding of the divine face,” and so on and so on (and even when everything is over—“the gates of excuses have not been locked,” of course…). Bottom line, I feel that if someone offered us such a deal in any other area of life, trying to convince us that everything works out in the deal and is nicely whitewashed—we would simply throw him down the stairs. You won’t sell us such nonsense; we believe in other things…. This is really not meant to prove that it isn’t true, but it does prove that we will never manage to make it part of us, part of our intellect.
What exactly are we relying on—on a few hundred years in the days of David and Solomon? There is not a nation in the world that did not enjoy a similar chapter of prosperity and peace somewhere in its history. Is that the proof of a chosen people and divine favor???. Here too, as everywhere, one can philosophize and make excuses, but if in another area of life you wouldn’t buy it, then it simply isn’t you. It’s a detached faith.
How can one continue yearning for “return to Zion in mercy,” when all this “Zion,” the whole Temple and the sacrifices, seem to us like something taken from another planet….
 
So far, that is from the side of someone who understands and agrees with everything, but feels that all of it is completely detached from his life.
And now to the other side of the same coin.
 
So fine—we succeeded in building ourselves a Judaism on the basis of a few successful Maimonideses, a few Leibowitzes, and we even found support in some contexts from the Ari, the Vilna Gaon, and the Chazon Ish. Look—even the mainstream thinks like us.
Hand on heart, the overwhelming majority of Jews and sages throughout the generations at all times did not think that way. Rather, they believed that the Hebrew Bible spoke literally, that the Sages believed and were right in what they said and that all their words were to be taken literally, that God helps His people and always saves us from their hands, that if you pray things will be good, and also that if you say one mundane word in the middle of Hallel you may find yourself outside the Garden of Eden. A simple and sincere reading of the Hebrew Bible, and especially the book of Psalms, leads you to think that everything is simple and understandable without any strained excuses and apologetics: if you pray it will be good, if you ask you will receive, and the life of the Jew is many times better than that of the gentile.
I am not proving from this that the position we built for ourselves is not the correct one. Newton and Einstein too were at first in a minority position. I’m only trying to step aside and examine the whole enterprise again. Earlier we spoke about how it is not part of us; now I wonder: if you see that nothing written there happens, and that nothing fits, and that if this is the thesis then everything already exploded long ago—then maybe instead of putting plaster here and here and here, perhaps we should answer in Abravanel’s style: “one answer by which all the questions will be removed”….
Maybe those same answers and explanations can also be shoved into Christianity and Islam. And if it is obvious to us that that is not what the poet meant there, why is the opposite obvious to us here? If you read the Hebrew Bible and get a certain impression, and read the words of the Sages and get a certain impression, then if it looks like a duck and talks like a duck, it is a duck—and not a monkey in costume. Maybe we went too far and “created” something, and with a sober look we would find the coin under the lamppost. And if it doesn’t work, maybe that is simply because it is not true???.
Earlier I noted that you would never sign such a deal, and that shows you do not live that way. Now I wonder whether that very fact does not also prove that you do not believe in it. True, we found excuses for everything; my feeling is that these are “local” excuses, and from a bird’s-eye view of this whole limping enterprise, a realistic person would have no doubt what to believe.
And personally, it is specifically you I want to ask. You keep proving that not everything in our world is proven and scientific; there are things that you simply “feel” (for example, that you are living and acting and not caught in a dream…). You called this “syntheticity.” That is true regarding the basic feeling of most people that there is “something,” but you did not speak about the platform Judaism built on that. I want to say that the natural tendency, or the synthetic feeling, is actually the opposite of that. Maybe everything is rational in principle, but practically speaking, this is completely not how the heart feels. The feeling indicates that the opposite is true.
[As an aside: from one matter to a related matter. People are used to answering the question “Where was God in the Holocaust,” but I think there is a basic failure in all the answers. Because as a philosophical question it obviously has answers, but those embittered Jews who abandoned their religion never philosophized. Their feeling was one of pure “syntheticity.” True, there are answers, but our feeling as those who experienced the event is that these are “excuses.” Those people simply felt that it was out of place to go on singing “for Your mercies are not exhausted” or “the kindnesses of the Lord are not ended, His mercies are not spent”….]
Breslov Hasidim believe that all abundance comes through Rabbi Nachman, and whoever binds himself to him merits it. For some reason, the sub-sector with the lowest socioeconomic conditions in the Haredi sector is Breslov Hasidim. True, one can come up with excuses—but maybe it is more correct to say that this proves it is all nonsense. Aren’t we in exactly the same boat???.
 
I want to summarize the two claims.
The first claim is that even if one accepts everything, the only possible way to live with it would be either in a “Leibowitzian” way—that is, Judaism over here and life over there—or in the classic “Haredi” way: simply not to think (“naivete,” as they say in the vernacular). In my opinion neither option is correct, and aside from that, anyone who reads the Hebrew Bible literally, and the book of Psalms in particular, cannot think that this is what the poet meant. The more realistic option would be to choose one of the two: religion or life….
The second claim is that maybe this itself is proof of the falsehood of the whole matter—not philosophical proof, proof that can also be refuted, but “synthetic” proof. If we live and think so differently, why pile this apologetic burden on us, instead of simply looking reality in the eye….
 
 
I would be glad to receive an answer