Q&A: Religious Experience Rather Than Religion
Religious Experience Rather Than Religion.
Question
Hello Rabbi Michi!
Lately there have been annoying changes in the family.
My religiosity is very, very cold in that way—more facts and Jewish law, and less… all the things Garbuz hates. More of the “Heh” in the Laws of the Foundations of the Torah.
Now my family is more into amulets and blessings from rabbis and specifically going to selichot at the Western Wall, and of course all those rabbis who give lectures are supreme seraphs, erelim, and tarshishim. You know, when it’s something kind of Garbuz-like. It’s something really, really foreign to me, and it’s very hard for me to understand why people sleep on the Sabbath and don’t read books (or study Torah—that too, at least).
Is there a way to get over this, and try to open myself up to it?
I don’t know if I’ll be able to accept it, because I really recoil from it, but is there anything to do about it?
Answer
I have no idea. My feelings are like yours and like Garbuz’s. But I don’t see any reason to open yourself up to nonsense just because your family believes in it. What you do need to open yourself up to is the fact that they think differently from you. That’s no reason to fight or cut yourself off.
“Arela looked at her maidservant in anger, shrugged her shoulders, and said: I know that fools have not ceased to exist, but that it should be my lot that my father and mother are numbered among them—that is hard to bear” (Agnon, A Guest for the Night, chapter 42)