Q&A: Rachel Rotner
Rachel Rotner
Question
https://www.mako.co.il/culture-weekend/Article-96a09841d5adb71027.htm&Partner=mw&Partner=rss
I read the Rabbi’s column about Rachel Rotner and his conclusions about her, and I thought it would be right to share this article of hers with the Rabbi.
Answer
Cheap New Age. From the description, this is an atheist who lives a religious life because it makes her feel good. I suspect that, as in many other cases, it is simply a lack of philosophical skill that prevents her from properly understanding herself.
As for the advice he gives her, it may be good advice: to let go and see what happens. But I am really not sure, because it seems the criterion is psychological-emotional: to see whether you miss it (and not whether it is right and true). But that is not the relevant criterion. This suggestion adopts her starting point (that religiosity is embraced because it gives us something), and in my opinion unjustifiably so (and that is not religiosity either).
Discussion on Answer
I’m not a diagnostician, and certainly not from a distance. But to me it doesn’t look like OCD (even though she herself mentions it, in the opposite sense. In her case, it’s an explanation for why she does do everything). In my opinion this is following feeling and identification (connection) instead of reason, as I explained in the column.
Rabbi Michael,
The phenomenon that Rachel Rotner describes—doesn’t it seem like a classic expression of OCD attaching itself to the question, “Is what I’m doing the right thing?”