Q&A: Religious in My Own Way as a Worldview
Religious in My Own Way as a Worldview
Question
Hello, as an introduction to my question I’ll note that it’s clear to me that it’s possible to answer it in a dry and superficial way, but I’m turning specifically to you based on my familiarity with your content and lectures, hoping that you can shed some light on the issue from your unique angle. This topic has been weighing on me a lot lately, and it connects somewhat with your series on innovation, conservatism, and tradition, which I’m just finishing. I’d be glad for a detailed answer, and even for directions and links for further study.Thanks in advance
Lately I’ve heard from several people whom I regard as rational and intelligent people that they define themselves as half-religious, “religious in my own way,” or somewhere on the spectrum between religious and secular.
Let me clarify at the outset that it’s obvious to me that nobody is perfect and fulfills all the commandments, so in that sense everyone is really not fully religious or is somewhere on the spectrum (according to a view that would claim that a perfectly religious person is only someone who keeps all the commandments).
Even so, the distinction in my view is their lack of aspiration to be somewhere else.
For example, there are people who can’t manage to get up for the morning prayer quorum, but they claim they would like to succeed in doing so, or that they aspire to it. In the outlook I’m talking about, there’s no such aspiration at all. For example, it’s enough just to pray on Friday night and that’s it. (I know this may sound like classic traditionalism, but it feels to me like a somewhat different and more modern outlook.)
I’ll add that personally I find this outlook very difficult, because it would be much easier for me to be “religious” if I defined myself as religious but not Sabbath-observant, yet I feel that would simply be fooling myself, and in the end it would become: I do what’s convenient for me—if it fits with religion, great, and if not, that’s also fine.
On the other hand, I’m aware that there are certain commandments that I also don’t really understand and, truthfully, don’t really aspire to observe. In addition, I find it hard to locate a principled difference between a person who simply prays with a quorum / does not keep the Sabbath because it isn’t important enough to him, and a person who claims that it is important to him but he doesn’t manage to do it (it seems to me that this comes down to priorities, and in the end, prayer / Sabbath observance is not prioritized enough in either case, and there is no essential difference between them). So the distinction between the outlooks becomes a bit blurred for me, and I’d appreciate some clarification from you.
In conclusion, of course everyone should do what he feels is right, but I’d be glad to hear your opinion regarding outlooks like these—for example, “half-religious”—and especially outlooks that define a new set of rules that both gives you comfort (for example, not keeping the Sabbath) and also gives you a feeling of connection to religion, etc., without telling stories like “I can’t manage to get up to pray,” and so on.
Answer
I would distinguish here between three planes:
- What I am obligated to do (that is, what I believe is correct).
- What I aspire to (assuming that a person does not always aspire to do what he himself thinks is right—an assumption that is open to debate).
- What I actually do in practice.
In principle, none of these three planes is identical to the other two. See columns 172–3 on weakness of will.
And now to your question: A person who does not think it is right to observe all of Jewish law (regardless of the question of what exactly it says; on that he may have his own views) is not religious, meaning he is not committed to Jewish law. Commitment to Jewish law belongs to plane 1. A person who thinks that all of Jewish law is indeed binding, but does not aspire to carry it out (plane 2)—whether because he is weak, or because he doesn’t feel like it, or because he is angry at the Holy One, blessed be He, or for any other reason—is religious in principle, and therefore this could be a “half-religious” person with some religious significance. Someone who thinks so and aspires to it but does not do it is the ordinary religious person (of course every religious person fails to do some amount of what Jewish law requires, but in principle that is the ordinary case).
Discussion on Answer
If you’re looking for measurable things—go study physics. One can wonder whether this is just a quantitative difference in how important it is to you, but in my view it isn’t. It is similar to what I described in column 661. Look there.
I’ll keep looking into it, and maybe I’ll come back with more questions later on.
Thank you very much!
I’m still having trouble sharpening the difference between plane 1 and plane 2. Aspiration itself sounds to me like something that isn’t measurable or absolute.
What is the difference between a person who understands that this is the Jewish law, but it isn’t important enough to him and therefore he has no aspiration to fulfill it, and a person who supposedly “aspires” to fulfill a certain halakha, but in the end does not prioritize it enough and does not observe it?
It feels to me like an excuse to tell myself stories—to say that I aspire to fulfill all kinds of things, while in practice only fulfilling what I prioritize (which looks exactly like someone who chooses which commandments are convenient for him and which are less so).