Love and Marriage (and religion)
Here’s an interesting article in last week’s Washington Post on people of different religions marrying each other. Overall, the article suggests that inter-religious couples are more likely to separate. Two standout parts for me:
1. Less than a quarter of the 18- to 23-year-old respondents in the National Study of Youth and Religion think it’s important to marry someone of the same faith.
And this quote:
2. “To limit yourself to only people of your own religion seemed bigoted. . . .
This is something I think about a lot. I totally identified with both of those statements when I was in college, but after visiting a church with someone I was dating seriously my senior year, I just realized I couldn’t marry someone who wasn’t Jewish. (Admittedly, it was a really lame church. Perhaps if she had taken me here I would have been more open-minded about the whole thing). Where are Jewschoolers at on this issue? Does it matter to you if your life partner is Jewish or not? Do you think intermarriage leads more often to divorce? How have interfaith dating/relationships played out in your lives?
I’ve never dated a non-Jew. Tried to once, but yeah…
I don’t think I could marry a non-Jew, but I wouldn’t flat out rule it out. My parents’ marriage began as an intermarriage, but my mother converted, so I’m pretty comfortable with the idea. I wouldn’t say it’s bad for Jews to intermarry, but I don’t think I could.
I’m the daughter of an intermarriage (father is Jewish, mother is Quaker) so I consider it to be perfectly fine. In fact, I always got a bit offended when people would suggest that there’s something wrong with it. There is no way I can hear someone say, in either a subtle or overt way, that intermarriage is wrong without hearing that there is something the matter with my family. I always found the “think of the children! They won’t know who they are! They’ll never have a Jewish identity!” argument to be particularly patronizing. I consider my Judaism to be a really important part of my identity, as do many people I know who are the children of intermarriages. Right now I’m in a relationship with a guy who’s not Jewish, in fact he’s a Palestinian whose father is Christian and mother is Muslim (and her mother, weirdly enough, is Jewish).
In my dating days, I found it easier to connect with non-Jews with active “religious lives” (meaning, engagement with tradition, spirituality, community, bettering the world, divinity) than Jews who were out of touch or lacked interest in Judaism.
I’m living with my gentile GF and want to marry her someday. I wish she was Jewish, and maybe someday she will be. There are things that would be smoother if she was, but she’s so wonderful overall, I can’t imagine this being a deal breaker.
The question of whether intermarriage leads to divorce seems less like a matter of opinion and more like something for statistical research. My understanding is that the rate of divorce for intermarried couples (regardless of observance level) is higher than the divorce rate of the general population, but I don’t know any specifics offhand.
In terms of the question of bigotry, it’s not a concern that I share. But if I were a person whose religious identity had almost no substantive content, I think I might feel precisely as the person quoted does. To make marital decisions based on a label (without a sense that the label affects your life in any important ways) could seem very much like bigotry.
Now, sometimes people later come to find that the label has more meaning for them when they thought. For instance, I know an intermarried couple (one nominal Christian, one unobservant Jew) who had no issues until their first child was born; at that point the nominal Christian decided she might want to have the child baptized and the unobservant Jew freaked out, reactions which surprised both of them.
So (obviously) it’s maybe not always easy to tell how an identity label will actually affect you. But I definitely think that the question of bigotry (which always comes up in this conversation, right?) needs to be nuanced with an understanding of the religious circumstances of the person expressing the concern.
@miri: It has been the subject of statistical research, and in fact is significantly higher.
But I think the more interesting question is whether or not dating and marrying only other people of one’s own faith is bigoted.
IMO, the answer is “Sometimes.”
If a Jewish person (for example, but I’m not sure how this translates to other religions, it may not) is religiously active, if they are observant (in any denomination or sense of observant) then, no, it’s not bigoted, because being religiously observant has as part of it the need to create a Jewish home, and transmit dor l’dor (generation to generation) a special type of relationship with our community and with God (please don’t get upset or assume that I’m claiming that Jews hare better than others; I’m not, there are all kinds of relationships; Jews have one (or more) types, other religions have others)and to maintain a community in which certain behaviors are demanded of us both as individuals and as a community from God.
OTOH, if a Jewish person has no relationship with observance, and views Judaism purely as a racial or group identity, then I would have to say that , yes, it is bigoted to not date or marry non-Jews.
With the open-mindedness of humanity in this Age of maturity; with easy access to the teachings of various religions on the Internet; inter-racial date and marriage will become more pleasant and successful. All misundersatndings of the past will fade away, a new spirit of universal and selfless love will connect all the human race into a global family.
I’ll take an unpopular view here- intermarriages are not recognized by Jewish law and are therefore wrong according to Judaism. That has nothing to do with whether you’re a good person or if you can raise children, it just means you haven’t made Judaism a deciding factor in your life.
ms writes:
I’ll take an unpopular view here- intermarriages are not recognized by Jewish law and are therefore wrong according to Judaism.
Ok, so (following on KRG’s point) why should someone who doesn’t care about any other aspects of Jewish law care about this one?
Miri, you hit on the major source of tension – lifecycle events. Most people raised in pluralistic societies can get along with one another. They have a sense of shared identity, at least superficially. Emotions, sex and money can solve most any relationship issues. It’s when the rubber meets the road that problems develop. Either your child is circumcised, or they’re not. Either your child is baptized, or they’re not. There is no fudging that clash of identity. It’s one thing to water down one’s own identity for the sake of personal happiness and comfort. It’s another to deny your child an identity.
That said, I don’t know anyone who wouldn’t marry a non-Jew because of the statistical probabilities of their marriage working out. Jews marry Jews for one reason – G-d told us to – and everything else is just enforcement: personal guilt, community and family pressure, cultural background, culinary preference, whatever. Either G-d told us to, or He didn’t. Those of us who have dated non-Jews, for years, even contemplated getting married, know the difficult, gut wrenching choices one is forced to make – a position we put ourselves in, for whatever reason. It all comes down to being honest with yourself, with who you are and what purpose you were created for.
Speaking of which, here’s an idea. Maybe Jewschool should get in the shidduch business. Well, at least a Jewish personals section. Could be fun.
ms, is that because Judaism is monolithic and only capable of ever saying one thing on a given topic?
BZ, I agree. At the same time, there are plenty of people today who claim the opposite, that intermarriage is just fine and dandy as far as G-d and Jewish law is concerned, and many use that generalized consensus – well, everyone else is doing it, it’s the times we live in, so it must be ok – to make their own decision about whether to intermarry. If I had a penny every time I heard the logic of “Doesn’t G-d want me to be happy?” be used to come to a decision.
Heck, all you have to do today is wear a beanie for your wedding and break a glass, and you can marry whoever you want. I never got that. Why would someone going explicitly against Jewish law still want a “Jewish wedding” with a “Rabbi” presiding? It’s universal, the final gasp of Jewish identity before the Christmas tree becomes a cherished holiday icon. The same person who once vomited at the thought of lighting shabbos candles will take great care and meaning from decorating a tree with her Christian family. The same hyper-liberal Jewish girl who made no effort to learn about her faith and railed about the cruelty of shechitah will become the most intense, burka wearing Muslim, eat only halal, move to Egypt, become a domesticated housewife, and then rant about how she never received a sense of spirituality in the Jewish faith. But I digress.
It might not change anyone’s mind, but we shouldn’t be shy about stating the unequivocal position of Jewish law on this or any other subject. If it makes us uncomfortable, then good, maybe we should be uncomfortable about making certain decisions.
Being a Jew is not a religious, cultural or ethnic choice or preference; it is a soul identity. Brooklynjew, your boyfriend and his mother are both Jews. Someone should tell them.
Look, clearly this isn’t a conversation about people who don’t care about Jewish law or, for that matter, Jewish peoplehood. They are nonissues in this conversation, whether it hurts their feelings or not. They simply don’t have a horse in this race. I’m mean, sure, they are going to complain on here, but really, how are they at all productive members of the Jewish people, however we define them? You people of all corners of the internet wouldn’t want them defined purely by bloodline…?
Josh writes:
Look, clearly this isn’t a conversation about people who don’t care about Jewish law or, for that matter, Jewish peoplehood.
Did you put too many negatives in this sentence? Otherwise it doesn’t seem to fit with the rest of your comment.
it seems to me that there are two poles to deciding what it means to be jewish, the biological and the confessional. the former can be represented by the (anti-)philosophy of judah halevi (as well as by the more contemporary michael wyschogrod), the latter by maimonides. halevi believed that the line of abraham has retained a special holiness ever since G?d picked him. maimonides believed that being jewish meant having the perfect and true beliefs of judaism, which is something one can achieve; one is not born with it, as in halevi.
it is sad to say, but i (as well as a number of scholars) believe it to be true that a pure, unadulterated halevi/biological position is racial. now, i am not saying that a pure maimonidean position is the necessary antidote, since jewish peoplehood is an important element that cannot and should not be ejected from judaism. however, it only seems to make sense, ethically, if it is coupled with the maimonides position. namely, it makes sense to believe in a jewish uniqueness if one is a participant in the jewish religion.
it seems to me that a commitment to jewish peoplehood totally divorced from jewish culture (and by this i do not mean liking jewish music or food, i mean being part of the cultural practices of judaism) is ethically incoherent.
Statistics don’t lie: the majority of intermarriages result in children who are disconneced from Jewish practice and identity. (The statistic I saw was that only a third of interfaith couples raise their children Jewish; p. 16 http://www.jewishdatabank.org/Archive/NJPS2000_Strength_Challenge_and_Diversity_in_the_American_Jewish_Population.pdf)
There are exceptions to this sad reality (my father, for instance, whose mother was not Jewish, took on an Orthodox conversion in his 20s).
I won’t judge people’s personal choices. Love is such a rare thing in this world. G-d bless you if you’ve found someone that you can share it with. But I think it’s inescapable that intermarriage generally results in dwindling numbers of practicing Jews.
Statistic is on page 18 of that link, sorry.
I would be happy if people could refute the statistic (methododology, bias, etc.), as I find it very depressing.
invisible_hand, what did you learn of Rambam, and from who?
AFFJF- (who I will now refer to as the Jewschool fan formerly known as a former Jewschool fan)
I can’t refute the statistic, but I wonder if it’s perhaps meaningless without a statistic holding that children of two Jewish parents end up practicing Jewish adults. If Jewish children of two Jewish parents are not practicing Judaism, I’m thinking intermarriage might not be the root of the problem.
@Anonymouse: Though Judaism is matrilineal, Islam is patrilineal. My boyfriend’s mother had a Jewish mother and Muslim father, and was born and raised in Afghanistan and educated as a muslim. Likewise, when she married a Christian Palestinian man, her son (my boyfriend) was raised as a Christian (even though he now feels more “culturally Muslim” and doesn’t believe in a higher power). Since neither my boyfriend or his mother were brought up to have any connection, be it cultural, ethnic, religious, etc, to Judaism, and don’t consider themselves Jewish, I don’t see why anyone should consider them Jewish. To do so would be mistaken at best and a negation of their own identities at worst.
Brookln Jew — By Jewish law, your bf and his mother are Jews. Posters who are more learned than me feel free to correct me, but according to Jewish law there’s nothing your bf or his mother can do or say that will stop them from being Jewish.
But I think it’s inescapable that intermarriage generally results in dwindling numbers of practicing Jews.
Statistically speaking, that may indeed be the case. But who cares? If one (or, for instance, me) doesn’t think that there’s intrinsic value to self-defining as a “practicing Jew,” then that statistic isn’t a convincing argument against intermarriage in the slightest.
I recently heard a talk by Doron Kornbluth, who goes around to college campuses giving this spiel about why Jews should marry Jewish. It’s an hour and a half of statistics like the above without one mention of any Jewish content or explanation of why, precisely, one might want to be Jewish as opposed to anything else. This is not an argument that I really get at all.
@ miri — “It’s an hour and a half of statistics like the above without one mention of any Jewish content or explanation of why, precisely, one might want to be Jewish as opposed to anything else. This is not an argument that I really get at all.”
Was that his role? To convince you that as a Jew you should practice Judaism (keep mitzvot essentially and do tikkun olam)? I think her talk assumes people as Jews value Judaism.
My only advice is that if whatever type of Judaism you have been exposed to is not speaking to you (I’ve been there, I know what that’s like), keep searching WITHIN Judaism for a spiritual practice that is meaningful. Judaism is AMAZING and somewhere within our tradition there is a style of davening, learning, and living that will speak to your soul.
So I think Kornbluth’s talk assumes the audience values Judaism the Jewish community, and the Jewish way of life, otherwise why would they care about intermarriage.
AFFJF writes:
I think her talk assumes people as Jews value Judaism.
Some Jews value Judaism, some don’t. Those who do will pass Judaism on to their children even if they have non-Jewish spouses. Those who don’t will not pass Judaism on to their children even if they have Jewish spouses.
a formerly former Jewschool fan writes:
Statistics don’t lie: the majority of intermarriages result in children who are disconneced from Jewish practice and identity.
Statistics tell us about correlation, not causation. Intermarriage may be correlated with children who are “disconnected from Jewish practice and identity”, but that doesn’t mean it results in them. A more likely explanation for this correlation: Adults who are disconnected from Jewish practice and identity are less likely to consider Jewish factors in looking for a partner, and therefore more likely to marry non-Jews (since the demographics of their spouses will more closely match the demographics of the general population). Also, adults who are disconnected from Jewish practice and identity are likely to raise children who are disconnected from Jewish practice and identity. This leads to a clear correlation between intermarriage and Jewish practice/identity of children, BUT tells us nothing about the children of an actively Jewish parent and a non-Jewish parent, or the children of two inactively Jewish parents, because the data analysis doesn’t do anything to control for the Jewish practice/identity of the parents.
I suspect there is also a strong correlation between observing Tzom Gedaliah and having actively Jewish children. So instead of focusing all these resources on getting Jews to marry Jews, the Jewish community (by its own logic) could just encourage more widespread observance of Tzom Gedaliah and obtain the same results for less effort.
(The NJPS has other methodological issues too: they consider someone with a Jewish parent to be “Jewish”, whether or not s/he identifies as Jewish. Then, if such a person (who may not consider him/herself Jewish) marries someone who isn’t Jewish by any definition, the NJPS counts him/her as “intermarried”. Obviously this skews the statistics about “intermarried” people. But even if there weren’t these huge methodological problems, I would still expect to see statistically significant differences between the “inmarried” and “intermarried” populations, but as I argue above, this can’t be attributed to intermarriage per se.)
Former Jewschool,
That’s correct, they’re 100% Jews. It doesn’t matter how many generations removed they are from someone who actively identified as a Jew. So long as a clear maternal line exists, they’re Jews.
To do so would be mistaken at best and a negation of their own identities at worst.
Why do you think it would be a mistake to let them know such an important, intrinsic part of their identity? Two Jews are estranged from even knowing that they’re Jews. It is a travesty that they should remain unaware of this for even another day, and you have been placed in a position to help them learn the truth. What they do with that information is their business, but they should at least know.
It is a travesty that they should remain unaware of this for even another day.
Heh. Somebody call the identity police! We’ve got a unknowing Jew out there!!!!! CODE JEW! CODE JEW!!!!! *all the Chabad rabbis’ beepers go off*
On a related note, I’d love to parse this notion of “identity.” Few Jewish conversations can avoid it – but what do we mean by it? Where did it come from? How does it translate into other cultures/languages/idioms? Why do we talk about it as though it’s self-evident? (There’s plenty of scholarly work on the question – but I’m less aware of popular lit on the question of “identity.” I’m sure it’s out there).
Try Sharansky’s “Defending Identity”. Not exactly what you’re looking for, but a refreshing read.
I don’t think inter-marriage in itself leads to more divorce. I do think that people who enter marriages without thinking about practical issues of spending lives together are more likely to divorce. A subset of those people have religious differences that significantly affect how they live their life, but assume things will somehow work out. Sometimes they do. Sometimes they don’t.
As for the statistics question on whether children of inter-marriages consider themselves Jewish, the personal connection to Judaism of the parent is important, but the connection of that family to the larger Jewish community is also important. I’ve seen no study that examines the Jewish self-identification of people who were children of intermarriages, but brought up in a welcoming Jewish community.
This is important, because it helps distinguish two responses towards intermarriage. One response is that it is never ideal and the goal is either intra-marriage or conversion of the non-Jewish spouse. The other response is that intermarriage is a reality in the modern world. Doing everything within halacha (however you define halacha) to make family welcome within the Jewish community will increase the likelihood and the parents and children will keep and nurture their connections and observances of Judaism.
These two views are being argued out within the Conservative movement with USCJ taking the first view and the Federation of Jewish Men’s Clubs taking the second view.
USCJ’s position statement is at:
http://www.uscj.org/Al_Ha_Derekh__On_the6909.html
(the non-Jewish spouse should be welcomed as someone on the path of Conversion)
FJMC was heavily involved in the Tiferet project and later a book:
http://www.interfaithfamily.com/news_and_opinion/synagogues_and_the_jewish_community/Lovers_of_Israel__A_Review_of_A_Place_in_the_Tent__Intermarriage_and_Conservative_Judaism.shtml
An article I dug up on this discussion is at:
http://www.interfaithfamily.com/news_and_opinion/synagogues_and_the_jewish_community/Bowing_to_Reality_Conservative_Shuls_Do_More_to_Reach_out_to_Intermarried.shtml
@anonymouse
“Why do you think it would be a mistake to let them know such an important, intrinsic part of their identity? Two Jews are estranged from even knowing that they’re Jews. It is a travesty that they should remain unaware of this for even another day, and you have been placed in a position to help them learn the truth. What they do with that information is their business, but they should at least know.”
They both know perfectly well that they’re considered Jewish under halachic law. They’re not ignorant of this fact at all. I’m saying that it would be very wrong to insist that they’re Jewish when they don’t see themselves that way because a) it presupposes that the Jewish rules about descent are more important than the Christian and Muslim rules and b) it would be incredibly presumptuous for me or anyone else to insist to them that I know what their identities are or should be better than they do. I absolutely hate it when people presume they know how to define me better than I do, especially when they know very little about me, so I would never want to do this to anyone else. I also think that considering someone Jewish by default even when they have no connection to Judaism in any of its various forms whatsoever really sucks the meaning and purpose out of being Jewish. The point is that Judaism is NOT an important or intrinsic part of my boyfriend’s identity or his mother’s. They have other parts of their identities that are intrinsic and important to them. It’s much more productive, I think, to include within the Jewish community people who DO consider Judaism to be a really important part of who they are.
All that would be true if being a Jew was a choice, Brooklynjew. It’s not. Your bf and his mother are Jews, were Jews and will remain Jews. You’re exactly right, Jewish law is infinitely more important than Christian or Muslim law. That should go without saying, given the origins of our law and theirs. Furthermore, there are no christian or muslim laws on succession. You’re talking about Arab tribal laws, which are paternal. This has nothing to do with other people defining you or them. It’s a matter of law, describing them, not defining them. They can define themselves however they wish, and it won’t change who they are. One last point (on my cell), being a Jew is an intrinsic quality, not a behavioral characteristic. Spiritually, every Jew has the same importance to our people, regardless of their identification and “personal performance”. Each one is connected to the rest at the soul root, and each one is “full of mitzvot like a pomegranite is full of seeds”. The conditions your bf and his mother were born too were
…unique. No one can know for what purpose they find themselves in their current reality, so close and yet so distant from our people. Whatever it is, they have the strength and the tools to get the job done. Just as the guy who loads the camels won’t burden them with more than the animal can bear, so it is with us, including me, including you, and including them.
“Jewish law is infinitely more important than Christian or Muslim law.”
to a practicing Jew. It is correct that these people are Jewish according to Jewish law, but not according to themselves. If according to Muslim or Christian law any individual is a Muslim or a Christian (and simultaneously is also a Jew according to Jewish law) they are also a Muslim and/or a Christian. Jewish law can only speak towards what it is authoritative on and it has no authority over Muslim law or Christian law (is there such a thing? Christian doctrine(s) i guess would be more appropriate, perhaps?) So, if a person, according to Jewish law is a Jew but they themselves do not identify as a Jew, two things are true: 1) they are a Jew, 2) they are not a Jew according to their own construction of their own identity. If #2 is correct then #1 is irrelevant to the individual but still relevant to Jewish law, but that fact in and of itself remains irrelevant to the individual who holds by #2. That Jewish tradition has voices in it which hold that every Jewish individual, whether or not they identify as Jewish, they SHOULD (must?) identify as Jewish is really not anything other than offensive to any person who constructs their own identity (and we all do) that does not conform to that particular construction.
Once I was confronted with the not so rare question of why a non-practicing Jew should circumcise their sons. My honest reaction once I got past the BS answer that “they should because they’re Jews,” (BS since to the individual in question it doesn’t mean anything, certainly not BS to anyone who it does mean something to where circumcision would still be relevant), I realized that the answer that was truly in my heart was that I WISHED for them that they had a reason to circumcise their son and that the reason was to enter into God’s covenant with the Jewish people symbolically and ritualistically which they were born into. But if they didn’t have a reason to circumcise their son, they shouldn’t cut their child for no reason. And if they had a different reason for the best interest of their child, then they should perhaps follow that one.
The fact is that the type of motivation that the views represented by what anonymouse is presenting is not necessarily going to work for all people, especially those who hold it as a strong value to be independent of mind and action and recognizing that they have the ability to be whomever and whatever they so choose. The key for Jewish tradition for those of us that have a stake in it is to present it in a way that speaks to people. Beating down someone’s throat “you’re not who you think you are” will likely scare off many more than it will bring in. And in the 21st century (not unlike the 20th) telling someone “you can’t do what you want to do,” well, that also doesn’t seem to get us very far.
And that is why intermarriage is not the problem. as I noted above which went unnoticed or deemed irrelevant, as far as I have seen, Jewish observance is not a direct result of two Jewish parents. ESPECIALLY if the parents are not traditionally observant, and even if they are. Many Jews are just not interested in Judaism (even many who have VERY strong Jewish identities; like myself from age 12-20, very strong identity, very little interest in religion) The last ten years of my life have been much different in terms of my interest in learning and living normative Judaism. It’s not because of my parents. And I know many people who grew up in orthodox or otherwise observant homes who are now either practicing other religions or adhere to no one particular tradition at all, or adhere to many, or are just plain not interested.
Marrying Jews will never save Judaism. It MIGHT save a Jewish bloodline (but if we don’t marry converts we’re going to be in big trouble) but it will never save the Jewish religion. And it must be recognized that even many self-identifying Jews don’t necessarily care about the Jewish religion. Telling Jews who don’t believe in Judaism or who do not identify as Jews in any other way that “you’re a Jew because my religious law says your a Jew and your blood says your a Jew and I don’t care what your heart and brain have to do with it,” I can’t see how that will ever get us any place positive.
You don’t have to be the one to do it, Justin, but someone needs to tell Jews who don’t know any better than they’re Jews. I went to school with an Iranian Baha’i and a Saudi Muslim, both Jews by their mother’s mother’s mother. The Saudi spent three months trying to convince us that he wasn’t a Jew. He finally came for a Shabbos dinner to the Chabad Rabbi my Jewish friends and I frequented. He did everything, like everyone else, drank some grape juice, washed for bread… Sweat beading down his face, literally shaking next to me during dinner, without saying a word.
It reminds me of the typical mivtzoim moment – the young chassid stopping a Jew on the street to wrap tefillin. Really, I’m not interested. It’ll just take a minute. No, no, I don’t have time. Come on, fifteen seconds. The moment of decision. Fine, fifteen seconds. It’s a hot day, they’re both sweating, the Jew is wearing a shirt with tight sleeves that just refuse to roll up. He’s carrying a laptop case and a rolled up jacket. The laptop strap is pulling at his neck. As he’s fidgets with the shirt, everything falls to the floor. Everyone is looking at them, standing there in the middle of the sidewalk. The tension rises, the senses are burning, there is a bewildering mix of fear, panic, apprehension, the significance of the moment, conspicuous self-awareness, all boiling down to one, irrefutable feeling – discomfort. He doesn’t even feel the straps being pulled over his arm, just the heat of the sun, it’s so hot. And then it’s over, and he doesn’t know if he should call someone about what just happened, if they will understand.
We’re talking about getting real, here, about coming to terms with who you are, not who you wish you were or who you rationalize yourself to be. It is a frightening thing, including for those of us who’ve known we’re Jews from our birth, to really drill down, to strip away the bullshit, to peel back the layers and face our essence. It is a difficult, uncomfortable thing. It’s not a matter of education or motivation – all that comes when it comes – but of essence and truth. They’re Jews, like you and I. That’s it.
Anonymouse, I’m impressed by your spiritual sincerity, but my sense is that the universe is a lot more complicated than that. You may believe Jewish law defines the nature of a person more than Christian or Muslim law, and that may be based on profound spiritual experiences, but I’ve had some intense spiritual experiences too, and my experience is that no religious law defines the essence of a person.
One last point (on my cell), being a Jew is an intrinsic quality, not a behavioral characteristic. Spiritually, every Jew……
You write that like it is some eternal, agreed upon truth, when it’s not.
Defines, no. Describes, absolutely. There is a difference.
When we speak of Jewish law, with regards to the description of a soul, I am referring to the “old books”, holistically, the totality of Jewish law and thought. There is not, as far as I’m aware, halacha on what constitutes the spiritual essence of a human being. Our laws deal with practical matters, such as who a Jew should marry, and who they shouldn’t marry, the status of children born from this or that union, the proper path of a convert, etc. Jewish spirituality deals with the underlying reality, and describes, in no uncertain terms, of what a soul is composed and for what purpose it is embodied, for example.
There is a recurring issue which needs to be addressed. It is not considerate, in our liberal, pluralistic society, to say what everyone really believes about everyone else in matters of faith – that they’re wrong. So, let’s be clear, Christianity and Islam have nothing to teach Jews about the service of G-d, about fervor, or modesty, or charity, or anything else. Being minorities in most societies in the world, we’ve learned to finesse the issue so as not to displease our hosts. After all, we have no interest in converting anyone, much less forcibly, we value the lives of their adherents, and hold certain that the righteous among them have a place in the world to come. Without a doubt, there’s some good in Christianity and Islam, compared to the pagans from which they descend. Christianity and Islam have served an important role in making the world hospitable to monotheism. Fefraining from murder, the rule of law and the rest of the Seven Noahide Laws are all good things – they encompass the bulk of Torah, Written and Oral – and should be studied by all human beings devoted to creating an ethical world that serves our creator.
The reason we know all this to be true is not because an illiterate Arab nomad had a dream and allied, manipulated and killed those who stood in his way. Nor is it because two hundred years after a self-proclaimed prophet was crucified, recollections of recollections of recollections of his life became a global best seller. We know it to be true because 600,000 Jewish men, their wives and many children – millions in all – underwent a singular communal experience that penetrated their tribal, familial and social disunity and transformed them, mind and heart, into a unitary people, joined in G-d, and law, and tradition.
There is a chassidic discourse about Mt. Sinai in Likutei Torah. It was the smallest of all mountains, almost like a hill. A question comes up of why the Torah was given on a mountain and why, if it had to be a mountain, was it the smallest of all the mountains. If the point was to elevate, to demonstrate grandeur, then it should have been the highest mountain. After all, this is what the kings of the earth to do demonstrate their power, they build the highest, largest monuments they can. Yet, the King of kings chose the smallest mountain for the most important event in human history – the giving of the Torah – and yet, it was a mountain, not a valley or plain. Paraphrasing heavily, after a winding discussion, a lesson is drawn for the moral behavior of a Jew. Sinai was the smallest of mountains. In all matters, a Jew should maintain the utmost humility, never seeking aggrandizement or attention for oneself, but remaining bitul, nullified to the will of our creator. Yet, Sinai was still a mountain. In one respect, pride has a place and a purpose. When Jewish observance is threatened, when the Torah is challenged, we should not remain silent but proudly rise with the strength of a mountain to defend our people and faith, and to sanctify G-d’s name.
Christianity and Islam have nothing to teach Jews about the service of G-d, about fervor, or modesty, or charity, or anything else.
I’ll just say, at the risk of prolonging this…thing, that I believe this to be false. And more important, not only do Xtianity, Islam (etc!) have things to teach Jews and Judaism, but they have taught things. Judaism didn’t develop in a vacuum, my friend.
We know it to be true because 600,000 Jewish men, their wives and many children – millions in all – underwent a singular communal experience that penetrated their tribal, familial and social disunity and transformed them, mind and heart, into a unitary people, joined in G-d, and law, and tradition
How do we know this to be true again? Without the Kuzari’s approach.
oh, but miri, don’t you understand that you’re parents didn’t lie to you? that experience is encoded in your dna, right?
this is the problem with having these types of conversations with people who approach these concepts and ideas from a fundamentalist perspective. they can’t see the insanity of their own argument. i would reckon that most observant, “believing” Jews find the idea of a dying/rising man-god to be pretty silly, and an 8-armed elephant god or a divine battle of dark and light or space ships which whisk us off to redemption. but a burning bush? thunder and lightning from atop a mountain? history.
i it’s best to let this discussion lie just where it is.