Seacoast of Bohemia

8:04 p.m. 31 March 2002

A few days ago, Cy asked a question in her journal: what was your religious upbringing like, and how do you think it has affected you? She asks because this boyfriend of hers has apparently got religion from Kevin Smith's "Dogma," of all things, and wants to talk about how they might raise children, religiously speaking, if they got married and if they had children.

I responded to her question already, but I went back today and read all the comments, and I keep thinking.

What is wrong with us? What is wrong with us that something that should be such a pillar of strength for so many people, something that has sustained a lot of human culture for a very long time, something that posits these wonderfully comforting beliefs about someone who always loves you or a way to deal with the deaths of people you love, has gone so totally wrong for the majority of people?

I don't doubt that it has. People out there are being hurt by religion. They're really angry. I'm not just going on the fact that most of the comments in Cy's journal say something like "my parents were religious. they made me go to church. I hated it/didn't believe in it/it scarred me for life and I resent having had to do it. don't do this to your kids, if you have any." I'm thinking, too, about all the people I know, and about myself. As I think about all my close friends, out of twenty or so people who came to mind immediately whose religious beliefs I even know about, only two who were raised religious still strongly believe in the faith of their parents. One believes more strongly than her parents, even. Of the rest, one's a sort of medium-jew, like me. One has converted to a different religion (but an unorganized one), and gets a lot of fulfillment from it, but his parents don't know. One is in the process of deciding whether she wants to convert to Judaism.

And of the rest of the people I'm close enough to to have discussed this sort of thing with, I can't think of a single other who would call him or herself "religious." Not one.

And I keep wondering what's gone wrong. I do call myself religious, I think. Maybe some of you out there who might feel angry or skeptical towards organized churchgoers might scoff at that: I don't ever go to synagogue except on Yom Kippur and Rosh Hashona. I don't keep Kosher. I don't too often say Jewish prayers.

And I've certainly had my problems with Judaism. I wrote a big essay about some of them last February. I have really never felt that I fit in to Judaism. I've been alienated, actively pushed away, and intimidated. I have not felt at home. I don't go to synagogue now primarily because the thought of seeing so many people who wouldn't accept me or who couldn't understand me or how I'm even a Jew at all makes me too scared to even go in the door. I'm constantly wondering whether one of my RealJew acquaintances is going to ask me "Why the hell do you think you're a Jew anyway?" I feel, in a way, as if they have been asking me that question for years.

I am not like other Jews. I do not speak Yiddish. I do not think it makes any sense to avoid ham when you don't keep the rest of the dietary laws or even the Sabbath. I do fast on Yom Kippur, but I don't avoid leavened bread on Passover (I'd be doing it right now, if I were doing it). I don't unilaterally support Israel, probably one of the most damning things I could say as a Jew. (In the wake of September 11th, I was more terrified that I would go home to services and hear that horrible hatred of Arabs than I was of anything else, really. All that hate on both sides. I can't handle it. Oh, I can't.)

And I've never been like them either. I never liked the right t.v. shows, went to the right camps, even looked the right way, and it made me feel like an outsider a lot of the time.

And yet. I am probably one of the most committed, religious, and strong in my faith that many people know. I know for a fact that I believe more strongly in G-d and in holiness and the power of prayer (however that power is achieved) than some people who avoid ham and shrimp. And pepper their language with Yiddish words and allusions to Joan Rivers. I have never been a successful cultural Jew, but the terrible thing is that I have nearly always been a very strong religious one.

My rabbi probably wouldn't believe or understand that. I think my type of experience is very rare. I'm not sure why its happened, exactly. Why, given the fact that I never felt at home with my peers, didn't I just drop out, like so many others? Why didn't I decide that the problem was that organized religion was wrong or that they were hypocrites (which, of course, many of them are -- we are all hypocrites. I don't think it's bad. I think it's human and inevitable)? Why do I persist in identifying as Jewish when probably most Jews in the world would like to contradict me?

I don't know. But I know that it's important to me that I do. I can't tell you for sure that I'll always be Jewish. I love my religion. I love the prayers and the sound of it, the rituals and the meals and the holidays, the way it's so old, the way people act in it. I love synagogues. I love Jewish myth. But I don't think that it's the only religion I could love. I have a lot of beliefs -- especially ones about the afterlife -- that aren't Jewish at all. In fact, some of them probably contradict Jewish doctrine entirely. And I know that I have felt the same connection to G-d I get while praying in synagogue in Episcopal services. In empty cathedrals. At a baptist funeral. In my Lutheran friend's hymns. Out in nature, by myself. While standing on the beach with my family. In a bhuddist temple. Outside of a mosque.

Holiness and faith and G-d are not localized, for me. And it might be, though I can't predict it, that eventually I'll end up something other than Jewish. Or at least, end up worshipping most regularly at something other than Judaism. Certainly, Catholic hymns make me cry. And incense seems like a great addition to any service.
But what I do think will continue is that I will want some kind of faith or belief in my life. I need it. I take strength from it. And, despite the terrible problems I've had with Judaism over the years (and they were extremely bad in high school, where for instance one of the girls in my Confirmation class -- which, by the way, I thought was a dumb idea and hated -- asked me bitchily "how on earth anything I was doing or saying related to Judaism in the least" and my teacher, wonderful woman though she is, gave me a book called "Why be Jewish" intended for converts, because apparently I was far enough from a Jew that I needed to be reconverted) I am still really glad I was raised Jewish. I am. I'm not lying.

Because the great things about it are so great that I think they overwhelm the bad things, for me. More than anything, being raised in a belief system gave me a place to start from. It gave me an understanding of the kinds of things people do to help them with the questions life makes them ask -- and an understanding of what those questions primarily are. It gave me a connection to ritual and the past that has been invaluable in my reading and writing. It gave me an identification of one sort that helped a lot when I wasn't sure I could identify anything that I was. It gave me a way to talk, unashamedly, about those huge unscientific and unspecifiable things that most people need to talk about at some point in their lives.

And what religion did not do to me, that it seems to have done to so many other people, is give me any sense that G-d didn't like me. Or that it was a cover for hatred and insularity. I feel that way about culture. Yes, I do. I have felt for a long time that, culturally, I'm some kind of monster. And that a lot of "Jewish culture" is just a front for intolerance. But I don't blame that on G-d or on the Torah. I accept the Torah as having been written by a legitimately insular and warlike group of people thousands of years ago who said a lot of things that have no relevance on my life today. I do not think G-d wrote it. (Not many Jews in my congregation do.) But I still like Torah, and I still like Judaism because it's a place to start from. It's something. It's not everything or even the thing I want to believe most of the time, but it's something.

Despite all my problems, I have never felt that religion, itself, was pushing me around or hating me. That was just individuals on the wrong path within it. And it still is. And even if I end up a non-practicing Hindu mystic, eventually, I won't have lost religion. Or gained it. It's just something I need, and pretty much always have.

And I appreciate very much that my parents gave me that option. And also were always willing to talk with me about the questions I had or the problems I encountered. I appreciate that, even though they've had their problems with Judaism too (and still do) they never told me it was G-d's fault. Or G-d's non-fault. They let me find my own place within religious thought. I don't think any belief system, religious or not, is without significant "crises of faith" or problems. That's how we operate. Thesis-diathesis-synthesis. Thesis-diathesis-synthesis. Take a statement, test it, assimilate the faults into the statement to make a new base statement including new information. At least, that's the healthy way we should operate.

But what grieves me beyond end is that most people don't seem to have had the opportunity to operate in that way. So many of us seem to have been raised "thesis thesis thesis thesis thesis --- there's no such thing as a diathesis no no no no no I'm not listening!" Which, of course, tends to screw things up a little. And so many of us seem to have either been told it was wrong to ask questions or never have been encouraged to go farther than just realizing they were out there -- which also, naturally, leaves one feeling significantly unfulfilled.

I know that part of my strong faith is probably attributable to the fact that Judaism, for all its faults, is a pretty flexible religion. There are a lot of different types of Jews. And also, I have my parents to thank for being open, thinking people.

And I wish that more people could have had that kind of upbringing. It really grieves me that so many people are being legitimately, deeply hurt by something that should be, and was designed to be a help for them. That faith or belief or "a way to ask questions" -- whatever you call it -- has ended up being defined as a system of hard-and-fast rules or a ridiculously oversimplified lesson plan rather than something bigger and more useful. Of course it's ridiculous if you look at it as, for instance, the only source of moral guidance in the world. No system can fulfill all of that. And people who tell you it can are, as as so many of us have realized, barking up the wrong tree.

It grieves me so much that instead of being given a chance to find themselves and connect with the past in a comfortable, accepting setting, people have been abused, alienated, and told to shut up. It grieves me that some people won't get to find themselves crying at an episcopal choir or feeling peace from a statue of the bhudda because those sorts of things have been stained with pain, fear, harshness, and cruelty for them.

I think so many of us react well to belief. Not all of us, certainly. There are also very, very many of us who don't want any -- for whom even the idea of a god or gods is too much structure -- and I understand that. But there are also many of us who could get a lot of fulfillment from some religion -- any religion -- or at least from having the opportunity to get comfortable with bits and pieces of various religions. Without having to feel bad about it. Or be criticized by anyone. And it's awful to me that so many of our religious leaders, so many of our parents, so many of our secular leaders are doing such a terrible job of it that they're wounding instead of soothing, and pushing away instead of helping. What a terrible irony. What a terrible shame.

What is wrong with us? I keep asking. Whatever it is, I wish we would work on fixing it. We're wasting so many good opportunities, and making so many good people unhappy.
It's just such a shame. Just such a terrible shame.

Labels: politics, spirit of the age, spirituality