This week, I spent most of Shabbat reading two books that (unexpectedly) made for a very interesting counterpoint. The first was Morality: Restoring the Common Good in Divided Times by the late Rabbi Jonathan Sacks. The second was Beyond the Synagogue: Jewish Nostalgia as Religious Practice by Rachel B. Gross.
If you’re reading this blog, I assume you know who Rabbi Sacks was. Rachel Gross is an up-and-coming scholar of American Jewish Studies; I used to enjoy following her on Twitter, when I could still be bothered to go on Twitter. Her book is certainly an interesting look at some of the ways contemporary American Jews choose to identify with Judaism.
But I’m not sure I can buy the author’s argument that participating in the Jewish nostalgia industry, by finding out what shtetl your great-great -grandparents lived in, or eating a pastrami sandwich, or touring some or other now-defunct historic synagogue, or buying your kid a Rebecca Rubin American Girl doll are all things we should accept as Jewish religious activities. Or maybe accept is the wrong word; I’m very much of the opinion that it’s not a good look to police other people’s Judaism, and if this is what works for some subset of Jews, more power to them. I suppose it’s more that it seems mildly, if benignly, delusion to consider these things actual manifestations of religious practice, rather than just say it like it is: not every Jewish person wants to, or is able to, connect with Judaism as a religion, and some people form an identity around the culture instead.
On one hand, yes, religion and spirituality look different in Judaism and Christianity, and definitions based on faith and attending services aren’t necessarily looking at the full picture. But for a long time I very much was one of those people who felt like I was having a religious experience by cooking Jewish food and reading All-of-a-Kind Family. And while I do think there’s value and meaning in all of that, I just can’t get behind the whole postmodern relativist idea that Judaism is whatever you want it to be. Ultimately, it is what it is, and everyone can choose to opt in or out to various degrees (and I don’t believe it’s a moral failing to lean toward the opting out side), but can we just accept things for what they are and stop trying to force them into things they’re not?
It reminds me of this obnoxious public service sort of ad campaign that ran on the New York subway a number of years ago. I’ve forgotten the details, but every poster was, in essence, a photo of a tween girl (a very diverse lineup, naturally) with a whole bunch of “I” statements written across it. Like, “I am strong. I am brave. I am creative.” And then at the bottom, each and every one said “I am beautiful.”
The thing is, not all of these girls were beautiful. And it was painfully clear to me that whoever came up with this campaign was using the word “beautiful” as a stand-in for something like “a worthy human being.” The whole thing drove me crazy, every time I saw one of these dumb posters. Like, No, words mean things! There’s not much good to be done (and potentially a lot of harm) in teaching little girls that they’re beautiful when, realistically, that’s not how most people will perceive them out in the world. Equally, though, we shouldn’t be teaching girls that beauty or lack thereof is what determines their value.
In Morality, Rabbi Sacks takes up, among other things, a sort of argument against the current dominance of that sort of mindset that anything can be whatever anyone wants it to be, and for a world where words, and actions, mean things. While I didn’t agree with every detail, necessarily, on the whole I found it very compelling. I do feel increasingly alienated from wokeness and identity politics and cancel culture and intersectionality, very much so. But that’s not what I want to talk about right now.
I want to talk about one particular section of the book, that while perhaps not objectively the most thought-provoking or compelling, spoke to me very deeply. In this section, Sacks was discussing a BBC show he once produced:
I wanted to explain… the important but difficult ideas of repentance and behavioral change that are at the heart of the Judeo-Christian ethic. How could you do so without religious terminology or iconography?
In the end, I realized that the best way of doing so was through the idea of addiction. We know how much harm we do to ourselves when we come addicted to alcohol, drugs, or other such activity like gambling. But it is extremely difficult to wean ourselves away from such habits, however self-destructive they are.
What has to happen is something very like repentance. First, you have to realize you are doing something wrong. Second, you have to make something like a public admission of this. Third, you have to commit to behavioral change, however hard that may be. Weaning yourself off addictive drugs was the nearest I could come to weaning yourself from bad habits and wrong deeds.
I’ve always felt that I have an addictive personality, though the things that cause problems for me are all of the non-chemical variety. These things are many, but ultimately most of them come down to selfishness and laziness and generally not being a very good person. I think that is just my nature, and while I wish it were not, until recently I didn’t have terribly much desire to fight it. Fighting my addictions was hard, and I didn’t want to do anything hard if I didn’t absolutely have to. I wanted life to be easy, much more than I wanted it to be good. And I suppose I always surrounded myself with enablers, people who put up with my bad behavior, and, for the most part, didn’t pressure me to grow or change. I thought I could keep going like that, indefinitely.
But back to Rabbi Sacks. While he was producing this program, looking at repentance through the lens of addiction, he visited a facility for teen drug addicts. Speaking to the director,
I asked her, simply, “What is it that you give them that gives them the strength to change?” I will never forget her reply… “We are the first people they have met who care enough about them to say, ‘No.’”
And that’s the thing that happened to me that set all of this in motion. Someone cared enough about me to say no. And while it hurt me probably more than anything’s ever hurt me in my life, I see now that it was what I needed. It was my rock bottom moment, the thing that set me off on this weird path of DIY spiritual rehab, on my own path to morality.
Exile in Freiville 