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Judaism is not a religion as much as it is an ideal. And it’s an ideal not because it’s the ideal way to live, or an ideal religion. That sort of denotes superiority. But I think that it’s an ideal in the sense that we don’t know exactly what the creator of the universe wants from us. We know that we’re in a covenant, and we know that the Torah says a bunch of things. We don’t really know for sure if that’s God’s Torah, or if that’s man’s Torah. And when I say man’s Torah, it’s not meant to be anti-woman, but simply making the reality that it was men who wrote that down and in particular it was men who tried to uphold a priestly class and a temple system.
But I think if you look at the evolution of religious practice, of Jewish religious practice, you find an underpinning there, a common thread. I think that that thread is where Judaism, at its strongest, lies the ideal that there’s a creative world and we are in a covenant with that creative world. But that in addition to that, we’re in a covenant with each other and that we have a moral responsibility to treat each other in a certain way. So, that to me is what Judaism is. And then the rest is just struggling to figure out all the other questions.
I believe that God exists, and I know in the Torah there are things that I am supposed to do. And I don’t know how correctly I am following what God wants, or if this is what God wants. I do the best that I can, which is what anyone can do. But it’s tough to know. It’s tough to know if the people who collected the writings of the Bible together really had a sense of what God actually wanted. In that way it conflicts, because there are so many things, trivial things, I’d like to be able to do. I’d like to be able to eat Chic-Fil-A. That’s such a silly, stupid thing, but it’s something I don’t do, that I can’t do. And I’m not sure if I should just go on ahead and eat Chic-Fil-A and not worry about it. And in that way, it really is a conflict. And there’s bigger conflicts. But that was the one I had to deal with this morning.
I struggle sometimes with whether I believe in universal morality. And this is a controversial opinion, so I’m sure I’ll upset someone when I say this. I don’t think Judaism is a universal religion. I don’t think that any .. at least in origin. Does that mean that I don’t believe that people can follow the Bible and practice it if they’re not Jewish? Of course, anyone can. In fact, I’m a very big supporter of outreach to non-Jews, particularly people who are partnered with Jews who are not Jewish, sort of changing some of the definitions of what it means to be Jewish, changing the ways the conversions are done to make them more open. I like to imagine that there is the sukka on Sukkot, it’s the booth that we all dwell in when we eat. I like the idea that we are making it stronger and stronger and bigger and bigger and the bigger we make it the more people we can invite under it, and that that’s sort of an ideal. But I wonder if there is a universal morality.
I struggle with what God is in terms of sort of Jewishness. Is the creator of the universe ultimately interested in sort of Jewish things, or is God interested in what everybody does? Does everybody have to do the same thing? If we say that there is a universal morality, then why does the Bible not seem to talk about it? Why does the Bible only seem to address the Jews and what the Jews should do to be Jewish? In that way, I struggle to know whether or not God has a uniquely Yiddish voice.