Ramble Inspired by Quaker Meeting

Just a heads up: this one is mostly for me to sort out my thoughts. I just feel like posting it online in case someone else is interested or feels like commenting on anything I'm saying, which is always welcome. It's going to be a long and convoluted ramble about Judaism, Quakerism, and agnosticism, and it's going to be mostly about myself.

So this morning I went to Quaker Meeting with Josh and Olivia. Olivia goes every week, and Josh and I were going because we have an assignment for Quaker Social Witness class to attend a Quaker event and then reflect on it. I really like that class - it's giving me a whole new insight into a really cool religion, and beyond that the set of beliefs and ideals that have led my school to run the way it does.

The thing is, I feel like I'm kind of on this spiritual journey. Gag me, that sounds so cliché. But I feel like a lot of people hit this around college; you've been brought up one way, and all of a sudden the whole world is open to you and you're not sure what you believe in anymore. Not that I've always believed in the Judeo-Christian God, or in Adonai, or whatever you want to call him/her/it. I have a really hard time with the concept of faith in something that you can't prove is there, but something that a book said did thus-and-such thousands of years ago. I'm not okay with ruling out the presence of (a) higher power(s), because hell, life exists and that's crazy. But I don't think that whatever power or powers that exist are within the realm of human understanding. And anthropologically, it makes sense that people create religion for themselves, and Christianity happens to be the one that's dominant in this country, and Judaism happens to be the one I was brought up in, and Quakerism happens to be the one I have started experiencing more of this year.

That said, I do want some sort of spirituality in my life. It doesn't have to be related to God with a capital G, nor does it have to be related to Light or Truth with a capital L and T. I am ridiculously small, and I am part of things greater than myself. And anyway, religion isn't just about God; it's about values and morals and how a person should live his or her life.

So during this class, I've been entertaining the thought of Quakerism in my mind. The main testimonies of Quakerism are the SPICES - Simplicity, Peace, Integrity, Community, Equality, and Stewardship. In other words: not living too lavishly, living peacefully and not supporting war/violence/conflict, being honest in words and actions, valuing the communities of which we are apart and collective opinion, understanding that all humans are equal and that there is the Light of God in everyone, and concern for the environment. These are all things that I agree with, and things that I want to work on in my life. Plus, a lot of Quakers have come to Quakerism from other faiths, although most of them are from other divisions of Protestantism. I mean, Quakerism is a sect of Christianity. Quakers are Christian. That's kind of a problem for me I think. And at first I just thought it was about guilt, the amazing Jewish value. But I think it's more than guilt and a sense of obligation. I still want to raise my kids Jewish, and stay a part of the community, because the community is ridiculously important to me and has played a pretty big role in my life. However, there's also this voice in my head saying that sending said kids to a Quaker school would be a really awesome environment for them (hypothetically), and that those are values that I'd want them to be strongly exposed to, and that I like the ideas of silence and an individual relationship with whatever it is you want to believe in.

Also, going to Meeting today made me see a lot of the differences between Quaker worship and Reform Jewish worship. First of all, I really like the silence. I like that everyone can have their own personal relationship with whatever it is they believe in - God, Truth, Light, the Inner Guide, themselves, the community, whathaveyou. Also, I like the idea of being moved by said force(s) to speak out of the silence and share a message with the community. Plus, I like how decisions are made in the Quaker community - consensus, because everyone is equal and every voice counts. But it's missing so much of what I was brought up in. Music, for one. Emotion. The silence is very calming, but the prayers I'm familiar with are joyous, sad, exciting, solemnly reflective. They have a lot in them that one doesn't get from silence, even if I don't find that everything in every Jewish prayers resonates with me. In fact, there is a lot in them that doesn't resonate with me at all, particularly about God, because I don't think that's the God I believe in, so why should I pray like that? But at the same time, I have no real desire to leave Judaism. I'm okay with being connected mostly to the community and the traditions of it. (And hello, the FOOD.)

So I guess that leaves me with answers, but at the same time not really at all. But I shouldn't have answers at this point in my life. I think I want to keep going to Meeting. In the future, like way in the future, I wouldn't mind going to Meeting, but I don't know if I want to be a member (there's a difference between member and attender) because I'm not Christian. And I don't think I want to give up Judaism for Quakerism, or give up Judaism in general. I think that if I'm doing Quakerism, I'm doing both. I don't know if that makes sense or can be done, but when I think about it, it's perfectly okay to like both or to be somewhere in between. And who's to say that I can't send my kids to a Quaker school (if I have that kind of money...) and take them to Meeting but also to Temple too so that they're part of that community? Although I guess that gets kind of confusing after awhile, since what do you do about First Day School vs. Hebrew School? But thinking about this now is honestly kind of silly, and probably unrealistic, since whoever I end up with will obviously weigh in a lot, like 50%. But Meeting got me thinking, and I hadn't really told anyone that all this was on my mind. So here you go: my ramble for today.

Ramble on Judaism and Christianity

For some reason, I keep thinking about this.

The Christian Bible includes both the Old and New Testaments, so why is it that Christians don't keep kosher or celebrate Hanukkah?

Disclaimers:
1. For the intents of this ramble, I am treating both testaments as true. This ramble isn't about my personal beliefs – it's about the relationships between the two religions and their texts, in a very basic and general sense.
2. I haven't read the whole bible. I've read all of Genesis and Exodus, all of Matthew, and various other stories, all only once through, plus whatever excerpts I've read at Hebrew School, Torah Study, or camp.
3. I'm honestly not that familiar with the history of Christianity in terms of what happened hundreds of years after Jesus' lifetime and the formation of the religion, so that might account for a good chunk of what I'm missing.

So. Why is it that Christians aren't Jews, plus? Why don't Christians celebrate all the Jewish holidays and observe the Jewish customs, plus the ones centered around Jesus' life and teachings? If Jesus was supposedly Jewish, and furthermore the son of the God that made all the rules of Judaism, why wouldn't he preach his new teachings in addition to those rules? It seems like he kind of let his new followers off the hook for all the old Jewish stuff, in favor of the new things he was teaching them.

I was talking to Erica about this, and she said that the way she's had it explained to her, Judaism was sort of an elite religion. To be truly observant you basically had to sit around studying Torah all day, and only the rich could really afford to do that. So along comes Jesus, who says that no, you don't have to sit around studying all day – all you really have to do is be good people to be good in the eyes of God, and here's how to be good people. All of a sudden, pleasing God was something that was accessible to the masses.

But if Jesus is the son of God, and God is perfect, and God made those rules laid out in the Old Testament, how could Jesus have had the authority to go to the people and tell them the rules had changed? If God told him to, did that mean that the original rules weren't perfect? If God didn't tell him to…well that would be really bad, wouldn't it? Or are the father and the son supposed to be equals in the trinity? Even if they are equals, why would one deity say to the people that they don't really have to observe the Sabbath, even if the other deity told them to? That would mean a weird competition for power over dictating the rules that just doesn't seem right in this context. Plus, (and here's the kicker,) if the rules did change so that all you had to do was be a good person and not follow all of the 613 commandments in the Torah, why does the Christian Bible still include the Old Testament?

I have no idea. Maybe I'm wrong about some of these details or interpretations. Maybe I'm vastly over generalizing. Maybe it has to do with the history of the formation of the religion. Maybe I'm completely way off and just don't know my stuff that well. But these are things I wonder about, and it'd be cool to understand more about these questions and their answers.