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.

Stuck in my head...

On occasion, I get Hebrew prayers stuck in my head for no reason. I guess something about a tune and a string of syllables I know by heart but don't understand is conducive to popping into my head at random times. Anyway, my ramble on prayer is a whole 'nuther issue, but right now I have the Mi Shebeirach stuck in my head (the prayer for healing), specifically the version by Debbie Friedman, which is part in Hebrew and part in English. There are a couple English lines in there that are resonating with me right now:

May the source of strength who blessed the ones before us
Help us find the courage to make our lives a blessing
And let us say, Amen

I feel like it's a lot of what I'm feeling in Quaker Social Witness right now, of not knowing what I believe in (whether this source of strength is a "who" or not, for example), but knowing that I want to make a difference and live a good life. So may whatever has motivated and strengthened all those who came before me, give me the strength and courage to make my life a blessing as well.

Ramble on September 11th, Etc.

First of all, Burn a Quran Day?! What the fuck. September 11th was once a day that brought Americans together, united the nation, reminded us of the ideals on which our country was founded. One of those is freedom of religion. How did this day, for some, turn into a day for hating all people of a certain faith?

I feel like I'm preaching to the choir. I'm pretty sure anyone reading this would agree with me that Islam is not a hateful, terrorism-happy religion. But how can we change the people behind Burn a Quran Day, behind the opposition to the mosque being built at Ground Zero? How can we stop people from thinking that Islam is an evil religion that has no place on American soil, much less near the site of an attack that was supposedly carried out by Islam as a whole?

And anyway, do I really have a right to claim that my preachings of love, tolerance, and so-called open-mindedness are any more legit than their unwavering belief that anyone who doesn't believe in Jesus as the savior/almighty/son of God is evil? Freedom of religion and speech, right? I mean, that's a bit extreme, but more generally, who am I to legitimately claim that my liberal beliefs are more legitimate than conservative beliefs, just because more people I know agree with me?

We have freedom of speech in this country. We have elections, so that the masses can have a voice and change the government if they want to. But sometimes I feel like the masses are getting dumber and dumber. Obviously that's a giant overstatement. It's not actually that many people; they're just disproportionately covered in the media. It's really not the masses at all. It's just that it gets me so angry.


So on a completely different note: May all those who passed away on September 11, 2001 rest in peace; may their families and friends find comfort; and may this country continue to move forward in strength and love.

For your reading pleasure...

An article on agnosticism!

Courtesy of Hannah Brower via Facebook.

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.

Oh, and also...

This Article.

I read it on the way to work, and it's pretty legit. I don't really feel much like rambling about it at the moment but I think it speaks for itself.

(Except that it doesn't mention solutions! Gahhh pet peeve...)

Continuation of Whatever Tickes My Fancy

My Belief-O-Matic results:

1. Unitarian Universalism (100%)
2. Neo-Pagan (99%)
3. Liberal Quakers (90%)
4. New Age (85%)
5. Secular Humanism (84%)
6. Mahayana Buddhism (77%)
7. Mainline to Liberal Christian Protestants (77%)
8. Theravada Buddhism (75%)
9. Taoism (68%)
10. Reform Judaism (59%)
11. Nontheist (57%)
12. New Thought (50%)
13. Scientology (50%)
14. Jainism (47%)
15. Sikhism (47%)
16. Baha'i Faith (46%)
17. Hinduism (46%)
18. Orthodox Quaker (46%)
19. Christian Science (Church of Christ, Scientist) (41%)
20. Orthodox Judaism (33%)
21. Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (Mormons) (30%)
22. Seventh Day Adventist (25%)
23. Mainline to Conservative Christian/Protestant (24%)
24. Islam (24%)
25. Eastern Orthodox (20%)
26. Roman Catholic (20%)
27. Jehovah's Witness (13%)

interesting...

Day 6 - Whatever Tickles Your Fancy

That's kind of a weird way of putting it. I was unaware that I have a fancy capable of being ticked, much less that doing what I want creates a tickly feeling in this...fancy....

I feel like this might be getting dirty.

Anyway.

What so-called "tickles my fancy" today? Ooh! I can ramble about a news story I heard/saw yesterday. I heard it on NPR after seeing it at this link. It's about Ultra-Orthadox (a.k.a. Hassidic) Jews in Israel, which is always kind of interesting. The dynamic between religious and secular Jews in Israel is a whole different ramble, but this article is particularly interesting because it's about how the Ashkenazi Hassidim (the Hassidim descended from Eastern Europe) are resisting the forced integration of their public girls' school with Sephardi Hassidim (descended from Israel, Spain, Northern Africa, and basically everywhere besides Eastern Europe). The Israeli Supreme Court had ruled against the segregation that the Ashkenazi were imposing, not allowing Sephardi girls to attend the school. After forcing integration, the government actually arrested 43 sets of Ashkenazi parents who then refused to send their daughters to this school.

My favorite quote: "Esther Bark, 50, who has seven daughters, said the issue is keeping the girls away from the temptations of the modern world. 'To suddenly put them in an open-minded place is not good for them,' she said."

So this brings up a few things. The first is this discrimination by the Ashkenazi Ultra-Orthodox against the Sephardi. Now as a disclaimer, I'm really not informed about this at all. I don't know what kind of "open-mindedness" the woman is talking about. But I didn't know that this racism existed, although I guess it makes sense since the Ashkenazi and Sephardi have always had slightly different rules based on what their rabbis have said. And don't groups tend to clash when they end up with slightly different rules? I wonder what exactly makes the Sephardi more open-minded or liberal compared to the Ashkenazi.

Also, this is a public school. My reaction is: if you care so much, send your daughters to a segregated private school! And if there isn't one, start one! You have to listen to the government when you're sending your children to state-funded schools. Plus, the school system in Israel is already pretty segregated – there are public Jewish, public secular, orthodox Agudat Israel (partially state-funded), public Arabic, and private schools (source).

My dad's reaction, because he was in the car with me when the story was on NPR, was that the Ultra-Orthodox have always expected to be able to do whatever they wanted on the government's dime. He cited the fact that the Ultra-Orthodox are the only non-Arab Israelis that don't have to join the Israeli Army at age 18, although this isn't true. The Modern Orthodox (only Modern Orthodox women?) don't have to either, although I think that while the Ultra-Orthodox are busy studying Torah during the time they'd be in the army, the Modern Orthodox do community service instead. Bottom line is, I'm not entirely sure what I'm talking about, and I don't think my dad is either.

But my feeling is mixed, because yeah, it's not fair for the Hassidim to expect the government and taxpayers to let them do whatever they want with government money when it's against the laws of Israel or court rulings or whatever. But at the same time, it's a Jewish state. So why is it that the Hassidim have to jump through hoops to be able to practice Judaism the way they want to, and the way that they are miraculously able to in the state of Israel, just because the secular government doesn't agree with it? I'm not saying I agree with it either. But isn't that kind of the point of Israel's existence? Just a thought.

And that said, I still say they should just have a private school, and then the taxpayers wouldn't be funding their discrimination, nor would they be forced to integrate against their beliefs, and then everything would be fine.

And that's my ramble for today.