The Atheist Rabbi
If you’re following the rabbinical dialogue between Rabbi Fred Klein and me then you’ve read his excellent second letter. It was quite challenging. I’ll leave it to the readers to judge whether I’ve been up to the challenge.
Once again I want to thank Rabbi Klein for his participation. I believe in the importance of family and community. My identity is bound up with being a member of the Jewish family and community. Reasoned dialogues are crucial to the health and well-being of our world wide Jewish community.
Exchange #3, From Rabbi Falick to Rabbi Klein
Dear Fred,
Thank you for another challenging letter. In my previous response, I spent some time discussing the implications on the Holocaust for Jewish theism. You mention other Jewish tragedies and how they were handled over the course of time. I certainly understand that it takes time to absorb such catastrophes (and we Jews have had more than our share) into our sacred narrative. My main point, however, was that all previous integrations of these events were reliable in one key aspect. Each was ultimately ascribed to the will of God. God was a player on the stage of history. It is my opinion that attempts to do so in the modern age will never be successful.
You challenged me with the question, “Could there ever be a compelling theology?” My answer is no. There does not exist any compelling theology for one who rejects the supernatural. As to the question of how to memorialize the victims, I cannot accede to designating them k’doshim, for what should be obvious reasons. I do agree with you that it is, of course, more meaningful to mourn than philosophize. But this is ground that you covered very well from both of our perspectives and perhaps we should move one.
As we do, let me preface it with an observation that your approach, which makes room for science, is clearly preferable to the cartoon version of religion that is predominant today. In our early discussions I assured you that I would not ask you to defend those approaches. No one who has read your thoughtful discourse could expect you to do so.
In fact, you have quite impressively anticipated some of my arguments against belief. You write about Maimonides’ take on the Shema and its instructions to love God:
For you this might seem absurd, but not for a religious believer. Maimonides begins this book and ends the book with Ahavat Hashem, loving God. This is the emotion that the Rav felt when he felt the need to write this work. He could no sooner deny his love for God than he could for his own wife or child. Without living a life of deep connection to God, his life would be incomplete. He desired connection and transcendence.
However, maybe you might challenge — yes, I understand this. However, his children and wife are real. God is not. To this I would answer God has no referent. You take one hundred people and each will have a different view of God. So what does love of God mean?
As I understand it, your answer is that the world needs poetry. Agreed. I just don’t understand why it must be poetry about God.
In fact, it is not through poetry that God is primarily manifest in the real world. If it were just a matter of loving and feeling transcendence, there would be no need for the religious minutiae of the pious. Much of this so-called “law” encapsulates anachronistic views of race, gender and sexuality that have real world, not poetic, consequences. I say to the religious: Go write all of the poetry that you want. Love your mysterious God with all of your heart and soul. But stop imposing the desires and demands of your subjective, un-provable being upon the rest of us. If poetry were sufficient for the religious personality, we would not experience religious terrorism. We would not witness the horrific treatment of those who “violate” God’s “laws.” Israelis could marry anyone whom they love without bringing proof of religiously acceptable parenthood. Gays could wed in the United States and elsewhere. Women would be driving in Saudi Arabia.
An argument about the loneliness of faith is not quite so persuasive when contrasted with the thunderous cacophony of religious absolutism that currently dominates our world. This provides me with a segue to address your questions to me.
You asked about communism, fascism and similar ideologies that are not necessarily religious. Non-believers are asked frequently about the abuses of non-theistic societies. I have already tipped my hand about my answer. The problem facing our world is not theism, per se, but theistic absolutism. This is not only because it is posited on the supernatural. After all, the consequences of supernaturalism alone are not necessarily harmful. People believe all kinds of silly things. That’s why most newspapers have horoscopes.
No, it is because theistic absolutism is a variety of dogmatic absolutism. And this is what poses the greatest challenge to our moral evolution. Dogmatic absolutism can come in many forms, some of them non-theistic. It includes fascism and atheistic communism. It can even appear in the guise of pseudo-science.
Eugenics, with its doctrines derived from the pseudo-scientific concepts of “social Darwinism,” is a good example of this. Or take the Soviets who were willing to believe all kinds of pseudo-scientific nonsense if it bolstered their ideology. Indeed, this is where the term Lysenkoism has its origins. The post-Enlightenment west has cycled quickly through a number of these non-supernaturally based dogmas. Fortunately, they tend to fall apart and become discredited relatively quickly. Unfortunately, it is usually after leaving a trail of destruction and pain in their paths.
There is one form of dogmatic absolutism that has not fallen apart or been discredited. This form is orthodox religion, the king of all dogmatic absolutism. In spite of its disreputable history, it remains alive and healthy.
Before I continue and for the sake of clarity I must note that not every contemporary religion falls into this category. Ongoing religious reformations have yielded non-dogmatic versions. Reform Judaism, liberal Anglicanism and the many others like them are generally benign, even positive influences. I believe that they are misguided about their beliefs in God (and half of the time I don’t think they know what they believe), but they are examples of humanistic theistic religions. Lacking dogmatic absolutism, they produce more good than harm.
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was a theistic humanist in every sense of the word. We secular humanists can and do make common cause with theistic humanists. Personally, I think that the more they focus on their humanism, the less they will find a need for magical thinking and theistic word games. When I confront them it’s usually because of the “cover” they provide to orthodox religion or the harm they do to critical thinking. But that’s all for a different discussion with a different dialogue partner.
Orthodox religions, on the other hand, which claim to know the will and mind of their gods, have not disintegrated in the aftermath of their many, many failures. They should be as discredited as fascism, communism or eugenics and yet they keep on rolling along. Why? Some theorize that it is because their ultimate promises cannot be disproved. They offer a soul. They offer eternal life. Who can prove false the existence of these things?
Dogmatic absolutism, coupled with its exploitation by the power hungry, has rained down ruination upon humanity. The good news, though, is what I addressed briefly in my last letter. When we place ourselves in nature, understanding how our biological evolution has led to our success as a species, we are able to locate our innate morality. We can abandon dogmatic authority, whether it is fascistic or theistic. We can stop depending upon the “wisdom” of ancient people who did not and could not understand any of this because the world they lived in was completely different than our own.
You wrote about how what we now know about the world displaced us; we are no longer “oriented” and do not know where we are (spiritually?) located. In fact, just the opposite is true. We now know exactly where we are and what should be our chief concern. You also point out the evidence of humanity’s cruelty and innate aggression. Like our innate morality, our aggression is also in our capacity to control. You do not deny this, but you throw up your hands and surrender our power to a God that you can’t even assure us exists:
So, even as a construct of control, a MORAL God as an enforcer of a moral order would get us there faster than some sort of rational enlightened system which is totally divorced of the culture, symbols, and webs of meaning which inform most people in the 21st century with the exception of Western Europe. In other words, as a “social engineer” creative use of religion would still get you where you want to go faster.
Is this the same moral God who said, “If a man also lie with mankind, as he lieth with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination: they shall surely be put to death; their blood shall be upon them” (Lev. 20:13)?
Or is it the great enforcer of morality whose moral instruction consisted of this: “Have you saved all the women alive? Kill every male among the little ones, and kill every woman that hath known man by lying with him. But all the women children, that have not known a man by lying with him, keep alive for yourselves” (Numbers 31:1).
Perhaps his moral authority can be summed up with this instruction: “Neither shalt thou make marriages with them; thy daughter thou shalt not give unto his son, nor his daughter shalt thou take unto thy son. For they will turn away thy son from following me, that they may serve other gods: so will the anger of the LORD be kindled against you, and destroy thee suddenly” (Deut. 7:4-5).
I think, with only three small citations (of the hundreds available to me), I have made my point quite clear. This source of morality is not particularly moral by our standards. And if you argue that these verse are simply a product of their time, then you have already made my case. So, too, if you present a kinder or more compassionate image of God from rabbinic literature. In every instance, God, together with all that he says or does, is a product of the human imagination. Dogmatic theistic absolutists cannot acknowledge this. They grant eternal authority to these words and texts.
Contrast them, if you will, with these excerpts from another text:
…We affirm that moral values derive their source from human experience. Ethics is autonomous and situational needing no theological or ideological sanction. Ethics stems from human need and interest.
…The preciousness and dignity of the individual person is a central humanist value. Individuals should be encouraged to realize their own creative talents and desires.
…To enhance freedom and dignity the individual must experience a full range of civil liberties in all societies. This includes freedom of speech and the press, political democracy, the legal right of opposition to governmental policies, fair judicial process, religious liberty, freedom of association, and artistic, scientific, and cultural freedom.
…The principle of moral equality must be furthered through elimination of all discrimination based upon race, religion, sex, age, or national origin.
These are small excerpts from Humanist Manifesto II. It is not a holy text. It’s not in any way sacred. There was an earlier version and there’s a more recent one, too.
Like the Torah, it was written by human beings. Like the Torah, it is a product of its time. Yet honestly, which would we rather live by?
The webs of meaning you mention are founded upon archaic understandings of the world. The “orientation” you write about was accompanied not only by cruelty, but by disease, malnutrition and general misery. All of these were accepted. They were God’s will. Such thinking provided comfort to an impotent humanity. Those days are gone and their philosophies of life should now disappear, too.
Finally, I would like to address your questions about my approach to tradition, including the use of the title rabbi. This has also come up in some of our private conversations.
Like you, I live with certain tensions. I do not hope for or desire any return to pre-scientific times. And I do see value in traditions. But these traditions must meet certain tests. They must be moral. They must be voluntary. They must be acknowledged as the product of the human imagination and as such, they must meet human needs.
With these caveats in mind, I search Jewish traditions for the stories, practices and commitments that will enhance the meaning of modern life. Since Passover is approaching, I’ll use that as an example.
Like other liberal rabbis, most of them theists (even if their theism is ill-defined), I do not regard the Torah as a history book. All of the non-Orthodox rabbinic schools teach the Torah’s stories as legends. This was my approach long before I asserted my non-theism.
So why celebrate? The holiday is part of my culture and history. I’ve celebrated it all of my life and it is central to my identity as a Jew (polls show that it is the most celebrated Jewish holiday). As a Humanistic Jew, I believe that the lesson of Passover is still powerfully meaningful today. There are still people who are in actual slavery. Others do not enjoy full freedom due to the prejudices of the societies in which they live.
Humanistic Jews don’t thank God for freeing us. We are merely grateful (just grateful!) that our people placed a value on freedom and we find it highly worthy of celebration.
There are many other rituals and organizational structures that we also preserve. The Society for Humanistic Judaism is organized along similar lines as the Union for Reform Judaism or the United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism. We have havurot, congregations and rabbis. We do not seek to overthrow the entire religious project of humanity. We seek to re-orient it away from obeisance to a mythical deity and toward ultimate concern for the well-being of humanity.
I named my blog “The Atheist Rabbi” because I am an atheist and, quite frankly, to get attention. But I also sub-titled it “A Secular Humanistic Rabbi’s Blog.” I worked hard to earn the title of rabbi and my certificate was signed by at least one non-believer who was on our faculty at HUC. Others among my teachers also had little regard for supernatural conceptions of God. When the younger generation of Reform rabbis began to re-embrace older forms of practice and then of belief, I could see that my days as a Reform rabbi were numbered. I am grateful that there is a Society for Humanistic Judaism to which I could turn. There they take seriously both their Jewish heritage and their humanistic concerns. It is one of many excellent vehicles to share these concerns with the world.
Your “social engineer” has not succeeded very well. Our vision has barely been given a chance. I say it’s high time to put our ancient texts in their place — antiquity. They are a lovely literary treasure and should be appreciated for that and for the fact that they provide a window to our past. To continue searching them for eternal values yields mostly ancient prejudices and superstitions. It brings us ongoing conflict between competing religious “truths.” It produces religious persecution of women, homosexuals, and non-believers. These facts are in the headlines daily. Orthodox religions have utterly failed to improve humanity. So even your utilitarian arguments are not justified by reality.
You ended your letter by asking whether it was acceptable to pray that I am well. Frankly, I am happy for any wishes for my well-being as I am sure that there is no shortage of those who are praying me to hell. In any case, it is always nice for any person to know that he or she is in another’s thoughts. We are social creatures, after all. That’s how we evolved.
I wish you well, too, and I also wish you a happy Passover.
Best,
–Jeff
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