{"id":2328,"date":"2013-10-02T13:19:50","date_gmt":"2013-10-02T13:19:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/theatheistrabbi\/?p=2328"},"modified":"2013-10-02T13:19:50","modified_gmt":"2013-10-02T13:19:50","slug":"time-to-panic-a-new-survey-on-jews-is-out","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/theatheistrabbi\/2013\/10\/time-to-panic-a-new-survey-on-jews-is-out.html","title":{"rendered":"Time To Panic! A New Survey On Jews Is Out"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

The Pew Research Center has released its report on patterns of Jewish identity<\/a> and the leaders of the establishment Jewish community are pushing the panic button.<\/p>\n

Here are some highlights from the New York Times<\/a>:<\/p>\n

The intermarriage rate, a bellwether statistic, has reached a high of 58 percent for all Jews, and 71 percent for non-Orthodox Jews \u2014 a huge change from before 1970 when only 17 percent of Jews married outside the faith. Two-thirds of Jews do not belong to a synagogue, one-fourth do not believe in God and one-third had a Christmas tree in their home last year.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The most important statistic from my standpoint is the fact that \u201c32% describe themselves as having no religion and identify as Jewish on the basis of ancestry, ethnicity or culture.\u201d Only 15% say that being Jewish is \u201cmainly a matter of religion.\u201d Two-thirds say that \u201cit is not necessary to believe in God to be Jewish.\u201d<\/p>\n

The good news? Over 80% say they \u201care proud to be Jewish.\u201d<\/p>\n

Rabbi Andy Bachman of Brooklyn\u2019s Beth Elohim performed an \u201cal chet\u201d (mea culpa) on his blog, \u201cWater Over Rocks.\u201d<\/a> He makes some interesting, if now clich\u00e9d, observations. But most of his analysis completely misses the mark.<\/p>\n

First the good parts:<\/p>\n

For decades, a person who intermarried was seen as having \u201cgiven up\u201d on Jewish life. In our community in Brooklyn and certainly in countless Jewish communities everywhere, that is simply not true. Marrying someone *not* Jewish often leads to the couple making Jewish decisions together\u2013for their benefit and enrichment as a couple, and certainly when it comes to raising children\u2026.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

This approach to intermarriage is the result of reality landing on Jewish religious leaders like a million sacks of bricks. But good for him and them. At least they\u2019ve stopped demonizing intermarried people.<\/p>\n

Further on he writes:<\/p>\n

When a child moves into adolescence, one of the worst and challenging phases of life, we have a ritual that is as meaningful as it is incomprehensible. Rote memorization is our own worst enemy, since few have a fond memory of it for reading from Torah. But the relationships that can form with a family, when done correctly are indelible.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

(Quick plug for Humanistic Judaism: We have no requirement to read from the Torah. We ask the kids to select role models, do comprehensive research about them and share the values they learned from the role model\u2019s life.)<\/p>\n

Now the bad parts. And there are many.<\/p>\n

A big problem for pretty much all of my non-Humanistic colleagues is that even when they correctly identify a problem of belief, they have no clue how to address it. They don\u2019t even speak the same language as non-religious people.<\/p>\n

Here is his response to the irrefutable reality that American Jews are among the world\u2019s greatest disbelievers in God and the supernatural. He advises rabbis to:<\/p>\n

Embrace skepticism and doubt. We do such a poor job of not letting people know that the religious exemplars of faith\u2013the Rabbis\u2013had moments of enormous doubt; had questions about divinity and providence that tormented them; and struggled mightily to convey Judaism\u2019s deepest truths through the lens of questioning God, law and authority. American Christian traditions, especially the Evangelical movements which traditionally place faith front and center, have influenced American Judaism to place too great an emphasis on pure faith and I find that, to use a colloquialism, this \u201cturns people off.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Just a few years ago Reform and Conservative rabbis were pushing for more God talk in their congregations. I never heard that this was because they wanted to be more like the evangelicals! What is he even talking about?! Reform leaders and their prayer books push more and more traditional theism with each passing year. Yesterday Bachman posted a picture of himself wearing tefillin on Facebook. Why\u2019s he wearing tefillin if it\u2019s not about God? It\u2019s certainly not a fashion statement.<\/p>\n

But flipping and flopping on God is not the real problem with what he writes here. Like most of his colleagues, Bachman operates from a place of such reverence for the past that he doesn\u2019t even understand that his proposal for addressing the problem is irrelevant.<\/p>\n

Why on earth is it useful to me or any other non-believer to know \u201cthat the religious exemplars of faith\u2013the Rabbis\u2013had moments of enormous doubt; had questions about divinity and providence that tormented them\u2026.\u201d<\/p>\n

Guess what? I already know that damn well. I also know that the sources of their doubts could not have been more different (in most ways) from those that brought me to disbelief in God or gods. And the things that returned them to faith are even more irrelevant.<\/p>\n

To compound the cluelessness, he goes on to tell us that they used their doubts \u201cto convey Judaism\u2019s deepest truths through the lens of questioning God, law and authority.\u201d<\/p>\n

If I understand this correctly, Bachman is saying that doubt is a great part of Jewish heritage. This is because ancient people who lived on a planet that could not be more different than our own had doubts and channeled them into discovering deep \u201ctruths.\u201d<\/p>\n

This is ludicrous. Those of us who live in the 21st century world of doubt and disbelief are not interested in how some ancient personages who knew exactly NOTHING about how the universe really works used their doubts to get them to more nonsense. And don\u2019t even get me started on the completely ahistorical notion that there are \u201cdeeper truths\u201d that they uncovered.<\/p>\n

He goes on to say this:<\/p>\n

Don\u2019t get me wrong\u2013I am often deeply moved by people\u2019s stories of faith and find them inspiring. But a larger number of American Jews don\u2019t buy it and in an unrelenting string of ages of science and inquiry that stretches back in time nearly 500 years, if not more, we\u2019d do well to honor those who lack faith but want very much to remain part of the Jewish civilizational conversation about truth and justice, love and freedom, right and wrong, kindness and compassion, war and peace. Physics, biology, chemistry, philosophy, psychology, politics and history. These are equally valid constructs of Jewish civilization as faith.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I think that I\u2019m involved in the \u201cJewish civilizational conversation\u201d about values. Since the conversation that I\u2019d like to have is informed by radical honesty, I\u2019m not going to sit here and pretend that such lovely values are addressable by Jewish conversations alone. In fact, Jewish notions about truth, justice, etc., are characterized by widely varying attitudes that reflect grossly competing agendas. He knows this as well as I do. When Dr. Baruch Goldstein slaughtered 29 Palestinians in 1994 he was lauded by a number of Jews who were intricately involved in a \u201cJewish civilizational conversation.\u201d They believed his actions to be exemplary of Jewish values. Radical honesty requires us to admit that Jews can find any values they want in our tradition and a lot of them really stink.<\/p>\n

Non-Orthodox Jews don\u2019t get their values from a \u201cJewish civilizational conversation.\u201d At best, a Jewish conversation is a means to speak about UNIVERSAL values while employing a Jewish vocabulary. That\u2019s a cultural asset, but not a religious one. Religion is a dead-end to a useful modern value system.<\/p>\n

Bachman attempts to further elevate the practices of Jewish faith (at least his definition of it) by attempting to co-opt sciences like physics, biology, and chemistry as \u201cconstructs of Jewish faith,\u201d which they most certainly are not. They have nothing to do with any kind of faith. The scientific method is not a faith-based process.<\/p>\n

As for the rest of his list, just off the top of my head I can think of about two dozen Jewish religious perversions of philosophy, psychology, politics and history.<\/p>\n

Take history for example. Bachman himself twists the truth about Jewish history right there in the post when he writes:<\/p>\n

That Jews are still here on Earth after 3500 years is in large measure because of ritual\u2013the ritual of both sanctifying life *and* the ritual of defending ourselves against people who hate us. Both have been enormously effective tools of self-preservation. You can try to argue and I\u2019ll win.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

No, rabbi, you\u2019ll lose, and here\u2019s why. Your premise is absurd. The Jews of 3500 years ago are an utterly and completely different entity than the Jews of today. To the extent that they sanctified life at all (a questionable claim; see Numbers 31 for starters), it was in ways that modern people consider completely primitive.<\/p>\n

I might half concede his point about self-defense. Antisemitism certainly contributed to our survival. It contributed a lot. But that was an external factor in Jewish survival. I don\u2019t even begin to understand what he means by \u201cthe ritual of defending ourselves.\u201d When we defended ourselves, it had little to do with ritual and a great deal to do with self-empowerment (a real lesson of Jewish history).<\/p>\n

Towards the conclusion of his post, he writes about how Judaism can fill a \u201chunger for deeper connections\u201d:<\/p>\n

We promise that we are there for you at birth to welcome a child into the community. That means a name, a bris, a covenantal relationship; it means meals, friendships, a sense of going on a journey through life with others who join a chain of tradition stretching back 3500 years.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

If he\u2019s trying to \u201chonor those who lack faith,\u201d this is a funny way to go about it. First of all, it\u2019s based upon a fiction. There is no \u201cchain of tradition stretching back 3500 years.\u201d<\/p>\n

Secondly, and more to the point, speaking about \u201ca covenantal relationship\u201d is not a path to the hearts of non-believers any more than suggesting that their non-belief can provide a path to \u201cJudaism\u2019s deepest truths.\u201d<\/p>\n

Worse yet, by what \u201cchain of tradition\u201d preserving ritual are we to enter into this imaginary covenant with Yahweh? It is the barbaric practice of infant circumcision.<\/p>\n

If he\u2019s looking to honor non-believers, I would suggest that extolling covenants with fictional gods, based on legends masquerading as history and carried out through the vehicle of non-consensual, unnecessary and irreversible ritual genital mutilation may not be the best way to go.<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t expect anything that I or any other Jewish humanist could write will make a difference. Mainstream liberal Jews are determined to continue mythologizing Jewish values and history and making claims that do not match the facts. They\u2019ll simply continue to re-package their stale ideas and banal claims in fresh and shiny wrappers, believing that the marketing is the problem and not the substance of their teaching.<\/p>\n

According to the Pew report it looks like it\u2019s going very well for them.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Pew Research Center has released its report on patterns of Jewish identity and the leaders of the establishment Jewish community are pushing the panic button. Here are some highlights from the New York Times: The intermarriage rate, a bellwether statistic, has reached a high of 58 percent for all Jews, and 71 percent for […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2281,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[4,17,24,38,39],"class_list":["post-2328","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blogentries","tag-american-jews","tag-humanism","tag-liberal-judaism","tag-science-and-reason","tag-secular-humanistic-judaism"],"yoast_head":"\nTime To Panic! 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