I didn't know rabbis could approach religion with humour. Then again, how many rabbis have I run into (answer: none).

In a recent magazine article* I laughed while reading Rabbi Rami Shapiro's column. Here are some of his responses to readers' questions:

1. Q: "A friend dreamed of my deceased mother, who weighed in on an important financial decision I'm pondering. I was surprised, since Mom wasn't at all financially astute. Should I follow her advice?"

A: "Not necessarily. If your mom wasn't a financial wizard while alive, there's no reason to imagine she has become one now that she is dead."


2. Q: "I have friends that are obsessed with enlightenment, but I'm not interested. What am I missing?"

A: "Nothing. Enlightenment is over-rated. Of course, I may be saying this because I'm not enlightened. Or I may be saying it because I am enlightened. Which is why enlightenment is over-rated. What really matters is how you treat other beings. My advice: Forget enlightenment, and work on being loving, just, and kind instead."


3. Q: "My new neighbors put a shrine to Our Lady of Guadalupe on their front lawn. I see it every time I go out and come home. I'm Jewish. What should I do?"

A: "Since both you and Our Lady are Jewish, I suggest you greet her with a pleasant "Shalom Aleichem" ("Peace be upon you") in your goings out and comings home. It couldn't hurt to smile and wave to your new neighbors as well."


Then the Rabbi gets serious. Next question: "How can atheists be moral when they deny God, the true source of morality?"

The Rabbi responds:

"As the recent upheaval in the United Methodist Church over strengthening the ban against gay and lesbian clergy and same-sex marriage demonstrates, affirming God as the source of morality doesn't tell us much. If you support gay and lesbian clergy and same-sex marriage, your God will affirm gay and lesbian clergy and same-sex marriage. If you oppose gay and lesbian clergy and same-sex marriage, your God will oppose them as well. Ultimately, it is your morality that determines God's values, not God who determines your morality."

-----

So many big questions regarding religion.

I recently got back in contact with a doctor I used to work with. I had become friends with him and his family but we gradually lost touch when I moved away from that town. My mother has been very ill for a good while now and we've been unable to find her a regular GP, to literally save her life. (All GP practices in a large geographic area around us are full. One is forced to attend walk-in clinics on an issue-by-issue basis with no overall assessment and no continuing care). I was desperate and so finally resorted to calling in a favour. I hated to do it, after years of not seeing each other, but I was desperate. Within the first two minutes of our conversation, predictably (because he is a fervent EV Christian), my doctor friend asked "So, are you going to church?" I knew he would go there but still it bugged me. I had gone to church with him while we worked together but it was just too fundy, even for me who had just left the JWs (to his great delight because according to his theology I was hell-bound).

He did end up finding me a GP a few weeks ago, only through a who-you-know type favour, which I usually detest but we are truly out of options. The new GP, his friend, is also Christian, attending the same denomination. Waiting in his office you hear piped in music consisting of praise hymns. Kind of unusual in my experience, even in a "Christian practice". The GP was very friendly, helpful and competent so that is all I cared about. Crazy though - halfway through examining Mom, while she was naked under a flimsy paper sheet, lying on a cold, hard table, feeling desperately ill, he asks "So, do you go to church?" Ack. "I'm Roman Catholic" she croaked. Her Irish mom was RC and Mom and her three sisters were raised in that faith but only one of my aunts stuck with it. Mom has never gone to the RC Church in my lifetime. To my mind that makes her a nominal Catholic, at best. But that's her answer whenever someone asks her religion. I felt compelled to say to the EV doc "well, she was raised Catholic but..." and mentally slapped myself for that. Who cares? Why does it matter? How is it appropriate in that setting? But he is helping us in exactly the way I would wish so I bite my tongue and go with the flow to get to the end result we desire. Which is simple enough - basic competent medical care for Mom.

Back to my recent contact with my GP pal that I used to work with: When I answered 'yes' I'm going to church (a slight exaggeration so we wouldn't get into a hassle, as I do not attend regularly) I added "but you're not going to like it". Then I named the church which is the opposite of fundamentalist, certainly compared to his. Predictably, he responded: "But they've lost the Spirit of God!" and then launched into a list of all their "sins", chief of which is that they do not condemn LGBTQ folks; they ordain them, in fact; and they have female pastors. I could write the script for the EVs now on this. It used to bother me but now it just slides by. I laughed a bit, then told him why I became associated with them (because they helped me out with refugees in the community that I had met and was trying to help. They've given us clothing, food, hygiene kits, toys for the kids, and invited them to community dinners - with no fear of conversion attempts, as well as looking into helping to sponsor family members in reunification attempts). None of that matters, of course, if they don't follow the scriptures in lock-step with the way that EVs interpret them.

I grow weary of the age-old argument. It can turn you right off "religion".


Rabbi Shapiro answers another question: "Would humanity be better off with only one religion?"

"Would we be better off with only Bach and not Anoushka Shankar? Would we be better off with only Georgia O'Keeffe and not Hokusai? Religion, like music and art, is an expression of human creativity and should be studied the way we study art and music: not by comparing one religion to another, but by appreciating them all as expressions of humanity's quest for meaning through myth, story, and ritual."


Music to my ears. One of the biggest blocks to unity of all sorts, imho, is the wrong-headed insistence on there being only one interpretation of scripture. And ultimately, it's unknowable, therefore futile. The biggest thought error I made when joining the JWs (as a teen - so what did I know) was that there is ultimate 'truth' that all must adhere to or die spiritually and ultimately eternally. To think that only a tiny segment of humanity is given 'truth' and all the rest perish is not reasonable, just nor desirable. And how, I ask myself, can I be more moral than the Creator in wanting universal justice?

All the wrangling over interpretations and ideas with no apparent obvious absolutes is irritating and tiresome. I guess we'll each find out some day which way the wind blows.

And I can live with that.


Back to the Rabbi:

Q.: "If religion, unlike science, can't be falsified, how can we take it seriously?"

A: "People falsify religion all the time; it's just that the religions they falsify are religions other than their own. I take religion seriously for the same reason I take Shakespeare's King Lear seriously: There is great beauty and truth in it. Read Qur'an, New Testament, Bhagavad Gita, and Torah as great literature rather than infallible revelation, and you will discover much wisdom in them. If, however, you find yourself moved to jihad, crusade, civil war among cousins or occupying your neighbour's backyard, read Shakespeare instead."


Q.: "I used to think celibacy caused sexual abuse in the Catholic Church, but the recently revealed sexual abuse crisis involving married Southern Baptist pastors shatters that theory. What leads these men - priests and pastors and others - to engage in such wickedness?"

A.: "God."

"... What we need is a Boycott, Divest, and Sanction (BDS) movement working to end all support for and engagement with abusive religions, their clergy, and their Gods. Imagine women, men, and children of every religion, race, ethnicity, caste, gender, sexual orientation, etc. walking away from and ceasing to fund patriarchal power and the Gods who support it. Imagine them creating new spiritual communities based on egalitarianism, reciprocity, respect, love, and justice rather than male dominance, hierarchy, discrimination, fear, and prejudice. Now move beyond imagining and act."


I'm liking the Rabbi.

But no worries. I'm not up for conversion any more in my lifetime. Likely most wouldn't take me anyway. I ask too many questions. The Mormons in particular, in my experience really did not like that.


*"Spirituality & Health" magazine, May/June 2019, pg 18-19



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 06/23/2019 11:13PM by Nightingale.

What was your take away? Does this Rabbi believe in ghawd?

elderolddog Wrote:
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> What was your take away? Does this Rabbi believe
> in ghawd?

Maybe.

"Maybe" was my takeaway, because it sure wasn't a certainty.

elderolddog Wrote:
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> "Maybe" was my takeaway, because it sure wasn't a
> certainty.

As it seems to be "always" in these discussions, the most important part of the question is being ignored: "What" or "Who" is God?

Until there is an agreed-upon consensus on what the subject of the question is, or what the subject consists of, then there cannot be a sensible answer to the question.

That being said, many rabbis (and many Jews in general) do not "believe" ["in God"] in the same ways most people tend to think are "obvious." In fact, a large proportion of Jews need a literal guidebook to determine whether they do, or do not, "believe in God," because the question is, in Jewish terms, so nebulous.

I just came across one of these "guidebooks" the other day--and again, I don't know when, or how, I got this book, but it is certainly mine (my annotations, in my handwriting, are throughout the text):

FINDING GOD: Ten Jewish Responses, by Rifat Sonsino and Danial B. Syme, Union of American Hebrew Congregations [the Reform movement], copyright 1986. This is a good beginning "guidebook," though other Jewish options now also exist, options which were not so prominent thirty years ago when this book made its debut.

Even if this book is not comprehensive right now, it is a good, and quite hospitable, beginning on the subject.

In its consecutive chapters, the book examines ten traditional ways Jews have comprehended the subject of God:

1) God in the Bible. [Means: Old Testament]
2) God in Rabbinic Literature
3) Philo's Spiritual Monotheism
4) The Neo-Aristotelianism of Maimonides
5) The Mysticism of Luria
6) The Pantheism of Spinoza
7) The Philosophy of Dialogue of Buber
8) The Limited Theism of Steinberg
9) The Religious Naturalism of Kaplan
10)The Humanism of Fromm [I think it is appropriate here to add Secular Jewish Humanism, an established Jewish movement, to Fromm's concept of Humanism.]

In the back of the book (after the single chapters of discussion on each of the Jewish philosophies above) there is an easy grid from which a reader may pick and choose what THAT PERSON, alone, REALLY thinks and believes and feels about this subject, under each of the following headings:

1) God's Nature
2) Basic Questions about God in each of the above approaches
3) God's Unity (discussion of duality and non-duality, etc.)
4) God's Name (In Judaism God has many names, and which ones are used by any particular Jew or any particular source, is actually a fairly big deal. If I know what name YOU, as a Jew, habitually use to refer to God, I actually know quite a bit about your entire philosophy of life.)
5) Knowing God
6) God's Relationship to the World
7) God and the People Israel (Means: all Jews everwhere, who have ever lived, or who will ever live in the future.)
8) What God "Wants"
9) God and the Individual
10) The Problem of Evil

One quibble: The entire book is homo sapiens sapiens-centric, with no discussion of any other species which exist on this planet (no matter how closely they may be related to us), or to any other species which may, or may not, exist throughout our universe, and all other "universes" or planes of existence.


All of which means: When you ask a Jew "Do you believe in God," this question opens up a vista of possibilities to which neither the word "Yes," nor the word "No," may be accurate or appropriate....most certainly not from the potentially far different perspectives of the two people involved.



Edited 6 time(s). Last edit at 06/24/2019 02:29AM by Tevai.

Can funny rabbis be moral ?

Dave the Atheist Wrote:
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> Can funny rabbis be moral ?

Since the overwhelming percentage of rabbis are the cultural offspring of countless generations of Jewish humor, humor is more like a spotlighted feature.

In human life, when you are teaching, and understanding, and caring, and instructing by example, you can teach much more with humor than you can with fire and brimstone, threats, and ultimatums.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 06/23/2019 07:16PM by Tevai.

I like that rabbi. He has gained wisdom and has something to share and teach.

An excellent, and a thought-provoking post, Nightingale....with some really good points made.

About the humor: One of the things Jews are generally known for is their humor (it is an honored value because Jewish humor has actually helped Jews to get through the dark times when there were no other resources available to do this).

Most Jews who choose to become rabbis grow up with Jewish humor in its many different facets, and as rabbis, they tend to lean on this not only as they go through the long process of becoming rabbis, but even more so as they encounter the foibles of human life when they are serving their congregations. (I am making the assumption that Rabbi Shapiro is a congregational rabbi, rather than [for example] a primarily scholarly rabbi--a teacher, or writer, or researcher, etc.)

I am sorry about what you are going through with your Mom, and I am glad you've been able to maneuver through the system. What you are going through now (as the once-upon-a-time child becomes the parent to THEIR parent) can be really rough, and in practical and emotional ways I don't think most people could envision before it happens to them.

I have been there, and I deeply empathize with what you are dealing with now.

Thanks for this post.

It made my day.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 06/23/2019 08:44PM by Tevai.

Nice try, Tevai, but I'm just going to have to wait for Amyjo's take on all of this, to see if she confirms what you say.

The great thing about Jews is they have room beneath their tent for everybody, even atheists,like Einstein and Ellie Weisel.

Our prisons are not full of atheists/pantheists/Buddhists/Jews. They are full of Christians and Muslims.

Great post. Thanks for putting it up. I enjoyed reading it.

I like the rabbi, too.