Ed. note: Here is discussion on the topic of God from the hj list: Posts included here by: Sherman Kaplan Susan Averbach Hillary Al Tauber Miriam Jerris Patty Becker Roger Eden Walter Hellman ....................................................................... From shermank@interaccess.comTue Oct 10 21:17:50 1995 Date: Sun, 27 Aug 1995 17:37:10 -0500 From: "Sherman M. Kaplan" To: hj@teleport.com Subject: Is there a longing for god? In a recent letter, Al Tauber writes; >Religion differentiates people. Sometimes that's destructive (Bosnia, >Ireland, the Middle East) but religion activly practiced by non-fanatics > >(1) provides a sense of tribal belongings that diversifies and transcends >nationalism, > >(2) satisfies an inescapable spiritual longing and > >(3) binds the family. > I have been doing more lurking than participating in this forum, not out of a lack of interest, but because it is so very difficult to articulate exactly what I feel and want to say about the issues under discussion. There is an irony in that because much of what I do professionally is as a writer. I think that what troubles me is summarized in some of what Al (and others) have been alluding to since I signed onto this list. I often see such words as "spiritual" and "holy", and it makes me wonder: Though we call ourselves rational and Secular Jews, are we not at some level really longing for the existance of God? Is this not something we really want to believe, but for whatever reasons of rationality, we can no longer take that leap of faith. Perhaps I am only expressing my personal feelings, but I have become aware of the sense of sharing which characterizes this group. Since making the definition of myself as a secular Jew and joining the SHJ, I have also become aware of a distuburing sense within myself which I can only describe as an aversion to, if not a (dare I use the word) hatred of professed religion. At the same time, I remain interested in Jewish history and culture. But, I feel no sense of worship; after all, who is there to worship? The dilemma that arises from all of this is a sense that without god, Judaism, and all relgions for that matter, is an empty shell. Al Tauber correctly points out the sense of tribalism which seems to be part of the human condition. But, is that a worthy sense, or is it something that people devoted to rationality should try to overcome? And, if we overcome it, what is left of our sense of Jewishness? And more to the point, what use are words such as spiritual and holy if we deny (correctly IMO) the existence of a supreme being? After rereading what I have just written, I still am not sure I am articulating exactly what I feel. But, to suggest that within me rages a battle between a sense of the rational, and a desire to believe is not too far off the track. At this point rationality holds the upper hand in a world which suggests to me that this is after all a cold and hostile Universe in which we somehow manage to exist and try to make a better world, dependant only upon our actions, and nothing else. If you have gotten this far, thanks for reading this letter. ........................................................................ From saverbach@ortho1.ucsf.eduTue Oct 10 21:17:51 1995 Date: Mon, 28 Aug 95 08:26:23 WST From: "Averbach, Susan" To: hj@teleport.com Subject: discussion on spirituality/Humanistic Judaism Spirituality does not imply a belief in a supreme being. For example, Buddhists, though very spiritual in practice, do not believe in god/God. There is no reason that we cannot make use of our intuitive powers as well as our rational ones. We do this easily when we read poetry, see visual art, and listen to music. Those intuitive, affective qualities are brought into play in the expression of spirituality/transcendence--whatever you want to call it. We are more than rational individuals; we are connected to each other and to nature in ways that are difficult to express strictly in rational terms. ........................................................................ From shas@primenet.comTue Oct 10 21:17:51 1995 Date: Mon, 28 Aug 1995 12:17:02 -0700 From: shas To: hj@teleport.com Subject: RE:Is There a longing for God? Dear Sherman, Thanks for jumping in and not lurking. I for one feel better with my relationship to this movement now that I broke out of my lurking and am asking questions and exchanging thoughts. I feel more connected finding others with the same questions and empathies of struggling against the traditional path. I sometimes think this difficulty of putting our feelings, beliefs and desires into words and expressing ourselves clearly is a great part of the problem. I know I have great difficulty enunciating it. The following include snippets of your post of today: >The dilemma that arises from all of this is a sense that without god, Judaism, and all religions for that matter, is an empty shell..... what use are words such as spiritual and holy if we deny (correctly IMO) the existence of a supreme being? My comment to you is actually a reference to a portion of someone else's comments. Louis Fridhandler had a wonderful post, I thought, when he shared some of Erich Fromm's ideas to the list (8/24/95). He spoke about Fromm's book 'You Shall Be as God's". He wrote the following: "For me(as I think it was for Fromm), God is a metaphor expressing the mysterious power accounting for the (only knowable) unity in the variety of the universe. For me, this supports a faith that increasing our knowledge grants us power to influence our part of the universe. It is a faith supported by fact. Humanism means only that we use that influence for the good of our fellow humans, not to harm or exploit them. For many, God is not a metaphor, but fact. If they know enough to conceive of God as fact, okay for them. But I do not know enough (agnostic), so I conceive of God as metaphor. We can speak the same language, same words, mean different things, but it is still possible to get to the same point with regard to action." Unlike you, I don't make a living doing anything close to being a writer, so I hope I am making sense piecing these things together. But the idea that the words we use are not satisfactory to our meaning is because of our ascribing traditional usage. I think I often use words or phrases that mean something more than I really want them to mean (ie, Thank God, God only knows, Oh my God,or It's A Sin {I Picked that last one up while attending a Jesuit University!}). I really like that concept of God as metaphor. Sincerely, Hillary ........................................................................ From atauber@teleport.comTue Oct 10 21:17:52 1995 Date: Mon, 28 Aug 1995 19:27:14 -0700 (PDT) From: Al Tauber To: "Sherman M. Kaplan" Cc: hj@teleport.com Subject: Re: Is there a longing for god? Its not really about a longing for God but it is easily confused with that. The following is quoted from The Evolving Self, A psychology for the third millennium by Csiksazsentmihalyi. In most cultures that have attained the complexity of civilization, the qualities held in highest esteem are those involved in mental processes of a particular character, which for the lack of a better term might be called "spiritual". Spirital skills involve the ability to control experience directly, by manipulating memes (programs) that increase harmony among people's thoughts, emotions, and wills. Spiritual activity aims at producing harmony among conflicting desires....good and evil, love and hate, pleasure and pain..... While religions have lost much of their power, science and technology have not been able to generate convincing value systems to replace them. In all cultures, the essense of spirituality seems to consist in an effort to free consciousness from the thrall of genetic instructions. The need to help individuals see the necessity for self-discipline is as urgent as ever. This is Al speaking. God was just a tool of management, an effective tool, to institute and maintain self discipline so a society could function. atauber@teleport.COM Public Access User --- Not affiliated with Teleport Public Access UNIX and Internet at (503) 220-1016 (2400-14400, N81) ........................................................................ From Msjerris@aol.comTue Oct 10 21:17:52 1995 Date: Tue, 29 Aug 1995 08:26:22 -0400 From: Msjerris@aol.com To: hj@teleport.com Subject: HJ and Spirituality I want to thank those of you who have contributed to this discussion. It has been significant and moving. I concur with those who say that the longing is not for "God" or a god, but for a higher consciousness and transcendent experience. We achieve this experience in a variety of ways -- when we hold life cycle ceremonies, our memorials, marriages, and mitzvah's are among the most powerful experiences I have ever had. When done well with good music our holiday and shabbat celebrations can also achieve this level. I find this longing satisfied when people treat each other with love and respect. I feel that in a way much of the conversation about "longing" has achieved this level of experience. (See William James, Varieties of Religious Experience). ........................................................................ From Patty_Becker@MTS.cc.Wayne.eduTue Oct 10 21:17:52 1995 Date: Tue, 29 Aug 95 18:13:16 EDT From: Patty_Becker@MTS.cc.Wayne.edu To: owner-hj@teleport.com I am somewhat frustrated by this ongoing discussion because some people seem to think they have to choose between god/religion/humanism/yiddishkeit. For me, humanism itself is the religion, the set of guiding principles for my life. Humanism, by definition as used in SHJ, *ignores* the issue of God. Sherwin Wine calls it being "ignostic". The main point is that our relation- ship to people and our own power of reason determine our actions, not the authority of a higher being. Now, where does Jewishness fit it? Being Jewish, for me, is simply what I am. Yiddishkeit expresses it well for me, because I grew up secular in the Workmen's Circle (a shule student in the 40s and 50s and parents and all grandparents and other relatives involved in the organization). For others, the ritual of traditional Judaism evokes this feeling, because that's how they grew up. The point is that in Birmingham Temple, and I hope in other SHJ groups, the point of the organization's existence is to be Jewish. Otherwise we could be Unitarian or join chapters of the American Humanist Association or whatever. We follow the cadence of the Jewish year and Jewish life cycles, but create ritual and ceremony for them that fits with our humanistic, not god-observing, religious philosophy. Another main point which must be realized is that being Jewish is not simply being a member of the Jewish religion. We are a member of a historic people, a family, whose government was the halacha, or the laws of Judaism. As said by human rabbis. We have our own ways of doing things which are different from Christians who are different from Muslims, etc., but we are also Jewish as others are Polish or Italian or Chinese or whatever. It is critical to understand this distinction between religion and ethnicity, and between the God/humanism dichotomy on the one hand and the Jewish self on the other. I love being a Humanistic Jew. It fits who I am and what I want to be and how I want to live my life. I want my daughter to marry a Humanistic Jew. Now that she's a senior in college, she's come to value our "differentness" --it's *pleasurable* to be Jewish instead of a WASP or whatever. Enough for now. I'm interested in how others may responde to the above. ........................................................................ From eden@siftac.easynet.co.ukTue Oct 10 21:17:52 1995 Date: Thu, 31 Aug 1995 08:33:20 +0100 From: Roger Eden To: hj@teleport.com Subject: Oh God! I'm fed up with being asked about God! I am the Chairman of the UK community (such as it is), and about a year ago I threatened to walk out if anyone asked me again "but do we beleive in God". In truth much of our discussion still revolves around the subject - the numinous and other spiritual options (would you beleive - can we synthesize a Jewish Astrology as a way of life?). If you asked me whether I beleived that there were fairies living at the bottom of my garden, I would have about the same inclination for a serious dicussion. In my draft London Platform (recently posted) I felt the need to address the issue, so I give my explanation regarding God. I avoid the debate "is there, isn't there a God", which is quite sterile. There is a God for those who beleive, he exists in their imagination and emotion (that is not intended to be denigratory - merely objective). So I could be called a non-Thiest who beleives there is a God - for beleivers. The evidence is plain, I cannot touch or measure someone elses greif, but I don't deny the existence of greif, and I therefore do not deny the existence of God as the behaviour of the believers shows. Howvever those who have a God, are not better mentsch than those who don't, some of them behave significantly worse. And behaviour is the only criterion. Judged on the behaviour of Theists - on balance - who would long for a God? ........................................................................ Date: Tue, 21 Feb 1995 22:41:47 -0800 From: Walter Hellman Subject: Why I feel I am Jewish Thanks to Rabbi Stern (v4, n123) for a very clear and concise presentation on the mystic and rational views of God. When we look at the long term evolution of our planet and life from relatively simple elements of the origin to the incredible complexity we know today, we must account for the transformation. The traditionally religious attribute it to the traditional God. The non-religious attribute it to chance interactions of the known forces of nature. Another view, close to the "rational" one described by Rabbi Stern is that the transformation is the result of directed higher order processes of which we are only marginally aware and which we are probably not capable of understanding. Although the exact nature of these forces is not known, their existence can be inferred in the same way the invisible force of gravity is inferred from its effects. Thus there is direction to the universe and life...an "unfolding" as Rabbi Stern and others have referred to it. Life is not an accident but part of that direction. Michael Lerner has described the "force" responsible for the unfolding as follows: "The God of the universe is not a static force, not a repetitive or cyclical process, but rather the force that makes for transformation from that which is to that which ought to be." (Tikkun; vol 9, no. 2, p.37) What "ought to be" can be viewed as that to which the unfolding is directed. Jewish history has played a major part in this unfolding with its orientation toward social justice, ethics and the associated improvement of society. But this view of the unfolding is a matter of faith. Others do not share it; the social darwinists, the might is right supporters, the very great numbers of those who simply do not care. There is an odd sort of destiny at work here. The universe is unfolding by means of higher order forces, but we are the players, the agents of the forces. To the extent that we act and have faith in our vision, the unfolding may proceed in a direction that justifies our faith. Is it possible for a humanist to "worship;" to consider anything sacred? I think so. It is the faith in a vision of the idealization of existence and society; a particular view rooted in values developed in large part through Jewish history. This faith may be wrong. We may lose. Our vision may not be borne out in the unfolding. Think of the direction being taken by Congress today. But what else is faith than trust, which cannot be rationally established, in a body of beliefs? These beliefs, intimately connected to both humanism and Judaism, are, for me, the essence of the Humanistic Judaism religion. Do these views give the comfort of traditional religion with a personal God? Perhaps not. But there are other rewards. We are living for a higher cause. We are part of something bigger than ourselves. We do have responsibility. Just as the traditionally orthodox cannot claim to fully understand God's reason for our being here, we cannot fully understand the nature of our unfolding. In both cases there is mystery and where there is mystery, there is hope. hellman@teleport.com Internet Public Access User Hillsboro, Oregon USA