Religious

March 9, 2013

Take a lamb for each household….You shall keep watch over it until the fourteenth day of this month….they shall take some of the blood and put it on the two doorposts and the lintel….For that night I will go through the land of Egypt and strike down every first born…And the blood on the houses where you are staying shall be a sign for you: when I see the blood I will pass over you, so that no plague will destroy you when I strike the land of Egypt.        

We read these words just a few minutes ago, and they may be familiar to you from Passovers gone by.  When the Israelites were commanded to smear blood on their doorways, do you think there were some who said, “I don’t think I’ll do that ritual; I’m not really that religious”?

It’s hard to imagine any Israelites witnessing the first 9 plagues and remaining unmoved or unconvinced.  There are, as they say, no atheists in foxholes.

So I was fascinated by a piece on NPR and written about in Boston Magazine in recent weeks about growing numbers of American adults, particularly young adults, with no religious affiliation.  Katherine Ozment writing about herself and her family in the magazine explains,

“ When national surveys ask, ‘with which religion are you affiliated?’ and then list several possible answers, we’re the ones who check the box that reads, ‘None of the above’.  Because of that, sociologists call us Nones….

“And our numbers are growing.” She goes on to say,  “Twenty percent of American adults now say that they believe in nothing in particular.  Forty-six million adults identify themselves as religiously unaffiliated, and 88 percent of them say they have no interest in joining a religious institution.”

Sociologists spend a lot of time on this one, identifying why the trend began and what its potential impacts might be on American society, heretofore a society significantly more religiously identified than for example that of Western Europe.

Robert Putnam, political scientist and author of Bowling Alone suggests that this movement away from religious affiliation is a response to the religious right:

          “The boomers, compared to their parents were less religious – and remain less religious.  That happened during the ‘60s.  It was part of their liberation in gender terms, racial terms, sexual terms and religious terms.  But a backlash against the ‘60s counterculture gave rise to evangelical Christianity, which eventually produced the religious right.  And in reaction to that, the next generation – those coming of age around 1990 began leaving organized religion.”

I don’t know if this is a trend that will continue to snowball or if the pendelum will swing back the other direction in time.  I don’t even know if the trend away from affiliation is, on balance, good or bad for American society.

In fact, I am more interested in considering a subset of the Nones, what I suspect is the largest population:  the unaffiliated who are on the margins, those who do not forcefully and adamantly reject the very idea of religion, but who hesitate to call themselves religious. 

Here’s what I mean.  Maybe you truly are not religious.  You never wonder about the nature of God.  You are not troubled by a God who allows the Holocaust or school shootings because the very thought of God is never in the equation for you.  You never wonder what will happen after you die.  You don’t need commandment or law or the tradition of a religious community to be your finest self.

To such a person I can only say, zai gezunt.  Be well.  Go be a decent, honorable person and find your way to bring healing and comfort to our troubled world. There is no reason you and I should not meet over a tuna sandwich and ponder what is the best way for a person to live, how can we each contribute to making the world a kinder, safer place to raise our children.  (We can have that conversation over a drink.  I’m religious, but I like a good drink…) We will doubtless follow different paths but we will likely find much overlap in our definition of good and righteous behavior.

 But I think the reality for more people who fall into the category of Nones is more nuanced than that.  I notice a discomfort with defining ourselves as religious.  It’s not an outright rejection of God or religion.  It’s more a sense of discomfort with calling ourselves religious.  {We think, I’m just a normal 21^st century person trying to live a decent life.  Have some affiliation with a church or shul, I believe in God, but I’m not, you know, religious.}

First of all, for the modern, educated, believer in science, religious is embarrassing, even primitive.  When we think religious we may think fundamentalist, one who rejects evidence for faith.  It calls to mind extremism like the Taliban, like the hareidi, like the willfully ignorant of scientific evidence of say, evolution.  Sometimes when we hear “religious”, we think “religious nut”.

Or maybe some say “I’m not really religious” out of a sense of respect.  We actually have a respect for religious belief and practice and don’t want to be disingenuous or insincere.  We don’t want to lay claim to something that is not properly ours.  In other words, we aren’t embarrassed or put off by religion, we just don’t think we are pious enough or actively observant enough to call ourselves religious.

I actually find this more troubling than rejecting religion.  Too many of us – too many Jews, Christians, probably too many of every faith community believe that religious is all or nothing.  It is expressed in one way only.  For Jews, too many of us believe that authentic religious life is expressed only by the Orthodox, maybe even only by the Ultra-Orthodox with their distinctive dress and unwavering separation from secular society. The rest of us are second best, “just Conservative, or “only Reform,” not really entitled to see ourselves as authentically religious.  (I want to make this clear: The fault is not in Orthodox Judaism or with Orthodox Jews, but in us, in our inability to see our expression as authentic.)

So listen, it’s not my place to label anyone.  But I would suggest that maybe you are religious, you are genuinely religious and may legitimately proclaim yourself so.  Okay, you may be thinking, that’s not such an insight.  It’s 11:00 on a Saturday morning and I’m in a shul wearing clothing that’s less than completely comfortable.  Talk about preaching to the choir.  But too many of us would say, well, I’m a guest of the bar mitzvah family, or I’m here at services but that I don’t observe Shabbat in its entirety.  Or I’m careful to keep a kosher kitchen, but am lax about my kashrut observance when I eat in a restaurant.  So I can’t call myself religious.

          Of course you can!

I have an old friend.  A dear friend who grew up in a fairly observant Jewish home.  His family kept kosher and attended shul regularly.  Maybe it’s because I’m a rabbi, but I sense he’s a little embarrassed that as an adult raising a family of his own he no longer keeps kosher.  I mean not at all—not in the house or out.  He typically has no misgivings about anything he eats. 

But on a business trip a few years ago – almost this time of year in fact – it was chol ha-moed Pesah (the intermediate days of Passover) and at the banquet was a platter of breaded shrimp, apparently a favorite of his.  {You can see where this is going:}  He peeled the breading off and ate the shrimp.

That’s religious behavior!  Noting that this is the season that we remember we were redeemed from slavery.  Remembering that that redemption ought to inspire gratitude.  Understanding, that somehow that gratitude is expressed by not eating leavened food for this season: That decision not to eat the breading on the shrimp: It is nothing less than an religious impulse: An expression of the gratitude we are enjoined to feel because generations ago God or something we think of like God freed us from slavery.  I don’t care if it’s not consistent or even predictable.  It is a lovely Jewish response.  And it is a genuine enough expression of gratitude and of connection with the Jewish people that merits one to say, look, I am in fact religious!

          So maybe you are less than fully comfortable with the prayers in the siddur.  Maybe you don’t understand the Hebrew.  Maybe you DO understand the Hebrew and aren’t sure you agree with every word we recite.    Maybe sometimes your mind wanders during prayer and you find you’ve just been saying words, nor really praying.  Maybe you sometimes wonder if God really does hear our prayer, or maybe you don’t always like the way God answers our prayers.

Or perhaps you are disappointed in your faith community.  Maybe you feel it does not respond actively enough to urgent, pressing needs of inequality, of injustice, of something so basic as hunger here in our nation.  Likely you have doubts and questions no one has been able to answer to your satisfaction.

None of that disqualifies you from being a religious Jew.  Our first national name is b’nei Yisrael, the children of Israel – the children of one who struggles and wrestles with God and what it means to believe in God.  That is our first religious mandate.  Not to be sure, not to be unblemished in our faith – to wrestle with it.

So I would say that whatever your affiliation, however observant you are, you are religious if you long for community to mark milestones like this morning’s in which we witness a boy take his place as a man.

You are religious if you feel a visceral connection to the land of Israel and an irrational love for the people Israel – or whomever your people may be.

You are religious if you are moved by holiday traditions, if you even once in a while long to be comforted by God’s Presence and if you want to convey that connection and that longing to your children.

I tell you you are religious not to label or limit you, but to welcome you to your rightful place and to encourage you to struggle and wrestle – you are an insider.

Shabbat Shalom.