A Closer Look at Judaism

This week I had the opportunity to attend a reform Jewish Friday service with Kelsey, one of the students that I interviewed earlier this semester. The experience was not what I was expecting...

The temple was small, but enough people came so there could be a minyan (ten Jewish men), so all the prayers could be recited. The Rabbi had an acoustic guitar that he played while the prayers were being chanted, all in Hebrew, and one of the young boys in the congregation who was practicing for his Bar Mitzvah led us through the prayers. The Arc was opened, but the Torah was just prayed and bowed to, not taken out and read. We recited prayers (that were available in the prayer book for those in the congregation that needed them... aka me... but it was hard to follow because it was all backwards) then the Rabbi spoke for about ten minutes. He was really excited about the new prayer books, so actually spoke on the development of the prayer books, how they were first oral traditions, then written down, then condensed, then rewritten again, then modernized, and finally re-traditionalized to what they now have today. He compared this to baseball.

The entire service lasted about 45 min.

Afterwords, everyone gathered together in another room and ate a ton of food (after it was prayed over, or course!) I had the opportunity to talk to the Rabbi for a minute about the project. He said something to me that I was shocked to hear come from a Rabbi's mouth.

"I don't care what religion you believe in as long as you hate it. Every religion has bad things about it, but they all have good things about them too." Um, that seems a little confusing. Why should you have to hate your religion?

Wow. This was someone who has dedicated their life to this one religion, memorized a BUNCH of prayers in another language, practiced traditions, lived in guidelines, and says that he hates his religion. Why practice it then? Why devote your life to something you hate? This is very backwards from all the people who have told us that they find their religion a place of comfort and calm. How could you have find comfort in something that you hate and why you continue doing it?

I think that we need to take a look back at one of the differences we have encountered in Judaism. A person can be Jewish by religion and by heritage, so being Jewish does not necessarily mean that you practice it, or even believe in it. I would expect someone who is a Rabbi to be more than just a cultural Jew, but because this was a reform temple I guess even the Rabbi doesn't have that strong of a religious affiliation. I wish I had thought to ask him why he was a Rabbi, but I was so taken aback by what he said that I didn't think to ask anything else. I think that he is a Rabbi because he gets something out of practicing the prayers. Maybe he likes being a "teacher" (because that is what the word "Rabbi" means), and he just wants to convey the important moral aspects of that religion, and not so much the religion itself; what he would call the "good things" about the religion. These are only speculations.

I can also interpret this as one of the many signs of religion shifting from a restricted and organized group practice to a more personal spiritual experience. He chooses to be a Rabbi and teach, while hating the idea of his religion.

On the other hand, this can also be interpreted another way (as pointed out to me by Jonathan...) Hating your religion mean that you have thought about it and you have seen that the religion itself has to be more than just what you are raised with, more than what you have been taught and say. It has to be what you believe and what fits your worldview. I don't think that if you actually think about any religion there isn't some aspect that you don't understand, something you can't think about, and something you can't disagree with. It just matters that it's you thinking about it. Because what is the point of just doing religion if it is lip service? People that just do that are doing nothing. If it is suppose to mean something then you should think about what you don't agree with and come to terms with that. Think about why it is said and why you disagree. Religion is not all bad and you should not look at them to see only what you don't like (because religion offers more than just debate topics), but they are set up to be a framework of guidelines and not concrete rules. I wish more people saw them as such.