"What I haven't heard on this blog is something about the sense of the sacred in a non-halachic, non-dogmatic traditional Jewish setting. Maybe I'm wrong but the orthoprax part seems rather dry without the mystery and yearning for the divine - whatever that word means. Maybe I sound a little Carlebachian but I'm really talking about something more serious. You seem to be all about intellectual arguments about the existence of the Divine. Maybe it's because of the MO background. Is there a place somewhere for those who think the divine is real but feel dogmas and dikdukei halachos just don't speak to us? You don't have to be a talmid of Dr. Freud to know that there is a lot more to the sum total than "merely" the rational and intellectual centers of the mind."
And here's something from Deepak Chopra:
"By making belief in God their enemy, atheists deprive themselves of what spirituality is really about: a process of inner growth. There are wisdom traditions around the world that do not use the word God (e.g., Buddhism, Vedanta) or advocate religious worship in the conventional sense. Countless people have seen through the faults of organized religion and turned instead to their own spiritual journey. Hitchens and other atheists stand at the door to that journey and slam it shut, assuring all who approach that to seek God, the soul, or higher reality is a fool's errand. How do they know? It's not as if they have inquired deeply into the great saints and sages who have successfully traveled such a journey. Hitchens dismisses every spiritual person out of hand, which means that he dismisses William Blake (the source of his phrase, "mind-forged manacles," which Blake applied to modern industrial life, not religion) in the same breath that he dismisses Bible Belt preachers.
By discounting the whole notion of spiritual awakening, atheists make a claim to false knowledge. They haven't walked the walk, yet somehow they know, with dead certainty, that Buddha, Socrates, Plato, Jesus, Confucius, Zoroaster, Saint Paul, Rumi, Kabir, the Prophet Muhammad, Rabindranath Tagore, and countless others aren't just wrong; they are stupid and blinkered compared to any everyday atheist today. I have my doubts. The atheists I've met went through a period of personal disillusion with religion, and on that basis alone they became atheists. Could anything be more subjective for a crowd that decries subjectivity? Could anything be more idiosyncratic for a group that claims to represent universal reason?"
So basically, this is my reason for being Orthoprax. The OJ community (and to a lesser extent Conservative and Reform), pays attention to spirituality, morality, community and all those spiritual type things. Without religion one can certainly be a private seeker of all these things, but generally people need social reinforcement. And of course from a cultural perspective, OJ provides the rich cultural fabric and heritage that many non OJ people seem to want, and OJ people would miss. I know people who gave up on OJ after becoming Orthoprax. They miss a lot. Maybe being able to eat at McDonalds on Shabbat makes up for it, but I'm not so sure. I also know plenty of people who are Orthoprax who totally don't have to be. Their spouses are non Orthodox, their families are not an issue. They could easily just leave. But they don't.
Posts
40 comments:
It really sounds like you are trying to convince yourself. Would you really be observant, given the place you're in now, if you didn't have an observant wife and family?
Go ahead. Continue to ignore FKM's latest 2 posts (fkmaniac.blogspot.com)
on Bible Criticism and the Kuzari principle while pretending that you've honestly examined the issue from every angle.
"The OJ community ... pays attention to spirituality, morality, ...and all those spiritual type things. "
Would that such attention be so widespread. Increasingly, OJ pays attention to halachic minutiae that often are at variance with spirituality and morality. Such obsession, together with an obscurantist insistence on literal acceptance of certain historical "facts", at variance with established scientific findings, is a major cause of orthopraxis, IMHO.
I would encourage potential orthopraxers not to give up on our tradition so easily. There is more complexity in there than your rebbe taught you in the 5th grade. As your understanding of many things has deepened since since the fifth grade, so can your understanding of Judaism. The Rambam was branded a heretic in his day. His books were burned. His grave was desecrated. To this day, much of his writings are not studied in "frum" circles. Same goes for several Rishonim. Don't abandon Hashem because of the rigidity of certain men.
R.W., I just read a great blog about Book of Moerman Criticism and the santa claus principle - IT was mind boggling. you should read it. From every angle you will see the truth in their claims.
moshe,
"Don't abandon Hashem because of the rigidity of certain men"
why does it come back to this? you always think that anyone that does not want to be frum (as you define it) just wants to eat a cheeseburger on yom kippur while driving his car.
moshe, what if someone put forth their best effort and came up on the side that NONE OF IT IS TRUE! you suggest that person should continue living a frum lifestyle anyway? now, for many of us, we are stuck. But someone not stuck?
and then you throw the guilt part in there that they are "abandoning god" - puhlleeeezzze your your BS
Why is abandoning Orthodox Judaism akin to abandoning God?
tesyaa, if you believed in God, you would believe in rabbinic orthodox judaism. but the only reason you dont, is becasue of all the strict rules. you are a ba'al tayvah.
LOL, that's me, the hedonist
without exageration, frum yidden believe this. I just had a discussion with my very chareid local rabbi about this - and he truly thinks the ONLY reason anyone would not abide by these rules is that they want to indulge.
that attitude is so arrogant, its beyond.....
"There is more complexity in there than your rebbe taught you in the 5th grade"
Is there where you tell people to learn Tanya?
Ksil,
"you always think that anyone that does not want to be frum just wants to eat a cheeseburger...."
????
I don't see how you got that from anything that I wrote. I never said that, nor do I believe it. I think you have me confused with JP.
tesyaa,
"Why is abandoning Orthodox Judaism akin to abandoning God?"
It's not, ipso facto. However,in practicality, the skeptics whom I've encountered on this blog generally take the position, among other things, that God does not exist, or, at minimum,that his existence cannot be proved and/or has no relevance to how one leads one's life.
BSD
"Is there where you tell people to learn Tanya?"
If you're referring to contemporary Chabad,I would rank them, intellectually, at about the third grade, not the fifth.
Moshe,
Please name the next book on Judaism that I should read.
BSD,
If you're serious,please tell me a little about your background and views and I'll try to respond.
"I don't see how you got that from anything that I wrote"
what did you mean by this? "Don't abandon Hashem because of the rigidity"
Moshe,
Do you have an email address?
XGH...After beating up on so many others you should be able to do a little better than OJ pays "attention to spirituality, morality, community and all those spiritual type things." Last year the buzzword was "meaning", this year bye-bye meaning, hello spirituality. Litvisher Yid didn't ask for more rational arguments why Orthopraxy is right and everyone else got it wrong. He wanted something "about the sense of the sacred in a non-halachic, non-dogmatic traditional Jewish setting." And he wanted something that came from a place other than the "rational and intellectual centers of the mind."
I'll be frank...WADR I think you lack the poetic-romantic impulses to convey such feelings and thoughts, and you do not have any definite ideas what is the spirituality you want or seek.
There are few if any 'secularized' rebbes, magidim, baalei madreiga that have the rhetorical power to bring people to higher madreigos in ruchniyos. You as a rationalist post Copernican person have ruled out the core picture in all frum talk...a heaven above corresponding to the world below, thus ruling out all neo-Platonist talk of ascendancy, higher and lower.
Where will you find a new language, a way of talking that has fewer worn out, unrealistic metaphors? Rumi, Buddha, St. Paul... not exactly heimish or yeshivish.
BSD,
Any chance you could provide me with an email address? I'm reluctant to publicly post mine. If you are likewise reluctant, perhaps you could just give a very general summary of your views and background here, nothing too specific. I just need to know a little, to make an informed recommendation.
bsd.anon.email@gmail.com
The whole end of Sam Harris's book is dedicated to spirituality. To say that atheists discount the notion of spiritual awakening is quite off the mark.
It's not that we have a problem with spirituality. It's that we have a problem with spirituality being hijacked by religion.
BP,
"spirituality"
You mean to tell us that there is something beyond physical reality? Prove it. :)
You mean to tell us that there is something beyond physical reality?
Unless you regard the neurological experiences "beyond physical reality," no.
To clarify for you, this is Sam Harris's short clarification of his views on spirituality:
My views on "mystical" or "spiritual" experience are extensively described in The End of Faith and do not entail the acceptance of anything on faith. There is simply no question that people have transformative experiences as a result of engaging contemplative disciplines like meditation, and there is no question that these experiences shed some light on the nature of the human mind (any experience does, for that matter). What is highly questionable are the metaphysical claims that people tend to make on the basis of such experiences. I do not make any such claims. Nor do I support the metaphysical claims of others.
There are several neuroscience labs now studying the effects of meditation on the brain. While I am not personally engaged in this research, I know many of the scientists who are. This is now a fertile field of sober inquiry, purposed toward understanding the possibilities of human well-being better than we do at present.
XGH...After beating up on so many others you should be able to do a little better than OJ pays "attention to spirituality, morality, community and all those spiritual type things."
EJ, beating up on others is all that XGH knows how to do. This post was just to assuage his conscience after the criticism on the last post.
D...I do agree that tearing down is much easier than building up. I do feel if XGH could roll his eyes and wax poetic on the virtues of yiddishkeit, say like Rav Kook, he would gladly swoon away. But it's not so easy to do as we all recognize, especially when you are like XGH, a person of integrity, trying to be honest with himself and his readers. What I am being pushy about is having two standards, a mehadrim epistemolgy for Orthodox people, and a hodge podge utilitarian laundry list for not acting on the skepticism. We are not happy with people who say they wear a yamulke to avoid melanoma or go to shul because it's a good cardio workout.Utilitarian justifications are not exactly what people are seeking.
If XGH sticks with this topic, I want to say something why Arthur Green, who also denies the existence of an external God is taken as a leader in the renewal of spirituality in America, and why the paths open to Green are not open to XGH. For now I hope I clarified my remark, and was not insulting.
Deepak Chopra?? Are you kidding me?
There are plenty of atheists who do things that you and he would call "spiritual" all the time. Yoga, meditation, Buddhism, art, communing with nature, music, raves, psychedelic drugs, surfing, etc. etc.
Chopra is an enormous fraud.
Just today, famed atheist blogger P.Z. Myers refered to Chopra as "that long-winded charlatan."
Face it you guys, if you're not Orthodox and do not believe that all of Torah is God's words to Moshe Rabbeinu, you are not Jewish.
After I posted my last comment, I learnt that Rabbi Green had given a long talk at the HUC-JIR graduation that was now availablew on the internet. I thought it was a wonderful musar shmooz and a clear statement of his vision. For those who might possibly be interested I post the URL.
http://www.huc.edu/newspubs/pressroom/article.php?pressroomid=1795
Nate,
So we only need to keep the major 7, right?
Chopra's quote got some attention on a popular atheist science blog.
http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2011/05/chopra_challenges_eloquence_wi.php?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+scienceblogs%2Fpharyngula+%28Pharyngula%29
is it legit to eat macdonalds on shabbos, but remain part of the orthodox community to gain the benefits and contribute to its institutions?
Have to agree with those who are criticizing you for citing Chopra.
"They haven't walked the walk, yet somehow they know, with dead certainty, that Buddha, Socrates, Plato, Jesus, Confucius, Zoroaster, Saint Paul, Rumi, Kabir, the Prophet Muhammad, Rabindranath Tagore, and countless others aren't just wrong; they are stupid and blinkered compared to any everyday atheist today. I have my doubts."
Well they don't have to know with dead certainty. They might just know beyond a reasonable doubt.
Don't know about all the people he mentioned but Budda and Socrates weren't theists in the sense that modern Western religions are theistic. Jesus might never have existed, although I will give the Catholics credit for building nice cathedrals. Muhammed gave us Islam. Zoroaster gave us Zorasterism.
I don't know if Paul was blinkered, but he sure was batty. Plato was off the wall about many things. Don't know much about the others, but so far I'd say that if Chopra was trying to be ironic, he missed the boat.
But the spirituality that you're finding in being Orthodox/prax isn't the kind of spirituality that Chopra's talking about. The spirituality is whatever you get from following a rigid set of halachas, minhagim, and chumras, that are often arbitrary. If that is what you like, then fine, but the only spiritual value I can see in it is just a sense of fitting in with the community.
Seems to me the xgh reference to Chopra is just recasting the prior poster's comment. Spirituality, meaning etc have a place. Religious Jewish groups focus on it as well as all the cultic rituals ichabod refers to.. Xgh is clearly familiar with OJ and seeks some solace in its moral ambitions.
Nate - I encourage you to read a recent post on daat emet about biblical history. You I'd love your take on it.
>without exageration, frum yidden believe this. I just had a discussion with my very chareid local rabbi about this
Ksil,
You do realize, you went from talking about Frum to charedi right? Frum people are not necassarily charedi.
>raves, psychedelic drugs,
LOL
sigh.
HH,
"Frum people are not necassarily charedi"
that is such an EXCELLENT point! Thank you! you should go read Harry's blog that defines "frum" and give your 2 cents there.
Hey GH,
Do you miss mis-nagid? I miss mis-nagid.
>that is such an EXCELLENT point! Thank you! you should go read Harry's blog that defines "frum" and give your 2 cents there.
Im not defining frum. You seem to be doing that and doing a piss poor job at it.
That can't be little foxling. Not the real one. I heard LF was lost in some polka incident.
>They haven't walked the walk, yet somehow they know, with dead certainty, that Buddha, Socrates, Plato, Jesus, Confucius, Zoroaster, Saint Paul, Rumi, Kabir, the Prophet Muhammad, Rabindranath Tagore, and countless others aren't just wrong; they are stupid and blinkered compared to any everyday atheist today.<
Am I the only one disturbed that Deepak mentions every religion -- even the murderous Islam -- but can't come up with a Moses, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Micah, or Amos (among many others)?
Why be disturbed? All those guys were just regular people with ideas.. Moshe, Isiah, etc were prophets and sent by god. Completely different league.
Post a Comment