I Do Not Believe in A Jewish God

Long ago I wrote a long piece on why I do not believe in a Jewish God.  Summarized -- I can't believe that if God does exist he made a private contract with a bunch of guys called Jews -- or Catholics -- or Muslims.  So I don't observe the Sabbath -- or Sunday -- or Yom Kippur -- the holiest day of the Jewish New Year.  And I never go to Synagogue.

I have been made to think about my behavior by two very unlikely sources: my friend Mark Ross, a freewheeling, freethinking, brilliant man -- and my mother, who for years has asked me to please go to Synagogue.

I told Mark I do not go to Synagogue here in Traverse City -- and I explained that I do not believe in a Jewish God.  He said -- "but they are your people.  As a social act, why don't you go?"  I am very bad at quoting people correctly--and I do not mean to make it sound as if he were saying "your people" as one would say to blacks--and yet what he said ran true.  These are people like me.  They were raised as I was raised -- as slight outsiders in a largely Christian community.  I, and the other Jews in this town, share a kind of history.  Not to go to synagogue is to disengage myself from them--and yet I do not mean to disengage myself from them.  I suddenly see that from their point of view my act is a kind of slap in the face.

Mark made me pause.  No I do not want to worship a God I don't believe in -- but no, I do not mean to so completely cut myself of from the community of Jews in my town.

And my mother made me pause too.  She has, forever, wanted me to become more Jewish, but she never took the approach she took this time.  She, the non-academic, took the philosophic approach.  Once again I forwarded my argument about not believing in a Jewish God.  She began explaining that Yom Kippur, the holiest day of the Jewish Year, is a day set aside for human to think about the meaning of life.  It is a day of fasting and praying--you may not eat.  You may not do your daily work.  You must stop all work and think about what you did in the past year, and what you will do in the coming year.  Don't work that day.  That day think about why you do the job you do, and why do you the things you do.

My tunnel vision made me focus on the Jewish God: I do not believe in him.  I  forgot the social component, and the philosophical component of religion.  Human beings need a day set aside where they are told to stop working and told to think about the meaning of existence.  Yom Kippur is set aside for Jews to think about The Big Picture.

Have I convinced myself?  Will I go to Shul -- the Jewish word for synagogue?  I doubt it, but I have planted -- my mother and Mark planted a seed of doubt in my mind.  There is a lot going on in this thing called religion -- but I think I would like to keep God out of Religion.  As far as I can tell, he does not exist, but my fellow man, and my eventual death, do.  Maybe religion can lend me some help with those.

 

Copyright © 2004   Henry Morgenstein

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