Day 38 of 2017: On reform Judaism

I like being a reform Jew, and essentially an atheist, and it's been hard not to think about the tensions and frequent lack thereof between those two statements lately. A quick story helps explain much of the lack of contradiction: at Temple Sinai, where we are members, one of the rabbis was talking to the parents as part of the open house for the School for Jewish Life and Learning (aka Hebrew School). I forget the exact context, but she basically said at one point "...God... [pause] ... or the spiritual force in your life as you yourself understand it ..." and went on to finish her point. In reform Judaism, we don't just believe in the separation of church and state, we believe in the separation of church and church, apparently. I know of at least one case where both the president of a synagogue (Hi, Mom!) and the chair of its Ritual Committee (Hi, Dad!) were both non-believers and no one really cared.

If you surveyed the approach to belief and faith in your average reform synagogue, I'm not sure if believers would really be in the majority most places. It's certainly not an overwhelming majority, and the median belief in some places probably falls somewhere in the agnostic/deistic part of the spectrum. I fall a bit more to the "faithless" part of the spectrum than that, sitting into the atheist camp with a non-trivial degree of curiosity for "God the programmer of the simulation in which we live" a la Elon Musk and techies throughout the ages [1]. Of course, mechanical theories like that don't really yield a useful theory of morality; rather, they explain why we might be here but not at all what we should do about that fact. To answer the obvious question with the obvious answer: yes, like all atheists forever, I try to hold fast to the Inverse Golden Rule, do NOT do unto others as you would have them NOT do unto you, while living up to the Golden Rule to the best of my abilities.

An aside: I realize the Golden Rule is more aspirational than realistic for the average person, but still, it bears repeating that people who claim religious beliefs really shouldn't act like assholes. Like, ever. This is not the kind of thing where you get to act like a schmuck and then claim backsies. Even if people annoy you, or have different beliefs, it's not your right as a person whose beliefs are grounded in most religious/ethical traditions to act out about it. If you do, it is not hypocrisy in the sense of simple inconsistency, it is hypocrisy in a fundamental sense that impugns your very character.

Anyway, if I am particularly comfortable as a reform Jew, the biggest reason is almost certainly because the values that they emphasize match up nicely with my own, with a particular focus on social justice as the centerpiece of reform Jewish identity [2]. In some cases, even I am skeptical if the religious justifications for some policies, e.g., Reform Judaism's embrace of LGBTQ equality, actually fit within the claimed textual framework that are used as references; of course, as a non-believer, I'm completely happy with the ends and don't really care overmuch what literature citations people use to get there [3].

Another aside: Whenever I organize my books, I always put my Tanakh (Old Testament) collection in the section I create for Jewish fiction. I find this joke amusing. I can't help it.

To the extent I have a disagreement with many (most?) reform Jews, especially the older half of the congregation, it's almost certainly my feelings towards Israel -- I have no problem with the idea that Israel has a right to exist, but I'm pretty extremely dovish, basically J Street and then some [4]. Luckily, I haven't been able to determine if Reform Judaism even has an official policy, and voices dissenting on the dovish side of the spectrum are certainly growing in number rapidly [5].

So, why the tension? The tricky spot is, of course, the kids. How do you properly teach children both ethics and skepticism? I have to admit, I still find this tricky. Our daughter is fully aware of my non-belief, and our son still believes that Star Wars and Batman might be documentaries, so we'll work more with him later. Basically, I've come around to discussing ethics as the central question now, and belief vs skepticism later. This might make me a bad New Atheist, but since it seems like moral beliefs and religious faith are essentially uncorrelated traits amongst the American population, and I suppose the world as well, I'd rather work on the former with my kids and let the latter sort itself out over time.

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/oct/11/simulated-world-elon-musk-the-matrix

[2] http://www.reformjudaism.org/social-justice

[3] http://www.reformjudaism.org/practice/ask-rabbi/what-does-reform-judaism-say-about-homosexuality

[4] http://jstreet.org/

[5] http://www.nybooks.com/articles/2010/06/10/failure-american-jewish-establishment/