Christmas

Like so many other American Jews, I have a complicated relationship with Christmas. 

I grew up in Tallahassee, FL, the panhandle, on the edge of the Bible Belt. Out of my high school graduating class of 450 students, I was one of only four Jews. Every day before school began, a student group called the Fellowship of Christian Athletes would gather around the flag pole for a morning prayer circle -- a ritual that, to me, seemed to signal that was America and democracy were rightfully under the domain of two identity groups: Christians, and athletes -- of which, I was a part of neither. 

It was in this cultural context that my complicated relationship with Christmas grew. If our family went to the mall in December, the stores were all decorated with the wreaths and glittering lights, a girl scout troop was selling poinsettias, dozens of children lined up to have their picture taken with Santa, and my own youth theatre company had been invited to stand in the mall’s main concourse and sing a repertoire of Christmas songs -- wishing the crowds of shoppers first “a merry little Christmas,” and then, “a holly jolly” one. In December, the mall was transformed from an ordinary center of retail commerce into a magical winter wonderland, evidence that Christmas was indeed “the most wonderful time of year” -- but none of it was meant for me. 

Predictably, these childhood experiences led me to identify with the Grinch Who Stole Christmas or Ebernezer Scrooge. I’ve even been known to consciously choose not to wear red or green in the month of December, so as to avoid inadvertently reinforcing the idea that those are the colors of the season. But unlike Scrooge or the Grinch, it was not that I despised joy and wanted to keep others from feeling it as well. Mine was no mere “bah humbug.” Rather, my resistance to Christmas arose from my surrounding cultural context. Similar to how I felt as I watched the Fellowship of Christian Athletes gather around the flagpole every morning, Christmas reminded me that, as a Jew in Tallahassee, I would always be a cultural outsider. 

Of course, I’m not the first person in Jewish history to have a complicated relationship with Christmas. The challenge goes back thousands of years, all the way to the Rabbis of the Talmud. [1] The ancient Rabbis were evidently very familiar with what we now know as the Christmas story -- the story of Jesus’s birth, as recorded in the Gospels of Matthew and Luke. [2]

The Rabbis not only knew these stories, they were also seemingly uncomfortable about the theological claims that those stories make. The ancient Rabbis took what they knew of the Christmas narrative and crafted their own version of the story -- a counter-narrative, a theological rebuttal, which is recorded in the Talmud. [3]

As we might expect, these counter-narratives are highly polemical and more than a little bit unflattering. Where the Gospels report that Mary conceived by way of the Holy Spirit, the Talmudic counter-narratives suggest that Mary conceived by way of extra-marital affair. Where the Gospels report that Jesus’s parents had to flee to Egypt with their newborn son, the Talmudic counter-narratives suggest that while in Egypt, Jesus became an apprentice of the Pharaoh’s magicians -- and that the so-called miracles of Jesus’s ministry were in fact nothing more than Egyptian sorcery. 

We shouldn’t be surprised that the ancient Rabbis’ discomfort with Christmas looks different from my own. After all, the Rabbis were living in a time in which Judaism and Christianity were actively competing to show which tradition had better theological insight. It makes sense that the Rabbis are concerned with the theological implications of the Christmas story -- wrestling not with the ubiquity of Christmas culture, as I did in my adolescence, but rather, wrestling with what it means for a religion to claim that its inspirational figure is the child of God. 

In our time, the theological dimensions of American Christmas have significantly faded. This trend goes back to the Puritans, who, despite their religious fervor, disliked the holiday of Christmas. They objected to the feasting, drinking, and other rowdy behaviors that so often accompanied the holiday -- and in an effort to curb those behaviors, the Puritans made the celebration of Christmas illegal. 

And while the legal prohibition against the holiday was eventually lifted, their Puritans’ attitude towards Christmas would hold sway for many centuries -- with public institutions, including schools, and even the United States Congress, open for business on Christmas Day all the way through the mid-1800s. But while the Puritans backed away from celebrating Christmas, other, non-religious cultural influences came forward to fill the void -- moving the holiday’s focus from the Church to the home, from the figure of Jesus to the figure of Santa, and, in time, to the holiday’s commercialization, and, some would argue, full secularization. 

Even the US Supreme Court has weighed in on Christmas’s secular status. In a 1989 case known as Allegheny County v. the ACLU, our nation’s highest court declared that while a nativity scene on government property violated the constitutional right to freedom of religion, a Christmas tree on government property did not -- with the majority arguing that the symbol of the Christmas tree has “attained secular status in our society.” [4]

It makes sense, therefore, that the American Jewish response to Christmas has not been theological, as was the case with the Rabbis of the Talmud, but rather, has been cultural. If December in America is marked by Christmas songs on the radio and Christmas movies on TV, American Jews have responded with our own cultural creations: from the Daveed Diggs song “Puppy for Chanukkah” to the movie The Hebrew Hammer. If the Christmas table is set with eggnog and a honey-baked ham, American Jews have responded with our own culinary tradition: Chinese food and a movie -- a cultural custom that, according to some sociologists of American Jewry, [5] has become as widespread as many of our most sacred religious rituals. 

I suspect that I will always feel some of my childhood discomfort about Christmas -- the feeling of being a cultural outsider. Deeply ingrained experiences stay with us for a long time. 

But of course, I’ve also grown since then. I feel more self-assured of who I am as a Jew, and what it is that I believe. Surprisingly, while I still feel myself to be an outsider to Christmas culture, I find myself intrigued by Christmas theology. I don’t feel threatened by it. Theology, after all, is not the main axis along which Christmas in America expressed. What’s more, as my own theological commitments have matured, I find that I’m better able to appreciate other religious traditions without feeling like my own is being threatened. I find that I’m able to get something meaningful out of interfaith dialogue, and not just that old childhood feeling that my Jewishness somehow makes me an outsider. 

A mentor of mine compares interfaith dialogue to the experience of going to an art museum. [6] In one room are the Impressionists. In another room, the Cubists. Each of them has their own style, their own way of depicting the world. The Impressionists might paint a flower one way, and the Cubists, an entirely different way. Neither style negates the power and beauty of the other. Each has its own unique and perfectly valid window on the world. And sometimes, the artistic vision of the Cubists might even inspire and enhance the artistic vision of the Impressionists. 

The same is true of interfaith dialogue. When my Christian friends and colleagues say that Christmas celebrates the birth of the son of God, I can come to appreciate the power and beauty of that idea without it negating my own theological commitments. If I’m open to it, I might even find myself inspired by that idea -- and work to translate that theological insight into my own religious idiom. 

What, then, might we, as Jews, learn from the theology of the Christmas story? How might we translate this holiday’s central theological idea -- the birth of the son of God -- into a theological idiom that we, as Jews, can appreciate? 

We might say it like this: the divine can be embodied. [7] The ideals that we ascribe to God -- like truth, compassion, and justice -- these ideals are not remote and far away, solely within the domain of some unfathomable and unreachable God, but rather, are ideals that can be embodied by humans on earth. For Christians, that embodiment is exemplified by Jesus’s birth -- the birth of the son of God, as Christians would put it. But the underlying theological principle is one that we, as Jews, can also affirm: a life on earth can and should be an expression of the noblest divine ideals. 

Christmas in the United States is not primarily a theological event. It’s a cultural one. And it’s that cultural phenomenon with which I’ve had such a complicated relationship since I was a child. 

But the secularization of Christmas presents us with a surprising opportunity -- an opportunity that the Rabbis of the Talmud could never have imagined, an idea that never would have occurred to me as a child in Tallahassee. There is something theologically powerful contained in the Christmas story -- an idea that has inspired Christians for thousands of generations, and that, if we’re open to it, might grow to inspire us as well: each of us is the child of God, each an embodiment of the divine, if only we would realize it.

_____

[1] For more, see Peter Schäfer’s book Jesus in the Talmud

[2] For more, see Rabbi Dr. Michael Cook’s book Modern Jews Engage the New Testament, chapter 9: “Christmas: Why the Infancy (Virgin Birth) Stories?”

[3] BT Shabbat 104b

[4] Interestingly, the court also held that a menorah was permissible on government property, similarly arguing for its secular status. | For more, Jonathan Sarna’s essay “Menachem Mendel Schneerson, Letter to the Jewish Community of Teaneck, 1981” in Yehuda Kurtzer & Claire E. Sufrin’s book The New Jewish Canon.

[5] For more, listen to Dr. Rachel B. Gross’s interview on the Judaism Unbound podcast: “Digesting Judaism.”

[6] For more, see Rabbi Dr. Larry Hoffman’s article “Dialogue, Liturgy, and Truth: The Shape of Gifts to Come,” in the journal Worship, Volume 94 (2020).

[7] For more, see Shaul Magid’s discussion of Daniel Matt and Zalman Schachter-Shalomi in Magid’s book American Post-Judaism, chapter 6: “From the Historical Jesus to a New Jewish Christology: Rethinking Jesus in Contemporary American Judaism”

Crossing the Moral Divide

Over the past week or so since the presidential election was called, we’ve heard more than a few political pundits and public intellectuals make an appeal for national reconciliation. It’s no secret that for the past five years, our nation has been more polarized than ever before since the Civil War. The unprecedented voter turnout in this year’s election consisted of both a blue wave and a red wave -- two enormous upwellings of support for two differing visions of our country. Fears of regional secession, and even civil war, have become commonplace in our public discourse. Our country is deeply divided -- and I share in the sense of urgency over national reconciliation. 

And while many have called for such a reconciliation, few have provided any useful roadmaps for doing so. As Rabbi Blake shared last week: when the clothing manufacturer The Gap released an ad suggesting that national reconciliation might be as simple as zipping together the two sides of a hooded sweatshirt, the company were excoriated as naive to the depth of the problem. To heal our nation’s wounds, we will need a vision that far exceeds the perception of The Gap’s marketing director. 

Such a vision was offered this week from one of the most unlikely of places. This past Saturday night, in front of a small, socially distanced audience, in studio 8H at Rockefeller Plaza, the comedian Dave Chapelle took the mic as the guest host of Saturday Night Live. Chapelle has hosted SNL only once before -- and the last time was at another highly divided moment in our country’s history: on the Saturday immediately after the 2016 presidential election. 

If you’ve ever seen Chapelle’s work -- including, most famously, his sketch comedy series The Chapelle Show, which, among other things, takes a satirical jab at race relations in the United States -- you know that he regularly brings his sharp wit to comment on American politics, culture, and society. And this past Saturday night, his opening monologue did exactly that. 

But amidst all of his edgy observations and punch lines, perhaps the most powerful moment in the 12-minute routine was when Chapelle, who is a self-described liberal, took a more serious tone, and turned directly to the camera for a moment of honest reflection. Addressing the members of the viewing audience who align with him politically, Chapelle said: “Remember when I was here four years ago? Remember how bad that felt? Remember that half the country, right now, still feels that way.” 

What I found so refreshing about Chapelle’s comment was that it provided us with a clue about how to heal our deep national wounds. He asked the members of his viewing audience who were pleased with the election results to do something that is at once quite simple, and yet, at the same time, quite profound. He asked them -- and, by extension, all of us -- to try and put ourselves in someone else’s shoes, to remember how they feel. He asked us to try and remember the humanity of the people with whom we most strongly disagree, to try and channel their inner lives. While other public figures made well meaning but vague calls for national unity, Dave Chapelle told us how to do so: by trying to traverse the empathic distance between us, by trying to become moral travelers. 

We find in this week’s Torah portion a similar dynamic. Two times, our Torah portion presents us with a well meaning but somewhat Pollyanna picture of former foes reunited in peaceful harmony. We see the half-brothers Isaac and Ishmael -- one, the progenitor of Judaism, the other, the progenitor of Islam -- reunited after nearly a lifetime of estrangement, as, together, they bury their beloved father, Abraham. The midrash (or ancient Jewish legend) adds that, just before his death, Abraham was reunited with his former lover, Hagar -- him, a Hebrew, her, an Egyptian, the future enslavers of the Hebrews, lovingly reconciled despite their past quarrels and their peoples’ future animosity. 

And while both of these scenes of unity are lovely and encouraging, they are also not all that helpful. They give us something towards which to aspire, but provide little instruction as to how it might be achieved. The prophet Isaiah dreamed of a future, messianic time when former enemies would be united in peace: when the lion would lie down with the lamb -- when the snake and the child would play together, without the child trying to behead the snake or the snake trying to bite the child’s heels. It’s an admirable image. The only question is: how do we get there? 

A different, less obvious scene in our Torah portion provides us with helpful instruction. 

Our matriarch Rebecca is an undersung hero. If we celebrate her at all, we celebrate her for being generous and kind. We meet her this week, while she is standing beside a well. A stranger -- who turns out to be one of Abraham’s servants, a man named Eliezer -- arrives at the well. He is parched, having just made the long journey from where Abraham is living in the land of Canaan to here, Rebecca’s hometown in Mesopotamia. The dirty and dusty Eliezer asks Rebecca for a sip of water. She gladly obliges -- and unprompted, she further extends her generosity by dipping her bucket into the well and also providing water for all of Eliezer’s twelve camels -- no small task. 

We remember Rebecca for this act of kindness -- for going out of her way to provide hospitality to a stranger. But this is only half the story. Because even more than she is generous, Rebecca shows herself to be incredibly brave. Impressed by Rebecca’s act of kindness, Eliezer proposes something preposterous to her. He mentions that he has traveled all this way on behalf of Rebecca’s distant cousin, Isaac -- and Eliezer proposes that Rebecca make the long journey back with him in order to marry Isaac. 

Consider for a moment how absurd is this request. A strange man is asking Rebecca to follow him and his invisible God, travel thousands of miles across a scorching-hot desert to a foreign land, in order to marry a man she’s never met before. And shockingly enough, though she will have to learn a new language, adopt a new lifestyle, and practice a new religion -- Rebecca agrees to go. 

In our era of deep polarization, we can learn from Rebecca’s bravery. It might often feel like we and the people with whom we disagree are not even living in the same country -- as if we are in our own little land of Canaan, and they, in far off Mesopotamia. It might often feel like a vast, scorching hot ideological desert divides us from one another. It might often feel as if the people with whom we disagree are not even our fellow Americans -- seeing one another as complete strangers, forgetting that, in fact, we are distant cousins. 

Like Rebecca, if we are to traverse the empathic distance that separates us from one another, we will need both generosity and bravery -- bravery to leave behind the safe and comfortable ideological bubbles in which we’ve cloistered ourselves, and generosity to consider that the people with whom we most strongly disagree feel as certain in their beliefs as we might feel in ours. 

In his widely acclaimed book The Righteous Mind, the social psychologist Jonathan Haidt -- who grew up Jewish in Scarsdale, by the way -- examines how it is that equally smart and compassionate groups of people can find themselves so deeply divided by religion and politics. Each side, he points out, thinks that if only the other side would simply listen to reason, they would come around to the correct moral judgment -- our moral judgment. 

But Haidt’s research shows that our moral judgments are not as grounded in pure logic as we might think. He examines certain taboos that vary from culture to culture. For example, Americans tend to be repulsed by the idea of eating dogs. Even though a thorough, logical examination might demonstrate that eating dog is no different from eating beef -- still, many of us hold this to be a moral red line. This, it turns out, is how most of our moral judgments are made. We inherit our moral standards from our surroundings -- and only after we have affirmed them do we employ the means of logic and reason to justify our beliefs. We are conditioned to use logic to fortify our own beliefs, rather than use logic to inspect them. 

Haidt has identified six moral “flavors,” as he calls them. Any of us would affirm that each of these six moral flavors, when considered alone, is better than its opposite: it is better to exhibit care than to do harm, fairness is better than cheating, liberty is better than oppression, loyalty is better than betrayal, order [1] is better than chaos, and quality of life [2] is better than degradation. And while all of us would agree that each of these six flavors is better than its opposite, our culture wars begin when we start mixing flavors in the kitchen. Different groups prioritize and combine a different set of these flavors -- the way that Italian cooking relies on basil, while Indian cooking relies on cumin -- to the point that each social faction has its own distinctive moral cuisine. 

Given this, it is easier to understand how equally smart and compassionate groups of people can come to such opposite conclusions about society’s most pressing questions. Given this, it is harder to dismiss the people with whom we disagree as merely ignorant or cruel. We are forced, instead, to remember each other’s humanity -- that we are not pariahs to one another, but rather, are distant cousins. 

This is not to fall into total moral relativism. Our Jewish tradition affirms that even while the truth is always complex, the truth can be ascertained. Our tradition in general and the Talmud in particular is famous for going out of its way to explore every issue thoroughly on all sides -- making room for the opposing argument, giving credibility to the dissenting opinion. And only then, after all sides have been rigorously inspected and given honorable treatment -- only then is the decision of how to act finally made. Ours is not an argument for moral relativism; it is an argument for honorable treatment. 

So let us hope to be like Rebecca -- to tap our deepest wellsprings of bravery and generosity. It may feel as if a vast, scorching-hot ideological desert separates us from one another. Nevertheless, we must find the courage to cross it. If not, then the expanse between us will seem to grow and the desert consume us all. So like Rebecca, let us fill our buckets with water, and give plenty to the camels as well. We have a long journey ahead.

_____

[1] Haidt uses the word “authority” -- but I have chosen a related word to better illustrate the binary.

[2] Haidt uses the word “sanctity” -- but I have chosen a more colloquial phrase.

A New American Dream

On a recent Friday morning, on my drive home from a funeral in Queens, I decided to make an unplanned stop in Flushing, to visit the old neighborhood where my dad grew up in the Pomonok housing projects. Subsidized by the City of New York, Pomonok provided many Ashkenazi Jewish families at mid-century with affordable housing -- a stepping stone between the tenements of the Lower East Side and the leafy suburban neighborhood of my childhood. Every time I visit Pomonok, I feel grounded in my family’s story -- how my ancestors came here with very little, and slowly, over four generations, we rose and were able to achieve the American Dream. 

And yet, every time I visit the Pomonok housing projects, I feel a certain unease -- a sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach, a sense that the story that I so cherish about America is somehow incomplete. Alongside my family’s American Dream, there is another, harsher story -- the brutal story of American racism. While my ancestors arrived here to the Statue of Liberty, the ancestors of many African American families arrived to the slave auction block. While my family has experienced four generations of upward mobility, many African American families have experienced four centuries of ongoing oppression. 

Conversations about race can be particularly difficult for Ashkenazi Jews. Our identity in America is rife with internal conflict: we are at once a minority, outsiders, a community on the margins; and yet, we have successfully integrated into seemingly every sphere of American life. We have at once found in this country greater safety and security than any other Jewish community in history; and yet, anti-Semitism is on the rise here. We struggle to reconcile the fact of our white skin with our centuries of pain and oppression. 

More than 50 years ago, James Baldwin wrote: “It contradicts the American dream to suggest that any gratuitous … horror can happen here.” But the truth is, gratuitous horror has been happening here since long before Trayvon Martin was killed, long before Michael Brown, and Eric Garner, and Tamir Rice, and George Floyd -- all the way back to the very beginnings of our nation. 

How are we to understand these two contrasting realities: the promise of the American Dream, and the horror of the American Nightmare? 

On Rosh Hashanah, we are commanded to hear the sound of the shofar -- a sound that the Medieval Jewish scholar Maimonides compared to a wake up call. He heard in the sound of the shofar a wordless voice, crying out: “Awake, you sleepers, from your sleep; arise, you slumberers, from your slumber.” He heard in the sound of the shofar a call -- to open our eyes as wide as possible, to see a reality that exists beyond the comfortable world of our own dreams. 

What might we learn if we heed that call -- if we tell our own Ashkenazi Jewish story alongside the story of American racism? What might we discover about the American Dream? 

***

Like the blast of a shofar, the horn of a steamship bellows as it enters New York Harbor. Among its passengers are some of the 2.5 million Ashkenazi Jews who, with extraordinary bravery, left their countries of origin at the turn of the 20th century in order to seek a better life in the United States -- including my own great-grandparents, and maybe yours as well. They were “the tired, the poor, the huddled masses yearning to breathe free.” They left behind in the Old Country their villages, their parents, their grinding poverty, and the pain of having been Europe’s archetypal outsider. They brought with them to the New World the Yiddish theatre, their socialist ideals, their grandmother’s recipes, their grandfather’s prayer shawl. 

 

They found work wherever they could: sewing dresses in the garment district, selling pickles from a pushcart, baking pastries at a kosher bakery, hanging wallpaper. They saved their money to enjoy life’s simple pleasures. In the Old Country, a roasted chicken had been a rare delicacy -- a special weekly treat reserved for the Shabbat dinner table. But here in the Land of Opportunity, they lived with the spirit of abundance -- stacking the meats on their deli sandwiches so high that they could scarcely take a bite. 

But their lives were not easy. Many of them lived in crowded tenement houses on the Lower East Side. They were looked down upon by America’s White Protestant elite -- seen as filth, a foreign influence that was changing the country for the worse. 

They watched, in 1924, as the US shut its door to further Jewish immigration. They watched as colleges and universities placed quotas on Jewish enrollment -- creating an ethos in higher education of the more exclusive, the more desirable. And most painfully, they watched from afar, helpless, as six million Jews were systematically murdered by the Nazis -- and agonized over their American Dream and their cousins’ European nightmare. 

After the war, things began to change. On account of the horror that had unfolded in Europe, anti-Semitism in America became taboo -- was forced underground and relegated to the fringes of society. Meanwhile, through the GI Bill, the federal government provided many Ashkenazi Jewish families with subsidies -- so that they could afford to go college and buy a home. [1] Many of those whose parents had only finished high school now became doctors and lawyers. Many of those whose parents had lived in the tenements now bought a family car and moved out to the leafy suburbs. 

Since then, Ashkenazi Jews have continued to thrive. We have risen high in the ranks of government, built hospitals and established universities, and left an indelible mark on American music, theatre, and film. We have utilized our resources to fight for just causes -- for civil rights and for Soviet Jewry. We have instilled in our children our fervent belief in the American Dream -- that, although our ancestors may have come from modest beginnings, with a good education, hard work, and a strong moral compass, we believe that our children can achieve anything. 

And yet, there is one dimension of our success story that has often been overlooked. Without our intending to do so, and largely, without our even noticing it, in the century that has passed since our ancestors first arrived here, something shifted in the American psyche that caused this country to see Ashkenazi Jews as White people. [2] The ethnic differences that at first made us stand out were eventually washed away -- unable to withstand the starker racial contrast upon which America insists: a strict dichotomy between people with white skin and people with black or brown skin. For centuries, we had been Europe’s archetypal outsider. But by the time our ancestors arrived on these shores, America already had its archetypal Other, who had lived here for centuries in pain. 

Like the wail of a shofar, the cry of an enslaved woman pierces the air as her child is torn from her arms. She is one among the 600,000 people who were brought to this country in chains. They were sold on auction blocks, alongside furniture and cattle. They could not legally marry, were barred from learning to read, could not gather in private groups, and were forbidden from owning anything. They were the property of their enslavers, to be treated however they wished. They were legally tortured, whipped, raped, and killed. 

By the time America declared its independence, slavery had been here for more than 150 years. The birth of our nation crystallized a blatant hypocrisy -- of at once proclaiming a person’s unalienable right to liberty while simultaneously enslaving 20% of the population. This hypocrisy is baked into the Constitution -- which declares that enslaved people count as only three-fifths of a person, that enslaved people are somehow less than fully human. 

This grotesque American myth is so deeply ingrained in our national subconscious that, every time we make advances against it, it keeps coming back in new forms. After the abolition of slavery, the brief period of Reconstruction brought unprecedented progress: the election of Black politicians to congress, the establishment of a free public school system -- giving many poor Americans, regardless of race, their first opportunity to learn to read and write. 

But these advances were only short lived. They were met with a sprawling new system of segregation, and a viciouos resurgence of racist terror -- with lynchings more than once a week for 75 years. As W. E. B. Du Bois put it: [3] “The slave went free; stood for a brief moment in the sun; and then moved back again toward slavery.” 

This pattern would repeat itself in the 20th century. With extraordinary bravery, the leaders of the Civil Rights Movement successfully dismantled the Jim Crow regime. It seemed that there had been a moment of reckoning in America -- that the country was finally waking up to our history of racial oppression. 

But the promise of the Civil Rights Era was never fully realized. The racial oppression of the Jim Crow era did not disappear; rather, it changed forms. Today, Black Americans suffer disproportionately from the plague of mass incarceration. By a wide margin, the United States incarcerates more people per capita than any other nation in the world -- with Black Americans five times more likely than White Americans to be imprisoned. This disparity is linked not to greater criminality, but rather, to differences in how White and Black people are policed. 

Our ongoing scourge of police brutality against Black Americans is the most gruesome expression of the problem -- but it indeed runs much deeper than that. For example, White and Black Americans are proportionately equal in their drug usage, but Black Americans are twice as likely to be incarcerated for it. This disproportionate burden has ripple effects: even after being released from prison, many formerly incarcerated people will find themselves ineligible to apply for a student loan, barred from public housing, and in many states, will lose their right to vote. 

The unequal way in which our criminal justice system affects Black Americans is just the latest expression of American racism. A system that is supposed to protect us all has instead warped into a system that endangers the lives of many -- an injustice that scholar Michelle Alexander has described as The New Jim Crow.

***

Each of these two stories tells a truth about America: the story of Ashkenazi Jewish immigrants who came to this country in search of a better future, and the story of enslaved Africans who were brought to this country by force. There are, of course, many other American stories -- of indigenous people, of Puritans, of suffragettes, of war veterans, of the DREAMers. The American story is all of these: each of them reveals some aspect of the truth, and none of them is fully complete without the others. 

There is a certain danger that comes from acknowledging only one story -- an absolutism that mistakes a limited picture of reality for the whole truth. What’s more, there is a positive benefit that comes from putting two stories into conversation with one another -- a productive tension that challenges our assumptions and broadens our field of vision. 

Hearing the Ashkenazi Jewish story told alongside the story of American racism leaves us with a complex and uncomfortable truth: in the United States, Ashkenazi Jews are simultaneously outsiders and White people. This unusual identity at once causes us to feel uneasy in conversations about race, and yet, it might also compel us, perhaps even more so than other groups, to join in the fight for racial justice. 

How we are to do so is not at all obvious. No one party or ideology has an exclusive claim to the truth. There are smart and compassionate people from all across the political spectrum who have differing and good ideas about the best path forward. In the fight for racial justice, there is no simple answer. There are many; and pursuing them will be difficult; and still, we must commit to them. 

We might start by further educating ourselves about Whiteness -- about how that category has evolved over time to include Ashkenazi Jews. We should pay special attention to our own discomfort -- but not let that discomfort be a barrier to getting involved in the work. 

We might further educate ourselves on the role that racism has played in this country: how it has shaped every moment in American history, and is baked into every policy issue in contemporary American life -- from healthcare to education, from income inequality to the spread of the pandemic. 

We might realize that racial justice leaders are asking not merely for signs that say Black Lives Matter -- but rather, that our country conduct itself in such a way that we demonstrate [4] through our laws and our actions that Black lives matter. Protests and marches have their place -- but if they are not backed by the much harder work of identifying specific policy changes and advocating for them, then our protests and marches alone will have served little beyond allaying our own feelings of guilt. 

We might support initiatives that are led by Jews of color [5] -- who comprise 12% of American Jewry, but who are vastly underrepresented in Jewish communal institutions, like synagogues. We should remember that the fight for racial justice is not about someone else’s community, but rather, is also about our own. 

We might learn to speak openly and honestly with our children about race -- treating it not as a taboo subject that we anxiously brush under the rug, but rather, acknowledging it as a part of our society that we can face and engage with. Many of us grew up learning that it was polite to try to see beyond race -- when in fact, not only is that impossible, it also willfully ignores the reality that people with different color skin often have different experiences in this country. 

We might discover that it is absolutely critical that we show up to the work of racial justice specifically as Jews. Today, bigotries of all kinds are on the rise, including anti-Semitism and racism. These two hatreds are two sides of the same coin. [6] This is why the marchers in Charlottesville were carrying both Nazi and Confederate flags. Both hatreds seek easy scapegoats for society’s problems: anti-Semitism, by conjuring fears that Jews control society from top -- and racism, by conjuring fears that people of color drain society from the bottom. To effectively fight one, we must also commit to fighting the other. If we would want others to join us in the fight against anti-Semitism, then we must be similarly prepared to join the coalition in the fight against racism. This is not to say that we fight against racism out of our own self-interest. Rather, we do it because we all too painfully know what happens when no one shows up for the fight. 

None of these things will be easy. In fact, they will be very hard. The only way that we can even begin to approach them is by working together. For this reason, WRT is launching a new Racial Justice Working Group, about which you can learn more by contacting our office. We will need each other in this work -- need each other to bring our ideas, our energy, our questions, our skepticism, our life experience, our commitment to work together, even when the conversation makes us feel uncomfortable. 

Whenever I visit the neighborhood where my dad grew up, in the Pomonok housing projects, I feel not only a deep connection to my family’s American story; I feel not only a certain unease that that story is incomplete; I feel something else as well. I feel a deep and abiding belief in the possibility of the American Dream: not the dream of upward mobility; not the kind of dream in which our eyes are closed to other people’s American story; not the kind of dream from which the sound of the shofar must wake us; but rather, a new kind of American Dream. 

The New American Dream hopes not that each successive generation might rise higher and achieve more than the last, not that our children might do better than we have, but rather, that they might be better: that they might be better citizens, that they might be better and braver participants in our national conversation about race, that they might be better equipped to build a more just and equitable society -- that, through our children, our country might be better than it has been in the past. 

The New American Dream, in fact, is not a dream at all. It is an awakening. The shofar blasts. Will we hear it?

______

[1] For more on this topic, see: Brodkin Sacks, Karen. “How Did Jews Become White Folks.” Race. Edited by Gregory, Steven and Roger Sanjek. | Additionally, see: Goldstein, Eric. The Price of Whiteness: Jews, Race, and American Identity.

[2] Again, for more on this topic, see: Brodkin Sacks, Karen. “How Did Jews Become White Folks.” | Additionally, see: Goldstein, Eric. The Price of Whiteness: Jews, Race, and American Identity.

[3] DuBois, W. E. B. Black Reconstruction in America. p. 30.

[4] See: Kendi, Ibram X. How to Be an Antiracist. Chapters 16 & 17: “Failure” & “Success.”

[5] A group that includes Black Jews, Jews from Latin and South America, Jews of Middle Eastern origin, and others.

[6] For more on this topic, see: Kivel, Paul. “I’m Not White, I’m Jewish: Standing as Jews in the Fight for Racial Justice.”

Into the Unknown

It feels like in the past few weeks, we’ve reached a new stage of the pandemic. First, there was a period of shutting down; then, there was a period of sheltering in place; and now, we’re in the period of wondering how and when to re-open. There are no obvious answers. And although our public officials have provided us with guidelines to follow and benchmarks to meet, still there are a lot of unknowns.

Many conversations over the past few weeks have centered the question of how do we plan for the unknown. Public health officials looking at reopening guidelines, companies thinking about their employees and their budgets, families looking ahead to their planned celebrations and life-cycle events, economists looking at the unemployment rate, summer camps looking ahead to June, schools looking ahead to September, civic leaders looking towards the upcoming election -- all of us are asking a variation of the same, central, difficult question: how should we go about planning for the unknown? When so much is still uncertain, how do we plan for the future?

This week’s Torah captures the challenge of planning for the unknown. We begin this week reading from the fourth book of Torah, a book that has two names. In English, it is known by the name the Book of Numbers. And indeed, as that English name suggests, the Book of Numbers begins with numbers, figures, tallies, charts, and maps -- a detailed description of planning.

The Israelites have been encamped at the base of Mount Sinai. And here, at the beginning of the Book of Numbers, they are preparing to leave that mountain and begin their journey towards the Promised Land. And as they prepare to set out on their journey, they realize they’d better have a plan. And so, they first take a census -- a counting of the entire Israelite camp. Hence the name, the Book of Numbers. But the planning that the Israelites undertake is far broader than just a census. Not only do they count all the people, they also determine which tribes will march at the front of the pack, who will march at the side, who at the rear. They determine which families will be responsible for packing up and moving their portable sanctuary -- who will carry the altar, who will carry the lampstand, who will be responsible for the walls of the tent, who for the tent pegs. In excruciating detail, the Torah outlines all the particulars and minutiae that the Israelites consider as they prepare to begin their journey from Mount Sinai to the Promised Land -- a sweeping, thorough, comprehensive plan.

All this we gather from the English name “the Book of Numbers.” But as we’ve mentioned, this fourth book of the Torah has not one, but two names -- not just an English name, but also one in Hebrew. In Hebrew, we refer to the fourth book of the Torah as Bamidbar -- a word whose translation has nothing at all to do with numbers, nothing at all to do with details, nothing at all to do with planning. In fact, Bamidbar means nearly the very opposite. Bamidbar translates to mean: “in the wilderness.”

This is a fitting name for the fourth book of the Torah. After all, this fourth book describes the journey to the Promised Land -- a journey that takes the Israelites through 40 years of wandering in the wilderness. They are trying, challenging years. Water is scarce. Food is limited. The desert sun is hot. The other tribes they will encounter on the journey are antagonistic. The Israelites break out into complaining. A few rebel factions start to mutiny against Moses’s leadership. Moses grows tired. God grows frustrated. It is all in all a bitter journey through an inhospitable, uncharted territory -- a wilderness.

These two names for the fourth book of the Torah -- Numbers, on the one hand, and Bamidbar, in the wilderness, on the other -- capture the challenge of the time we’re living in. On the one hand -- as the name “Numbers” suggests -- the proper functioning of human society depends on our ability to plan. We need to have some ability to project outward into the future, to see what’s coming down the pike, and to make our arrangements accordingly. And yet, on the other hand -- as the name “Bamidbar / in the wilderness” suggests -- we are moving into territory that is entirely unknown. None of us has a crystal ball; no one can predict the future of this pandemic, and how we will come out of it. And while there certainly are more likely and less likely scenarios, if there’s one thing that the past several months have shown, it’s that things don’t always work out the way we expect.

In many ways, we are like those Israelites, standing at the base of Mount Sinai: we are doing our best to make adequate plans, as we prepare to enter an unknown wilderness.

It is a challenging position to be in. And if our journey turns out to be anything like the Israelites’, we should expect that even with all of our planning, there will be unexpected surprises, eventualities for which we could not plan.

And equally, if our journey turns out to be anything like the Israelites’, then maybe there’s a lesson for us waiting to be learned in the wilderness -- a spiritual insight that we might glean from this challenging time. After all, despite all of the challenges of our people’s journey through the wilderness, looking back on that era, we see that it was one of tremendous spiritual growth for the burgeoning Jewish people. A new generation of leadership emerged. The holidays and customs that we now take for granted were born, trial-tested, and honed in those early, wilderness-wandering days. 

The wilderness represents all that is as yet unknown -- all that could be, all that is possible. Scientists and artists alike live on the edge of the wilderness. Scientists probe beyond the boundaries of human knowledge, peer into the teeming darkness of the unknown, and from beyond the frontier, they bring back new knowledge. Artists, too, dwell at the edge of the wilderness. They push us to see the world in ways that we’d never before considered -- to gaze beyond the limited horizon of our everyday consciousness. For the scientist and the artist -- certainly, the wilderness can be daunting. (Who hasn’t stared at a blank page with a feeling of trepidation?) But equally, for the scientist and the artist, the wilderness holds immense potential.

The writer Rebecca Solnit captures the power of the wilderness in her cleverly titled book A Field Guide to Getting Lost. Solnit writes -- and I’ll quote her at length: “Lost really has two disparate meanings. Losing things is about the familiar falling away, getting lost is about the unfamiliar appearing. There are objects and people that disappear from your sight or knowledge or possession; you lose a bracelet, a friend, the key. You still know where you are. Everything is familiar except that there is one item less, one missing element. Or you get lost, in which case the world has become larger than your knowledge of it.” Solnit continues: “Imagine yourself streaming through time shedding gloves, umbrellas, wrenches, books, friends, homes, names. This is what the view looks like if you take a rear-facing seat on the train. Looking forward you constantly acquire moments of arrival, moments of realization, moments of discovery. The wind blows your hair back and you are greeted by what you have never seen before.”

Following Rebecca Solnit -- what if we approached our upcoming journey into the wilderness ready, prepared, expecting to get lost? How might we orient ourselves so that when the path ahead becomes unclear, we are attuned not only to being lost, but equally, to the new, as yet unfamiliar things we have found?

There are innumerable questions for which we as a society must plan for in the coming months. As the name “the Book of Numbers” suggests, our planning will likely be sweeping, thorough -- nearly comprehensive.

And even as we properly plan and prepare for the months that lie ahead, let us also remember the other name for the fourth book of the Torah: Bamidbar, “in the wilderness.” There is creative potential in the unknown, waiting to be tapped -- new ways of thinking, new ways of connecting, new ways of conducting business, new ways of marking life’s milestones. If there’s one thing that is certain, it’s that the future is anything but certain. Let us be prepared for that.

Telling the Story

On Passover, we are commanded to tell the story of the Jewish people. And so, this past Wednesday evening, even though we were only able to gather virtually, our family, like so many other Jewish families around the world, joined together on Zoom to do exactly that -- to tell the story of the exodus from Egypt.

And you might not be surprised to hear that it only took a couple of minutes before we had digressed entirely from our intended purpose of telling the story and were instead deep into a conversation about some of the enduring themes of the exodus narrative.

The conversation took a particularly interesting turn when a member of our family pointed out that the Passover story doesn’t just tell the tale of our people’s liberation. The story also makes a series of bold theological claims along the way -- insights into what our ancient ancestors believed about the nature of God.

First of all, the story asserts that there is a God -- already a claim that is worthy of debate. Second, the story asserts that God notices when human beings are suffering. Remember, after all, that the Passover story tells us that God heard the outcry of the Israelites from beneath their Egyptain bondage. This is a God Who sees and hears what’s happening on earth. Third, the story asserts that God not only notices human suffering -- God also cares about human suffering. God’s heart is stirred upon hearing the outcry of the Israelites, and God is filled with compassion. Fourth, and finally, the story asserts that God not only cares about human suffering -- what’s more, God can and does do something about it, and liberates our people from Egypt.

To summarize, the Passover story makes four theological claims: (1) there is a God; (2) God notices human suffering; (3) God cares about human suffering; and (4) God can intervene against human suffering.

As you might imagine, these observations sparked a long conversation around our seder table -- a conversation in which there were no definitive answers. Each seder participant agreed or disagreed with a different set of these four claims. Some people expressed their conviction that there is no God in the first place, so it’s meaningless to talk about whether God is concerned with human suffering. Others believed that there is a God, Who created the laws of science and physics, but that, after causing the Big Bang, God has since been absent from the universe, and is therefore unaware of human suffering -- like a watch-maker, who builds a watch, winds it up, and lets it go, completely unaware of how time has unfolded. Others believed that God knows about what is going on in the universe, but doesn’t much care -- that, from God’s perspective, an earthquake is not a human tragedy, but rather, is simply the natural and necessary shifting of the earth’s tectonic plates. Still others believed in a God Who cares deeply about human suffering, but that God is unable to do anything about it -- the way that a parent might care about their child’s pain, but is unable to do anything to make that pain go away. And still others expressed their belief that God is manifest through human relationships -- so that, when humans take action to alleviate suffering, we are, in fact, acting as God’s agents.

It was a rich and deep conversation, on a topic that we do not regularly engage -- and certainly helped to make the seder feel like a night that was different from all other nights.

One reason this conversation was able to take place is because Judaism is not dogmatic. That is, there is no particular statement of belief that a person must accept in order to be a Jew. Certainly, Jewish thought has its own theological tenets -- its own constellation of core beliefs that guide Jewish life. But none of these beliefs are mandatory. Much more important than affirming any one particular belief is our very participation in the conversation. It is not required that we think the so-called “right” thing. What is required is that we think something.

Whatever each of us may believe about God, there are two important principles that ought to guide the articulation of our own theology. The first principle is that we should think of our personal theology as always subject to change. The ideas we had about God at age four likely don’t match with the ideas we had at age 14 -- so why would they look the same between age 14 and age 34, or 54, or 84? For some of us, our convictions are long-lasting. For others, our ideas about God continue to grow and to change as we do. Any statement of belief does not have to be forever and for all time. Rather, it should reflect our best current thinking, and we always reserve the right to change our mind.

The second guiding principle -- and for me, the most important one -- in articulating our personal theology is: our beliefs ought to be an outgrowth of our experiences. There’s an exercise that clergy periodically undertake -- but in truth, anyone can do it -- called writing one’s autobiographical theology. It’s a fancy name for a relatively simple exercise. Your autobiographical theology is exactly what it sounds like: tell us the story of your life (your autobiography), and then tell us how that story has impacted what you believe (your theology). It sounds obvious -- that, of course, our life experiences shape the things we believe -- but sometimes the most obvious thing is the thing that is most easily overlooked. When it comes to theology, it is often all too easy to rely exclusively on the sophisticated or famous things we’ve read in books. It is much easier to quote Descartes and say “I think, therefore, I am” than it is to seriously consider what it is that we ourselves believe.

In a heightened moment such as this one -- when each of us is living through a once-in-a-century pandemic, when life and death are so visibly before us, when we daily encounter the randomness of why one person suffers while another does not, when small acts of human heroism are so frequently on display, when moral dilemmas confront us every hour -- in a heightened moment such as this, when the full complexity of the human condition is before us, now, more than ever, is the time to consider our theology. Now is the time to ask big questions. Now is the time to wonder about God. Now is the time to articulate our own autobiographical theology -- to tell the story of our experiences, and how those experiences impact what we believe. Each of us is living with this pandemic. Each of us has a story to tell. Each of us has something important to say -- some statement of belief or doubt, some idea about God or humanity, some question, some deeply felt intuition, some righteous lament that needs to be voiced.

Moments of crisis have always produced the best theological innovations. The Babylonian Exile, the Destruction of the Second Temple, the Spanish Expulsion, the Holocaust -- each of these moments in Jewish history led to a shift in the ways that our people thinks about God, the world, and our place in it. And while this pandemic certainly does not rise to the level of any of those historical catastrophes, nevertheless, we can learn something from our past: that a moment of crisis can and should cause us to think carefully about the things we believe.

That, after all, is exactly what the Passover story is all about. The Passover story is, in its own way, an act of autobiographical theology. Our ancestors lived through a crisis -- and in its aftermath, they had a story they needed to tell. Their experience was one of bitterness. Of slavery. Of saltwater tears. Of having to make bricks without straw. Of having their newborn babies thrown into the Nile river. And out of this deep suffering, our ancestors cried out, raised their voices in pain. And whether we ourselves believe in God or not, our ancestors felt stirred within them some deep intuition -- a feeling that there is in fact a God, a God Who notices when we are suffering, Who cares about us, Who wants us to thrive and be free, Who wants us to know that even in our moments of deepest despair, we are always loved.

That’s the story our ancestors told. When, God willing, generations from now, our great-great-grandchildren look back at today, what are the stories that we will have told?

We will tell the story of an elderly grandfather, who lived a long and full life, who thrived in his career and was beloved by everyone who knew him -- who, though he was pushing 90, still had so much life in him, who contracted the virus, and tragically, his life came to an abrupt end.

We will tell the story of a mother, who, though she was perfectly healthy and young, not in any high-risk category, nevertheless wound up in the hospital, in need of an oxygen tank to help her breathe -- and who, though she thankfully came home within a couple of days, nevertheless, reminded us of the randomness and unpredictability of human suffering.

We will tell the story of thousands of doctors, nurses, and other healthcare professionals, who, at great personal risk to themselves, with not enough protective gear to stay safe, and much to the worry of their friends and family -- who, even with great trepidation, nevertheless turned their offices into intensive care units, and proved just how deep is the human commitment to caring for one another.

We will tell the story of people who were laid off from their work, small business owners who had to close their doors, who suddenly had to worry about where their income was coming from, how they would feed their families -- who experienced firsthand just how quickly life can change, how one day you can feel like you have it all, and the next day, it may be gone.

We will tell the story of complete strangers, who knocked on their neighbors’ doors, and asked through the window whether everyone inside was alright -- who drove to the grocery store to pick up beans and rice, so that those who were homebound would still have something to eat.

We will tell the story of teachers, who got into education because they loved connecting with young people, and who, cut off from their classrooms, and with little training to do so virtually, nevertheless found ways to inspire and show their love for the students who look up to them.

We will tell the story of disappointment, of weddings postponed, of vacations cancelled, of family gatherings put off to some other time -- painful reminders of the old Yiddish adage, that “humans plan, and God laughs.”

We will tell the story of parents, who, while balancing the demands of working remotely, suddenly found themselves responsible for homeschooling, feeding, and entertaining their children, who struggled to find enough hours in the day to be responsive to the many demands on their time and attention, who wrestled with the setting of priorities, with the need to balance work and family.

We will tell the story of boredom, of people shut indoors for weeks on end with nothing but time and nothing to do -- the feeling not just of social distancing, but of isolation, of loneliness.

We will tell the story of friends who hadn’t spoken to each other for months, who reached out for a friendly check-in, to simply catch up, to laugh, or joke, or watch a movie together while sitting on the phone -- who remembered the importance of relationships, of people who keep us balanced, and wished we kept in touch like that more often.

These and so many others are the stories we will tell. These and so many others will be the experiences that shape what we believe. The meaning of this crisis will not be clear and simple. It will be messy, complicated, many-layered -- filled with loss, pain, unexpected randomness, surprising joys, inequalities, small acts of heroism, frustrations -- the entire spectrum of the human condition. 

On Passover, we are commanded to tell our stories. And if we listen carefully, we will find that it also works the other way around, too. Our stories have something to tell us. Our stories tell us who we are. They tell us what we believe.

Why Be Jewish?

Have you ever been part of a conversation where, over and over again, the only thing the other person ever says is: “Why?” It might go something like this:

“Daniel, it’s time to put on your shoes.” “Why?” “Because school starts in 15 minutes.” “Why?” “Because the school board has decided that school begins at 8:15.” “Why?” “Because a well-functioning society needs clearly defined schedules.” “Why?” “Because schedules enable social cohesion.” “Why?” “Because humans are social creatures.” “Why? “Because to be human is to be vulnerable.” “Why?” “Because life is impermanent.” “Why?” “I don’t know why! Now come on. Put on your shoes.”

A conversation like that can be a challenging experience. All you’re trying to do is get out the door on time. But before you know it, the conversation has moved from the everyday task of tying our shoes to the most enduring questions of what it means to be human. In my experience, most of the time, the person asking why is not trying to be profound. They are trying to get a rise out of us, trying to delay going to school. But nevertheless, their stall tactic forces us to consider life’s great mysteries -- the questions that have no answers, enigmas about which we must ultimately say: “I don’t know.”

In this week’s Torah portion, we find a Jewish version of this conversation. The Torah portion provides a detailed list of instructions on how to observe the holiday of Passover. But seemingly every time an instruction is given, the list is interrupted by a young person asking “why?” Over and over again this happens -- until the questions begin to feel less like a genuine curiosity and more like a quiet act of protest.

Perhaps you’ve been a part of a conversation like this one -- if not about Passover, then maybe about becoming Bar or Bat Mitzvah. The conversation might go something like this:

“Daniel, it’s time to put on your shoes.” “Why?” “Because it’s time to go to the synagogue.” “Why?” “Because you need to work on your Hebrew.” “Why?” “Because you need to learn how to lead prayers and chant from the Torah.” “Why?” “Because that’s what Jewish people do.” “Why?”

This is often where the conversation begins to break down -- and for good reason. Asking why we, the Jewish people, do the things that we do is truly a hard question. If we take the question seriously, we will soon discover that it has no simple answer. It is not the kind of question for which we can easily find answers in a book -- questions like: “Why do we eat matzah on Passover?” or “Why do we light candles on Shabbat?” It is part of a much harder set of questions -- questions that challenge our assumptions, questions that probe to the very core of religious life, questions like: “Why should I be Jewish instead of some other religion?” Or: “If I believe in science and democracy, then what’s the purpose of religion in the first place?” Or, more simply put: “In a world where I don’t have to be Jewish, why should I be?”

“Why be Jewish?” is a relatively new question. Only a few generations ago, it would have been an impossible question to ask. In the pre-modern world, Jewishness was not a matter of choice; it was a matter of fact. It took until the early 1800s for the Enlightenment ideals of autonomy and self-determination to take hold in the Jewish community. Since then, we have moved from a world in which there was nothing at all you could do in order to not be Jewish, to a world in which in order to not be Jewish, all you have to do is to do nothing at all.

When a young person asks why they have to learn Hebrew, what they are really asking -- whether they mean it this way or not -- is: “In a world where I can be anything I want to be, why should I be Jewish?”

It is an absolutely critical question for us to answer. It is a question that keeps today’s leading Jewish thinkers up late at night. It is a question that we, as a congregation, must take seriously, must consider carefully -- not only for the sake of our young people, but indeed, for all of us. If we have no meaningful response to the question “Why be Jewish?” we will wake up one morning to discover that our Jewishness has become an unexamined enterprise, a hollow shell, entirely devoid of its own intrinsic meaning -- a project whose only purpose is its own self-perpetuation, without any idea as to why it ought to be perpetuated in the first place.

It is for exactly this reason that one of the most important, and also the most meaningful parts of our work as rabbis and cantors is listening to Bar and Bat Mitzvah students -- and also, quite often, to adults -- when they ask: “Why should I be Jewish?” It would be all too easy to dismiss this question as pesky, as trying to get a rise out of us, as a stubborn act of resistance. In fact, we see it the exact opposite way. It inspires us to do our best work. It keeps us honest. It forces us to think critically. It helps to ensure that we won’t wake up one morning to discover that our Jewishness is an unexamined, hollow shell.

When my wife, Leah, was studying for her Bat Mitzvah, she, like many of us, had a lot of questions. She had her own ideas about God, doubts about the purpose of prayer and the stories in the Torah. So one day, during a Bat Mitzvah lesson, she asked her tutor: “If I don’t believe in any of this stuff, then why should I bother becoming a Bat Mitzvah in the first place?” The tutor shot her a disapproving look. He called her a cynic -- a word that she had to later ask her dad what it meant -- and returned to having her parrot back at him the melody of her haftarah portion. It was a formative moment for Leah. And although she dutifully completed the rest of the Bat Mitzvah process -- from the day after her Bat Mitzvah, it would be ten years before she would again step foot inside a synagogue.

We need not view the question “Why be Jewish?” as a threat. Certainly, it is a challenge. But if we back away from the challenge, how many people will disappear from Jewish life not just for ten years, but more likely, forever?

To answer the question, “Why be Jewish?” we must first respond to the question beneath it: “Why practice any religion at all?” The philosopher Tim Crane provides a helpful framework. Crane places religion and science side by side to see how the two compare. He notes that both science and religion are lenses for understanding our world -- but beyond that, the two share little in common. We often think of science and religion as in conflict with one another. But when we look more carefully, Crane writes, we discover that science and religion simply have different goals -- and that difference helps us understand what religion is for.

Science is interested in making the unknown known -- in where there is mystery, creating knowledge. Religion, Crane points out, does the exact opposite. Religion revels in mystery, is ever in search of the unknowable. Science is the practice of answering questions; religion is the practice of asking questions for which there are no certain answers.

Questions like: Why are we here? Does life have a purpose? Can people change? Why do bad things happen to us -- and how should we respond when they do? Is there such a thing as “doing the right thing”? What is love?

In our everyday lives -- and I’ll be the first to admit it, all too often, in our Jewish lives -- we are not attuned to these kinds of questions. Nevertheless, these questions lurk just beneath the surface. Like a conversation partner who continually asks “why?” until the conversation has moved from tying your shoes to the impermanence of life -- religion, when practiced well, helps to remind us of life’s great mysteries, of the questions for which there are no certain answers. Religion teaches us to humbly say: “I do not know the answer -- but here’s what I believe.”

We have addressed the question: “Why practice any religion at all?” But we have yet to address the question that got us here in the first place: “In a world where I can be anything I want to be, why should I be Jewish?”

The writer Sarah Hurwitz provides a helpful image. Hurwitz asks us to imagine an enormous library that is filled floor to ceiling with books on life’s unanswerable questions. And you, the library customer, come in every day to browse around in the stacks. Each day, you take a few books off the shelf and flip through them. Some of them, you really like -- they speak to you. And so you check them out of the library, take them home, and read them carefully. Other books, you find less compelling -- and so, after a quick flip-through, you return them to the shelf.

And then one day, buried deep within the basement of the library, you come across a book you’ve never seen before. It catches your eye -- and you notice that it has your family’s name written on the binding. Of course, you’re surprised, and intrigued, and perhaps even a little bit nervous about what might be written inside. You take it down from the shelf, blow the dust of the cover, and crack the spine -- and immediately, you discover that this is a very old book. It has endured many centuries and has traveled many thousands of miles in order to wind up in your hands today. You start flipping through, and you see that each page has been written by a different generation of your family -- each of them trying to articulate their best responses to the questions that have no answers.

You flip from page to page, reading the wisdom that each generation has shared with the next -- until you arrive at the book’s current page. And you see that it is blank -- except for one word: your name, written across the top.

And suddenly, you are reminded of a conversation you once had -- a conversation you only remember vaguely, as if it were in a dream. Someone was telling you: “Daniel, it’s time to put on your shoes.” And you responded: “Why?” “Because it’s time to go to the synagogue.” “Why?” “Because…”

And then, a pause -- as your conversation partner considered their answer carefully. “Because… life is a great mystery. And I don’t have all the answers. And that is exactly why we need you.”

So: Why be Jewish? Because life is full of unanswerable questions. And the conversation can never be complete until you add your voice.

Standing there in the basement of the library, staring at the empty page that bears your name, you reach into your bag for pen. It is time to write your page.