When I first realized Judaism might have a little bit of room for me, I sat around and considered this religion from my limited and fairly ignorant perspective. Yeah, Jews have some fun and interesting holidays and they tend to involve great meals. But fun and food does not a religion make. Today, I know that there are countless things that make Judaism great. Last year, I didn't know half of them. So this post is about the few ideas that I came up with that made me say, OK I'm really going to investigate what Judaism has to offer.
Why are there so many Jewish doctors? No, this isn't turning into an antisemitic rant, I promise. But there are lots of Jewish doctors, professors, non-profit workers, and on and on. I just couldn't help but think that there must be something in Judaism that makes people reach for greatness. That might sound a little cliche. But is it a fluke? Judaism's focus on study, learning, repairing the world, and individual responsibility must have something to do with the professions that Jews pursue.
The name Israel means to wrestle with G-d. Each person has to figure out G-d for him/herself. And the point is to ask questions! I can't tell you how often I've thought and how often I've read from other people that it is such a relief to come into Judaism and be able to argue with the Rabbi. You can't argue with a priest. You can hardly ask questions of a priest... rephrasing a question does not count as a new question, just a repetition of the original. Basically, I just love asking questions and learning, whether it's in the classroom or just learning about a person's life. I don't understand how people could go through life without asking questions of everything. I've been told by a few people that I think way more than other people and my brain never mellows out.... not a bad thing in Judaism.
There are no roadblocks in getting to G-d. You pray straight to G-d all the time, every time. This is not a slight to Christianity, but I don't understand praying to saints. Well, the argument that you pray just so saints will help you out because they're closer to G-d, is somewhat logical. But I don't believe that there are saints hanging out in heaven with G-d, so that doesn't really work for me (see the afterlife). I just want to communicate with G-d directly, that's all. Also, there are no intermediaries between people and G-d in Judaism. Rabbis are teachers and the only one who can forgive sins is G-d, Himself.
Judaism doesn't hinge on miracles. Yes, there are miracles in the Torah and in holiday narratives. But if you take those away, the religion still stands. Maybe Moses didn't physically part the Red Sea like in the movies, but he still led the freed Hebrews out of Egypt and across a body of water. And even these miracles are more practical, if that can be said of a miracle. They're small and are much like the kind of miracle I believe my aunt's life to be (see Mary). Oil lasting for eight days instead of one is a little easier for me to believe in than say, Immaculate Conception. And if you happen to find a miracle you just can't believe in, there's still plenty to work with in Judaism to help you grow as a person and in your relationship with G-d.
Hinduism is to Krishna as Buddhism is to the Buddha as Christianity is to Jesus as Islam is to Mohammed as Judaism is to ....? Moses? But Moses isn't the only major prophet in Judaism. And wasn't the Torah given to the Children of Israel, i.e the Jewish People? The analogy doesn't work, and for a reason. Judaism truly is about a people, rather than a person. Following in the footsteps of Krishna, Buddha, Jesus, or Mohammed is totally cool. As long as it makes you a good person, I have no problem with that. But for me, I have a hard time only being able to look to one person who lived way back in day for an example.
Jews don't say "Cheers!" they say "L'Chaim!" which means to life! And I absolutely adore this seemingly small phrase. Jews and Judaism are concerned with this life and with living it to its fullest. In Judaism, you don't really do good works so you can get into heaven. You do good works because you should. I do the right thing because it's the right thing to do. Like I've said before, I believe this life is all there is, and I love life and so do Jews.
Finally, Judaism and science are completely, 100%, compatible. Thus, there's no choosing between religion and science, G-d and fact.
Showing posts with label afterlife. Show all posts
Showing posts with label afterlife. Show all posts
Wednesday, December 21, 2011
Wednesday, November 9, 2011
My Mother
How cliche will it be if I tell you that I love my mom more than anyone in the world? Don't care. I do. She's given me everything, has made unbelievable sacrifices, and loves me even when I push her away. But why does any of this matter to this blog? Well, she's my mother so obviously she had something to do with my religious education.
She and my dad enrolled me in public schools from the start so I had only one hour of religious education a week during the school year. For a lot of parents, if they choose this route they spend a few hours each week at home with their children teaching them about their religion. My parents didn't do that, thank G-d. Instead, my mother spent a lot of time outside with me. She loves to garden, so we spent hours and hours during the spring, summer and fall, digging up the soil, occasionally cutting earth worms in half, accidentally of course, planting flowers, watching birds and butterflies, catching frogs and the like. I was one of those kids who asked why about everything. Why is the sky blue? Why are some clouds more fluffy than others? How are some flowers pink and some yellow? My mom's a smart lady but she's not a scientist. So when she ran out of answers, she'd simply say because G-d made it that way. When science couldn't take us any further, we found G-d. But she never implied to me that the way things work didn't matter because G-d created everything perfectly. Science and G-d always seemed to go hand-in-hand.
When we weren't outside, we would paint or draw at the dinning room table. Being able to illustrate the way I see the world has always been important to me. My mother read to me everyday, until I was old enough to start reading to her. When I wanted to know something, she taught me how to look it up in the encyclopedia. Inquiry was a big part of my childhood.
My mom never taught me about original sin, or many other of those big hallmarks of Christianity. In fact, for the longest time, I thought that original sin just meant having sex because "the Virgin Mary was without original sin." It makes sense, right? And she definitely never taught me that only Catholics go to heaven and that non-Catholics go to hell. She always taught me that being a good person and doing your best in life was all that mattered when it came to the afterlife.
I don't know how my mom sees herself religiously anymore. But I do know that she's not sorry she sent me to CCD and took me to church. She told me that it's important to have a framework, i.e. religious tradition, in which to teach your children about G-d. Even though she feels a lot of the same frustrations with the Church as I do, she's not sorry she made her children a part of it. And I'm not either. I'm glad she cared enough to do that for me. As a teenager and adult, I haven't wanted to be a part of the Church. But at least as a child I was a part of something. I had structure and some meaning in my little life. I belonged somewhere.
When I think about my friend's funeral in the eighth grade, I feel a huge appreciation to my parents for putting me somewhere. Some of the prayers and songs in the service were printed in the program guide for his funeral. But some of the service was just from the standard church service. The friend who I went with is not religious at all. She might have been baptized, but her religious association didn't go further than that. So we get to part of the service when the congregation says the "Our Father." We're all saying this prayer, and my friend leans over to me and asks, "How do you know this?" She was looking for the words in the program packet. I told her that it's the same prayer we said at my church. Then she looks over and sees her mom saying it. She asks her mom how she knows it and she replies "I went to Catholic school growing up." Her mom said it with such a "DUH" tone. Then my friend just sat back in her seat and looked quite confused. She obviously felt very left out. She'd only been to church a few times in her life but most of her friends were being confirmed that year. In that moment I was so glad that I belonged to something, even if I didn't quite know what that was. And for this I have my parents, my mother, to thank.
Someday, I'll have my own kids, and I want them to feel like they belong somewhere. I want them to belong somewhere. I just can't make them a part of an institution I don't believe in. I can't teach them ideas I don't believe, many of which I don't even agree with their basic premise. That's at least partly why I'm on this journey I'm on: I want something more meaningful for my kids. I don't want them to grow up to find out that they don't agree with and can't bear to be apart of the Church, or a church, or whatever. I want them to have a lasting tradition.
When I told my mom a long time ago that I thought I wanted to leave the Church, she didn't object. She asked me if I wanted to write a letter to the bishop. A letter like that would be officially leaving the church with no possibility of ever returning. I couldn't believe she suggested it, but I think she knows the pain I feel when I think about my name being on the Church's roster. As long my name is still on their list, it in someway gives my approval to their actions. I just don't want to hurt anyone. I don't want to hurt my grandpa or my brother or my niece. One day I'll have to actually deal with these things, but at least my mother understands.
She and my dad enrolled me in public schools from the start so I had only one hour of religious education a week during the school year. For a lot of parents, if they choose this route they spend a few hours each week at home with their children teaching them about their religion. My parents didn't do that, thank G-d. Instead, my mother spent a lot of time outside with me. She loves to garden, so we spent hours and hours during the spring, summer and fall, digging up the soil, occasionally cutting earth worms in half, accidentally of course, planting flowers, watching birds and butterflies, catching frogs and the like. I was one of those kids who asked why about everything. Why is the sky blue? Why are some clouds more fluffy than others? How are some flowers pink and some yellow? My mom's a smart lady but she's not a scientist. So when she ran out of answers, she'd simply say because G-d made it that way. When science couldn't take us any further, we found G-d. But she never implied to me that the way things work didn't matter because G-d created everything perfectly. Science and G-d always seemed to go hand-in-hand.
When we weren't outside, we would paint or draw at the dinning room table. Being able to illustrate the way I see the world has always been important to me. My mother read to me everyday, until I was old enough to start reading to her. When I wanted to know something, she taught me how to look it up in the encyclopedia. Inquiry was a big part of my childhood.
My mom never taught me about original sin, or many other of those big hallmarks of Christianity. In fact, for the longest time, I thought that original sin just meant having sex because "the Virgin Mary was without original sin." It makes sense, right? And she definitely never taught me that only Catholics go to heaven and that non-Catholics go to hell. She always taught me that being a good person and doing your best in life was all that mattered when it came to the afterlife.
I don't know how my mom sees herself religiously anymore. But I do know that she's not sorry she sent me to CCD and took me to church. She told me that it's important to have a framework, i.e. religious tradition, in which to teach your children about G-d. Even though she feels a lot of the same frustrations with the Church as I do, she's not sorry she made her children a part of it. And I'm not either. I'm glad she cared enough to do that for me. As a teenager and adult, I haven't wanted to be a part of the Church. But at least as a child I was a part of something. I had structure and some meaning in my little life. I belonged somewhere.
When I think about my friend's funeral in the eighth grade, I feel a huge appreciation to my parents for putting me somewhere. Some of the prayers and songs in the service were printed in the program guide for his funeral. But some of the service was just from the standard church service. The friend who I went with is not religious at all. She might have been baptized, but her religious association didn't go further than that. So we get to part of the service when the congregation says the "Our Father." We're all saying this prayer, and my friend leans over to me and asks, "How do you know this?" She was looking for the words in the program packet. I told her that it's the same prayer we said at my church. Then she looks over and sees her mom saying it. She asks her mom how she knows it and she replies "I went to Catholic school growing up." Her mom said it with such a "DUH" tone. Then my friend just sat back in her seat and looked quite confused. She obviously felt very left out. She'd only been to church a few times in her life but most of her friends were being confirmed that year. In that moment I was so glad that I belonged to something, even if I didn't quite know what that was. And for this I have my parents, my mother, to thank.
Someday, I'll have my own kids, and I want them to feel like they belong somewhere. I want them to belong somewhere. I just can't make them a part of an institution I don't believe in. I can't teach them ideas I don't believe, many of which I don't even agree with their basic premise. That's at least partly why I'm on this journey I'm on: I want something more meaningful for my kids. I don't want them to grow up to find out that they don't agree with and can't bear to be apart of the Church, or a church, or whatever. I want them to have a lasting tradition.
When I told my mom a long time ago that I thought I wanted to leave the Church, she didn't object. She asked me if I wanted to write a letter to the bishop. A letter like that would be officially leaving the church with no possibility of ever returning. I couldn't believe she suggested it, but I think she knows the pain I feel when I think about my name being on the Church's roster. As long my name is still on their list, it in someway gives my approval to their actions. I just don't want to hurt anyone. I don't want to hurt my grandpa or my brother or my niece. One day I'll have to actually deal with these things, but at least my mother understands.
Monday, October 31, 2011
The Afterlife
You'd think that I would have included this post in my earlier posts about Christianity and why it doesn't suit me... but to be perfectly honest, I don't think about the afterlife that much so it only recently occurred to me. In short, I don't believe in the afterlife, an afterlife, life after death, or whatever other way you want to spin it.
I've heard the argument that there has to be an afterlife, otherwise there is no justice, and G-d is just. This seems logical enough... But why does there have to be justice? The truth is, that we don't really know what G-d does, so we can't definitively say that He pursues justice. Maybe there is justice here and we just don't recognize it. We're measuring justice by our own ruler, not G-d's, so we could be doing it all wrong...
Anyways, my argument is just as logical: if there were another life, why did G-d put us here in this one? Why wouldn't he just stick us in this other life to start with? There is some purpose to our existence in this mortal, physical world.
So, yeah, I do think that when it's over, it's over. My roommate and I discussed this at length not long ago. She is Catholic and totally believes in the afterlife. She said that when her grandpa died, she immediately knew that he was in heaven with her grandma and that she was happy about that. I guess it's great that she has such faith in this idea. But she doesn't really know; she only believes. What I do know, is that her grandpa, and everyone else who's ever died, isn't here.
When I think about people who've died, like my close friend from junior high school, I just think that it really sucks that they aren't here experiencing life. In the spring of eighth grade, my friend died. He had a pacemaker, and essentially, it stopped working. Not only did it stop working, but it stopped working at track practice, which I was at. It was a Tuesday. I was one of the only girls who saw what happened because I was in the pole vault pit next to where the boys were sprinting. It was a terrifying experience. The next day at school, the coaches and EMTs who responded talked to us, and told us he was doing fine. They told us the doctors would be able to fix him. That Friday, his parents pulled his younger brother out of school to come say good bye. I went to his funeral, where teachers and mentors spoke about what a wonderful person he was and the pastor spoke about heaven.
In all the days that have followed his death, I have never once felt comfort in heaven. I never felt that he was with G-d, or Jesus, or his grandparents, or anyone else. I didn't feel relieved that his suffering was over. All I felt was that it sucks that he's not here. And every milestone, big or small, that passed, I thought about how he wasn't experiencing it. He didn't get to start high school with us, or go to homecoming or to prom, or scream with us at football and basketball games, or apply to college, or stress out about what to do with the rest of his life. He didn't get freshmen move in day, or get to choose a major, or change his major 3 or 4 more times. He won't graduate college, or get married, or have kids, or grow old with the love of his life. And that freaking sucks.
I am constantly reminding myself to savor every moment, because the moments will expire eventually. I scrapbook and save the most random things that everyone else discards but I know are important. One day I will look back at a ticket stub or at a random holiday fact card from Hillel and be reminded of what a glorious time I am having. I know that I only have a certain amount of time on earth, and I don't have time to waste. The first time I told my roommate that I don't believe in the afterlife, she responded by saying that that is scary and it makes each day super important. Yes, each day is super important, and I try not to forget that. When I start to complain about my college classes, I remind myself that there are millions of people who don't have the luxury of complaining about that.
I should include that I do believe in the immortal soul. I think that when you die, you soul is at peace and will be at one with G-d. But your soul doesn't go somewhere else to live, it just exists somehow. As a friend helped me figure out, consciousness does not go hand in hand with a soul, so your soul will continue to live without "you" being conscious of it.
I know that I could be wrong. There could be an afterlife. But what happens if you spend your whole life banking on an afterlife and miss out on opportunities because you are always thinking there's more time, and then you die, and nothing happens? If I spend my whole life worried about this world and this life, doing good for people, loving my friends and family, being the best person I can possibly be, thinking that there is no afterlife, then there actually is one, I will be pleasantly surprised. But the person who spent his whole life sure of an afterlife and there isn't one, won't be pleasantly surprised. He won't be surprised at all. He won't be anything. Because his life will be over, and nothing happens after death.
I've heard the argument that there has to be an afterlife, otherwise there is no justice, and G-d is just. This seems logical enough... But why does there have to be justice? The truth is, that we don't really know what G-d does, so we can't definitively say that He pursues justice. Maybe there is justice here and we just don't recognize it. We're measuring justice by our own ruler, not G-d's, so we could be doing it all wrong...
Anyways, my argument is just as logical: if there were another life, why did G-d put us here in this one? Why wouldn't he just stick us in this other life to start with? There is some purpose to our existence in this mortal, physical world.
So, yeah, I do think that when it's over, it's over. My roommate and I discussed this at length not long ago. She is Catholic and totally believes in the afterlife. She said that when her grandpa died, she immediately knew that he was in heaven with her grandma and that she was happy about that. I guess it's great that she has such faith in this idea. But she doesn't really know; she only believes. What I do know, is that her grandpa, and everyone else who's ever died, isn't here.
When I think about people who've died, like my close friend from junior high school, I just think that it really sucks that they aren't here experiencing life. In the spring of eighth grade, my friend died. He had a pacemaker, and essentially, it stopped working. Not only did it stop working, but it stopped working at track practice, which I was at. It was a Tuesday. I was one of the only girls who saw what happened because I was in the pole vault pit next to where the boys were sprinting. It was a terrifying experience. The next day at school, the coaches and EMTs who responded talked to us, and told us he was doing fine. They told us the doctors would be able to fix him. That Friday, his parents pulled his younger brother out of school to come say good bye. I went to his funeral, where teachers and mentors spoke about what a wonderful person he was and the pastor spoke about heaven.
In all the days that have followed his death, I have never once felt comfort in heaven. I never felt that he was with G-d, or Jesus, or his grandparents, or anyone else. I didn't feel relieved that his suffering was over. All I felt was that it sucks that he's not here. And every milestone, big or small, that passed, I thought about how he wasn't experiencing it. He didn't get to start high school with us, or go to homecoming or to prom, or scream with us at football and basketball games, or apply to college, or stress out about what to do with the rest of his life. He didn't get freshmen move in day, or get to choose a major, or change his major 3 or 4 more times. He won't graduate college, or get married, or have kids, or grow old with the love of his life. And that freaking sucks.
I am constantly reminding myself to savor every moment, because the moments will expire eventually. I scrapbook and save the most random things that everyone else discards but I know are important. One day I will look back at a ticket stub or at a random holiday fact card from Hillel and be reminded of what a glorious time I am having. I know that I only have a certain amount of time on earth, and I don't have time to waste. The first time I told my roommate that I don't believe in the afterlife, she responded by saying that that is scary and it makes each day super important. Yes, each day is super important, and I try not to forget that. When I start to complain about my college classes, I remind myself that there are millions of people who don't have the luxury of complaining about that.
I should include that I do believe in the immortal soul. I think that when you die, you soul is at peace and will be at one with G-d. But your soul doesn't go somewhere else to live, it just exists somehow. As a friend helped me figure out, consciousness does not go hand in hand with a soul, so your soul will continue to live without "you" being conscious of it.
I know that I could be wrong. There could be an afterlife. But what happens if you spend your whole life banking on an afterlife and miss out on opportunities because you are always thinking there's more time, and then you die, and nothing happens? If I spend my whole life worried about this world and this life, doing good for people, loving my friends and family, being the best person I can possibly be, thinking that there is no afterlife, then there actually is one, I will be pleasantly surprised. But the person who spent his whole life sure of an afterlife and there isn't one, won't be pleasantly surprised. He won't be surprised at all. He won't be anything. Because his life will be over, and nothing happens after death.
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