Remember, this stuff has changed over the past few months and will likely change again. But I put it forth (a) as an exercise to get others to think and comment about the big issues and (b) as an interesting activity that I think people should do at some point.
I believe all of the following with 90% probability (ie: a 90 is good enough to get an A): that the universe as we know it was formed and is controlled by one supernatural entity (we call God — all references herein are to the abstract) that knows all, receives prayers (and sometimes acts on them) (but that prayer is more an opportunity given to man and an appropriate activity for communities than an offering that God demands of him), rewards and punishes both in our lifetime, generations that come before and after and in an afterlife. God favors the practice of monotheism. Religion does not require certainty but rather strong belief that is subject to doubt and reaffirmation. [Even many matters of what we call scientific truth are not certainties but rather conventions by which we explain things in a universal manner that we couldn’t otherwise explain (ie: the color blue does not exist since light has no color but we all agree what blue looks like).]
God does not dictate all events and his intentions can not usually be explained. Therefore, bad things happen to good people and vice versa, as far as we can tell. The belief in a temporal existence on this earth versus an eternal afterlife is a comforting rationalization for this because no man-made justification could otherwise exist for man’s ability to “get away with” evil deeds and the consistent perpetration of tremendous forms of evil on this planet, especially in this century which despite technology and greater universality has witnessed more killing than in any other century. The comfort that God will ultimately reward and punish is also a worthy deterrent from man otherwise occupying himself with revenge and seeking restitution or retribution when society cannot provide it or the pursuit of it would be too burdensome and distracting from more productive activity.
God wanted the existence of several religions in the world but gave the Jewish religion favored status in return for increased obligations and suffering. He (or she or more likely It) also created other religions to persecute the Jews; otherwise, Judaism would have ceased to exist long ago. However, since all this is according to his will, no one religion is “better” than any other and anyone who practices his religion devoutly is to be respected. One who has not accepted a religion or its observances is not a sinner every time he violates a tenet of a religion. Practitioners of polytheism and atheism should be respected if they truly believe in it. One may change religions without penalty as long as one does so solely on the basis of theological conviction and not for material gain.
One’s affiliation to a religion is almost always a product of birthright and familial obligation; to a great degree, one does not choose his religion (ie: Bar Mitzvah at age 13 doesn’t really count) (ie: Had I been born to Christian or Moslem parents, I would have most probably been Christian or Moslem). Religion is important because it strengthens family units and provides for roles of each family member (ie: “The family that prays together stays together”; families are together on the sabbath; each person in the family has certain roles to play in the Passover seder). Ritual and continuing education through study and introspection are important both for developing and maintaining one’s relationship with God and transmitting religious identity to one’s children. Superior to ritual observance is constant mental awareness of one’s relationship with God and such awareness as a force that influences man to act for good instead of evil. However, simply being a good person may be salutary but is not religious observance. Man’s imperative is to enjoy life and this world tempered with obligations to fellow man and recognition of God; however, man is not expected to live his life as a servant of God. One should not live as an ascetic in this life as if this will earn him paradise in an afterlife.
The revelation at Sinai occurred and the 5 Books of Moses in their entirety are God given law and exist as mandatory authority but yet they are both a heritage from the past and a continuing legacy to each generation as if given anew or to be revealed again as if for the first time. The interpretation of the 5 Books of Moses (5BM) should be literal according to the plain meaning of the words to a reasonable man reading them today except in the face of strong contradictory evidence that the words do not mean or call for action that a literal reading would otherwise indicate. All that is not prohibited is permitted. It is optional yet salutary to create reasonable fences around prohibited acts in order to avoid doing them. The history and present practice of clergical tradition and rulings have persuasive authority and deference should be shown to community standards and the clergy of the various communities that set these religious observances through tradition and interpretation. Clergy of every generation are qualified to interpret the literal meanings of the 5BM as they read them in their day and interpretations may change if clergy either come to the conclusion that clergy that came before them erred in their interpretations or the plain meaning of the words should be read differently at that time except as indicated in the first sentence of this paragraph. The Bible may be ignored in the face of common sense or in special circumstances where the greater good is readily apparent to a reasonable man. (I have a problem with clergy ducking serious issues by deferring to the sages of 2,000 years ago who they say have no equal in today’s era.) The statements in this paragraph will be illustrated later in this article through examples.
Clergy’s persuasive authority is restricted to interpretation and application of the 5BM, setting standards for religious observance, educating and guiding communities toward activities, ethics and philosophies that delineate and further man’s relationship with God. Clergy should refrain from interference in political affairs where religious issues are not directly relevant to the political matter. Clergy must recuse themselves from rulings on religious matters in which they have financial interests. Linkage of peripheral issues should not be relevant to religious rulings about specific issues unless linkage is inextricable.
If God did not exist, it would have been necessary to invent Him. The universe is a great chaos which needs some sort of rationalization. Only the existence of belief in a supernatural power that might someday reward or punish could deter evil acts when no man on earth would suspect or punish it. The world benefits from a force that urges morality, accountability and kindness. Like all good things, excess can lead to perversion and acts of great evil, rationalized in furtherance of religion and the supposition of God’s will.
The Meaning of Life involves 5 imperatives:
1. Man’s day to day objective is to enjoy Life. Each day is a gift which should not be squandered. It is OK to delay gratification (ie: pension, hold out a treat for the sabbath or a holiday) but not to excess.
2. Man’s overall objective is to leave a Legacy (ie: children, charitable foundation, history, building, positive influence on people and society).
3. Man’s overall quest is to search for Truth. Finding it is not the imperative.
4. Man’s day to day obligation is to do his Duty (ie: family, job, country, God). These four entities bestow favors upon Man which should be reciprocated.
5. Man’s overall duty is to Improve the world he lives in and leave it better than as he found it. This can be done both on a day to day basis and in terms of leaving behind a Legacy.
The pursuit of excellence can be subsumed within these categories as it is a way of acting on these imperatives. Man can seek a relationship with God as a partner in pursuit of these imperatives.
ILLUSTRATIONS OF ABOVE PRINCIPLES IN DIFFICULT SITUATIONS OF FACT
Please remember while reading this section that you should assume even when I state something as fact that these are my opinions and are not a guide to Jewish law.
1. Sabbath begins at sundown. It is OK and salutary to start observance 18 minutes before sundown or earlier but it is not a violation of Biblical law if observance starts at sundown.
2. The prohibition of work on the sabbath can likely be interpreted to account for the invention of electricity (although I have no scientific background and therefore have no idea how one would deal with this in fact). Problem is the slippery slope and the greater question of fiction for a greater good. What do I mean? It might be true that playing an acoustical guitar on the sabbath is not “work.” Maybe even playing a radio. Let’s assume arguendo it is not work. Playing guitar to accompany festive singing at the sabbath dinner table is one thing; sitting in the garage playing rock and roll is another. Problem is that the spirit of the sabbath would be utterly ruined if families would sit on the telephone, drive to the mall, go to football games and sit at their PC’s and go on the Internet just like they do every other day. The overall idea of the sabbath is a day of rest and it is clear from my own experiences that it is a wonderful thing for families to sit with each other for 24 hours without disturbances from the outside world. Beyond the technical laws of sabbath is a spirit of the sabbath — one could technically hold a business meeting in which people talk and strategize over actions they will take later in the week but one shouldn’t do so on the sabbath. It would be too much of a slippery slope to expect people to only listen to their radios to sing along with zionist tunes played on Israel Radio on Saturday mornings and not to listen to the soccer games being played in Israel during the sabbath afternoon. In the absence of the feeling that people could figure out for themselves a consistent interpretation of “work” within the “spirit” of the sabbath, it is probably best to keep alive the fiction that “work” is so liberally construed as to include almost anything that could disturb the peace. People will of course be left to their own devices in the privacy of their homes but I can’t see a better way to do this from a legislative standpoint.
3. In general, the second day of festivals that are celebrated outside of Israel are excesses in an age of atomic clocks and in an environment where Jews work in a gentile world. The 8th day of Passover, for example, brings one to violate the biblical imperative of wearing phylacteries in order to observe a rabbinical prohibition against work. The original declaration of a holiday and day of rest applied to an all-Jewish community in a desert encampment later to live in a designated land. It is a burden in a Diaspora situation (the majority of people use up all their vacation days just with the Jewish holidays) particularly when the only reason to keep doing it is that it has been done like this for 2,000 years. It is an error that should be stopped.
4. Concepts such as Kol Isha (prohibitions against hearing a woman’s voice singing) have no literal basis in the 5BM unless you twist words to the ‘nth degree. This is a rabbinical creation with the status of persuasive authority. Other examples of rabbinical creations are wearing a skullcap, the Evening Service, the synagogue and the requirement of 10 men to form an official service. This is not to say that just because they are matters of rabbinical creation they should be ignored but they should not be viewed with the same imperative as biblical commandments.
5. This is a real tough one. Homosexuality is literally prohibited in the 5BM as an abomination and is therefore a sin. Because any religion can only survive via procreation and there is a biblical command to procreate, it is reasonable that the practice has been strongly discouraged. Discovery of insemination techniques coupled with strong evidence that unisex families can raise children as well as conventional family structures, if true, counters that stand to an extent. Bigger question: can biologically driven activity (if that is what homosexuality is) be sinful behavior? Or is it fair that a set of people with a higher impulse to sin are given a greater duty to control their “evil” impulses? In essence, do we make them give up a great deal of happiness in order to fulfill a set of responsibilities? Put another way, is a kleptomaniac guilty of sin if he steals? I am ambivalent on this issue. I don’t think that we should raise the bar in front of certain classes of people (a parallel example of “thou shalt not raise obstacles before the blind”) and should be realistic that for thousands of years this has been an issue that up until recently was pushed under the rug and often dealt with in a hypocritical manner, in all 3 of the monotheistic religions. On the other hand, in a literal sense, I have solicited but haven’t been able to find any kind of convincing proof that there is a literal escape from the sin said to exist. If we believe that God wrote the Bible, then he knew that homosexuality was biologically driven (if true) when he wrote it and still made it a sin. It is a cruel circumstance; my only consolation is that the homosexual has a higher duty to put responsibility before pleasure in this life and will be amply rewarded in the next life. I am not happy with this answer but it is the only one I have at this time that makes sense in a theological context and because I have decided that to 90% probability there is a God who rewards and punishes and has set forth a code of behavior, it must be dealt with.
6. An authority charged with the supervision of food preparation so that it will be judged kosher is out of line if it withholds kosher certification because it does not approve of activities at the event that is catered (ie: belly dancing — controversial but not sinful). Whether or not kosher certification can be withheld from a catering hall that is open on Friday night (where violation of the sabbath is occurring and the issue of inextricable linkage is more apparent) is a difficult question and I understand that this is a contested issue in Israel.
7. It is OK for rabbis to create a ritual (ie: on a one-time or recurring basis) (ie: a service, prayer, holiday, fast day, custom) and this can be observed in a community, country or worldwide. Such a creation will be persuasive authority. It is OK for rabbis to discontinue such a ritual.
8. It is acceptable for rabbis to announce religious positions with regard to the issue of territory for peace since the giving of the biblical land of Israel to the Jews is expressly within the 5BM and this is therefore not a strictly political issue. However, because nothing in the 5BM explicitly states what the land is or that it cannot be surrendered for any reason, it is permitted to be flexible in this regard and any rabbinical opinion will be persuasive. In a more general sense, if one believes that God wants the Jews to have a land of Israel and for it to be strong and permanent, a rational compromise that convinces the majority of the country that they will have greater security and normalcy cannot lead to national suicide by creating the likelihood of successful Arab attack. Religious teachings are that the two exiles (due to Babylonian and Roman conquest) were God’s punishment brought about by internal infighting among Jews (interestingly not mentioned is a lack of religious observance which was true for the majority then as it is today). An excuse to coverup military inferiority or a lesson that the military powers were delivering God’s will? If it’s a lesson, then Jews have more to fear from each other than from Arabs. The last election in Israel tends to prove that this point is quite true today in the minds of Israelis.
9. Jesus Christ is not called for in the 5BM and no man can be or become a deity. Neither can anyone such as the Lubavicher Rebbe. It is a violation of the first 2 commandments to recognize any gods besides God.
10. Overriding the literal Biblical imperative:
a. Man is very sick. It is the sabbath. You can drive him to the hospital. This is almost universally accepted.
b. House alarm is ringing a false alarm. It is the sabbath. It is nighttime and it is disturbing the neighborhood and the police will come. It is OK to turn off the alarm, call the police to abort them coming out, and to reset the alarm. This is controversial.
c. Abortion may or may not be murder. Nothing in the Bible clearly contemplates abortion. In a general sense, in the context of my opinion, it is permitted however let’s assume it is murder. Mother declares she will abandon baby if it is born and society is not prepared to bear costs of that baby. Abortion should be permitted as an act of mercy to the baby — not as a matter of preserving the woman’s freedom to choose. Euthanasia is also viewed in this context as a merciful act of greater good against the biblical imperative not to murder. A living will that calls for hastened endings in no-win situations should be respected and religious authority to the contrary should be viewed as persuasive. The definition of murder may be interpreted within its plain meaning of malice to exclude killing for the sake of preventing further suffering when done with the consent or direction of the person who is overwhelmingly likely to continue suffering for the foreseeable remainder of his life.
d. Community standard: Polygamy is permitted by the Bible but has been generally outlawed for societal more so than religious reasons. If a community wanted to have polygamy and it would not be considered taboo in that society, there would be nothing biblically to prevent it.
