Dear Friends,
Judaism is a religion that is based on deeds, not doctrines. Unlike other faith traditions, it has no creeds. Although the Sh’ma comes close to it, the Sh’ma is more a statement of fact than a statement of belief. It instructs, “Listen up Israelites, YHWH is the name of our God – only YHWH.” Never do Jews liturgically proclaim, “I believe in YHWH, the God of Israel.” Even when Torah talks about God, the writers speak about God’s actions rather than about God’s being. “I am Adonai your God who led you out of Egypt to freedom,” God announces before issuing the Ten Commandments, which are the foundation of Jewish life. These commandments tell us what to do, not what to believe. Nor do the post-biblical writings of our Sages and Rabbis – the Mishne and the Talmud – say much about God. Their focus is on how we should behave. The medieval codes that follow continue to define, ritual practice. No subsequent list of the 613 mitsvot includes a commandment to believe.
These reflections of mine were prompted by a letter to the Ethicist in last Sunday’s New York Times Magazine. The inquirer, a person who grew up in the Catholic Church whose thinking brought him to question the divinity of Jesus, the sanctity of the Gospels, and the justification of specific actions of the Church seemed to be in conflict with the writer’s desire to go to Church. He questions the legitimacy of his going to Church to hear the music, participate in the choreography of prayer, and to be a part of the community if he refutes the tenets of what the Church mandates he believes. Wisely, the Ethicist encourages him to continue his weekly attendance. It may or may not be a sin in the eyes of the Church, the Ethicist argues, but it does no harm to anyone, he reasoned.
Of course, we Reconstructionist Jews have found a way to have our cake and eat it too, religiously speaking. For us belonging eclipses believing and behaving. We are a ‘come as you are’ form of Judaism that is broad enough to a home to the religious naturalist, to the agnostic, and to the atheist, as well as to people of more traditional beliefs. Understanding Judaism as an expansive expression that includes folkways and food and art and music and that finds sacred fulfillment in everyday acts of kindness and social justice, belief is but one component of Jewish life. Moreover, though Torah does not describe what God looks like, it does tell us that human beings are created in God’s image. And where do we see the image of God in the Hebrew Bible? We see God in acts of redemption and compassion. So just as God acts to redeem the captives and to care for those in need, we mirror God when we do what we can for the stranger and the marginalized.
And we see God in community, too. “How good and pleasant it is when we come to be together,” the Psalmist declares. I look forward to the many opportunities to come – at services and in study groups, making sandwiches and baking hamantaschen, at committee meetings, and in the parking lot, just to name a few – when we will come and do the work to repair our fractured world. And then, in the words of our ancient priests, we will see ‘the face of God’ in each of us. With great anticipation for those times to come, I am, warmly,
Lee
