Agnostic in a Foxhole

Things in my life have recently taken a turn for the worse. I won't go into detail, but suffice it to say that (while not as dramatically as the title might suggest), I have been pretty emotionally drained and feel like I am trying to piece back together who I am and what I want.

And here's the thing: like other times in my life that have been trying, I feel this really strong pull back to religion. And not just religion in general, but the very traditional religion of my childhood.

I spent (rather deliberately) the past two Shabbosim visiting some Orthodox friends of mine and keeping Shabbos completely (resisting the urge to even check my phone once). This is something I have not done in a LONG time.

More importantly, perhaps, I feel the need to revert my life back toward Orthodoxy and even to do things like pray. The intellectual in me always makes me pause before doing anything like this and usually I just don't. But it's very much there. I understand that it makes sense, psychologically, for humans to react this way while going through traumatic experiences. Still, it's strange to see it in myself.

...But I Still Like Tradition!: The Conundrum

On my last post, an anonymous commenter asked that I write about resolving the “‘I like the social parts of Jewish traditions/holidays, etc. but that's it’ conundrum.”

Well, the statement is not completely accurate (is that an actual quote from my blog? If so, oy!), nor am I sure I’ve really resolved that conundrum, but here goes nothing…

I’ll make sure to get my actual feelings on the subject out first.

The phrase “social parts” is sort of vague and I’m not sure it actually describes what I like about Jewish traditions and holidays. As I mentioned in a previous post, I'm traditional, but not a traditionalist, in that I don’t think tradition trumps all. For example, if a tradition violates my deeply held moral/ethical beliefs, I’ll have a big problem following said tradition.

In other words, I do like and have a respect for tradition as a whole. That's partly because I have a respect of my ancestry, my heritage, my fascination with the history of the Jewish people...

But it’s true that many of the Jewish traditions and holidays include rituals, etc., that don’t fit with my worldview. It’s also true that I’m an agnostic, don’t believe in the divinity of the Torah, and have issues with the values of some of the rabbis who constructed the Halachic code by which Orthodox Jews live today. So yes, I’m definitely not Orthodox. And in a lot of ways I’ve stopped even acting as such in my daily life. Though I’m still not fully “out” to my parents, siblings, and certain friends of mine. (They know I’m less religious then them now, but don’t really know to what extent.)

That said, I do want to keep as much Jewish tradition in my life as possible (as discussed above), so long as it does not contradict my values. And since the Modern Orthodox tradition is the one in which I was raised, it is in many ways the one that’s most comfortable to me (though I’m not necessarily sure comfort is a good way to determine how I should live my life), and therefore is the one that I tend to look toward first for a traditional element in my life.

And I do enjoy what you might call the “social” aspect of it. It means something to me, not only because it’s part of my ancestry, but because it’s part of my life to an even greater degree than American cultural events like July 4^th or New Years (after all, if my family happened to be out of the country on July 4^th, it would go nearly unnoticed; the same can obviously not be said for Jewish holidays). It is, in effect, part of the makeup of who I am.

And I do love it. I love the feeling of sitting in a Succah on Succos…of smell of the etrog…the crazy dancing on Simchat Torah…lighting menorah and eating latkes with my family on Chanukah. And, like I’ve said before, the non-Orthodox versions of these rituals often feel strange to me, almost devoid of “realness."

So what to do? The agnostic, quasi-practicing Jewish girl has an affinity for (some) Orthodox rituals!

Well, like I said, I’m not really sure I’ve solved the conundrum, but here’s what I’ve done in the last year:

I’ve tried out Conservative services. This, as I blogged, was nice in some ways, and really strange in others.

I’ve gone to my parents’ house for holidays/Shabbos, while slowly letting them know (through more subtle conversational hints) that while I do appreciate this way of doing things, I’m not fully in the same boat as them theologically, and I don’t always do things like this on my own. This approach seems to be working in a not-so-painful way. As an aside, every time I’ve been there, I’ve had my also not-so-Orthodox boyfriend (his theology and upbringing is pretty similar to mine) there as a support network. This has been immensely helpful.

For those holidays I’ve done on my own (see fast day posts), I’ve tailored the rituals to fit my life, my reality, and my philosophy. This worked with the fast days. It hasn’t really worked (i.e., hasn’t felt right) with the other holidays.

I’ve gone to Chabad. I like them. Not their theology, but their approach. I know that deep down they’re looking to make me as Orthodox as possible (and that they have some beliefs that go beyond even regular Orthodoxy, with which I do not agree), but it never feels awkward or sinister to me. And the traditions there are done as traditionally as it comes…which is comfortable for me. Though as I said above, I’m not sure that I should be using comfort as a criterion (i.e., I’m offended by the idea of a mechitza and of not being counted in a minyan, etc., even as it feels comfortable to me).

So this is where I am right now. It’s definitely not optimal but it’s better than it was at this time last year! As for where I’m going, I’d like to start looking (more actively) for a community of traditional non-Orthodox Jews to see how that feels. Also, I’d like to start holding non-traditional Friday night dinners (and other Jewish rituals) with my other less-than-Orthodox (and maybe non-Jewish?) friends.

Tisha B'av with Food

Okay, so fine, I'm an agnostic. I don't really feel God or spirituality the way other people seem to.

And I'm not really sad about the absence of a Temple in Israel. (In fact, I think I'd be more disturbed than anything about things like animal sacrifices that are supposed to take place there.)

That said, as I wrote in my last post, I do find meaning in Tisha B'av - in remembering the loss and suffering of so many of my ancestors, in so many places, generations. But I've never been able to experience that meaningfulness because my body simply shuts down without food (see previous post for more specific details).

So this Tisha B'av, I ate.

I limited myself: only plain bread, plain pasta, juice, and water.

I didn't play any of those games where you only eat a morsel every minute or so. I didn't think that sort of activity would help add meaning to the day -- it seems like it would only serve to make me focus even more on food, etc.

I have to say that this was the most meaningful Tisha B'av, most meaningful fast day actually, I've ever had. And that includes all of those I observed when I was more religious that I am now.
It was a "fast" the way the Christians define it during Lent (only, I guess, more extreme). Every time I opened the refrigerator, I had to stop myself from taking what I really wanted - and then, got to think about why I was doing that.

And that's the thing: I was mentally present enough to think about it. Completely incredible, for me, at least.

Being Decisive: Tisha B'av

Even in my least religious moments, I've always seen a justification for fasting on Tisha B'av.

Unlike Yom Kippur, it doesn't necessarily (at least the way I understand it) have to do with a belief in God. Well, I suppose the idea really is that in the end God's going to bring moshiach... But what I mean is - you needn't believe in God for Tisha B'av to have meaning.

The fast day is all about remembering and mourning all the tragedies in our nation's history - more specifically, about morning the tragedies of our ancestors. I've always understood it that way. And so it always made sense to me to follow it.

But here's the thing: fasting makes me sick. More than anybody else I know. While no doctor has ever told me not to fast (I've never asked!), I have a tendency to become hypoglycemic, and fasting means that I literally cannot move from the couch for at least the last 10 hours. It also means a good 10 hour recovery time post-fast.

Last year, I had a particularly bad attack of hypoglycemia, broke my fast on orange juice, and then continued to fast afterward.

But this year, I'm making the decision before the fast even begins that I will not fast. I won't go out, party, and order myself a chocolate cheese cake either, but I won't fast.

I'm going to commemorate the day in my own way - keep things serious, eat only as much as necessary. But I don't see the point anymore of following the tradition as is, simply because it's tradition, if the said tradition renders me completely and utterly unable to move.

And I think, just maybe, this is the way the rest of my outlook on Judaism/tradition/what-the- hell-I'm-going-to-do-with-my-life-religiously is starting to shape up. We shall see.

Death & Skepticism

One of my co-workers recently passed away. He was young (in his early 40s).

I find it really difficult to deal with death as a skeptic/agnostic. So much more so than when I believed. Heaven/the idea that they're still watching & still exist are gone. And it all becomes so meaningless.

The Little OJ Girl Who Lives in My Brain

On my way home yesterday, I had a realization:

There's no reason I have to be certain of where I eventually want to be in terms of Judaism, or even exactly where I am right now, to be open about said status with family and/or friends.

I can tell them I'm unsure. I can tell them I don't know if I can be Orthodox, that I'm not really Orthodox now, that I might or might not be Orthodox in the future. That I value our tradition and love so many things about it, but am not sure I believe in a lot of the concepts that undergird them.

But I haven't. And I'm not sure I will.

Why?

Well, here's the second realization:

No matter what I've done, what I've learned that has contradicted OJ, etc., deep down there's this insistence somewhere inside of me that being "non-religious" (in the OJ usage of the term) is bad, wrong, and something of which I should be ashamed.

It's almost like I have a much younger, Orthodox version of myself living inside my brain, full of all the contentions she's been taught, and she won't leave me alone.

Basically: I haven't been able to accept myself as non-Orthodox or even questioning Orthodoxy because a part of me is still convinced that such a designation would make me a BAD person.

And how can I ask my parents and friends to accept me as I am if I haven't yet accepted my own thoughts and my own choices as legitimate?

Religious Questioning & The State of Israel

An old friend of mine with whom I've recently gotten back into contact has also "lost her religion" - to a far greater extent than I have.

While she still enjoys aspects of Jewish culture (i.e., food, music, literature, etc.), she's completely rejected anything to do with Judaism (as in the religion). Questioning religion, for her, was only a part of questioning the entire value system in which she was raised. Much like me, she was raised to be a Zionist, went to Israel for the year, went to religious Zionist camps, etc. And so, Zionism was one of the value systems which she questioned and ultimately rejected.

She's now not only pro-Palestinian, but actually anti-Israel.

I have always been more "liberal" in my Zionism than others. By that, I mean that I've always been appalled by people who implied or openly stated that the Palestinians had no legitimate side. Even as I saw certain Palestinian tactics as murderous and unethical, I've never been able to understand some people's reactions to them. One really otherwise-sweet girl in my seminary, for example, declared that if she had a machine gun, she would walk into East Jerusalem and open fire. This - and all of those people I would meet who espoused Kahane-esque philosophies - was completely incomprehensible to me. I always believed, you can't lump a nation/race all together and say they are all evil and all deserve to die. (That is, at the end of the day, the biggest problem I have with the biblical injunction to eradicate Amalek.)

It wasn't until I was in my early twenties that I actually began to read literature written about and from the Palestinian viewpoint.

Up until that point, I had always been taught as though Israel had never done anything wrong EVER (almost certainly a mistake from an educational standpoint). That every piece of land acquired by the State of Israel was done so either by purchase from absentee landlords (thus, the problem was with angry tenants, as it was) or by humane methods after the UN Resolution.

When I found out that this wasn't always the case, I was left really confused. In addition to this, because I was simultaneously questioning whether the Torah was true, I wasn't really sure how the State of Israel could be justified. If God didn't give us the land, what claim did we have to it?

Of course, the literature I was reading was very one-sided and written from an emotional perspective. And though I have since come to see things differently, for a while (maybe a year or two), I felt really strange about my allegiance to Israel. So much so, that I couldn't even bring myself to say the word "Israel" around non-Jewish people without a queasy feeling in the bottom of my stomach. That said, for some reason, I still felt really attached the country itself. When I did visit, it still felt good in that way that it always had. And I couldn't (and didn't want to) imagine a world without Israel.

Interestingly enough, it took conversations with an Evangelical Christian Zionist to balance out my perspective again.

From these conversations, I have since come to the understanding that while Israel was not ethical in every decision it has made, no country can make such a claim. Yes, there were Palestinians exiled in unfair and inhumane ways. Yes, that's awful. But Israel has been ethical in many of its decisions. And those instances in which it has not been ethical do not revoke its right to exist.

The original settlements and the subsequent founding of the State of Israel were at least partially premised on the idea that in this hostile world, Jews needed their own homeland. And world events (pogroms, the Holocaust, and other persecutions) supported this thesis. If we look at Middle Eastern countries and/or certain European countries, today's world events still point to this need.

I'm rambling, admittedly, but it really made me feel strange to talk to this girl who now believes that the State of Israel should not exist -- especially at this point in the evolution of my belief system. She says that unless we look to the Bible, we have no claim to this land (implicit in her statement is that the Bible is not a valid source).

Now, I don't really want to use the Bible as a source either for such disputes. But certainly, if the Jews are to choose any land for the purpose described above, we do at least have a historic connection to the land.

I don't even know if that's important, though. In my mind, what it comes down to, is that she's now arguing for something completely unethical. There are generations of Israelis who have now grown up in this land, who own property, who understand this as their home. How would removing these people be ethical when removing Arabs from their homes was not? Can we correct something that was unethical (from her perspective) in the past by doing something equally as unethical today? Following her line of reasoning, to me, would be equivalent to arguing that we should remove the residents of the American West and give all the land to the Native Americans.

Why I Haven't Told: The Self, Divided

Slowly I’m coming to the realization that my situation is more complex than I originally thought. I’ve tried, but haven’t been able to tell my parents and the more I think about it, the more I realize that my reluctance is not just related to my cowardice (although I’m sure that factors into it, too).

The truth is that I’m really torn. In addition to my intellectual problems with Judaism, and all of the things I find problematic within its social structures, there is also so much that I love about being part of the Orthodox community. So much that I’m not sure I could just let go of.

I’m using this entry as a way to organize my thoughts on this – a way to understand what it is that I love and what I find problematic. So here goes nothing…

I’ll start with what I love:

--Shabbos. Whenever I decide not to keep it (this happens more and more frequently lately), it honestly makes me feel empty. Sure, I can go to the mall or to some concert I wanted to go to, I can watch whatever came from Netflix on Friday afternoon. But the thing is, growing up, my parents always made Shabbos such a beautiful experience. And even when I got older, the day provided a space for real bonding with friends (one uninterrupted by ringing cell phones, laptops, TV shows, etc.). As tempting as it is to live one weekend here or there without it, going Shabbos-free for life seems like a colorless existence to me.

--Holidays. The best memories of my childhood are the scents, colors, textures of the Jewish holidays.I know this seems related to the Shabbos thing, and I suppose it is, but most secular celebrations of Jewish holidays that I’ve been to don’t cut it for me. This past Sukkos, in particular, I found myself in a crisis. Faced with the prospect of a three-day Yom Tov, I decided that I would let myself just chill for those few days and maybe attend a Sukkos dinner at the Conservative synagogue. The whole experience left me so sad, there aren’t words to describe it.

--Community. Yeah, I know you can find this anywhere. Community is not exclusive to the Jewish world. But to me, there’s something really nice about the way the MO Jewish community functions, especially when combined with what I love about Shabbos and the holidays.

But I conflict greatly with the MO community in terms of the things I believe in. Some of these are:

--God. I’m an agnostic, not an atheist, but I definitely lean more towards the atheist side these days. And God’s a huge issue. If you don’t believe in it, why are you practicing all of these rituals?

--Torah. Even if I could make that jump from agnostic to believer, I can’t believe that a book with so many inaccuracies and morally problematic (for me) ideas could be divine. And unlike others for whom this doesn’t matter, it’s pretty crucial for me.

--A Definition of Morality. Mine differs pretty greatly from that of most MO Jews I’ve met (even some of the most vehemently modern ones). I don’t see how I can live within a system with such strict gender divisions and with such a heteronormative culture. While I can admit that Judaism’s morality may have pretty progressive at one point in time, today it just doesn’t measure up in my eyes.

--Set Expectations/Normalcy. (Linked, definitely, to morality) Again, not limited to the Jewish community – and certainly not inherent in Judaism as a religion – but prevalent in most MO Jewish communities I’ve been to. That is, there is an idea that your life will follow a certain course and that course is even more limiting that the “normal” course proscribed by contemporary secular society (which is already quite limiting!). “What?! You’re 28 and not married? Oy!”

This is just a starting point. There’s so much more to say. But in the end, what I’m trying to get at is that it’s not just the problem of how to tell my parents, it’s the problem of how to tell myself. Because I actually feel like there are two sides of me at war here, and I’m not sure which way to turn.

Figuring it Out (Or Trying, Anyway)

So here's where I am.

I'm 28 years old. It's been more than 14 years since the first time I intentionally ate non-kosher (unless you count gum, in which case it's been about 20 years). It's about 12 years since the first time I broke Shabbos.

Back then, it was different though. While I questioned the idea of God, the idea of religion, these acts were more about rebellion...and occasionally even about fitting in. I was brought up in a Modern Orthodox home, with ba'al tshuva parents and, at about 14 years old, it started to feel like my life (in more ways than just religiously) no longer fit me.

When I was 18, I went to seminary (like so many others from my circles) -- and while I never became really frum per se, I did stop eating non-kosher, started keeping Shabbos, perhaps more significantly, started believing in the premises of Orthodox Judaism.

Of course I always still questioned. In seminary, for example, I tried asking my rabbis & teachers about things that still bothered me -- the fact that our religion commanded us to commit genocide, most specifically--the fact that the Torah seemed to talk about women like second class citizens. Again and again, I was told that this wasn't the time for these questions (especially about Amalek!) or given explanations that didn't really work for me (women are different, special -- and the Torah understands that about us; but I didn't feel very different).

Slowly, through college and later through graduate school, I began questioning even more -- reading, talking to other Ortho Jews, people of other faiths, etc. -- and what had seemed to make total sense a few years earlier, no longer did. It got to the point where I couldn't even reconcile the idea of God's existence anymore (I'm currently an agnostic).

But it was more complicated than just that. Because for all the theological, philosophical, and feminist issues I had with Orthodox Judaism, I have mixed feelings about it. That is, many of the beliefs it espouses are ones I (sometimes vehemently) disagree with. But I often feel a strong emotional connection to its traditions and community. And I don't, for the most part, dislike day-to-day existence as a Modern Orthodox Jew. (The phrase "for the most part," of course, is problematic when you're dealing with Judaism.) So I've been living -- outwardly, anyway (occasionally I've moved into the more Conservative/Conservadox realm) -- as what others in the blog world have called "Orthoprax" for a while now. This is because of the aforementioned emotions, as well as the fact that I don't want to alienate my parents and siblings.

I guess none of this would be such a problem if I didn't have these nagging ethical/intellectual problems with OJ...and if I didn't have to qualify the above emotional justification with the phrase "for the most part." Lately, these issues have become more problematic as I read and experience more.

This blog is in response to a few months of reading other OTD or skeptic blogs, specifically a recent entry by Going Going Gone in which she noted the lack of female bloggers on this topic. Hopefully, like it has done for others before me, this blog will help me sort out my thoughts.