It’s a great way to wind up your Rabbi and it is very common. A member of the Synagogue or someone who I am getting to know as a Rabbi for the first time will often introduce themselves by saying ‘I’m not religious’.
This is often in the middle of an obviously religious ceremony such as funeral where the whole experience is driven by the Jewish religion, or it may be when someone makes an enquiry about joining the synagogue for the first time, or it may be a couple who are planning their wedding and want it to be Jewishly traditional. So what does ‘I’m not religious’ mean when you are actually right in the middle of an act which is itself part of religious Judaism?
To be honest I think it means – though I am doing this today, honouring my lost loved one in a Jewish way, joining the Jewish community so that I will support it for the long term and ensure its survival, committing my life to my loved one under a chuppah with blessings that bring God right there with you – don’t expect to see me in shul on Shabbat –faith is not my thing!
We just stood for the ten commandments which Josh leyned for us. Most of us will know that there is a Jewish tradition that these ten are just the start of the commandments, mitzvot that Jews in theory commit to live by. There are legendarily 613 of them – the Taryag Mitzvot.
One of my favourite passages in the Talmud makes a major point of showing that these 613, which affect all aspect of life can validly be reduced to a few principles (BT Makkot 24a). It does so as always in the Talmud by using quotations from the Bible itself.
The 613 are distilled into eleven principles from a Psalm of David on how we can live our life. (Psalm 15) Then there is a further distillation to six principles from the book of Isaiah (Chapter 33). Then the passage really cuts it down – to three principles from the prophet Micah: “It has been told to you, O man, what is good, and what the Eternal does require of you; only to act justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God”
Finally, the passage ends by saying you don’t need 613 commandments to lead a good life, you don’t need ten – just one will do – either from Amos (5:4) ‘So says God to the house of Israel: Seek me and live.” Or from the prophet Habbakuk (2:4) who said just this ‘A righteous person shall live by their faith’
Beautiful – but yet so many Jews say to their Rabbis ‘you should know – I’m not religious’. As in I don’t observe the one principle on which Judaism is based.
So if faith is actually the elemental essential of Judaism how do we square it?
Alan Morinis, the extraordinary teacher of Mussar, the Jewish discipline of ethical behaviour, says this: When each of us is young we all question space, time, life until our mind is a place of confusion. Then we reach an accommodation and for most of us we put the questions in the closet. Then we carry the answers, even if they are platitudes, into our mature lives where they fit no better than the clothes and toys of our childhood. No wonder faith and religiosity can make little rational sense. (Everyday Holiness page 220)
It feels to me that often the problem is what one might call a category error. Faith is not something to be understood intellectually but rather to be appreciated from experience. It has to start from the heart – not from the head. Faith and belief are not like proving scientific facts. As our Torah portion told us – to see God directly, like seeing a Martian or a Yeti is just not possible for a human. But to perceive that there is a God and to have faith and believe is not only possible, but it is what makes the world feel whole.
The Lubavitcher Rebbe, Shneur Zalman of Lyadi, once wrote this to student who said they could have not faith or belief: “I do not accept your assertion that you do not believe. For if you truly had not concept of God who created the world with purpose, then what is all this outrage of yours at the injustice of life? The substance of the universe (rocks, mountains, sea) is not moral, and neither are the plants or the animals. Why should it surprise you that whoever is bigger and more powerful (in this world) swallows his fellow alive?
It is only due to an inner conviction in our hearts, shared by every human being, that there is a Judge, that there is right and there is wrong. And so when we see wrong, we demand an explanation. Why is this not the way it is supposed to be? That itself is belief in God.” (Everyday Holiness p222)
These words are stated directly by Moses in our Torah portion today, a little before the part we heard. “You shall know today and you will feel in your heart that there is God in the heavens above and the earth below and there is no other.”
Essentially if you feel that life should be better for yourself and for others, if you feel that there should be justice in this world and that the life of your children and grandchildren should be safer, happier, better, if you feel that despite short term interests the earth should be protected and left beautiful for future generations, then you are religious.
Judaism has a particular way to cultivate these senses, a way to train the heart so that faith is real and sustaining. It is to open our eyes to the experiences of our senses, when we are quiet under the night sky, or catch a glimpse of the structure and texture of a hand or meet and accept a painful unaccountable loss or lie alone in bed shielded from the storm and wonder. It is to cultivate a sense of awe at the universe and our place in it.
Judaism also says cultivate a sense of gratitude for the basic things in life. We do so in our morning blessings in every service, every time we say the Modim prayer in the Amidah – and just thank God for our lives, thank God that we are free, that we are alert, that we can function in this world. Not taking basic things for granted is also religious.
And Judaism has a discipline, the Mitzvot, that help us find a constant pathway to satisfying faith. By doing them we walk along the pathway, whether it be observing Shabbat, giving Tzedakah, charity, visiting the sick, comforting the bereaved or contributing our time or resources to the Jewish community. As the elders say at the end of our Torah portion today, we will hear and we will do. Alan Morinis writes ‘If I waited till God was more a presence in my life to be convinced to observe the Shabbat, I would likely not get there. Because I observe Shabbat my faith grows.’ (Everyday Holiness page 231)
It is a great wind up to your Rabbi to say ‘I’m not religious’. Please forgive your Rabbi if they wind you up in return by saying ‘Oh yes you are, you just don’t realise it yet.’
