God Is Not One: The Eight Rival Religions That Run the World (39 page)

The classic Seder food is matzo, unleavened bread prepared in large, flat sheets that snap when you break them. Matzo recalls the hurried flight from Egypt, when there was no time to allow bread to rise. So during the eight days of Passover leavened bread products are prohibited from Jewish homes. Other foods on the Seder table include:
maror
, a bitter herb that recalls the bitterness of slavery; and
kharoset
, nuts and apples ground up to resemble the mortar slaves used in their forced labor. There are also four glasses of wine, which are consumed at key moments during the Seder.

There is no faith prerequisite for participating in Passover. You do not have to believe in God. You do not even have to be Jewish. For the past few years I have attended a Seder with friends in suburban New Jersey. When I was young, I went to ersatz Seders—odd affairs staged in church halls a few days before or after Passover by rabbis and ministers open to interfaith dialogue. But the ones I attend now are honest-to-goodness Seders—family and friends converging from near and far, preparing food, opening wine, and gathering on one of the first two nights of Passover week in a small home around a huge table to retell an ancient story. Every year the family patriarch begins by saying that this is not just ancient history. To gather for Passover is to stand in a tradition of a people who have gathered for millennia to retell this story in their own languages and on their own terms. But if this story is not also our story, then it is not worth retelling, he says. “In every generation, each of us should feel as though we ourselves had gone forth from Egypt.”

Passover festivities center on a reading of the Haggadah (literally, “telling”), which recalls the story of the exodus of the Israelites from Egypt. Some Orthodox Jews insist on one official Haggadah. Other Jews revel in thousands of different versions, including the hugely popular “Maxwell House Haggadah” distributed by this coffee maker beginning in 1934.
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When I was teaching at Georgia State University in Atlanta, I asked my students to read a feminist Haggadah, and some of them were upset that Jewish women were playing fast and loose with their tradition. But in this case playing fast and loose
is
the tradition. At the Seders I have attended in New Jersey, the family uses a Haggadah written by their daughter, which understands the Exodus story through the prism of the civil rights movement, with a heavy dose of Jewish mysticism thrown in for good measure.

Seders typically begin with lots of discussion and end with lots of singing, including a seemingly interminable rendition of
“Dayeinu,”
whose lyrics go through each and every miracle performed by God in leading the Israelites out of Egypt. An even longer folk song called
“Had Gadya”
(“One Little Goat”) recalls the children’s book in which a frog ran from a cat who ran from a dog who ran from a pig who ran from a cow (and so on), only in this case a man buys a goat who is eaten by a cat who is bitten by a dog who is beaten by a stick which is burned by fire which is quenched by water which is drunk by an ox which is killed by a slaughterer who is killed by the Angel of Death who is himself done away with by “the Holy One, Blessed be He.”

Life Cycle Rituals

Jews also observe rites of passage such as birth, adulthood, marriage, and death. Traditionally the first of these two passages were celebrated more for males than for females, through the bris, or circumcision ritual, and the bar mitzvah (“son of the commandments”). Many Jews now have naming ceremonies for female infants and bat mitzvahs (“daughter of the commandments”) for twelve-year-old girls.

Jewish mourning practices include a seven-day period of sitting shiva in the home followed by burial, Kaddish prayers for the dead, and a one-year-anniversary remembrance called the
yahrzeit
. Jewish views of the afterlife are harder to summarize. In the Tanakh there is hardly any mention of life after death. Patriarchs live long, die natural deaths, and are buried by their kin (or, in the case of Moses, by God Himself), with no hint of any heavenly reward. Through the influence of Greek speculation on the immortality of the soul and with the rise of a Jewish tradition of martyrdom (itself influenced by Greek tragedy), Jews came to affirm the bodily resurrection—a doctrine that would play a huge role in the origins and development of Christianity and would later be enshrined in Maimonides’s “Thirteen Principles.” Nonetheless, Jewish thought has long downplayed the world to come. While many Reform Jews deny the bodily resurrection and many Orthodox Jews affirm it, almost all Jews agree that our focus should be on this life.
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Even among the Orthodox there is less talk of the world to come than there is among most Muslims and Christians. A saying in the Mishnah takes jabs at all sorts of theological speculation, concluding with a broadside at speculation about the afterlife. “Whoever reflects upon four things would have been better off had he not been born: what is above, what is below, what is before, and what is beyond.”
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Reform, Conservative, Orthodox

The only form of Judaism officially recognized by the State of Israel is Orthodoxy. Elsewhere Jews have split into various branches. All these branches tell the Jewish story of exile and return, and all respect the authority of the Torah. They divide largely over how they interpret and observe halakha
.
So while Christian denominations distinguish themselves largely on the basis of faith and belief, these branches differ more on ritual and ethics.

In the United States, there are three main Jewish movements: Reform, Conservative, and Orthodox. Among American Jews who belong to a synagogue, 39 percent affiliate with Reform, 33 percent with Conservative, and 21 percent with Orthodox. Most American Jews, however, do not belong to any synagogue at all.
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The simplest way to describe the differences between these three groups is to say that each focuses on one key element in Judaism: the Reform on ethics, the Orthodox on law, and the Conservative on tradition.

The Reform movement began in eighteenth-century Europe and flourished in the United States, where it is now represented by Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion campuses in Cincinnati, New York, and Los Angeles. Jews have traditionally understood themselves as a people set apart, but the Reform impulse is toward integration and assimilation. Pioneers in the Reform movement wanted to be modern Germans or modern Americans without ceasing to be Jews. So instead of Hebrew they used vernacular languages in sermons and prayers. Some even held Sabbath services on Sunday rather than Saturday and refused to circumcise their sons.

The Pittsburgh Platform (1885), the classic expression of Reform Judaism, described the Hebrew Bible as “reflecting the primitive ideas of its own age” and spoke of Judaism as “a progressive religion, ever striving to be in accord with the postulates of reason.” It rejected kashrut on the theory that only the moral laws of the Torah were binding. And because Reform Jews wanted to make whatever countries they were living in their homelands, this platform refused to see Jews as living in exile from their true home in Zion.
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Today Reform Jews are more ritually observant, and virtually all of them are grateful for the Zionist movement that culminated in the State of Israel. But they continue to emphasize Judaism’s prophetic tradition and its commitment to social justice, believing it is their job to repair the world by their own hands, not to wait for a messiah to do it. Reform Jews have pushed hard for gender equality, ordaining female rabbis, counting women as part of the minyan (quorum for prayer), and insisting not only on welcoming boys into adulthood via the bar mitzvah but also on initiating girls into adulthood via the bat mitzvah.

Orthodox Jews, by contrast, define themselves as defenders of Torah and tradition. They attempt to observe all the mitzvot, including kosher dietary laws. They accept only male rabbis, and their services are conducted in Hebrew. While Reform Jewish men rarely wear a yarmulke or
kippah
(head covering), Orthodox men will not take more than four steps without one. And while Reform Jews allow men and women to mix in their temples, men and women are separated in the Orthodox
shul
.

Orthodox Jews are themselves separated into various groups. The Modern Orthodox, for example, are scrupulous in their observance of halakha, but they are much more open than other Orthodox Jews to modern life and modern ideas, including liberal-arts education. In the United States the Modern Orthodox are represented by Yeshiva University in New York, where it is common to see young men wearing blue jeans with traditional
tzitzit
(fringes) hanging out over them.

Hasidism is considered ultra-Orthodox, but when it began in the 1730s in the shtetls of Eastern Europe, it was seen as liberal and even revolutionary because of its emphasis on the heart over the head. This movement was inspired by the Baal Shem Tov (1698–1760), a man beloved not so much for his book learning as for his heartfelt spirituality, his down-to-earth stories, and his unshakeable conviction that God is near to all of us, not just the intelligent and the learned. Today the Hasidim (“pious ones”) testify to the presence inside Judaism of what Hindus call bhakti yoga, the discipline of devotion. Firm believers in divine immanence, the Hasidim attempt to commune with God always and everywhere, sensing His presence in activities as mundane as sleeping or tying your shoes. Characterized by full-throated and fully embodied enthusiasm—Judaism as joy—their services recall the ecstatic prayer of Pentecostalism and the danced religion of the Yoruba. The Hasidim revere a new Jewish exemplar, the
tzaddik
(“righteous one”), who is distinguished more by piety than by education. They invest in these tzaddiks, whom they also call
rebbes
, tremendous authority over their collective and personal lives, not unlike the guru figure in the Hindu tradition. The distinguishing mark of their movement, however, is their holy joy. “God desires the heart,” the Talmud says, and the Hasidim seek to give God what He most desires.
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The beliefs and practices of Conservative Jews mark a middle path between Reform and Orthodox Judaism. Like Reform Jews, Conservative Jews are quite open to advances in modern thought, including Bible criticism. They are closer to Orthodox Jews when it comes to worship and law, respecting not only the ethical but also the ritual commandments as halakha, and worshipping in Hebrew. Women and homosexuals can be ordained in Conservative synagogues, however, and worshippers are permitted to drive to services on the Sabbath. Conservative Jews trace their origins to the founding, in 1886 in New York City, of the Jewish Theological Seminary, but their movement did not pick up steam until Solomon Schechter (1847–1915), a Cambridge University academic, came to the United States to lead JTS in 1902.

Much Jewish humor pokes fun at the differences between these Jewish branches, with each joke taking aim at one group or another. One widely told joke takes a jab at the Orthodox for their obliviousness to modern life and at Reform Jews for their obliviousness to Jewish traditions:

A Conservative Jew living in a small city bought a new Ferrari. He wanted a rabbi to say a bracha (blessing) over it, but there were only two rabbis in town. So he went to the Orthodox rabbi. “Rabbi,” he asked, “Can you say a bracha for my Ferrari?” The rabbi said, “What’s a Ferrari?” So he went to the Reform rabbi. “Rabbi,” he asked, “can you say a bracha for my Ferrari?” The rabbi said, “What’s a bracha?”

Reconstructionist and Humanistic Judaism

Two additional American Jewish branches are Reconstructionist and Humanistic Judaism. Reconstructionist Judaism, developed by Mordecai Kaplan (1881–1983) in New York City in the first half of the twentieth century, found institutional expression with the opening of Reconstructionist Rabbinical College in suburban Philadelphia in 1968. Following Kaplan’s lead, Reconstructionist Jews rejected the notion of Jews as a chosen people and spoke of God only as an expression of the highest ethical ideals of human beings. From their perspective, Judaism was not a supernatural religion but an evolving civilization. Today Reconstructionist Jews are eager adapters of Jewish civilization to modern life. In keeping with their origins in the Conservative movement (Kaplan taught for over fifty years at JTS), they tend to be more traditional and observant than Reform Jews, speaking Hebrew in worship services, for example, and observing the full range of Jewish holy days. They distinguish themselves from the three leading U.S. Jewish branches, however, by viewing mitzvot as folkways rather than law. Like Reform Jews, they strive for egalitarianism in terms of both gender and sexual orientation. In fact, the first American bat mitzvah was held for Kaplan’s daughter Judith in 1922. Not surprisingly, there is also Jewish humor that pokes fun at Reconstructionist Judaism: At an Orthodox wedding, the bride’s mother is pregnant; at a Conservative wedding, the rabbi is pregnant; at a Reform wedding, the bride is pregnant; and at a Reconstructionist wedding, both brides are pregnant.

Humanistic Judaism began in 1963 when Sherwin Wine (1928–2007), the “atheist rabbi,” founded Birmingham Temple in suburban Detroit as a home for Jewish freethinkers.
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Today its congregations celebrate Jewish culture and the power of the individual without invoking God, praying to God, or reading from the revelation of God. For Humanistic Jews, Judaism is first and last about ethics—doing “good without God.” They reject the bris, or circumcision ritual, as sexist, preferring naming ceremonies for boys and girls alike. This group has strong affinities with Israel’s kibbutz movement, which was built in the early twentieth century on secular and often antireligious foundations. One spokesperson is Harvard University’s humanist chaplain Greg Epstein, a student of Wine and the author of
Good Without God
(2009). Although Humanistic Judaism is quite small—the International Federation of Secular Humanistic Jews claims only twenty thousand members—it expresses the sentiments of many more. According to a variety of studies, many Jews in both the United States and Israel are secular in the sense of either not being affiliated with any synagogue or not believing in God.
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