Lord of the Wimps
Daniella Leifer2010Opinion[Opinion]
Unlike many of the authors on Unpious, I’m not an ex-Chasid, and in fact didn’t grow up religious at all. My dad is an Ex though, so I suppose that makes me second-generation. His gripe was never with the religion itself, just the baloney, and his mantra has always been “don’t judge Judaism by the Jews”, “don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater”, etc. – which sums it up pretty well in my view too.
So although I’m not really religious according to the official rules, I certainly believe in God. In general, I can see some benefits in Judaism’s mundane rules and rituals. People can be spectacularly talented in the art of making bad decisions for themselves and messing up their own lives and some degree of structure and rules is helpful and necessary for many people. Another important aspect is that Judaism helps maintain a strong community identity, and — in particular — it helps foster bonding between men. Ten men for the minyan to meditate and sing songs together every day – try getting ten secular men together for anything other than watching the superbowl once a year.
But much more importantly I see Judaism, on the whole, as a gatekeeper of values, morals, and ethics that is vital as an institution because these are the fundamental elements that make life meaningful and worthwhile, and they can be pretty easily corrupted or neglected or forgotten. These are what make Judaism relevant and important. There are reasons why the Jewish world has been so successful throughout history; why the typical American materialistic life is not very satisfying for a lot of people; why it is hard to find community in the secular world despite the fact that people are so desperate to find it and need it in order to be happy and fulfilled. (Leaving one’s religious community is difficult, in part, because it is a community.)
The religion parts aside though, I think there’s also more to the God story. It seems like many OTD-ers – actually, Jews in general – look at God as an all-or-nothing proposition: either He is this terrible, fearful, angry guy who’s always threatening you, or He doesn’t exist. But there are other possibilities. For starters, I don’t think God is really a mean old guy with a beard, and I don’t think He’s always as angry as they say He is. I doubt He’s really an egotistical sociopath who demands everyone bow to Him and shower Him with praise and compliments. I also don’t think “He” is a male, with a penis, who thinks that women’s bodies are evil either – just for the record. In fact, I think it’s the complete opposite. Maybe that’s all shtick, and the trick here is that God is pretty much unpowerful. A wimp. Weak and feeble. Like the Wizard of Oz. Perhaps all-knowing, and maybe all-some-other-stuff, but not all-powerful. At least, not in the way we ordinarily think of as power. No lightning bolts, no thunder, no wrathful vengeance and smiting. But, it was made to seem that way because otherwise, who would listen to a wuss like that? How else can you get people to listen and do things that they should do, but probably wouldn’t otherwise?
Math, surprisingly enough, can help explain. Game Theory is a branch of applied mathematics that is used to study and analyze behavioral dynamics in the social sciences (i.e. economics, politics, sociology, psychology). One of the basic models in Game Theory is known as the “Prisoner’s Dilemma,” a hypothetical scenario in which two suspects, arrested by police, are faced with the choice of either cooperating with each other to remain silent and go free, versus defecting against their partner and condemning the other (and possibly himself) to a lengthy jail sentence. It demonstrates why two people might not cooperate even if it is in both their best interests to do so, and as such, has bigger ramifications in the real world. Basically, it posits that the best overall societal outcome – a positive-sum game – occurs when people cooperate with each other and form trusting relationships instead of competing or cheating. However, this is up against a powerful counter-incentive that if you do cheat, you’ll win big over the schmuck you just screwed. In a zero-sum game, on the other hand, you have lots of schmucks running around trying to screw each other in order to come out ahead, but everyone more or less ends up losing.
All the emphasis on loving your fellow Jew, then, isn’t just bullshit. Wimpy God is hoping we will cooperate and trust (i.e. love our fellow Jew), because then life is a lot more pleasant. Hence, the thunderbolts and lightning and wrathful vengeance – pretty much so that people will be tricked into being good to each other, since otherwise they most likely wouldn’t. As one example, how would you overcome the human (especially male) tendency towards a might-makes-right ethos, and replace it, or at least counterbalance it, with some semblance of fairness and justice? Human societies have a tendency towards might-makes-right because even if many oppose it, might wins because it’s mightier. So God – the force of harmony and goodness in the world, weak as He may be – had to pretend to be a big bad dude in order to get people to listen. An unpowerful God, who needs our help in order to bring goodness into the world. Maybe. It could explain a lot. When you think about it in terms of a few people, it doesn’t seem that important. But on a bigger humanity-wide scale and across the span of world history, it becomes more compelling and fascinating, in a grand-scheme-of-things kind of way.
The world is imperfect to say the least, and to think that God doesn’t really have much control over it is scary, but also exhilarating. The world could be a barbaric and terrible place to live, much more than it already is. Things like Machiavellianism, apathy, and crass materialism, where people use each other and lie and cheat and don’t trust anyone or give a shit about anything, have the potential to flourish and could even become the normal way of life, as it is now in some parts of the world, where life basically sucks. This could get taken to ultimate extremes. Apparently, the real underlying thesis of Mein Kampf (according to those who read it — which, admittedly, I haven’t) was Hitler’s desire to establish a world based on the “natural order” of the strong dominating the weak. His desire to eliminate Jews from the world stemmed from this goal – to rid the world of the very idea of a law-and-ethics-based society that fostered fairness and cared for the less fortunate. (In his view every Jew, religious or not, carried at least a spark of ethics and morality – the real target of elimination. The racial ideology was just his way to get the masses to go along with him, to give them something to rally around.) It may be a crazy mixed-up world, but ideas and ethics and values matter.
So, some of the things that can counter all of this potential badness are things like brotherliness, love, humor, friendship – in other words, all the things that make life fun and interesting and worth living, and which are affirmed, supported, and protected by Judaism. Unfortunately the cultishness of Hasidism today keeps Jewish spirituality, chesed, community – all the good parts of it – trapped in little bubbles. Judaism has great things to contribute to the world’s collective mind and being. But when they are kept locked in a cage with no way to blossom and grow, these same good things start to turn in on themselves and become pathological. Some degree of modesty, for example, helps foster a sense of self-respect and boundaries, but taken to an extreme it becomes an absurd exercise in mass OCD neurosis.
It’s important to remember that Hasidic Judaism was not always what it is now, a mostly corrupt institution where individuals vie for power in a hierarchy built on fear and intimidation, fostering emotional and mental oppression, near-fascistic conformity, and tolerance for all sorts of abuse. People made it corrupt over time, and relatively recently too. It was originally a peaceful, joyful rebellion against a hardened and stagnated Judaism that had lost its soul. Judaism, an incubator and repository for a sense of humanity and ethics in the world, had become corrupt and in danger of losing its vital essence. The Hasidic movement allowed joy and kindness to take the reins back from cold, harsh, and hierarchical rigidity. No wonder it gained such a foothold.
Illegitimate power structures created by small-minded people usually end up crumbling at some point. But it doesn’t seem like a Judaism constructed around upholding and embodying high ethical and moral values and rooted in love and appreciation for God, instead of fear of God, would. It seems much more compelling that an unpowerful God would prefer (or possibly even depend on) heartfelt sincerity over obsessive observance of halakhic minutiae (and especially over stringent minhagim developed out of strange Polish cultural customs of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries). Rebellion based on bitterness, even if justified, may ultimately be counterproductive. But rebellion based on love is potentially very powerful. In fact it’s necessary whenever corruption starts to gain a stranglehold on the core goodness it overshadows, in order to bring some love (and sanity) back. This is the heart of the original Hasidic movement – Judaism’s original love revolution.
18 Responses
Danielle, I agree with your post on some level, it is true that God is not threatening at all. God created us all equal, and we are all valued by him on the same level regardless or race, gender, religion etc. There is really no “factual” basis of right or wrong in terms towards God other than doing to the best to our consciousness and treat a fellow human in good dignity for our personal safety. God created the world for us, it is our choice how we treat it. Our behavior is what makes us as a community.
Where our Jewish faith and all the other faiths became destructive is the 15th-16th century with the powers of anarchies who simply abused the faith and good will people invested in God and for the success of their states. The real motive for religion was because people wanted a deeper meaning for the internal life. The motive was good but the slippery slope of power affected the Jewish as well.
In the Chasidish community, most of us would have kept the bound to the community if not for the high level of corruption that exists in the name of Jewish and God. The corruption is a clear result of too much community power, and may we need to dismantle these powers.
How much of the religion needs to be thrown away to make this work? Why does this gatekeeper of morality need texts that call for genocide in no uncertain terms – or is the Torah not really part of Judaism either?
Beautiful essay.
I am not quite an ex-Chasid either, per se, still I have to disagree with some points.
“some degree of structure and rules is helpful and necessary for many people.”
True enough. But what degree? All societies provide some degree of rule and structure; religious societies tend to provide quite a few degrees more. It might be helpful to some, but is detrimental to others.
Where religion does excel is in providing meaningful rituals for life-altering events, which strongly secular societies are hard-pressed to emulate. These rituals, I would agree, are helpful and necessary for many people.
“and — in particular — it helps foster bonding between men”
…to the exclusion of women, particularly as practiced in more right-wing circles. That is the flip-side of this coin, which renders any putative benefits worthless.
Societies where women are excluded from the old-boys decision-making and politicking club eventually rot: they turn violent, extremist, angry, lose interest in cultural and artistic pursuits, and generally disintegrate socially. They are then propped up by testosterone-soaked sexually repressed marauding bands of young men whose idea of fun and games tend towards the sadistic.
This is happening now in large parts of the developing world where the more extreme forms of religion are gaining ground, and closer to home but writ small, in the darker corners of practical Judaism.
Look at the little two-bit fiefdoms of the Chasidic (and litvak?) courts, the ugly battles over control and loyalty, the angry, scary and insane rhetoric filling the coffee rooms and mikvah’s. Seemingly, nothing else matters or is worthy of contemplation.
Do you think were women encouraged to participate in community and cultural affairs — with the men, not sequestered in their own bikur cholim — the situation would’ve been the same? Were the influential political and religious voices to include an equal amount of women, would we continue to hear the same tired old mix of extreme and threatening rhetoric (both political and religious)? Were women allowed in the men’s mikveh, would we continue to hear the same insane and inane discussions over and over again, like an old record with a scratch at just the wrong place? I think not! (Okay, okay, I’m kidding with that last one.)
“The religion parts aside though, I think there’s also more to the God story[...] Math, surprisingly enough, can help explain.”
Absolutely. God is an amazingly pretty and astoundingly astute mathematician, and She sits on this beautiful throne all day doing longhand math — by pencil and paper. How else can you explain the uncanny ability of nature to solve Schroedinger’s equation numerous times each pico-second, amongst other complex calculations involving energy fields and fundamental forces that would take super-human powers and many computer-years to solve? And the solution always, always works!
Yes, that is a fantasy with little evidence to support it. But your wimpy god has even less evidence going for Him, and I like my god better — love Her, in fact.
“how would you overcome the human (especially male) tendency towards a might-makes-right ethos, and replace it, or at least counterbalance it, with some semblance of fairness and justice?”
I’ve yet to find a single soul who has a tendency towards a might-makes-right ethos. Some might rely on their might in practice for one reason or another, but no-one, religious or secular, believer or atheist, truly thinks it is right. Besides for sociopaths, maybe.
Incidentally, some influential evolutionary biologists believe that is precisely how our moral sense developed. When you live in a community, as you point out, cooperation is a positive-sum game, and so those communities with a budding innate morality inevitably ended up having more than competing communities, thus winning the natural-selection game.
“ brotherliness, love, humor, friendship – in other words, all the things that make life fun and interesting and worth living, and which are affirmed, supported, and protected by Judaism. ”
How so? Besides for brotherliness, these values are not especially affirmed or protected by Judaism so much as by Jews. Perhaps you meant the supreme value of human life and limb, where there is a better case to make. (But not the value of human liberty of thought and conscience.)
“Judaism constructed around upholding and embodying high ethical and moral values and rooted in love and appreciation for God”
I don’t see how a Judaism constructed around a love for a wimpy game-playing God (or a mathematician God) can possibly work, without doing major violence to the traditional meaning of the word ‘Judaism’ — and to the word ‘God’ for that matter.
Yoel W:
“In the Chasidish community, most of us would have kept the bound to the community if not for the high level of corruption”
Any evidence for that assertion?
It’s an interesting theory philosophically and poetically, as are many religious dialogues and god-hypothesis. This same “Nonzero Theology” – w/o the forced Judaic rhyme – already has a bible, “Nonzero” by Robert Wright (Trade Paperback 2001). But to continue the discussion: Isn’t it merely an evolved iteration of Pascal’s Wager?
“Hence, the thunderbolts and lightning and wrathful vengeance – pretty much so that people will be tricked into being good to each other, since otherwise they most likely wouldn’t.”
But you’ve just ruined it for god and the universe by making it public!
The writer takes the reader on an interesting amusing philisophical roller-coaster ride, so some of it was fun, interesting, and playful, some other parts frightning, and at some point turned our stomachs inside out to a point where it feels like throwing up. But overall great writing!
While I tend to disagree on almost every line, I will not go into more detail, since it’s obvious that the writer tried to step on as many toes possible.
What I do want to comment is the part where you say that chasidisism used to be a beautiful community, you probably didn’t read the previous post/book review by HR.
When people challenge either/or by defining it with terms like “all-powerful, all-knowing..” etc, but leave undefined what powerful means, what knowing means, it doesn’t help shatter either/or. We need to not only define terms, we need to define defining terms. Are we using a yardstick or meter stick? If someone grows up in a system that defines meaningful power differently from another system, they have completely different ideas of what it means to be all-powerful (a system that assumes evolution of the natural world in which man is a part believes all power relationships evolve to some degree; one that denies a place for evolution believes authority is invested *directly* by God as Creator or in human power relationships as Law giver). Oft times I hit on that the ‘liberal’ God I believe in is far too ‘powerful’ to be bound by literal readings of [every midrash on] Tanach, too powerful to not allow mankind a role. By power, it would seem my liberal God has reign over all ‘power’ – not simply as defined within Orthodoxy/Sikhi/Pentecostalism.
Daniella, thank you for writing this. It’s powerful.
Puzzled:
Well, I think that’s oversimplifying it a little – it’s much more than just a question of “how much of the religion to throw away”. And on another note – is calling for genocide such a major part of the texts? I’m an armchair torah commentator at best (meaning I don’t know much but I like to throw around quotes here and there that support my own hypotheses) so I guess I don’t have a lot to say about that. I personally agree with the “living torah” school of thought – that it is intended to be interpreted with each generation so that its wisdom and insights remain relevant to a changing society. What would that look like? As one example, instead of interpreting laws of kashrut to just be mindlessly stricter and stricter, they would be reinterpreted in light of current, serious issues surrounding food, nutrition, and environmental concerns; for example kosher meat would require addressing animal welfare and the massive use of antibiotics and hormones that are extremely detrimental to the health of people and the planet. That’s more what I was getting at – re-thinking the religion in a thoughtful way, rather than just throwing things away.
Baal:
I see where you’re coming from on most of your points, except for a few. As far as the male-bonding stuff, I agree 100% about the societies where women are excluded from decision-making turning dysfunctional and extremist. But the pull towards fundamentalism is, in my opinion, just the way people are. It happens all the time, in every religion, etc. Women certainly need a greater share of power in Chasidic communities, that I agree with 100% too. But having some male-bonding rituals doesn’t have to somehow extrapolate into, say, women not being allowed to drive in Williamsburg (as another example of extremism gone wild). Things like that are just human idiocy that became policy.
As regards your point about the might-makes-right thing – generally I don’t think people support it *consciously*, it’s more like a subconscious or incidental tendency of people – which makes it more insidious, first of all, and secondly, makes it that much harder to control it or prevent it from doing damage. In my (obviously-feministly-leaning) opinion, most of human history has been a story of the male ego spiraling out of control and ruining everything, and society’s attempts to rein it back in. It is sociopaths that do this, sure. But personally I think it can be brought out of people who might not otherwise “agree” with it. And so therefore this is part of the reason why I think Judaism as a social system is necessary and important, to prevent this from happening and make people care deeply about ethics and values.
But my major disagreement is with your last point. Firstly, I didn’t say that God plays games; I used the prisoner’s dilemma to illustrate what life can be like when there is an absence of a moral/ethical sense in how people conduct their lives. I think that fostering love and appreciation for God, and, for example, instilling in your children a sense of aspiring to live your life in an ethical way that would be “good” in God’s eyes, is a far higher quality of religiousness than just simply obeying out of fear (and, as an addendum to that, that the Torah had to start out with the obeying out of fear, because human society 5,000 years ago just wasn’t very advanced and didn’t really have any other mentality or way of thinking). Secondly, presenting God as unpowerful is to illustrate the fragility of the ethical and moral basis that is the essence of Judaism, and that it needs our love and nurturance and protection from corruption and neglect. I don’t see how that does violence to God or the religion (nor to people either, which would be another vitally important consideration as well).
What complete rubbish and foolishness! I may be off the derech, but I still can see that this article is total stupidity!
hmmm – do I detect some raw nerves there, or perhaps a button or two that’s been pressed? You’re entitled to your opinion and all, but you don’t make a very solid case.
Farchapt:
On a belated note – thanks for your comment (I think?). I didn’t intend to make anyone puke, but stepping on toes is another matter (you wouldn’t want me to write a boring article, would you?). You were correct – I didn’t read the previous article about power and politics in Europe’s chasidic communities before mine was posted. But in a sense, it sort of bolsters my argument, no? Not to argue semantics, but I didn’t mention the community – it was the underlying idea/concept/principle that I pointed to as the beautiful part, not the community (I do try to choose my words carefully for that reason). I could be accused of having a dim view of human nature, but I’m not surprised that power and politics and money and other ridiculousness tarnished something good. People’s tendency to pursue them always ruins good things like that – look at the idealism of the 60′s, for example.
But if He is not all powerful then he is not G-d. Something is more powerful than Him. It is all or nothing, it has to be because the Torah defines G-d as all powerful.
That question, Rivky, is ultimately unanswerable. There are the usual circular arguments you can make: “can God create a boulder so large that he himself cannot lift it”. Or, how about another twist on the same principle: “Can God be both powerful and unpowerful at the same time…”. The point of my article wasn’t really about trying to prove whether God is powerful or unpowerful. It was supposed to be thought-provoking and thought-stimulating, and hopefully help spark thoughts and conversations about how people have been conditioned to think about God in very narrow ways, and about other possibilities regarding God that could be – especially because of this usual all-or-nothing attitude that is so prevalent. It’s about liberating yourself from the mindset of this silly, cartoonish version of God as a “powerful” entity who’s constantly looking over your shoulder at everything you do, trying to catch you doing something bad. This is a very limited conception of God as forceful, coercive, etc. – which is the way people typically conceive of the word “powerful”. The point of my article is to open up readers to other possibilities that are a bit more inspiring and hopeful.
Maybe the word “power” itself should be thought about in a more in-depth way – maybe God “powers” the world the way electricity powers a television. That could make God “all-powerful”, right? Or, maybe being soft and compassionate and empathetic is actually more “powerful” than being harsh and forceful and judgmental. It’s sad to think that there may be people out there who are angry at God and maybe even hate God, or have stopped believing in God, because of the foolish drivel they’ve been led to believe by others who are only guessing themselves.
A SHIKSA shouldn’t be posting on a Jewish form about Judaism. YOU ARE NOT JEWISH!!
And a MORON shouldn’t be making stupid comments about people they don’t know (and I am jewish, btw). Why don’t you try debating the actual IDEAS that I wrote about, rather than making a pathetic personal attack? Oh wait – probably the reason you can’t debate my actual ideas… is because you have none of your own.