I came to study Religion after completing my University
studies; I decided to attend a Lutheran Seminary where, among other things, I
became aware of the questions faced by all religious people including me.
Certain other events also contributed to my pursuit of
questions.
When I was boy, my parents sent me to a Jewish parochial
school, a Yeshiva, which I attended for six years. This was where I was taught, in Jewish
tradition, the question is more important than the answer to the question. The Rabbis at Yeshiva Zichron Moshe,
Steinberg, Frost, Lipshitz, amd Eisenblaat taught me to wrestle with the text
and to love the questions. For half the day (8-12) we studied Hebrew subjects
and for the other half (1-5) English subjects.
I was a much better Hebrew than
English student.
Years later, when I was in the Air Force, on leave and
trying to catch a flight from Germany to the U.S., I was put on an air transport
which had only one seat left. The rest
of the plane contained coffins on their way from Vietnam, piled high, towering
over me, almost right up to my seat. We
flew back together for seven hours. I
grew up on that flight and came to realize the terrible questions associated
with war.
Most important was the Holocaust. My parents rarely said much about those
days. Our apartment in the Bronx was a
crazy place. But as I grew up I realized
I was the child of survivors. And as I came
to read the words of Elie Wiesel, imploring people to pray to God for the right
questions, I was compelled to pursue questions about the character and nature
of God, of human beings, of good and evil, of the Bible, of Judaism and
Christianity, and the various religious traditions.
The questions raised by Religion are vital: What are we doing here on this planet? How did we get here? Is there any meaning to our existence? From where did the material that came to be
part of the Big Bang come from? Is there
a God and is that God involved in our world, which is to say, how does God work
in human history? What does God have to
do with absurd suffering and evil, especially the Holocaust? Is there an afterlife and if so what is it
all about? Why all this secrecy from
God? Why all the different world’s
religions? Why do some people hate and
fear each other, while others do not? For good or for bad, Religion asks the
big, mysterious, truthful, hard to get at, questions. And let’s be honest, the
responses are usually tentative, limited and possibly wrong.
I have been lucky to have found a place that allows me to
teach the questions which have haunted me all these years. And I have been lucky to have found students
willing to wrestle and slog through the difficult twists and turns encased
within these questions.
Btw, besides being haunted by the questions, I have come to
love and be obsessed by them.
No comments:
Post a Comment