Murray Haar On Religion: The Heart, Soul, Mind of Being Jewish

Friday, February 3, 2017

The Heart, Soul, Mind of Being Jewish

Being Jewish is, primarily, not a matter of faith, it is a way of life. Whether someone Jewish believes in God or not, is not as important as obeying the Torah of God. That ought to strike you strange. If there is no God, if no one is there, why are you bothering to obey his teaching? Because God’s Torah is more important that God.

The Torah or teaching from God about how to live our lives is vital to staying sane and avoiding chaos. Once the Torah has been given to the Jewish people, it is no longer under God's control. Jews must determine how to interpret and what to do with God's teaching. The Jewish tradition believes that the secret to life lies in the doing. When Jews debate and argue with each other, as they often do, it is over what to do and how to do it. Long live this argument!

Most Jews do not know who or where God is, nor do they know what God is doing, but they know what God wants. Torah teaches us to pursue justice, to care for the stranger, to rest on the Sabbath day, to refrain from worship of anything or anyone that is not God, to not murder, to remember the Exodus from Egypt as paradigmatic, to seek forgiveness from those we hurt before we ask mercy of God, to be in awe of, praise, question and even accuse God with equal intellectual and emotional integrity, and finally, to respect any religion that urges concern for the neighbor and clamors for justice.

Jews are people who are called upon to do what they can do to stop craziness wherever they live, from the smallest insignificant kindness to the greatest acts in pursuit of what is right. To be honest, not all Jews do what they should do, that is true. But the goal is the goal. The secret resides in the doing. This is the heart, soul and mind of being Jewish. This goal of doing what you can do, "without God before God", is what gave birth to Christianity and Islam.

And when a Christian or a Muslim does what he or she can do to stop craziness, they are each acting in a profoundly Jewish manner. Whatever else those religions are about, they are at their best when they know, the secret resides in the doing and in the arguing about what to do.

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Notes from The Door

Whenever you care for the neighbor in pain, at that very moment, God is real. At that very moment, the Messiah has returned. In every situation where there is pain and injustice do what you can do to stop the pain. Murray Haar
Religion was not created by God but by people. What God thinks of our religions only God can say. If your religion teaches you to love God and to stand with your neighbor in pain, it is a good religion. If it teaches you to hate and to be indifferent, it is a bad religion. Murray Haar
Get Busy livin or get busy dyin (Shawshank Redemption)
The Holocaust teaches us that it is possible to be alive but no longer human. Murray Haar
I am wiser than this man; it is likely that neither of us knows anything worthwhile, but he thinks he knows something when he does not, whereas when I do not know, neither do I think I know; so I am likely to be wiser than he to this small extent, that I do not think I know what I do not know. Socrates
Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone, Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone, Silence the pianos and with muffled drum Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come. Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead Scribbling on the sky the message He Is Dead, Put crepe bows round the white necks of the public doves, Let the traffic policemen wear black cotton gloves. He was my North, my South, my East and West, My working week and my Sunday rest, My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song; I thought that love would last for ever: I was wrong. The stars are not wanted now: put out every one; Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun; Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood. For nothing now can ever come to any good. W. H. Auden
For the most part, Christian pastors and priests are not taught to think but to transmit. They go to a vocational school called a seminary where they are taught how to transmit and proclaim the gospel but not how to teach their people to think critically about what they believe. They do not know how to teach their parishioners that Christianity could be wrong. Pastors and Priests are not prophets; they are religious functionaries who care about people and love Jesus. They themselves are usually nice people, will visit you in the hospital and give you bread and wine but they are not, for the most part, great thinkers. So, to expect them to reform the Church is just not realistic. Occasionally though, pastors show up who can think and believe at the same time and it is in them that there is hope for a reformation. I have met them. They are real and I have hope in them. Murray Haar
We do not believe in the Bible. We believe in God. The Bible is a vector toward God and the neighbor. When the Bible points us toward God and the neighbor, it is true. Whenever it does not, it is not true. We have to learn not only to read the Bible but to argue with it. Then the text will become real. Murray Haar
“In religion, the question is more important than the answer to the question.” A Midrash
Do not go gentle into that good night, Old age should burn and rave at close of day; Rage, rage against the dying of the light. Though wise men at their end know dark is right, Because their words had forked no lightning they Do not go gentle into that good night. Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay, Rage, rage against the dying of the light. Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight, And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way, Do not go gentle into that good night. Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay, Rage, rage against the dying of the light. And you, my father, there on the sad height, Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray. Do not go gentle into that good night. Rage, rage against the dying of the light. Dylan Thomas
“He who saves a single life, saves the world entire.” The Talmud
“We do not choose to be born. We do not choose our parents. We do not choose our historical epoch, or the country of our birth, or the immediate circumstances of our upbringing. We do not, most of us, choose to die; nor do we choose the time or conditions of our death. But within all this realm of choicelessness, we do choose how we shall live: courageously or in cowardice, honorably or dishonorably, with purpose or adrift. We decide what is important and what is trivial in life. We decide that what makes us significant is either what we do or what we refuse to do. But no matter how indifferent the universe may be to our choices and decisions, these choices and decisions are ours to make. We decide. We choose. And as we decide and choose, so are our lives formed.” Joseph Epstein

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Friday, February 3, 2017

The Heart, Soul, Mind of Being Jewish

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