My very first essay against Judaism, sparked by the story of Rabbi Meir Pogro’s various follies.

I am very angry right now.

My frustration with Judaism lies in its lack inability to transform you as a person, no matter how much Torah you supposedly study. The recently exposed scandal of Rabbi Pogrow’s behavior, and dozens like it, are shining examples of learned men and practitioners of the faith who remain untouched — or even corrupted — by the religion they follow.

We all know many unhappy or evil religious people. We all know very happy and moral non-religious people. What I’m arguing is that there is no correlation.

First off, let me say that I consider myself knowledgeable enough in Jewish thought to tell the difference between Jews and Judaism, and all my issues are with Judaism itself, even if they are sparked by a Jew’s behavior.

Yes, there are many refined Jews. And the Torah has its share of best practices that can add to your well-being. But it’s not systematic, it’s not readily available, and it packaged with a huge amount of outdated BS. Ideas that inflate your ego, inspire you to judge, and entice you to kill, if you could get away with it.

The trigger, not the source

In the Pogrow case, there are two very important nuances about what’s bothering me:

1. I’m much more bothered by the fact that others around him tolerated him as a person than with his own behavior. Aish is supposedly an institution that guides you to become a better human being and yet the highest level of leadership bring in someone who is clearly an asshole (this was apparent way before the current news item) — stating unequivocally that rote study and knowledge is more important than the supposedly essential character development.

2. Judaism has the capacity to disable one’s internal sense of right and wrong in place of an external source. Thus, if you’re not knowledgeable enough, you’re afraid to criticize a Rabbi’s douchy behavior because “maybe there’s something you don’t know about”. Similarly, a brand new ba’al teshuva can go and judge people whose lifestyle he had no problem with only a few months before.

Some people cite Judaism’s contribution to morality, life guidance, relationship advice and happiness. My personal experience has been different: I see a morality that is flawed on many aspects such as the value of (non-Jewish) life, democracy, or women’s rights. I see very little guidance as far as relationships or happiness. I see a deferment of many of life’s biggest challenges – current events, suffering – to a future time after we die or the messiah shows up.

And it has been my own personal experience that because of the expectation that I do get guidance in these very areas, that I am so bitterly disappointed today.

Everything important is missing

When examining my own emotions regarding the Pogrow case, I realized what really was bothering me: it was the Judaism itself that he was supposedly an expert on.

My criticism of Judaism’s capacity to transform you into a better person is twofold:

1. The information that is genuinely helpful is hard to find or implement, which is the last thing someone needs when they’re seeking direction or growth in life.

2. That helpful information is few and far between and drowned in a huge amount of at best irrelevant or at worst harmful information.

What’s the point of following the Torah if you’re trying not to be an asshole? Just go to the self-help section of the library. At least there it’s condensed.

It’s Torah that’s supposed to teach you how to be a good person — in preparation for being the good person that you need to be to study Torah. That alone is an impossible cycle.

(I have met Jews whose religiousness is a much more trivial part of their lives, and who therefore have fewer expectations. It is the respect I afforded Judaism and the central role I expected it to play in my life that paradoxically made me so frustrated)

Let it be noted that I don’t admire much of the secular world either. The educational system, for example is screwed up pretty much everywhere and leaves people with little preparedness for the real world. The entertainment industry and much of technology as well, merely serves to destroy or waste people’s lives.

But I think for me the biggest issue is that they never claim to be anything more than that. They don’t give themselves grandiose claims or titles – and if they did, I would have the same issues with them as well.

It’s all about how

Here’s my point: everyone, in every religion, and every part of the world, will emphasize how important it is to be a good person, a nice person, before anything else.

Derech eretz kadma latorah, etc. etc. ad nausem.

But where, practically, do you learn how to do that? How much of the Torah is devoted to your person growth? Where do you learn to be that good person that you’re supposed to become before you learn Torah?

My issue is that the Torah spends much more time telling you what not to do than how to transform into the person who is capable to not do it.

You’re taught Torah from the moment you learn to speak, so that doesn’t leave much room for before. And you’re taught that anything but Torah is neutral at most and probably has some flaw mixed in somewhere.

So really it’s Torah that’s supposed to teach you how to be a good person – in preparation for being the good person that you need to be to study Torah. That alone is an impossible cycle.

The proof is in the priorities

And then, like I mentioned above – proportionally, how much of the Torah is devoted to telling you how to be a refined person: pirkey avos, a few constantly quoted psukim, and the mussar movment, invented 200 years ago?

Contrast that with endless lists of people you can’t sleep with, punishments you’re eligible to receive for screwing up, numbers of Jews in the desert, what colors of sheep Jacob owned, and who should be killed for doing what, and you’ll find an anthology that seems to have its priorities in a very different place.

The Torah doesn’t really tell you how to work on your middos. And working on your middos is a very trivial value if you look at the daily life outlined by the 613 mitzvos. People say things like “without mussar and cheshbon hanefesh, it is nearly impossible for the Torah alone to change a person.” So how come so little of it is devoted to that?

I understand that anyone can fail. I am not even judging Orthodox Jews who do bad things. My issue is that the Torah spends much more time telling you what not to do than how to transform into the person who is capable to not do it. It is one thing to tell people what not to do, it’s another to guide them in how to avoid doing it. This guidance exists in the world, and it bothers me that it doesn’t seem to be in Torah.

I’ll give you a specific example.

Meditation has changed my life. And I learned it from Buddhism. For a long time I used to apologetically explain that Judaism has certain references to meditation as well. But now I say no – something this important needs to be spelled out clearly, repeatedly, in a practical way. If it is not, it’s as if it isn’t there, and the Torah has failed as a “guidebook for living”. I believe that if it is truly timeless and written by God, then it is fully capable as being a relevant and easy to comprehend as Stephen Covey’s 7 Habits.

What I take from my own experience is to not believe in any system, or any person. But rather look only inward to find my own truth.

We all know many unhappy or evil religious people. We all know very happy and moral non-religious people. What I’m arguing is that there is no correlation. If you want to follow Judaism because you believe it’s correct, that’s a debate for another time. But if you call it “wisdom for living” or the “tree of life,” then I will have to disagree.

In the beginning, man created God. And he thought it would provide him some answers.

But bigger and better questions popped up instead.

Me.

If you think of God as means to explain so much of our the world that we don’t understand, you’ll find that it definitely creates some answers, but opens up a lot of new questions.

Yes, it’ll make death less scary, because you’re going on to a better place.

Yes, you’ll be able to infuse a lot more meaning into a seemingly meaningless existence.

Yes, you’ll have the implied comfort of knowing that it’s all part of some grand plan.

But you’ll also have new questions:

What does he really want from you, right now?

Why in the hell does he give cancer to babies and dementia to people who are doing everything right?

Why, really, did He need to create any of this?

Both approaches require you to grapple with difficult emotions.

Believing can lead to anger and resentment at an unresponsive God. It requires a theological leap to explain why bad things happen to good people.

Not believing in God requires grappling with a seemingly meaningless existence and a perpetually approaching End of it All. It means not having a good explanation of what existed before the world was created.

But if I need to take leaps or live with unanswered questions, I’d rather experience, and come to terms with, negative emotions that don’t include a dysfunctional deity.

I wrote God a letter.

Dear God. I just want you to know how much you mean to me. I’ve felt things towards you that I haven’t felt in a long time. I feel giddy. I can’t eat or sleep. I’m constantly thinking about you.

To be honest, I’m in awe to be in your presence. I feel so unworthy, and the thought of you even reading this letter seems surreal. You reassured me that you will read it, and I am truly touched by this.

Yours,
Shalom Tzvi

In response, God sent me a box of bow ties.

They were not exactly my style, and I don’t usually wear bow ties. But I did appreciate the gesture.

So I wrote another letter:

Dear God.

I just want to be upfront, because I feel that it’s the best approach. I love you. It’s hard for me to admit it so openly, I feel very vulnerable doing so. I feel like I’m opening myself up to rejection, but I’d rather bring it up, and hear your feeling towards me in response.

The bow ties were really nice, by the way. But to be honest, I’d rather just hear from you than get gifts. I know you’re really busy, but if you could spare time for even a quick conversation, you have no idea how much that would mean to me.

Love,
Shalom Tzvi

In response, God sent me a carefully wrapped box full of horseshit and a bouquet of roses.

* * *

Here’s the thing.

There’s a commonly shared idea in Jewish thought, an idea I was raised on, that relationships are forged by similarity. To that end, Torah and the Jewish tradition are there to help you become more like God, and therefore deepen your relationship with Him/It.

This, from my personal experience, is bullshit. (Personal experience is all we can go by in the world. Also, there’s a well-accepted idea that all worldly phenomena and experiences, especially romantic relationships, are there to teach us about relating  to God. See Song of Songs for a particularly sexy example).

You want to build intimacy? Stare into someone’s eyes for 30 seconds.

Want to feel closer to a person? Share your feelings with them and have them do the same to you.

Want to not have a relationship? Make sure it’s one-sided and the only response you get from the Other is vague actions, subject to interpretation.

Similarity has almost nothing to do with it. Would you really like to marry a clone of yourself?

“Ah,” you say. “This is a sad, sad reality of our generation. We are so distant from God.”

You may appreciate some aspects of similarity in a relationship. But you’ll probably appreciate the areas they balance you out as well.

So much of a relationship is about either shared experience, instant chemistry, or a combination of both. When is the last time you saw someone evolve to a point where they became suited for another person (in compatibility, not just in maturity)?

People say they feel they have a relationship with God. God tells them things. I assume they are not schizophrenic, and that God tells them things either via physical signals or internal intuition.

This is not a relationship I want to have.

Some sort of monarchist, idolizing, Stockholm syndrome phenomenon.

Would you be content with a father who sent you a box of chocolates every time you asked for one? Would you be happy with a spouse who conveyed their disapproval by passive (or not so passive) aggressively smacking you about until you finally, hopefully, get it right?

“Ah,” you say. “This is a sad, sad reality of our generation. We are so distant from God.”

Always the convenient generation bashing.

Did anyone in this generation do anything to deserve being born into this generation? To have a relationship experienced entirely through a one way mirror?

And frankly, hasn’t it always been this way? Hasn’t mankind been lamenting their fall from heaven across cultures and since the beginning of time?

And then, if you really think about it, is man that responsible for his actions? Relative to God, isn’t the most powerful person just a small, fumbling child gesturing towards his parent?

At the root of it all, it’s God, if He does exist, that set this whole thing up: a one-sided relationship where you stumbling in the dark with the burning desire to return to your Source, to achieve emotional and spiritual completeness.

This cruel and distant behavior on left me angry. I would never tolerate such a relationship with a human, and don’t see why I should lower my standards for an all-powerful deity.

I’ve told him as much. I’ve shared my feeling with him on the subject. Plus, being omnipotent, he’s heard me talking about it with others.

But His response, as far as I can tell, has been the same as when I professed my undying devotion.

Another box of bow ties.