Religion

Rabbi's Notes - April 2002

by Rabbi Margaret Holub

Hard times. Weird times. Frightening times A terrible, terrible escalation of violence in Israel and Palestine, dreadful news absolutely daily, reprisals to reprisals in a wild and seemingly unstanched upsurge. The President of the United States making offhand comments about using nuclear weapons in Iraq. Manhattan still smoking six months after the terrorist attack. The decimation of poor Afghanistan. A woman in Nigeria sentenced to death by stoning because she had sex outside of marriage in a region now ruled by the harshest redaction of Islamic law.

It's hard to concentrate, isn't it? Hard to focus on the task at hand when the world seems to be shaking with violence everywhere. It's hard not to be thrown side to side from the repercussions of seemingly endless horror.

I heard a story recently, from another rabbi, which keeps reverberating in my head. She told me about an inspired executive in a large progressive foundation, one that funds efforts all over the world, and domestically as well, to provide housing, food, medical care, education, refuge from domestic violence and so on. This foundation executive undertook some sort of investigation -- I don't know how systematic or by what methodology -- and determined that the single greatest impediment to progress on any of these good fronts is right wing religion. All over the world, efforts to meet the needs of poor and disenfranchised people, to offer peace and security, and to protect the natural environment are being undermined by fundamentalists of all stripes. Consequently, this billion-plus dollar foundation decided to go into the business of supporting liberal religion.

Often lately I have cringed as I listen to the news and hear the horrors being perpetrated worldwide in the name of religion. Does our world need religion? Or is it simply, overwhelmingly, a source of division and hatred, just a way to legitimize violence? Maybe the path of integrity in these times is to quit the religious enterprise altogether, hang up our tallises, as it were, and just be secular, just be citizens of the universe. Maybe giving up our sectarian practices -- our holidays and prayers and candles and outfits -- would be a small price to pay for a world in which no one is stoned or bombed or bulldozed in the name of God. Sometimes this is an inviting line of thought.

Many commentators have made the point that all fundamentalism -- whatever scripture it draws upon -- is really the same religion. Whatever story is told to back it up, fundamentalist religion hates divergences of belief or sexuality or lifestyle or culture. Put Jewish, Christian and Moslem fundamentalists side by side and you can hardly tell them apart. All punish drastically, all suppress artistic and personal expression, all oppress women, all have hated enemies, all seek to use the power of the state to enforce their vision of right and wrong. Our world is tortured and tormented and torn apart by this kind of religion.

One might say that there are really two and only two religions in this world of ours -- fundamentalist religion, which hates difference and personal expression and loves to punish, and the other kind -- progressive religion, inviting religion, welcoming religion -- which loves people (and plants and animals and natural formations too) in all their different ways and wants it all to thrive in peace.

Sometimes, when I hear rabbis quoting the very same scriptures and sources that I love in order to forbid women from singing aloud or to justify bulldozing Palestinian homes or to punish and exclude people for being gay, I forget that they and I are not of the same religion. Conversely, when I sit with my lovely and inclusive Christian colleagues in the Coast Ministerial Association, or hear the extraordinary Moslem liberation theologian Farid Esack on the radio, I realize that, while we each have our own holy books and sacred practices, at some level we all practice the same religion. It's not that the world doesn't need religion -- it still needs paths into the Mystery, still needs teachings of love and conscience, still needs community and celebration and healing. It may even need a bit of fundamentalism in its place -- clear boundaries, structure in the pursuit of the numinous. It definitely needs a spiritual practice of welcoming, of inclusiveness, of delight and honor. I draw inspiration from that foundation executive who is trying to build a better world not by opposing religion wholesale but by supporting the religious voices of inclusiveness and celebration of diversity.

Rabbi Michael Lerner and others are certainly right when they say that we practitioners of the second religion have been asleep at the wheel for the past twenty years. We have given the name "religion" over to the fundamentalists, the punishers, the excluders. He is struggling as valiantly as anyone today to take the word back, to organize people under the banner of a religious vision of inclusivity and peacemaking. I am thrilled by what he is trying to do with the Tikkun Community, and by the Shalom Center, by the Jewish resisters in Israel and the Junity movement in this country, and by those in our own community who express their own religious vision of peace and inclusion in a plethora of different ways. And there are many of you. I think, for just one example, of the anti-nuclear organizing that Carol Wolman and John Lewallen are doing so valiantly here at home in this vein. Besides endeavoring around specific issues, you are also helping us to get our voices back as people whose tallit is inclusive and welcoming and peace-seeking.

My wish, my hope, for our little community in the midst of these scary and trying times is that we start talking more and doing more about peace and inclusiveness -- from the smallest, most local gestures in the household to the broadest strokes on the world front. I hope that we will start saying these beautiful words to each other: a Jewish vision of peace, Jewish inclusiveness, Jewish open-mindedness, Jewish support and celebration as opposed to punishment, that we will articulate our own scriptures and practices in ways that encourage and inspire the kind of world we want to live in. We may not win every struggle, especially not the proximate ones, but I hope we will strengthen each other to engage more and more. That celebratory, embracing RELIGIOUS voice has been painfully quiet in our sorrowful times. Let's start speaking up!

© 2002 Rabbi Margaret Holub

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