Resolutions update

I'm about to shut down my computer for Yom Kippur. It's something I've been doing for the past five or ten years, and I find it helps me to spend a day offline. With that restriction, I have to rest, or think, or read a book, or talk to my family when I'm not at Temple, and that's a good restriction to put on myself once in a while.

Last year, I wrote this post about what it's like to celebrate Yom Kippur as a Humanist.

This year, I thought it might be a good time to check in on my New Year's resolutions, and how I started this blog. I've been keeping it up (pretty well) for nine months now, after all, so let's see how I'm doing.

So here's my Resolutions post. I'm not doing that well.

I'm glad I'm still writing, and this week I re-committed to writing every day, and except for Wednesday, which was 9/11 and I had a migraine and I just couldn't, I've done that. I'm pleased that I'm writing now, even though Hopper and Boo will be home any second and Yom Kippur will start and I will turn off my computer and there are dozens of excuses I could come up with not to write. But I'm about 100 posts below where I would have been if I'd written every day. Sometimes I think about posting more than once a day so that I can catch up, but I'm not sure how I feel about that, and I know it feels like cheating to post from work. If I posted every work day and then twice on Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays, that would go a long way to catching me up, though. For now, I'll forgive myself if I write mostly every day for the rest of the year.

Skipping to number three, I'm doing okay in the taking care of myself area. I'm pretty much sticking to the VB6 diet, although Hopper is getting lazy about cooking again since school has started. I need to step up in the cooking area, and with cooler weather coming and me no longer working on Sundays, I'll hopefully be able to cook a big pot of soup or something like that once a week. That would go a long way toward making our meals healthier and helping Hopper balance his workload.

I've been exercising a bit more lately, too. I'm really trying hard to make absolutely sure I exercise on non-work days, because it's pretty hard to get any (other than walking the 10 blocks between the bus station and work, and up and down the stairs) on work days. Hopefully it will be enough. Wonderdog is certainly enjoying it.

But I haven't done much beyond slacktivism to fight for what's right. There's a day of action coming up in my town, so maybe I'll get political. Unfortunately, it's the day after Hopper and I get to see Wil Wheaton vs. Paul and Storm so I'll probably be tired...

Resolutions are hard.

But these three things are still important to me, so I'm going to redouble my efforts. I have already done so on the working, eating and exercising fronts. I just have to get out there and change the world. Who's with me?

New Directions

It's probably about time I announced that I have retired from teaching Religious School.

About time, right?

I was planning to announce it last Sunday, which was officially my last day, but I was busy getting ready to officiate at a funeral so I missed the whole day and it seemed rather self-absorbed to be talking about my retirement when Hopper had just lost his grandmother.

So I'm announcing it now.

I have retired from Religious School and I intend to spend my newfound free time researching Humanism more thoroughly. I will check out some Humanist congregations in my area (actually, I think there's only one, but I'll check it out) and I'll also find out about some learning opportunities that will help me study Humanism in more depth. Ultimately, I hope to become a Humanist Officiant so that I can be licensed to perform weddings, funerals, baby namings and coming of age ceremonies.

So I guess I started on my new "career" a bit earlier than I expected. Anyway, I think I was helpful to some people I love in a time of great pain, and that always feels good.

Hopefully I'll have some new adventures along this different path.

We shall see.

An open letter to all Atheists everywhere

Dear Atheists,

Can we all please stop pretending that religion makes no sense at all?

I get that you don't believe in it. That's cool. I don't believe in God either, and I'm working my way down the whole religion thing.

But I understand why it appeals to people, and I get the internal logic.

See, all you have to do is assume that God exists, and that [insert faith tradition] is instructions from Him, and there you go: it all makes sense.

Is the base assumption logical? No. There's absolutely no evidence to support that hypothesis. But if you want to understand the actions of the religious, that's all you have to do. And you're smart, right? That's why you don't believe things without evidence. So you can do a simple logic exercise.

What triggered this rant? (I hear you cry.) Well, the other day, Richard Dawkins tweeted:

1. Richard Dawkins ‏@RichardDawkins26 Apr

   Sharia law "is legal to them". Oh great. So I'll go out and break English law and plead that I was obeying "Dawkins Law". What rubbish.

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2. Richard Dawkins ‏@RichardDawkins26 Apr

   Oppressed & abused women believe the falsehood that Sharia "law" is law. http://bit.ly/14iOKn6  Who is telling them the lie? "Scholars"?

    View media
3. Richard Dawkins ‏@RichardDawkins26 Apr

   British women beg old fools called "scholars" http://bit.ly/14iOKn6  to grant divorce from marriage that was never legal in the first place.

    View media
4. Richard Dawkins ‏@RichardDawkins26 Apr

   BBC investigates Sharia in UK: http://bit.ly/14iOKn6  But why so keen for Sharia divorce, when Sharia marriage not legal in first place?

    View media

From this we are meant to infer that Dr. Dawkins is baffled by the behavior of Muslim women. There is absolutely no logic to what they are doing. After all, their marriages are dissolved under British law, and that should be enough for them.

Well, it isn't. They might want to get married again someday, and under Sharia law, if they don't get a Sharia divorce, they can't get another religious marriage. And if your whole community thinks that's important, it's pretty damned hard to say, "Well, science says it doesn't matter," and walk away.

Let me explain this in terms you can understand. Humans are pack animals. While some humans have been known to leave their pack of origin and to join a new pack, this is rare. Most humans will sacrifice greatly to remain in the pack. Those humans who are rejected by a pack tend to exhibit signs of great anguish, which can lead to depression, desperate attempts to be accepted by the pack, or even destructive behavior. Most humans will follow the rules of their packs even when this defies logic and often even when their own self-interest is compromised in other ways, reducing their individual social power or even depriving themselves of necessities.

So while the evidence may show us that these women will not suffer in hell if they do not get their Sharia divorces, these women believe that they will, and therefore they operate under that assumption. It's not scientific, but it is logical. Even if individual women don't believe in God, they may seek a Sharia divorce so that they can be accepted by their communities, because the thought of leaving the community forever is too painful.

Religion satisfies many human needs, and it polices many societies. We may wish it would go away. We may even work to end its influence. But let's not pretend we don't even know what's going on.

Sincerely,

The Jewmanista

Yom Hashoah (Contains swear words. Unusual for me, but there it is.)

You may remember that a few weeks ago I was wondering about the wisdom of the Passover story. Is it right to teach our children that we are separate and chosen?

Well, today is Yom Hashoah (Holocaust Rememberance Day), and that brings on a whole different way of thinking. We observed the holiday yesterday at Religious School, and when you say the Sh'ma right after thinking about death camps, it turns into one big "Fuck you, Nazis!"

It feels good.

Really good.

The only other time I felt like that was the first service I went to after 9/11. I was living in Brooklyn at the time and teaching in Manhattan, so in addition to my own experience of the city I lived in being attacked, I had students' reactions to deal with.

I was teaching Religious School at the time in a small congregation in Park Slope. Our first day of school was supposed to be September 12th. When I arrived at the church where we rented space, there was a police officer at the door. I had to identify myself before being let into the church. The idea that my congregation could be in danger--that we didn't know if it was over yet--was a new anxiety to add to the pile.

I remember sitting in a circle outside in the churchyard. It must have been the Saturday following 9/11. When we said the Sh'ma, it felt wonderful. I was still alive, still Jewish, and not going to shut up.

Have I mentioned that it feels good?

But really, what's the better way to stop genocide? Teaching about the Holocaust hasn't stopped it. Sure, the Jews have been more or less OK since then, in most places, but in this list of the top 5 genocides in history, two happened after the Holocaust, and that's not even counting the more recent genocides in Bosnia, Rwanda, Cambodia and Darfur. Genocide continues to this day. So is it better to keep teaching our kids to be proud that we are still here? Or is it better to teach kids that all people are entitled to equal rights? That everyone should be free and have access to food, clean water and an opportunity to find meaningful work?

People say that not raising our kids Jewish will allow Hitler a posthumous victory, but I wonder who is kicking Hitler's philosophies harder: people like me, who raise their kids to practice Judaism, or people like my brother, who married an Asian woman and had mixed-race children who aren't being raised with any religion? Or maybe it's my dad, who has blond hair and blue eyes and grew up Christian, but converted to Judaism so that he could marry a brown-eyed brunette with bad vision and crooked teeth. (Take that, eugenics!)

And I won't even start on what Hitler would have made of international adoption.

To be clear, I'm not for a second suggesting that we shouldn't teach about the Holocaust. We should remember it, and the other genocides, too. We should make Turkey acknowledge the Armenian Genocide. High school kids should learn about the banality of evil and we should all stand against genocide.

But I wonder to what extent genocide is a side-effect of tribalism. If we could somehow come to believe that we are all humans and that divisions are artificial, how could genocide exist? There has to be a "them" to extinguish in order for someone to commit genocide. If we were all "us," what then?

Okay, that's not going to happen until the alien overlords arrive. But I still have to decide what to teach my kid.

The Hardest Time of Year To Be A Jew

This week is Passover. It's hard, but not for the reasons you might expect.

Sure, it's a pain to avoid bread for a week. I find myself staring longingly at the ice cream truck as I pass it, wanting an ice cream sandwich or a cone. But I can handle that, and I actually think it's good for me to practice this kind of self-control for a week. When the week is over, I always find that I appreciate bread (and pizza!) more than I do the rest of the year. Appreciating bread is a good thing.

Boo keeps asking why she can't eat bread, and I think it's good for her, too. I expect that she will have the same appreciation for leavened products come next week, and in the meantime, I hope she's developing some compassion for other children who have limited diets because of allergy or religious mandate.

It's the rest of it that causes me the problem. We are told that we observe this holiday to separate ourselves from everyone else (we're the Chosen People, after all) and to remember the story of Exodus.

Is it a good thing to separate ourselves from everyone else? The Humanist answer is clear: no. And history would seem to teach the same thing. Throughout history, religious groups that consider themselves better than other religious groups tend to cause trouble. So why is it good for me to teach my child that she is Jewish rather than just another part of humanity? This makes me very uncomfortable at this time of year.

The story of Exodus is even worse. The image of God described in the story is a god who destroys crops, cattle, slaves and babies for no reason other than his own glory. Is that someone I want my child to worship? Or anyone? It's a horrible, uncomfortable, angry-making story that discomfits everyone I've ever read it with. So why is this the central story of our people? Why is this the story that we choose to tell from one generation to the next, without fail?

And, should I decide that I don't want to pass this story on any longer, what then? Do I write a new one? Edit the old one? Dismiss Judaism from our lives altogether?

If I withdrew Boo from Religious School now, she would probably never really learn to read Hebrew. If we stopped attending Temple, she would have very few Jewish friends. Do those things matter?

So many questions at this time of year. It's the hardest time of year.

Sexism and Judaism

Today in Jerusalem, ten women were arrested for wearing tallit at the Kotel (prayer shawls at the Western Wall.) I'm not a personal fan of wearing a tallis. It just doesn't work for me. But the notion that there is a god who cares whether or not women wear them offends me anyway.

I feel like the men who made this law and the men who reported these women and the men who arrested these women didn't have parents who said to them, "Worry about yourself!" Because that's how prayer should be. You want to pray at the Wall? Fine. Go ahead. You want to wear a shawl and a hat? Go crazy. But why are you looking at the women on the other side of the divider? That divider is there so you won't be distracted by lustful thoughts while you're praying. Instead, you're looking at the women to make sure they're not praying the same way you are, because if they do that, God will get mad.

Seriously?

How can you believe in a god like that and still feel like life is worth living? If your god cares more about what someone is wearing while they pray than how that person conducts her life, you need to find another god. If your god is offended because women want to observe more laws than they have to, because women are doing the same kind of work you are doing to become closer to the same god you are allegedly worshipping, there is a problem, and it's not the women.

Rules like that--rules that say this person can pray and that person cannot--are proof that your religion was written by people. People have an interest in raising one group over another. Men have benefited from this arrangement, where men get to pray and study and women raise children and earn money to support the family, for centuries.

Behavior like this, that divides one group of Jews from another, just serves to weaken us all. We look worse to the International Community, we look foolish to anyone who can think logically, and you lose support from the millions of progressive Jews who live around the world.

All so you can keep your little corner to yourselves.

How to be a Humanist

This morning, Boo woke up early. It doesn't happen often, but when it does, she's highly efficient and usually in a good mood. Today was like that, and when I came downstairs, she was making herself mac and cheese for breakfast. When she was done, she put the pot in the sink and went to the dining room to eat.

"Boo," I said, "next time, please put some water in the pot if you don't have time to wash it. Otherwise the cheese gets crusty and it's hard to wash off."

"Oh," she replied, "I'm sorry. I thought that was only for cream of wheat."

"It's okay. I took care of it this time. I just wanted you to know for next time, since you have a long life of cooking ahead of you."

And then the Jewish alarm bells went off in my head. I had committed a kaynahora--I had brought the attention of the Evil Eye by mentioning my daughter's potential long life. In my head, I kept saying, "God willing" and I wanted to spit preemptively to remove the jinx. And then I was arguing with myself.

I've always thought these superstitions a bit silly, but saw no harm in observing them. But since becoming a Humanist about a year ago, I find them even sillier and would like to stop. And yet...it sort of feels like playing with my daughter's life. If jinxes aren't real, there's no harm in saying "God willing" or "God forbid." If they are, then it's pretty risky to go around tempting the Evil Eye, isn't it?

Of course, there is absolutely no evidence to support the existence of an Evil Eye OR God. And so the notion that God could protect me from the Evil Eye is utterly ridiculous.

And yet...