"Rationalist" Judaism ("safe haven" style)

amother ↓

Wed, Dec 04 2013, 1:12 am

I didn't know where to put this but this seems to be the closest category that lets me post anonymously, and this might get shalom-bayis-ish so I don't want to be too public about it... I am also hoping I won't get moderated out of here if some of what I'm saying seems to contradict the 13 principles; I'm not trying to rebel, just to understand. I know there are some pretty smart people on here and hope they can help me come CLOSER to the Torah and the truth through this conversation.

***NOTE TO RESPONDENTS: PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE be sensitive to the shalom bayis aspects of this issue when responding. bear in mind that this involves my DH whom I love and respect. Let's keep this peaceful, even if you disagree with my DH's views please don't say things like "Your DH has gone off the deep end, run away fast!" Frankly, even if he were C"V crazy I would try to work through this and not run away, but I don't think he's being insane about this even though sometimes it feels that way...

DH has gotten very into what he calls "rationalist" Judaism. Theoretically, it makes a lot of sense to me (heh. I just realized what I did there.) However, there are some aspects that I find disturbing and I would like to hear from others who are familiar with this viewpoint, and also talk to people who follow this approach themselves. PLEASE DO NOT RESPOND if you are not familiar with this. I have nothing personally against chassidic thought but if you follow it I really don't think your responses will be helpful for my needs at this time, and I already do know about your point of view because that's kind of where I come from myself. Thanks and goodbye please, really.

So first of all, what I mean by rationalist Judaism, because I'm not sure that's a universal term and if it is I don't know if it is used in the way we are using it, is a Rambam-like point of view in which you evaluate your Jewish practice, well, rationally, not just following whatever has always been done. Part of this includes that when science conflicts with chazal, you generally go with the science. Another aspect is that narratives (including in Tanach) that are unnatural are generally assumed to be figurative and did not actually, physically happen as described.

So, that already is cognitively acceptable to me but feels a little disturbing. It doesn't seem to be the majority view according to most of what I learned growing up and in school, even through seminary where they were relatively balanced in presenting different viewpoints. I find myself questioning, how can you claim to accept the Torah as pure truth if you're taking half of it to be only figuratively or allegorically true? At what point do you draw the line - if there weren't any angels in the story, how do you know there was an Abraham there? Etc.

On a related note, it's shaking me up that because it contradicts the basis of so many nice inspirational things I learned over the years and continue to read now. Drillions of nice divrei Torah are based on very un-rationalist approaches. You mean 90% of my inspiration in life has been based on things I don't really fully accept anymore? You can see how this gets problematic...

Then there's a whole other issue that is part of all this that is also disturbing. Part of choosing what to believe is examining the sources. DH, who has been the leader in this whole exploration (and btw he is an EXTREMELY learned and intelligent person, educated beyond the ordinary rabbinic levels in chareidi yeshivas, and part of that is what contributed to this whole scenario because he is cerebral enough to figure out when things don't make sense even though they are widely accepted) Anyway, he does a lot of historical reading and concluded that certain sources that are very widely accepted (and I don't want to name names purposely here but I do mean VERRRRY widely accepted) actually come from very, shall we say, sketchy origins. I started off just not knowing what to believe but then the evidence he was bringing me got so compelling I just caved and said, OK, I guess that particular reference source is fraudulent. Gosh. The bigger problem is that there is then a lot more that is based on it, I didn't even know how much until suddenly it pops up all over the place that this or that thing I always thought or practice I always practiced is suddenly of disreputable origin! It has shaken me up so much that very often when I get the sense that DH is about to say something to that effect, I just tell him not to say it. I also made a rule that we don't discuss this type of thing at the Shabbos table but DH keeps flirting with the boundaries of that. I hate it.

I'm also worried about our kids. They're very little but even in preschool they're learning things like customs DH no longer condones. People who take this approach - what do you do? How can we send our kids to schools that teach things we believe to be untrue? There don't seem to be any schools that don't. I feel like we're setting our kids up for the same kind of existential crisis I'm having right now. DH says he has many friends who share his views on these matters, some of whom are older and more experienced than us, I don't get why they (we) don't just get together and make our own school and community. They're naturally afraid of the reaction they'd get from the more traditional community (I.e. EVERYONE in the known frum universe?!?!?!)... sigh... which is another thing that bothers me about all this, are all the other non-rationalist-judaism rabbis that IRrational? And how did a peace-loving girl like me end up somehow on the opposite side of this great chasm from what seems like everyone I've ever known?

OK I had better stop rambling. It is the middle of the night and I've been tired forever and have plenty to do, but this has been sitting on my mind for MONTHS and I just had finally get it out.

↑ amother ↓

Wed, Dec 04 2013, 1:29 am

Thanks. I did find Slifkin's blog. I don't have tons of time for reading. I still have a lot of my existential dilemmas, particularly regarding reconciling my new beliefs with my whole life to date and the vast majority of the frum world's current beliefs and practices, including my own family. I also don't get why, if it is so, well, rational, it is still so far from the mainstream that I'm afraid to even post this stuff under my username on imamother, let alone utter it in public. I considered going over to a more modern community/lifestyle but I realized that is not the answer, we are still more chareidish in halachic practice and even more intellectual communities still accept a lot of the sources we now deny.

Another problem is that while the logic of this approach makes sense, it also seems so cold and clinical to me. Maybe this part is just DH and not the philosophy itself, but I feel like half the soul is being sucked out of Judaism. All the little extra flavorings and seasonings. It just doesn't feel right... but in a different way it does... but... I should really go to sleep and read the responses here all at once tomorrow.

chani8 ↓

Wed, Dec 04 2013, 1:46 am

I think that if you were to write down all the things that being rational contradicts for you, you'd find that there really isn't all that much. You are not going to have to give up all your inspiration. There is plenty of inspiration in our holy Torah that is rational.

I think you ought to take each 'revelation' and think through it. Decide what you are comfortable believing, and what bothers you. Decide whether the scientific explanation is satisfactory, or a more midrashic explanation works better for you.

The way I see it, the robbonim are as legitimate in their interpretations as the scientists. Both don't always know the truth. The truth is not always so clear. It's not black and white. Go with what makes sense to your mind and gives you shalom.

Like I said, you will find very little that actually conflicts, in the big picture of it all. What's happening, is that you are terrified and perhaps feel apikorsis to even consider another way from what you were initially taught. Interestingly, it seems to me that the men are less afraid to contemplate the possibility that midrashim were just stories meant to help us clarify what might have been going on, not meant, as we BY/BT women were taught, that midrash is Word.

I'd love a thread that takes topics, maybe parsha based, and discusses them from a rationalist POV. Is this possible, maybe in the MO section?

Dolly Welsh ↓

Wed, Dec 04 2013, 2:01 am

Sorry but it's hilarious that your DH wants to be rationalist about a religion and then gets very strict about certain aspects of it. He is, of course, being wildly RELIGIOUS.

If he wanted to be rationalist, he would forget the whole thing and go OTD.

He can't really do that.

So he might was well go along with the culture he probably doesn't want to leave. Editing it so its notions feel better to him - and then getting all dictatorial and High Prophet about his views - is, well, religious.

Sorry, but you do not have a particularly rationalist husband. You have a religious one who wants to be high priest and be a big religious authority.

Sorry, it's nothing more than a man wanting the biggest firetruck in the toy bin because he WANTS IT. Childish brutality.

If he had private doubts, and didn't bother anybody with them, I would say, it's a free country, and that's his business.

But he is making a big messy mess with his I Am So Clever routine. As he is bothering others, I can't let him off. He is an immense pain in the, and he has not been given Ruach HaKodesh to know the Big Ol' Truth. I don't think even he claims THAT.

Sir, this is a religion. We believe in a talking snake. If you want rational, the science department is down the hall and across the quadrangle. They even have their own elevator. Sometimes they need to come here and sometimes we need to go there. But we can tell the difference.

Your poor befuddled DH can't tell the difference.

Tell him to take some math and chemistry if he wants to be a big rationalist boy, and to stop terrorizing the women. Meaning you, OP. It's not very valiant of him, the big sissy.

In short his irrationality isn't any better than anybody else's, so he needs to stay in line Jewishly, or found his own religion and not pretend it's an offshoot of Judaism (it's just an offshoot of a Jew, which is not the same thing) or, exert his mental talents in a REAL rationalist environment. Meaning math or science.

He is kidding himself.

And he is destructive.

He has no leg to stand on intellectually, and isn't very friendly maritally.

People who think religion and science conflict don't know enough about at least one, and often both.

Some manners would have saved this man from his present ickiness.

You cook for him?

You are very nice.

Last edited by Dolly Welsh on Wed, Dec 04 2013, 2:11 am; edited 1 time in total

↑ Dolly Welsh ↓

Wed, Dec 04 2013, 2:31 am

I don't recommend to any Jew to go OTD.

Of course we believe in one talking snake. If anybody is on board with Torah Judaism, isn't there a snake in Eden who chats up Chava and on and on?

If one thinks that didn't happen, one may be a nice person, but perhaps "Orthodox Jew" isn't a good label for such a person?

I am only a pitiful BT and know little and less.

Your husband has used the Science part of his brain on his religious heritage, which is like trying to eat your peas with a butterknife. It's a fine tool, but it's not the right tool for that particular job.

So you and DH are having a real spiritual crisis.

Well, that is addressed spiritually.

There is no such thing as a rational religion.

There is no shame in believing in something that you take on Faith, if you have yourself made the decision, without being drugged or seduced or confused by somebody, to do that.

There is a need for some literature courses here, perhaps a dose of Shakespeare. Your DH is not good at metaphors and hidden meanings. Some in depth examination of advanced Western art, too. Let him look at Impressionist paintings, with an emphasis on Paul Cezanne.

Here is what his rationalism is: it is looking at, say, a woman he loves madly, and seeing through her face to the skull and the gray matter of her wrinkled brain. That's not very pretty. It is in there, of course. But it's a heck of a way to contemplate one's beloved.

The things your DH is worried about happened so long ago, and records are so sketchy and corrupted, that his placing faith (there's that word again) in them, and his own scholarship, has no foundation.

I am not mad at you and hope I didn't sound it. I was mad at him.

Perhaps I should be nice and be sorry for him.

I repeat: he must not mix science and religion. He almost sounds tired. He may have read too much, stayed up too late, felt he had to solve it all, been made responsible for too much, and got fried.

Just plain fried.

It is Okaaaaay to "just believe".

If he is such a rationalist thinker that he truly has no taste for religion, I wouldn't mind a bit, that's his business. It's this harassing of his family that has me upset.

I was ranting YOUR side. He clearly is making trouble, as you say, for the children.

A thing isn't another thing.

You don't say of somebody's yellow dress, er, I don't like it, because it isn't blue enough. If you want to see her in a blue dress, she does have one in the other closet, but she has to change.

A yellow dress cannot be criticized for not being blue enough. That's not what it is.

A religion cannot be criticized for not being rational enough. That's not what it is.

Judaism is engaged with the reason, but it is based on faith in the invisible and the untestable and the unmeasurable. It's a Faith. OF COURSE it isn't rational.

Sorry my tone annoyed you.

Last edited by Dolly Welsh on Wed, Dec 04 2013, 2:35 am; edited 1 time in total

↑ bamamama ↓

Wed, Dec 04 2013, 2:31 am

amother wrote:

Ms. Welsh, I don't believe you are respecting my request in the original post.

However, I do not think going OTD is the rationalist approach. Believe me, I have considered it more than once since this whole thing popped up and I kept thinking "They raised me with lies! To heck with it all!" But I decided it would not, in fact, be rational to throw out the baby with the bathwater (aggadically speaking Wink

) We actually aren't very into "Jewish culture," we are into doing what we believe is the right thing to the best of our knowledge. Which, admittedly, is limited but at least we've done our best instead of doing things we don't believe to be true because someone famous said so, even if someone famous displayed symptoms of messianic psychiatric complexes.

I don't even know where in my post you found basis for the other insulting comments you made. P.S. My husband is majoring in a science, was at or near the top of his very competitive chemistry class, and no we don't all believe in talking snakes.

As an aside, I know several otd people and some of the ffb ones are very dogmatic in their atheism.IT's like they refilled the bathtub only with different dogmatic water. Anywho...

It is a HUGE thing to think you were lied to. It really is. It bring sup issues of trust - not that you believe that anyone deliberately misled you, but that the community you know and love are committed to something that you now believe to be false.

Some people solve this dilemma by being ORthoprax - Orthodoxy is a lifestyle choice they make because it fits their family, worldview, culture, etc. This is a *very* legitimate reason to be Jewish!! As Chani8 said, there are lots of worthy teachings from our mesorah!

And as for family customs which you no believe to be halacha, can't you just do them because "it's what we do"? You don't have to teach your kids that these practices are Torah mi Sinai. Kids really do understand nuance if we communicate with them.

↑ chani8 ↓

Wed, Dec 04 2013, 3:22 am

amother wrote:

The biggest conflict for me is not any one point. Each point on its own I can take and say "OK." What is driving me crazy is the totality of it, that when you put it all together the result is that 1) most of the frum world is living what we consider to be at least somewhat of a lie. 2) a lot of what I was taught as truths my whole life was based on lies (fallacies, if you want to be generous, but the basic fallacy was the original believing the lies). 3) I don't know how to raise my kids in sync with what I believe is true while integrating with the frum world which I know and love.

You sound shell shocked, is all. I went through this, my family and kids all went through this at varying degrees. It's true, as I like to quote a famous BT Israeli actor's book, "Friends, we've been lied to." Sorry, forgot his name. Anyway, sure, you're feeling lied to. But it's not really that. For whatever reasons, this is how the ultra-orthodox version of our religion has evolved, to be a box that you can either believe in, or not. If you don't want to fit into their boxed version, then you don't belong in that box anymore. But there is a whole big wide world outside of their box, that is also Judaism. This is what you're discovering. And you sound terrified. Hugs to you on that. It's really not so scary outside of that box. When you get over feeling like G-d is going to strike you dead for not believing blindly, you'll see, it's a great big colorful world where G-d and Judaism and orthodox beliefs fit in and are an important part of your life.

But yeah, stepping out of the box, hurts.

5*Mom ↓

Wed, Dec 04 2013, 4:18 am

Actually, emunah does not mean *faith* in the sense of irrational, unprovable belief. This is not the mitzvah of Emunah. (Artscroll will be the death of us, I tell you.)

Emunah is from the same root word as Ne'eman, which means faithFUL, reliable, invested, possessing integrity. "Ani ma'amin b'Emunah sheleima" does not mean *I believe* but "I invest myself with perfect integrity." Torah does not ask of us to *believe* blindly in anything.

I do not keep *Jusaism.* I keep Torah. Torah is not a *religion.*

Torah is from the same root word as הרה and הריון. It means *conception.* Torah is the conception of the world; the way it was created, the potential and possibilities within it. Torah and science are perfectly alligned because science has everything to do with the conception of the world. And here I will quote the only part of Dolly's post that I agree with:

Dolly wrote:

People who think religion and science conflict don't know enough about at least one, and often both.

This is most definitely true.

OP, I can relate to your feeling like you've just had the rug pulled out from you. We call it disillusionment and it can be very painful. But it can also be the best thing that ever happened to you because who wants to live an illusion all your life? As far as science being cold and unemotional and lacking in spirituality, I disagree. When you begin to see the patterns in science and math and the universe, and learn about corresponding patterns in Torah it connects you to the universe in a way that can be overwhelmingly emotional, spiritual and warm. It may not be the emotionally-contrived pseudo-spirituality you have been used to, but IME it is much more powerful and much more meaningful in a universal, existential kind of way.

I hope you find the clarity and peace you seek.

Isramom8 ↓

Wed, Dec 04 2013, 4:26 am

OP, please know that you have many intelligent people on your side, people who know the young man (well, he's older now than he used to be) who started this "movement", and are not impressed or intimidated by his offbeat behavior. Things are not always what they seem.

You may want to read Rav Moshe Meiselman's new very scholarly book, Torah, Chazal and Science. The young man of "rationalist Judaism" doesn't like it, of course. But you're missing a lot of personal history with him.

How, in any event, can tumah and tahara be explained "rationally"? Or miracles? There is a whole spiritual reality that exists beyond what we experience with our physical senses. There is so much more.

Rationalist Judaism was invented supposedly to keep questioners on the derech. What a shame if what it's doing is weakening Jews in their faith and practice.

I hope your DH isn't beyond hearing these "rational" thoughts.

* Coming from a place of having personally tried to patch up this rift between the founder and a certain rav years ago, and having the emails to prove it. And a rabbi we know very well has tried very recently to do the same.

And yes, I not only "read" the most recent "rationalist" book - I studied it.

Last edited by Isramom8 on Wed, Dec 04 2013, 4:35 am; edited 4 times in total

Peanut2 ↓

Wed, Dec 04 2013, 4:26 am

It sounds like you are coming from a charedi background and saying the things you and your husband are saying is not acceptable. There are communities where you can say what you want, pretty much.

I'm not sure what you guys are questioning, but I wonder if you have guidance. Biblical criticism is really old and if you are trying to approach things from a more academic historical perspective, to see what happened, there are people, classes, professors, teachers, books, that explore this.
You may discover that some of the things your husband found were found by others long ago, and that there are many religious answers, both orthodox and not, to these questions. I'm assuming here you are talking about passages in Chumash or tanach. If not, but instead you discovered that the Zohar wasn't written by RSBY, then you will be fine. (Someone I know who studies Kabbalah at the hebrew university and either has or is getting smicha told me that now people think it wasn't actually moshe de Leon, but I digress.)

I also want to know what rituals you have issues with.
Please feel free to pm me, and I'd also like to add you to a fb group where you might be able to talk about this very freely, women only, and it might be helpful. If you are interested, of course.