Oy! this got out of hand.

It’s been a while since I’ve written an actual post, so there’s much to update. Lets start with Passover.

Before I start with Passover though, I feel like I need to back up a bit. Having gone to Orthodox day schools as a child, I was always left with a deep respect and yearning for the Orthodox lifestyle. Everyone always seems so happy. The children (as far as I’ve seen) are not rebellious, husbands and wives get along, and there’s so much tradition in the homes that you feel like you are being transported to a totally different place. There’s peace, serenity and even a holiness that you can actually feel in an observant Jewish home. Anyways, that’s what I was taught, that’s what I saw a lot, and that’s what I wanted. Of course with all that comes an almost fanatical sort of religiosity which makes the whole package possible.

Recently (in the last ~4 months or so) I came across the “frum skeptics” (religious skeptics) groups online (isn’t the internet wonderful?) and have begun to see a totally different side of Orthodox Judaism. It has made me stop and think about the underlying beliefs, requirements and sacrifices that come with living that kind of life. For a while I felt like I wanted to distance myself from the zealotry and fanaticism of the “ultra Orthodox” beliefs, which to me meant that life would be shallow and bland.

Then came Passover. Of all the Jewish holidays, except Yom Kippur which isn’t really a “holiday” in the traditional sense, Passover is the most demanding. You have to clean hour house inside out to get rid of all bread – you even have to clean all your books to make sure you didn’t drop any crumbs between the pages while reading. It is absolutely forbidden to have a single crumb of bread in your house for 8 days. In addition, there are the 2 Seders, and 4/8 days of the holiday are “yom tov” which means you can’t do any work. That’s a lot. I also think it is one of the most beautiful holidays. I love the whole Seder – it’s nothing but lots of tradition, which is awesome. This year I stayed with one family and had all my meals at the Chabad House. And at some point I got the same feeling I used to – how beautiful everything was and how much I wanted to be a part of this in the future.

However, this year, in the back of my mind was a more critical observation of the whole event – for example, the Chabad family’s tradition is to not eat any fruit or vegetables that can’t be peeled, and no prepared food of any kind (they even make their own mayonnaise). I thought to myself: why can’t I have the beauty and tradition of Passover without going crazy with all the extras? Why do I have to be limited to not eating kitniyos (rice, beans, corn, soy products, etc) just because I happened to be born into an Easter European family and not a Middle Eastern family? Accident of birth shouldn’t make my life more difficult. I always knew that a lot of the Orthodox laws and customs are just that – customs and traditions. I always knew that, but never questioned it. In school you are taught to accept the law (custom) as law, no questions asked. Well, after listening in on some online conversations (via blogs, comments, message boards, etc) I’ve realized that the core of Judaism is to question everything. So why don’t we question the very essence of Judaism? Why is that off limits? We don’t eat rice during Passover because there was no rice in Eastern Europe hundreds of years ago. That’s absurd. There’s a value in tradition, but turning it into an obstacle is not the solution.

So now I think that I can still incorporate the true laws and reasonable (logical) customs without becoming a crazy fanatic. It all comes down to the fact that Jewish law was derived from the interpretation of the Torah by men. And by “men” I don’t mean “humanity” but “old white men”), whose opinions were the result of their upbringing in a time very different from ours. Why does Judaism inherit from the mother? Because men (and women) would sleep around and move on and it would be difficult to know whether the real father was Jewish, but you always know who the mother was. Why are women prohibited from participating in clerical positions or deep learning? It’s outright sexism and nothing more. The whole “women are holier so they are not required to do X” is just apologetics, and Jewish women have swallowed it for hundreds of years. The fanatical claim that “we adapt to the Torah, the Torah doesn’t adapt to us” doesn’t make sense to me anymore. The Torah was always adapted to the times, that’s the whole point of interpretation, which by its very nature is subject to the time and society where the interpretation is done. Electricity didn't always exist, polygamy used to be legal, a father had the right to sell his daughter into marriage on her 12^th birthday, and you’re supposed to tie your left shoe before your right shoe. Does G-d really care which shoe I tie first? I highly doubt it. And to assert that He does is downright loony. Flipping a light switch is not the same as lighting a match. I could go on and on.

There’s much more to say on the subject but I’m getting increasingly frustrated writing about it so I’ll stop now. I think the last paragraph made it sound like I’m abandoning Judaism, but that’s not it. The point I was trying to make is that I want the beauty and tradition without being a blind follower. Is that possible? I don’t know if it is. But I think I’d like to try.