Judaism without God?

Last week was my second week back after more than two weeks away – five days at Limmud Conference and then a week and a half in Israel.  More on Israel next time....

At Limmud I taught a series on ‘Judaism without God, partly stimulated by reading God is Not Great, Christopher Hitchens’ powerful attack on faith.  I’d previously been unimpressed with the ‘new atheists,’ having read Richard Dawkins’ The God Delusion.  This is a book which brings home the point previously made by Dawkins himself in his attacks on non-scientist religious opponents of Darwinism, that you shouldn’t write about what you don’t know – in Dawkins’ case, religion and philosophy.  But unlike Dawkins, Hitchens had a fantastic education in the humanities and did know all about theology and the Bible.  As a result, his attacks on religion as untrue, barbaric, sexist, violent and destructive, have a lot of force.  While reading, I agreed with almost everything he said and then – tearing myself away from the book – remembered that I’m the Chief Executive of a religious organisation.

The hole in Hitchens’ argument, as pointed out by my friend Rabbi Joel Levy (who’s currently teaching a series on the topic) is that for most people, Western, liberal secularism is not enough.  it certainly does not have the resources to build communities and create the deep structures of meaning and value which our atomised, utilitarian society is sorely lacking.  I believe our goal is to create a genuinely liberal, humanist, open-minded form of communitarian religious practice, which respects the other, is open to science and western values, is committed to social justice, but at the same time is solidly and authentically grounded in our textual and cultural traditions. 

And it seems to me that if we want to defend a conception of liberal, non-fundamentalist religion as a positive force in the world, we need to be able to ground it in a conception of God that doesn’t make a mockery of our philosophical principles, not to mention common sense.  This was the basis for my sessions at Limmud.  To give one example of the insights we reached:  Maimonides taught that the most important commandment is to know that God exists and is the ground of all being.  But reading his philosophical work, the Guide to the Perplexed, it becomes clear that we can’t know or say anything about this God without limiting it (him?), projecting our own concepts onto him (her?) and sliding down the path to idolatry.

The conclusion is that Judaism believes that the whole of existence is grounded in something which we know to exist but can by definition know nothing else about.  It reminds me of my answer to then 5-year-old son who asked me if I believed in God.  I said yes – as long as we’re clear that we can’t know  what God is, I don’t understand what ‘believe’ means, and I’m also not too sure about ‘in.’ 

I find this idea powerfully comforting.  It allows me to get on with being Jewish, doing mitzvot, learning Torah and being involved in my community, while acknowledging that there’s no need to be clear about the fundamental value that ostensibly lies at the heart of all these things.  It effectively centres Judaism on God while practically removing God from the equation.  In this case, practice definitely precedes belief, as the Torah says, ‘na’aseh venish’ma,’ we will do and then we will hear.

THIS WEEK...

We finalised an amazing programme for Yom Masorti, our movement-wide day of learning, culture and fun, 10 February at New North London Synagogue.  Come and hear Daniel Sokatch, Chief Executive of the New Israel Fund USA on social justice in Israel, Rabbi Jeremy Gordon and Zahavit Shalev on Jewish parenting, Stephen Shashoua from the 3 Faiths Forum on Overcoming Stereotypes through Interfaith Innovation, and loads of other great sessions.  There’ll also be good food, great music from Los Desterados musicians, ‘Wot? No Fish!’ the the new show from performance artist Danny Braverman, and a free all-day children’s track with art, music, drama and family disco. For the full programme, more info and to book for Yom Masorti, go to masorti.org.uk.