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This letter is in response to the article “Rabbis work to renew traditions,” by Jeff Trewhitt in the August 15 State Journal-Register. As a born Jew, I took great offense at many of the statements made by Rabbis Groner and Glick, particularly at their insistence that Jews who “don’t find any deep meaning or intrinsic value…their daily lives…channel the resulting need into Jewish observance, which is the right thing for a Jew to do.”
I would like to remind the rabbis that such broad generalizations are not only dangerous but are precisely what enemies of the Jews, as well as other historically persecuted minorities, have used repeatedly to perpetuate oppression and create prejudice on the part of the ignorant. To claim that there is one right thing for all Jews to do, however, not only encourages the notion that all Jews are alike; it also assumes that all people with a common religions origin share the same spiritual needs, which can then be met in exactly the same manner.
It has long been my conviction that religion is a personal decision, not to be tampered with by the uninvited interference of well-meaning rabbis and other clergymen – not to mention accidental ancestors. (For those who never confront this issue but passively adhere to whatever situation they happened to be born into, that too is a decision.) Religion is a structure of practices based on beliefs which, I feel, should proceed from one’s own perception of inherent truth, not an absolute feature of one’s existence, inherited through the genes. Of course it is true that the Jewish heritage has enhanced many lives: in my own case, all of my grandparents were Russian immigrants who turned to Judaism, the religion and the culture, as a source of comfort, sustenance, and inspiration in the new, threatening country. But my circumstances are far removed from theirs, and for Rabbis Groner and Glick to suggest that, by virtue of being born a Jew, an “awareness of Judaic history and an effort to accept its traditions” will necessarily “provide meaning to [my] life” is presumptuous and absurd. For, in truth, they never have.
Beyond this, I would like to think that there is the potential in all of us to transcend our superficial identity – to take pride not in our arbitrary cultural origins but in our own personal achievements, and to stop condemning ourselves to a clan mentality, to eternally self-stereotyping ourselves so that we say, “I’m Irish; I have a temper,” “I’m from Tennessee; I love Elvis,” or “I’m Jewish; I end all my sentences with question marks.” But Judaism IS a religion before it is a culture, and as such should not be a pronouncement, a sentence, a verdict on the part of one’s parents or any rabbi. In the final analysis, I do NOT owe it to my ancestors to “keep the faith.”
