I once said, Judaism is not a faith-based religion and two of my students left the room in tears. It turns out that they were raised Catholic and both were struggling with staying Catholic or converting to Judaism. I didn’t realize at the time that I had pulled the lid off of their internal struggle that they were bottling inside. I explained, “it’s not that Jews do not have faith – it is that Jews pay more attention to their choices, their actions and their deeds than they do about what they believe or do not believe about G-d. At the time, I did not make much headway in soothing their anger. I realized that both women had been brought up in a tradition where one had complete blind faith in the traditions, rituals and teachings of their religion. They were taught that you did not need evidence of belief – you just believed and wonderful things happened. If they doubted their faith, then they were in spiritual crisis – in some traditions, doubting faith is a sign of weakness, a giving in to temptation or influence from an evil entity. If spiritual crisis is when you sometimes question or even doubt what you believe about G-d, then I’ve been in a spiritual crisis since 1972.
For me, when things are going well, G-d and I are the best of friends. I’ll do just about anything to serve and to be thankful for everything. However, when things are not going so well, I wonder what I did to deserve the cold shoulder. I’m not alone. The Psalmist wrote in Psalm 22: “My G-d – why have you abandoned me; why so far from delivering me and from my anguished roaring? I cry by day – You answer not; by night and have no respite.” It is certainly arrogant and somewhat self-centered to think that G-d only focuses on what I do, yet I know that our understanding of G-d and our relationship with G-d is usually a function of the relationship we had with our parents, especially our fathers. My father was a great man and he did the best he could as a father, given that he grew up very poor and his own father was an alcoholic. On par with his generation, he could be opinionated, critical and harsh with his words, yet my siblings and mother were the center of his Universe. All I wanted to do was to please him, as any child wants to do. However, somehow, and I don’t know why some us tell ourselves this lie, I never felt that I measured up to his expectations. Hence, my relationship with G-d in my younger years was also one based on not feeling that I measured up. Thank goodness that my spiritual quest in my early 20s led me to realize that all of us measure up, no matter what. The lies we made up to ourselves as kids were innocent misunderstandings. To G-d, when we breathe - we measure up; when we take risks and make mistakes – we measure up; when we fail or succeed – we measure up; when we love – we measure up. So, if there is a G-d who loves us no matter what and yet we cannot see this G-d or know the Essence of this G-d, from a Jewish perspective, what is faith in this G-d?
As you can see, these are very basic and general principles. Yet as basic as these principles are, the necessity of believing each one of these has been disputed and rejected by the progressive movements of Judaism. I for one, only accept five of the 13. So, perhaps faith is much more than a set of suggestions related to a belief system.
It seems in our culture that faith can be two things: (1) self-reliance, which means nothing is out there and it is all up to us (2) Don’t think too much and put everything in the hands of the Divine – and things will happen according to His will.
So I asked some family members and friends what faith means to them.
Z: I believe in a Universal Energy / Higher Power guiding us to fulfill some master plan for us. We then we have choice to either stay on path or to steer off the path placed ahead. Faith ties into this Higher Power, and there are a plethora of paths and all are valid – We cannot be passive in our faith – we are active participants in the unfoldment of our lives if we just open our eyes and see what is being placed before us.
E: I believe in G-d as a power – an energy bigger than us. I experience it when I’m out in nature, which is why I hate going to synagogue.
R: I believe in a G-d who is bigger than man and who has a hand in everything, especially coincidences. When bad things happen to good people it is something that I cannot understand and which I just accept as part of some larger Plan to which we have no access. Yet, as a Holocaust survivor, I know what the Nazis did was no act of G-d - it was an act of evil perpetrated by man.
D: Faith is trusting in something bigger than us and that we are not alone.
I saw this type of faith play out at a recent kabbalat Shabbat service in Atlanta – two young parents were saying kaddish for their son, who had died a year ago. As they shed tears of grief, fellow congregants came over to comfort them. After kaddish, a young man who was to become a bar mitzvah the next morning, came over and gave the mother a hug. The young man, who tragically lost his only brother a number of years ago, and is always known for his compassion was living what G-d wants of us all – to reach out to each other in our time of need. G-d comforted the mother through the young man, who was familiar with loss at way too young an age.
A dear friend of mine is a retired minister. He recently had hip replacement surgery and shared with me that attitude is everything, yet most important is trusting that G-d will be Present in what ever happens – what ever the outcome. He also shared that even feeling that G-d is in his heart at all times, there still must be room for doubt, for longing, for lament, for wondering why we must go through what we go through. We both agreed that perhaps G-d shows up when needed most - to those with broken hearts.
Marianne Williamson, in her book, A Return to Love, wrote:
“There is no problem in any situation that faith will not solve…” She was quoting from a program of spiritual development in which she participated in the 1970s called “A Course in Miracles”. A Jew, Williamson found that although the course drew from Christian myth and symbolism, it’s Universal application of the myths and symbols were not an affront to her Jewish beliefs. In reading her book, I found the same.
Williamson goes on to write that faith “…is a trust in the force that moves the Universe. Faith is not blind, it is visionary. Faith is believing that the Universe is on our side and that the Universe knows what it is doing. Faith is a psychological awareness of an unfolding force for good, constantly at work in all dimensions. Our attempts to direct this force only interferes with it. Our willingness to relax into it allows it to work on our behalf. Without faith, we’re frantically trying to control what is not our business to control, and fix what is not in our power to fix. What we’re trying to control is much better off without us and what we’re trying to fix can’t be fixed by us anyway. Without faith, we’re wasting time.”
Williamson also wrote that there is no such thing as a faithless person – we either have faith in fear or we have faith in love. When we peel away the masks we wear to hide our fears, when we let go of what we think others wanted, or want us to be, when we get out of our heads and drop down to our hearts, what is left is an endless supply of love.
I saw faith in love a few weeks ago when I attended one wedding of a young couple on a Saturday evening and then the wedding of a middle-aged couple the next mid-day. Both couples expressed faith to each other – and what I heard was not only the obvious commitment to remain faithful to each other, I heard the pledge of faith in a life shared with no guarantees of smooth sailing and yet staying the course. It was a faith in the power of love to make life’s challenges less challenging. It was a faith in the power of trust in a life that somehow unfolds the way it is meant to unfold – not always the way we intended it or wanted it to unfold. It is a faith in the enormous synergy that occurs when two human beings join their lives and their life energies together in creating a home as a safe harbor where each partner is welcomed, cherished, supported and nurtured - warts, bruises and scars, as well. A home where it just feels good and right to be when the world outside of that home seems to be falling apart. It’s faith that things just seem to happen for some reason, and often that reason is unknown or makes no sense at the time – yet perhaps in some future place, we see the lesson learned, the growth experienced and a personal redemption fulfilled.
Estelle Frankel, in her book, Sacred Therapy, refers to the Lurianic kabbalistic view of creation as three distinct stages: Tzimtzum, or withdrawal; shevira, or shattering; and tikkun, or restoration / healing. Frankel states that this creation archetype speaks of our own lives. Frankel wrote, “At every transition point in the life cycle, when one stage of life ends and another begins, we inevitably pass through a death / birth cycle – a withdrawal, a shattering and a restoration of self. We withdraw or are separated from what was or who we were, followed by a shattering – a universal feeling of being broken apart, finally resolving with an eventual re-birth or recreation of a new sense of being. Sometimes we choose this cycle of change and sometimes life chooses it for us. Faith is an acceptance that somehow it is possible that we will get through it. Our journey may be short or it may be long.
Going back to the Psalm 22: “ In You our fathers trusted; they trusted and You rescued them. To You they cried out and they escaped; in You they trusted and were not disappointed..” Maybe this means that G-d might not physically rescue us or offer us an escape route. Maybe it means that trusting that there is Plan larger than our wants and desires, that letting go of controlling and trying to fix life and trusting the process of life will provide mental and spiritual rescue and escape from pain and suffering. Maybe hope is really a word which means faith – that someday and somehow – it will make sense and G-d would be looking at us and smiling from another realm, like a parent, hiding behind a door – peeking out with one eye, lovingly and proudly watching her child learning something new.
Me? I have faith in somewhat similar fashion to what Morgan Freeman described during a recent interview on CNN. He said that G-d is the underlying, interconnected energy that resides within us all. Karl Jung called this the collective unconscious – the reason why we all have similar archetypes, shadow places and dream content. It is an energy that joins us all together, regardless of sex, race, nationality, religion, intelligence or circumstances. It is independent and has nothing to do with our particular beliefs, financial success, health issues, status or achievements. We each communicate with G-d in our own, personal way and for most of us in this place, it is along the Jewish pathway, yet all pathways to G-d are valid. Zechariah said, “and on that day, Your name shall be One and we all shall be One.” Whatever faith is to us- or is not to us, there is something that makes up our inner being, an inner being that seeks to give and receive love, to understand and be understood, to feel and to be felt, to share and to receive. It is a child within, filled with a sense of wonder and it is why we are so drawn to each other at our most vulnerable times – NOT our strongest times. So, in a sense, we already are One….. in faith.