The Fundamentalist Impulse: The Most Religious Response
Rosh Hashanah II 5772 / 30 September 2011
Rabbi Daniel Cotzin Burg
The year was 1997. It was Shavuot in Jerusalem and I had spent the entire night studying at the Conservative Yeshiva on Agron Street. This is a custom, you see. Since the morning of Shavuot is when our tradition tells us that our ancestors received the Ten Commandments at Sinai, Jews the world over stay up learning and eagerly anticipating the break of dawn when we prepare once again to receive Torah. I was a college student at the time and was spending my junior year abroad at the Hebrew University on Mt. Scopus. I had heard of this custom of tikkun leil Shavuot, but had never experienced it firsthand. Little did I know that the day would not yield the spiritual elation and meaning I sought.
The night began well – I enjoyed the learning. And tired though I was, I found renewed vigor at four o’clock in the morning when we began making our way through West Jerusalem toward the Old City. As we entered the gates, the trickle of people became a copious flow of bodies, pouring along the narrow streets, cascading over staircases, heading down toward the Western Wall. When we arrived at the Kotel, the place was packed – mostly with pale-faced men in black coats and hats, but also with women in long dresses, Sepharadim, children, men with knitted kippot – a growing sea of Jews breaking against the wall with the flow of shuckling bodies and the roar of gathering song.
Our group of egalitarian Jews met well back in the courtyard, near the bus station and away from the mekhitza so as not to offend those who felt men and women should not pray together. It was a medium-sized minyan; there were about 40 of us as we began to daven the morning service. The sun was inching up just below the horizon and the Jerusalem stone glowed with its pinkish-gold hue as it warmed to the day.
It was sometime during the chanting of the book of Ruth that we began to notice the crowd surrounding us. Groups of men on their way toward their homes got distracted by our anomaly: women in kippot and tallitot, chanting from Megillat Rut, men standing by their side. But we ignored them – captured by the story of the Moabite woman who would cast her lot with the Jewish people, an outsider who would give birth to the line of David and change the course of human history. Their murmuring turned to shouting and we could ignore them no longer. They waved their fingers, shuckling caustically in our direction. They called us goyim. They called us Nazis. They threw things at us – I was struck in the chest by a bottle of ice; a woman was pushed to the ground. We were terrified, but we continued to pray. The crowd grew. Soon we were surrounded by an ocean of streimels, wagging payes, and I saw the anger and hatred in their eyes. To them I was the enemy of the Jewish people. I was its destruction - more than Hitler, Haman, Hadrian, Nebuchadnezzer. I was Amalek, the enemy within, the cancer that needed to be purged. It was the first time I had come face to face with the fundamentalist impulse in Judaism, and as we were escorted from the courtyard by Israeli soldiers with M-16s, I knew that I would never be quite the same.
We are all too familiar with the term “fundamentalism,” and we know the havoc that some fundamentalists have brought to our world: the Taliban’s destruction of ancient and priceless statues of Buddha; the systemic female genital mutilation in Africa; dozens of German tourists gunned down in Luxor; the London, Spain, Bali, Norway bombings; and, of course, 9.11 whose ten-year-anniversary we mark this year. But the fundamentalist impulse does not always manifest itself in physical violence. There is also a growing assault of language. Pat Robertson blames homosexuals for earthquakes and hurricanes. Rabbi Ovadia Yosef said that Hurricane Katrina was God’s punishment for American support of the Gaza withdrawal. What do we have to say about this phenomenon? What should be our response?
Before I attempt to answer that question we should, first, make a distinction between fundamentalism and terrorism. Fundamentalism reflects a system of beliefs which can be called upon to perpetrate, or at least justify, terrorist acts. While it may be the case that some (and not most) religious fundamentalists will use terrorist acts as a tool to accomplish their goals, the two are not the same thing. But equally important: there are many different “fundamentalisms” in the world. Islamic fundamentalism is substantively different from Catholic, Protestant or Jewish fundamentalism. While some Southern Baptists may cleave to a literal reading of scripture, Shi’ite Islamic fundamentalists are not interested in a literal reading of the Koran. Rather, they abide by a particular and systemic reading of Shari’a law.
Acknowledging this, Martin Marty of the University of Chicago does point out that there are some “fundamentals of fundamentalism,” unifying metrics through which we can begin to identify the fundamentalist impulse across religious and cultural lines. Here are three of his criteria:
Fundamentalists exist in constant reaction to a threatening world. The threat may be vague or specific. It may be external: a specific nation like America or Israel, or a general concept like “westernization,” “modernity,” or “secularism.” Or the threat may be internal: the innovator, or modernist within the ranks of the larger religious body. This was me on Shavuot fourteen years ago. What we did triggered a kinetic reaction, an explosion for which only a small spark was required.
Fundamentalists have a skewed perception of time. In Marty’s words, “[fundamentalists] deal with the future as if it had already occurred, measuring history and their actions from such futures.” The future is assured, in some millennial or messianic promise of redemption, paradise or even 70 virgins. The Past was grand – fundamentalists hearken back to a Golden Age or a perception that they know what God, Jesus, Mohammed or Joseph Smith really wanted for their people. The present, however, is cloudy. People have lost their way and their errant behaviors must be corrected.
Finally, fundamentalists seek surety and scorn uncertainty. This is especially poignant for Conservative Jews: Marty explains that “fundamentalists resist ambiguity and ambivalence.” The world is divided into black and while, good vs. evil, us vs. them. Subtlety is mocked and deliberation scorned. Every action or belief is either right or wrong and it is just to punish wrong doers.
So why should any of this matter to us? Robert Putnam gave a wonderful lecture at Goucher this week. He claims that Americans, though religiously polarized, are generally a tolerant bunch. So why be concerned?
I want to suggest to you that, like it or not, we are engaged in a great battle for the soul of religiosity – in America, in the world and also within our own Jewish ranks. It is a battle worth fighting, it is a battle we are at serious risk of losing, and the stakes are incredibly high. As Putnam points out, though many young Americans consider themselves “spiritual” and say they believe in God, fewer and fewer of them find meaning in “religion,” finding it extreme, intolerant and even oppressive. And consider Israel. Bit by bit, the potential success of an inclusive and pluralistic Judaism in Israel is being undermined by the religious establishment there. Let me make a suggestion. This Saturday night get on line and go to www.masorti.org. There you can learn about our partner synagogue in Ashkelon, the TALI schools and the Kotel Masorti in Jerusalem where thousands of Conservative and egalitarian Jews can worship at the Western Wall in peace. While you are there, consider making a contribution. If we truly believe that Israel is to be a state not just for all Jews, but all Judaisms, then we must take the initiative to sensitize the hearts and minds of Israelis to real pluralism.
But the problem isn’t just in Israel. Here in the states, thousands of non-Orthodox Jews write checks to Chabad because they perceive an authenticity and passion they find lacking in their own Conservative, Reform or Reconstructionist shuls. But this is no more a failure of perception than it is a failure of many American Jewish institutions to present themselves as relevant. Only at our peril do we cede responsibility for our Jewish values: especially those that reflect a more nuanced perspective on our history, theology and religious observance. I became a Conservative rabbi, not because I lack passion, thank you very much. On the contrary, I study Torah with fervor, I delight in rousing prayer, I champion proudly the rights of women to have their voices heard, and I renew, each Rosh Hashanah, my desire to question and challenge and through these methods, to deepen my Jewish learning. I relish debate, ambivalence and ambiguity! And there is nothing dispassionate about that!
So what is the essential underpinning of this impulse for fundamentalism, the one that allows extremists to claim a false monopoly on passion? I believe it has most to do with how we view God. Let me explain. The fundamentalist sees him/herself and those like him/her as a conduit for Truth (with a capital T). The relationship is uni-directional: God speaks, we should listen, end of story. And since the fundamentalist is convinced of the surety of his/her beliefs, it is not such a stretch to think that God would want him/her to convince others of this Truth (and sometimes by whatever means necessary). The problem, of course, with this logic is that it is often, if not always, hard to determine what God really wants of us. Our sages dedicated their lives to this task; the Talmud is an attempt to do this. It takes up an entire shelf of my bookcase. Guess how many other shelves are filled with other texts recounting yet other texts, each of them filled with argumentation between rabbis about what we Jews should do, how we should behave, even what we should believe. The Jewish enterprise, the ancient one, not just the modern one, combats fundamentalism and theological hubris by forcing us to constantly grapple with our conception of the divine.
As moderns, though, we should also be careful not to fall into another trap. If I had a nickel for every time some random person on a plane, or in a bookstore took the time to inform me of how organized religion is wholly responsible for all of the world’s ills including war, famine, etc. … The conversation, incidentally, usually begins with how that person was emotionally crippled by his 4th grade Hebrew school teacher, which, quickly becomes my fault by virtue of the fact that I am wearing a yarmulke and took the time to listen. This is (you’ll forgive me) a cop-out. Intolerance is not a function of religion, it is a failure of imagination. To fall prey to this false dichotomy is simply to put the uni-directional relationship in full reverse, this time putting oneself in the driver’s seat. It is no more constructive to only speak than it is to only listen.
Religion is, after all, about humility. Moses, Judaism’s greatest hero, is not praised for being the best speaker or most knowledgeable, but for being anav meod, the most humble. A teacher of mine, Dr. Hanan Alexander, now at Haifa University, once gave a talk that made a powerful impression on me. Having passionate beliefs, he said, is not necessarily a problem. Even believing that we know what God wants of us is not necessarily a problem. The problem is when we lose the ability to say, “But I’m not God, so I could be wrong.” Fundamentalists think they have God in their pockets. And that is a dangerous thing indeed.
In his provocative book, Under the Banner of Heaven, Jon Krakauer recounts the 1984 slaying of a woman and her baby daughter by two extreme fundamentalist Mormon brothers, each of whom was convinced that God was directing them to murder. Dan Lafferty, the brother who ended these two innocent lives, told the author: “Unlike my older brother, I didn’t really have bad feelings toward Brenda or Erica. I was just doing God’s will” (p. 187). Bin Ladin, Baruch Goldstein, Yigal Amir, Anders Breivik, Dan Lafferty all thought they had God in their pockets. Each was utterly convinced that he was a conduit for divine will. Each was willing to take lives in order to prove his rightness. Each, we Jews must say loudly and clearly, is an affront to organized religion.
So what’s the solution? What do we, in the Conservative Movement, for example, have to offer to the greater conversation? For starters, we can help teach people that contradiction, paradox and ambiguity are good things, valuable tools in helping us search passionately for meaning without claiming to know God’s will – and we should be confident in this belief. We need a surety of uncertainty.
There is no reason why Conservative Jews can’t have the same fire and passion as Chabad. Now, I’ve heard the jokes: Reform = lazy, Orthodox = crazy, Conservative = hazy. And there’s some truth to this. Not so much Reform and Orthodox, but we Conservative Jews do sometimes sound like Tevye in Fiddler on the Roof saying, “But on the other hand.” There are, however, two important things I think we can learn from Tevye. First of all, at some point we all have to say, “No, there is no other hand.” We are not, nor should we be relativists, moral or otherwise. There is good and evil in the universe, there is right and wrong. Many times the difference is clear and we should fight for right and good and scorn evil. But, on the other hand, there is value in the “other hand.” Real discourse helps us to keep our grounding. Seeing both sides of an issue can only help us to understand it better. We may make a decision based on what we strongly believe is right, while equally passionate in our humility saying: “We believe that we are right. But, since none of us is God, we could be wrong.” We are the ones, who sit here in synagogue today, who can help lift Jews beyond simplicity or apathy, the ones who can ensure that the fundamentalist impulse does not consume the complexity of our faith.
To do this, we need to open our mouths, our hearts and our minds. To open our mouths: We need to speak to friends and colleagues, students and siblings about this progressive approach to religion. We need to speak out, as Jews, against any indefensible religious violence. To open our hearts: We should be passionate in our beliefs, not ceding enthusiasm to those with simpler truths. To open our minds: We need to study, to develop our knowledge base so that we can better participate in the debate. Some liberal Jews feel unprepared to dialogue, but this is an opportunity to deepen our Jewish knowledge – to refute the “on-one-foot” approach to religious expression. In the words of the great Talmudist Rabbi Louis Ginzberg, “All attempts made in the last two thousand years to create an acrobatic Judaism had to fail; one cannot go on forever standing on one foot” (p. 131 Tradition and Change). This is Rosh Hashanah after all, time to renew our commitment to Jewish living. Whether it’s Torah study on Shabbat mornings, or “Lunch and Learn” downtown, or a lecture at the shul, it’s time to put our foot down. In the words of Hillel: “tse u’lemad, go and learn!”
The fundamentalist impulse is a real force in America and the world: in Judaism, Christianity, Mormonism, Islam and every other major religion, but it must not define us! This Rosh Hashanah as we celebrate the New Year, let’s rejoin the conversation with God, a bidirectional conversation. Let us lend our voices to the chorus of generations: Rabbis and lay people who knew full well that we owe more to the Ribbono Shel Olam than to boil the complexity of life down to the simplistic, the easy and the overly divisive, people who knew that God’s universe is complex and fraught with contradiction. We should know these truths and shout them fervently from the rafters, always keeping in mind that we are not God, and so we could be wrong. This Rosh Hashanah, let’s take responsibility for repairing the black mark that fundamentalists have left upon our world. Whether in Israel or at home, let us take the initiative to support pluralism and a free exchange of ideas with our mouths, our hearts and our minds. The future is not set, it is what we make of it. The past was not perfect, our Sages often fought similar battles. The present is a slate on which we must help sketch the path for Jews and religious people the world over.
Shana Tova!