this woman’s work

Jackie said: “Part of my trouble is that much of the iconography, the Virgin Mary, the rosary, the Virgen de Guadelupe, still resonates with me, helps me make that connection, but I don’t know how to extrapolate a religion or community from that, you know?”

As a Reform Jew, I always wish there was such a thing as Reform Catholicism. There’s a wonderful book Sisters: Lives of Devotion and Defiance by Julia Lieblich. This book helped me decide to be Jewish in earnest although I struggle with some aspects of Judaism. One of the nuns is ex-communicated but she continues living/working as a nun. It made me realize that religion is between the individual and God and that the structures around our religions are there for us. It may be difficult to find a totally like-minded community but I do think it’s possible to be a seeker from within any religious tradition that feels like home and to bend that tradition to suit our personal relationship with God. I know that this is a bigger challenge in Catholicism but I don’t think it’s impossible. And I think it’s important that we not give up the things that are meaningful to us because our very human leaders try to tell us that we cannot have them unless we follow their rules.

I do struggle with this though. Judaism is all about following halacha — Jewish law. Is Judaism meaningless if we reject any of those laws? For someone like me — not keeping kosher, not honoring the sabbath, unable to pronounce any of the blessings (!) — can I really live a Jewish life? Well, it depends on who you ask. One day I’d like to live more Jewishly but I feel that this time will come when my children are older because after all, I’m in an interfaith marriage. It’s one thing for the two of us to decide that Judaism will be the dominant spirituality in our family; it’s quite another for me to demand that we all follow laws that are really important only to me. As the kids get older, if either of them want to embrace aspects of Jewish practice, I’d be pretty darn happy and ready to join them. But to follow these things now would be a hardship and ultimately, I’m afraid that they would actually turn my children away from Judaism and possibly then from God. It would be different if we lived in a Jewish community and had families that were living Jewish lives but we don’t. I trust God in this though. I trust that as my way has been made clear, so will my children’s and meanwhile within the context of Judaism, we are able to communicate with each other about that journey.

In the same way, I recognize that Catholicism for many people would have no power without the specific teachings of its leaders. In much the same way that Judaism is halacha so Catholicism is following rules set forth by the Pope — at least as I understand it. But then I remind myself that religion is the way that men (historically) have tried to understand God and so it belongs to us.

In the book my rabbi gave me before my conversion, Liberal Judaism at Home, the author Morrison David Bial writes:

The major difficulty with the criterion we have mentioned, his own sense of spiritual values, arrived at by diligent study of tradition — is that it obviously sets each Liberal [Reform] Jew as his own judge of what he will or will not do.

To the traditional Jew, this is nothing less than a severe transgression of halacha, the law. It is God who established the Torah and its mitzvot, commandments. Anyone who would dare set any mitzvah, commandment, aside is one who would cut at the roots of the God-given religion.

Then what can the Liberal Jew use as his final criterion, to help his knowledge of tradition and his understanding of Liberal Judaism in the task of deciding just where he fits in the infinite spectrum of Jewish observance? The answer must be a sense of kedushah, of holiness, of that which will help him sanctify his life, to make it truly meaningful. By this must he live, and it will help him give his life that inner meaning by which we seek fulfillment.

I believe that God speaks to each of us who are ready to listen. I believe that prayerful contemplation of the religious traditions that speak to us is our right and — for our children’s sakes — our duty. I want to model an active relationship with God for Madison and Noah. I want to show them that every religious tradition has wisdom that belongs to those that seek it. No one has a monopoly on the right way to do things; not even the guys who put themselves in charge.