| THE MEDIA blitz surrounding Richard Dawkins’s The God Delusion has had a curious effect on the Jewish community in Britain, causing angry scowls among some, but knowing smiles among others.
Initially, though, there was a general sense of dismay. Many Jews felt as if they had been stabbed in the back, then turned around and punched in the face.
The attack from behind was because they felt they were pursuing a religious lifestyle that was largely caring and considerate, and yet they had become associated with religious extremists whose murderous fanaticism in New York and London had tainted all people of faith.
The punch in the face was because, despite holding beliefs that they did not impose on others, they found themselves victims of a series of literary attacks by those espousing a militant atheism. There was a real sense of hurt, and also of bewilderment — what have we done to deserve this?
Yet, once the arguments of Professor Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, and others were subject to proper scrutiny, it was clear that they exposed various fault-lines within British Jewry, and a distinct polarisation began to emerge.
Orthodox Jews rejected the books as obnoxious rubbish. As far as they were concerned, the word of God is enshrined in the Hebrew Bible and simply cannot be challenged by mortals.
Those who bothered responding to Professor Dawkins’s criticisms referred to all the positive benefits that faith had brought to humanity, ranging from religious art, architecture, and music to hospitals and schools.
They also noted that Professor Dawkins only threw stones, and did not provide any alternative foundation for personal values or communal mores in place of religion. Moreover, they took great glee in pointing out that the greatest crimes of modern times have been carried out by those with no faith at all — Hitler, Stalin, Mao, and Pol Pot.
In complete contrast, Reform and Liberal Jews (generically known as Progressives) addressed his attacks more directly. They admitted that he exposed some of the weaknesses of faith, but were amused at how he tilted at religious windmills.
They had long accepted that parts of the Hebrew Bible are rather unsavoury, which is why they themselves had adapted Judaism to new conditions and perspectives — for example, redefining what type of work is forbidden on the sabbath, asserting the equality of women, permitting female rabbis, and distinguishing between the inspiring sections of the Hebrew Bible and the outdated ones.
To them, it seemed laughable that Professor Dawkins — an eminent scientist who fully concurs with Darwin and his evolutionary principles — should have completely failed to realise that evolution applies to religion, too, and had confused the modern version with the dinosaur model.
THE Dawkins controversy, however, brought one aspect of Judaism into sharp focus that some found uncomfortable. While most Jews had little problem defending Judaism on historical, cultural, or communal grounds, it did raise the much harder issue of the Jewish view of God. This may seem blindingly obvious from the title of Professor Dawkins’s book, but in fact it is largely a non-Jewish question.
For several years, I was one of the judges for the “Preacher of the Year” competition, and what stood out was the radical difference between Jewish and Christian preachers. Jewish sermons tended to be about practical topics such as business ethics, ecology, or how to cope with cancer, whereas the Christian ones were all about the same subject — belief in God.
That belief was their central message, whereas for Jewish preachers it was as if it did not matter whether their flock believed or not: preferably they did, but even if they did not, there was still the question of business ethics, or ecology, or how to cope with cancer.
When Richard Harries, then Bishop of Oxford, reviewed a book of mine, Faith and Practice: A guide to Reform Judaism today, he said: “This is a typically Jewish book, 200 pages on what to do and ten on what to believe; if it had been a Christian book, it would have been the other way round!”
Professor Dawkins made many Jews ask a question they had largely ignored: yes, I am Jewish, but what do I actually believe? Moreover, when they turned to Jewish tradition for an answer, they found it much less definitive than they expected.
THE HEBREW Bible is suffused with God, but in many ways it takes God for granted and shifts attention to the real centre of interest — the world we live in. This is evident from its very first sentence: “In the beginning God created heaven and earth.”
When we turn to Abraham, the “first Jew”, and try to discover how he lifted himself above the paganism of his time and obtained a sense of God, all we hear is “God spoke to Abraham and said: ‘Go to a land that I will show you’” (Genesis 12).
That led to the development in Judaism of 613 commands — many dos and don’ts, but very little theology. In fact, it took 3000 years before the great scholar Maimonides came along in the 12th century, and felt it necessary to write The Thirteen Principles of Faith to spell out that Jews should believe in God and some of the attributes of God.
Other faiths had internal wars and sectarian heresies over the right or wrong concepts of God: Judaism never sought to tie down God in the same way. That is why it is still possible to have very different images of God: as a puppet-master who pulls the strings of our lives; a watchmaker who puts life together and then stands back to leave it to run of its own accord; a judge who weighs up our worth at the end of our life; the still small voice, the conscience within us; or as the source of nature.
All of these are the Jewish God, or the God of the Jews — and the reason Judaism has been so relaxed about it is two-fold. First, it considers it a form of arrogance to say we know exactly what God is and is not. Second, the prime object of Judaism is not worshipping God, but getting on with our fellow human beings. If we praise God in our prayers for “supporting the fallen, healing the sick, and rescuing the oppressed”, it is as a reminder of what we should be doing.
The result of this is that, while many Jews today have total faith, there are those who are much less certain, and this is thoroughly acceptable — although it has rarely been publicly acknowledged.
The Hebrew word “Israel” means “he who struggles with God”, and can be taken as referring to the ongoing wrestling match between Jews and God — doubting, arguing, questioning — which nevertheless does not stop them being Jewish.
For this reason, there are many Jews today who say they are agnostic, yet are calmly told they are doing no more than joining a queue started by Moses, who, when God first speaks to him, wants some hard evidence that God really exists and is not a figment of his imagination.
It has led to many Jews’ taking the attitude that what counts is an extreme version of “deed rather than creed”. They would sum up their view by claiming that “to be a good Jew, you don’t have to believe in God; you just have to do what God says.”
There is also an increasing number of Jews who admit they are atheist. You cannot have a Christian atheist, because either you believe in Jesus or you are not a Christian; that is the litmus test. But you can have Jewish atheists — Jews who have no belief in a deity, but who do believe in Jewish values, or the Jewish community.
The Dawkins controversy has brought to the fore a new set of subdivisions in British Jewry — believer, agnostic, and atheist — but without affecting their Jewish identity. It is a development that will be unwelcome to many rabbis, but it is one that reflects the reality of Jewish life today.
Rabbi Dr Jonathan Romain is minister of Maidenhead Synagogue and editor of God, Doubt and Dawkins, published on 12 March by the Movement for Reform Judaism (Ł9.99; 978-0-947884-17-8).
|
back to Features
previous story
|
next story 
