So too, regarding religious organisations. They often lose their identities and fall into self-serving spirals of inwardly-focused behaviour and cease to relate to the actual human beings. Thus, individual belief may find itself under attack from bureaucracies which are unsympathetic to individuality.
What can one do then: Fight? Rebel? Retreat? Withdraw? Disassociate?
Inappropriate bureaucracies cause tension and conflict within society. I don’t believe that extremism is the correct or most effective approach. Obviously, we must remain true to our beliefs and to ourselves; but we must also be true to our community and to those around us.
Judaism is about emet, Truth. We are encouraged to be free thinkers, to challenge what we see and what we hear, to analyse, to be creative, to learn and to grow as individuals. At the same time, however, we are also encouraged to act with kindness and to participate in our actions with consistency.
For instance, a Jew is supposed to follow the dietary laws, to observe the Shabbat (Sabbath) and the festivals, to be charitable, to engage in the study of Judaism. Thus the character and personality of the individual Jew is formed as part and parcel of the Jewish people. It has a collective dimension.
This tension is a real and alive one, an active part of expression and living life, just like the tension between praying as an individual and praying as part of a minyan. The search for identity and for belonging is an integral part of the search for truth. It is one aspect of the fight between the good and bad inclinations, the yetzer ha-ra and the yetzer ha-tov.
Our Sages teach us that during the First and Second Temple eras of Jewish history, there was never overcrowding when our people entered the limited space of the Temple. No matter how many people came to Jerusalem to celebrate the Jewish festivals, each person always found sufficient space. Moreover, one of the ten constant miracles on the Temple Mount was that when people stood erect, they felt crowded; but when they prostrated themselves, there was space between them. Indeed, there were many people at the Kotel when I was there, and I am a person who needs space. But I, too, did not feel crowded, distracted nor disturbed by those around me.
We are the “chosen people” and “the people of the book”. Our mission is to be “ohr laGoyim”, i.e. “a light unto the nations”. Surely, we feature in the world press in a high profile, much out of proportion to our actual numbers. There are less than 20 million Jews in the entire world, 6 million of them in Israel and probably less than 50 per cent are involved with Jewish tradition and some kind of religious observance. So many Jews are ignorant of their history, culture and religion.
What is this “light” then with which we are illuminating the world? Sadly, the way in which we are profiled in the media is an aberration of truth, often motivated by anti-Semitism; it is mass-marketed ignorance based on gross exaggeration of small issues. To be sure, we are not a perfect people, nor is democracy a perfect system; the only perfection in this world is G-d. We should not pretend to be perfect, or be apologetic about our imperfection; at the same time, though, we must aim towards perfection.
We must not try to justify our existence or our right to exist. We also should not need to buy acceptance. What we need is to understand who we are, where we came from and where we are going. We Jews cannot escape our destiny. We are, in a way, like the prophet Jonah, who tried to run away from his duty and deny his destiny, but with the intervention of a Divinely sent big fish, accepted his mission in life and acted accordingly.
Our mission in life is to live according to the laws that G-d gave to Moses. Our light will illuminate the world when we become a living example of a true and meaningful human existence. We are part of humanity – in fact, a very positive and important part. However frail and dispensable on an individual basis, we are indestructible on a collective basis. Indeed, our existence defies logic. And one of the reasons for our continuity is that our system of belief has remained true to its fundamental contents, which has generally continued to serve the needs of our people.
In our system, G-d is the One and only One, King of the Universe, the Creator of life, energy/matter and space/time. And it is G-d who makes the rules that man lives by. At the same time, however, like most Western people, we live in a democracy, not a theocracy. We respect our rabbis, rather than worship them.
Some Jews are more superstitious than others; some are more spiritual. But while we may ask righteous people, dead or alive – whom we feel are closer to G-d – to help bring our prayers to Him, we do not worship any human being. We learn about our patriarchs and matriarchs, prophets and kings and we try to emulate them, or at least some of their positive qualities.
We are the “people of the book”. This “book” and “these people” live with the daily issues pertaining to both belief and bureaucracy, with their inherent conflicts. We have to confront possible contradictions and experience the consequent enrichment. We just live life one day at a time. Our “book” is well and alive in today’s world. It is relevant. It is actually modern. It is applicable. Our “book” is consistent. It is about living life and continuity of life. It is real and we are part of it.
One Shabbat I was in Florence and attended the magnificent old Sinagoga in Via Farini. After the service, the community had a small kiddush10 where Rabbi Levi spoke to us in Hebrew, English and Italian. It was the Shabbat of the Torah reading of the tabernacle with the well known verses we all sing every time we take out the Torah from the Aron Ha Kodesh11 and again replace it after the reading. Rabbi Levi chuckled and said that many of us Jews feel that our Judaism has been achieved by just being Jews, i.e. “simply belonging to the club”. But, he went on to explain that this was not an ending, but merely a beginning. All of us are on a journey. The journey is about learning and understanding and growing as a human being. Our journey never ends until we leave this earth at the end of our life.
10 Blessing over wine, accompanied with some snacks.
11 A closet or chest in which are kept the Torah scrolls used in the public worship of the synagogue.
Let us consider some other kinds of spiritual “bureaucracy”. There are many people who claim to believe in the One and only G-d, yet worship other things – mostly, the accumulation of wealth and power; and the general population, the “simple folk”, are manipulated to serve the “common good”. How does that happen? In non-democratic societies, people are “convinced” either by fear or by coercion, while in emancipated societies, this is achieved through rules and regulations, accepted standards of behaviour and the media; for conformity is so much easier and more comfortable than nonconformity.
The “bottom up” approach to communications and to influencing outcomes is to appeal to the intellectual side of individual people and to progress by appealing to their intrinsic logic and common sense. This is a very non-physical as well as a more creative and stimulating approach which works within societies where people have the capacity for free thought and free choice on an individual basis.
The “top down” approach to communications and to influencing outcomes is to create an environment of either euphoria (charisma) or of fear (despotism). This is a much more physical approach which has little need for intellect but may very well involve passion. This system is undemocratic and usually repressive. It requires the power of the masses and represses individual free thought as well as individual free choice. In fact, the individual citizen becomes generally unimportant to the mission.
Today, the “people of the book” are again under open and quite fashionable attack from “people of darkness”.
When the early Jews arrived in Rome, some three centuries before the destruction of the second temple in Jerusalem, i.e. about 2,300 years ago, they observed a strange holiday celebration.