Nadene Goldfoot
Alan Dershowitz asked in his book, The Vanishing American Jew, back in 1997 which I'm just reading again for the 2nd time, of what is the essence of Judaism?
To me, the essence of a Jew leads to all of us grandparents telling our children and grandchildren why they should follow our path and why they are expected to do so, and of course, this becomes the responsibility of the parents. For me, it's about being Jewish; thus, getting to the essence of being Jewish.
Why shouldn't we just forget our religion and meld into society and be like everyone else. After all, as Dershowitz's story is about a good example of the fact that our Torah (Old Testament and being the chosen Jewish people) are the basis of our religion. Lots of people read it so it's part of the Christian religion, too. Presbyterians say they're now the chosen people. Jews are no longer in vogue. What does religion have to do with G-d or how we view G-d?
The discussion continued with defending Judaism by the fact that we have been persecuted for thousands of years with people trying to convert us to their ways of religion. We all share a common history and destiny. One could say that Blacks and Armenians have also been persecuted people. Today's young people don't feel persecuted and do not have a share in these histories. We haven't had to stick together and fight any common enemies, and the Russians aren't after Jews in the USA. We aren't worried about it.
To me, the essence of Judaism is the belief that there is one unseen G-d, and it was the belief of our ancestors so long ago when people believed in a multitude of gods, pretty much reflecting the rulers on earth who lived in the upper skies above us. We were made of stuff that was different from others in our steadfast stubbornness.
Something was special about this essence. I saw our G-d as a force, as we didn't draw pictures or make statues of it. It wasn't carbon-based as all life was on earth, plant, animal, human, it was a force that was awesome that our ancestors could pray to and argue with if necessary. It is a force that was within each of us as well as without us, making us something special, carrying this force, causing us to hear it like another voice in our minds, making us all the children of G-d. It has been reaching us ever since the days of Abraham knowingly.
That G-d within our people led us to how we view and treat others with justice, understanding, care, importance in the same manners we desire others to treat us which is the essence of our teachings. That the height of goodness is to save a life and not to take a life, is the expectation that breaks with the manner in which so many were sacrificing people in order to gain the good will of the gods, makes me so proud to have the genes of such people.
The essence of Judaism is justice was a fact brought up in Dershowitz's book. We started justice with Abraham debating with G-d over the people of Sodom that had to be treated with justice by not all being killed.. Jews have been the leaders of the Civil Rights Movements. A debater could say that there's lots of different people doing this today. Many persecuted people are marching for justice, demanding it. The ultra-Orthodox haven't really mixed into these public affairs, so justice must not be the essence of the religion because it's the secular Jews, the atheist Jews who are active.
I say it's a compulsion within us that is 4,000 years old, having started with Abraham. It's the feeling of rejection of things that do not fit into your own sense of identity, what you feel is right. Abraham did this by rejecting his father's belief in idols and and whole milieu of many gods that needed sacrifices to keep them on the people's side, helping them to live.
It's a feeling of not having to be like sheep and do what the crowd is doing but standing for bringing about the right things in life that make life for all much better. It's that feeling of being inquisitive and learning about all there is to know about this planet; education.
We're said to be stiff-necked, and that is part of our essence. We are individuals and not like herds of people. We can stand alone if need be. You can put 2 of us together on an island and they might build 3 synagogues; one for each and the 3rd for the one neither would be caught dead in. We will wind up debating with each other, but all the while defending each other's lives. Each is a king in his own castle. Each is equal, especially in the synagogue. Yet we have our own social order of men who are either Cohens, Levites and Israelites. Each his his own responsibilities in the synagogue that were laid down by Moses.
The essence of Judaism is different from other religions as it is also an inherited religion; so it means close family connections. If your mother was Jewish, you are Jewish, and you're Jewish whether or not you attend synagogue on a Friday night or Saturday morning, or if you enjoy Manischewitz grape wine or not, or even if you believe in one G-d or none. Today, you're Jewish if only your Dad is Jewish as that's accepted as being Jewish by the Reform and Conservative Jews of today. That's the way it was in the day of Abraham and Moses, too, through the fathers, but they realized later that one could prove who mother was while it dawned on them, that they weren't sure about the father. Besides that fact, it's so often only the mother who does the actual teaching about our religion from birth onto an older age when children listen and learn and fathers can tolerate them.
Hopefully, children of such a family line will want to learn and be interested if they have 2 good role-models. For they should see a typical family of values, loving and kind practicing the Jewish values that children can imitate.
The essence of Judaism is not about what happens to us when we die, making us again different from other main-stream religions. It's essence is how we treat each other. It's the 10 Commandments that Moses brought down from Mt. Sinai and all the examples that go along with it. In fact, 613 rules have been found that are mostly what we all do absent-mindedly, part of our normal routines.
The essence of our teachings was summed up in the Golden Rule; Don't do to others that which you wouldn't want to happen to you.
This Jewish fellow got out of Germany in the nick of time; smart as he was....born in Ulm, Germany in 1879, worked in Berne. Left in 1933 when things were popping; an American citizen by 1940, Albert Einstein.
We're a people who are known for our famous Yiddicher Cup-our mind. We were learning to read and write almost 4,000 years ago, that comes with the DNA that we have inherited down the ages, even intermarrying people we shared DNA with, sometimes knowingly and later, unknowingly like an aunt and uncle I have-one from Germany and the other with ancestors from Lithuania. That ties us in celebrations that are unique to us only, to our special foods, to our insistence on eating only kosher foods, to our culture that is unique. That alone has kept up together, a people that are endogamic: pertaining to or characterized by the custom of marrying only within the limits of a clan or tribe..
For a rare people who should be on the endangered list along with Indonesia’s Sumatran Elephants , we've been lax in teaching our own children our very special history; only passing down certain historic events that we still honor and remember by holidays. We've got so many of them accumulated for so many years that we've had no time for our general history that can be found in its original state in our Tanakh (Old Testament). I can attest to that because I was a Sunday School teacher. I'm not even sure that the Yeshivas spend any time on it since they devote more time on the art of debate by presenting the thoughts and dealings of our famous rabbis on points of laws mastered in Judaism.
For those of us taking an actual history class on the Middle East today, I found that some colleges are presenting presentations coming from the minds of Muslims, which don't always coincide with our well-known history also validated in other country's history books. Case in point was my experience with the text-book, "Middle East Past & Present by Yahya Armajani and Thomas M. Ricks. I was irked, but younger and shyer and wrote a good historic, hoping to let my instructor learn a thing or two essay in my final which got me a good grade anyway.
And here we are, with people from all walks of life and all religions, finding we are being left in the dust by the many Muslims, who are still holding onto our mutual belief system of One G-d, only their way is quite different from our way of thought in this matter. We both have the essence of understanding that One G-d is creator of the world, but they have missed the boat, not having our rabbis who many can claim to be descendants of Moses's brother, Aaron and Moses' teachings that the essence was the teachings which are about how to treat others under all conditions, and here we have parted paths somehow, especially in today's world.
My father was an example of a cultured Jew only, not a religious one. He was born in Portland, Oregon in 1908 where there were just a sprinkling of Jews in the small population, but his father was killed in an accident by 1912 and his mother, uneducated from Lithuania, couldn't read, write nor speak English; a widowed immigrant, and his mind was always set on one thing; provide for his family. He entered school as a Yiddish speaker only. The essence of his religion, Judaism, showed up many times-as a kosher butcher by occupation, with ways of improvement in his business that contained much higher goals, with how he treated his workers, people he dealt with, his wife, all without any religious practice. He helped so many of them, in their business, bringing many home for dinner. He had pride in his Jewishness, and for him that essence was the acceptance of responsibility for the lives dear to him. He died at 59, an overworked enlarged heart and the multiple physical ailments he had in 1967---not in the Sixty-Seven War in Israel but in Portland, Oregon working hard causing him to be taken to the hospital.
Resource:
The Vanishing American Jew by Alan M. Dershowitz, (famous lawyer)
PS: During these 2 + years when I dare not enter our city library, I'm re-reading or reading books in my own that I had on hand, and this was my 2nd reading of this book. I'm getting a lot more out of it this time as our number are vanishing. Even I myself am a dual citizen of Israel and the USA; and am a yored with my heart in Israel.
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