Imagine a flock of birds winging overhead. Though to most of us at ground level all the members of the flock look alike, ornithologists have observed that within the flock, some individuals serve as sentry birds. Their job is to scan the horizon looking for predators and calling out warnings. Having a sentry is good for the group, but bad for the sentry in at least two ways - by keeping watch, the sentry has less time to gather food, and by issuing a warning call, it is more likely to be spotted by a predator. From the standpoint of Darwinian evolutionary theory then, it is clearly a tremendous advantage to be a non-sentry rather than a sentry. The puzzle is, then, how could the sentry gene survive for more than a generation or two? Wouldn't that gene go the way of all the other random mutations that are a disadvantage to the individual, because those individual birds would be less likely to reproduce and the gene in question would before too long die off? And yet, generation after generation, we observe those flocks with their sentries instinctively doing their job, often sacrificing themselves for the sake of the security and the future of the group 1. How are we to understand this riddle? Keep those birds in mind; I'm going to come back to them.
But first ...the last several years have seen the publication of several books whose purpose is to debunk the claims of religion. Christopher Hitchens' God is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything is a good example of this neo-atheist genre. For Hitchens, it is blindingly obvious that the great religions of the world all began at a time when we knew only a tiny fraction of what we know today about the origins of the Earth and of human life. It's understandable that those early humans would develop stories about gods or God to salve their ignorance2. But people today have no such excuse; we should know better. No intelligent design for Hitchens; no need to posit a Plan or a Planner behind the existence and complexity of the universe. Rather, rational inquiry and scientific progress will continue to unravel the riddles of the earth and of the creatures who inhabit it, as well as the wider universe, without unnecessary recourse to some higher being who brought it all into existence.
Richard Dawkins' book The God Delusion rejects Intelligent Design as well. Dawkins quotes Bertrand Russell, who said that while he can't prove that God doesn't exist, the existence of God is no more probable than belief in a celestial teapot orbiting the sun that is too small for our telescopes to detect. He can't prove there's no teapot, but it's pretty darn unlikely, and the same goes for God. Dawkins also has a particular gripe against the God of the "Old Testament", describing that God with great subtlety as "arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction: jealous and proud of it, a petty, unjust, unforgiving control freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully." (p.31). The result of this portrayal of God in Scripture according to all our atheist polemicists (and they're no more sparing in their criticism of God in other Scriptures by the way) is religions created in the image of that God, religions which have given the world things like stonings, witch-burnings, crusades, inquisitions, jihads, fatwas, suicide bombers, abortion clinic gunmen, pedophilic priests, sadistic residential schools, you name it.
Why did I spend so much time this summer immersed in atheist literature, and why am I sharing all this with you in shul on Rosh Hashanah? Is this how a rabbi shores up the faith of his flock? In other houses of worship, Dawkins and Hitchens might be quoted in order to show what heretics they are and that they will surely rot in hell. That's not my style, or my belief. As for the claim that they're heretics, my guess is that they would revel in the label. And as for hell, well -- if there is such a place, I imagine it's crowded with people who've done things a heck of a lot worse than writing books.
So if not to condemn them, why was I drawn to address some of the issues raised by these authors? Because I suspect that some of us, even if we might not express ourselves as forthrightly, might be able to identify with aspects of what they have written. We might feel discomfort with the discrepancies between the scientific world view which we're taught in school and the religious approach we learned in Jewish school or at shul or perhaps in the home. When we read the Bible, we might feel puzzlement or even anger about some of the ways in which God is described in those difficult passages which led Dawkins to his harsh denunciation. Certainly when we open our newspapers and read about the horrors committed in the name of religious faith, it is hard not to at least question whether religion is really beneficial in the world or not. John Lennon imagined that in utopia there would be "no religion too", and that harsh assessment of the destructive role religion has played and continues to play in human affairs deserves some kind of response. What better time to try to formulate such a response than at the New Year, when many of us reflect on issues of faith and identity more than at any other time of the year?
Dawkins condemns all religions, but I was of course particularly interested in his references to the Jews. He says he knows many intellectual atheists who proudly call themselves Jews and observe Jewish rites, either out of loyalty to an ancient tradition or to murdered relatives, but also out of what he calls a "confused and confusing willingness to label as 'religion' a pantheistic reverence for the wondrous natural world" (p.14). Pantheism is of course very far from traditional Jewish faith in a God who transcends nature, even intervenes in nature from time to time, a God who loves us and cares about us and, at this time of year, judges us. For Dawkins, coming to shul with pantheistic beliefs in mind like the notion that God is nature, beliefs which are so distant from those given expression to in our Tanakh and our machzor, violates the truth of what his Jewish friends really believe, and is therefore intellectually dishonest.
Is he right? While many of us here today come with a very strong faith in the supernatural God described in the Bible and rabbinic texts, others of us may be exceedingly doubtful (at best!) both with regard to the truth, and the utility of, our traditional religion. And yet here we are, back in shul this Rosh Hashanah as every year - taking precious days off from work or school, devoting limited financial resources to paying for shul memberships or tickets, praying the prayers, singing the songs, standing, bowing, listening to sermons, next week fasting and beating our breasts. What's going on here? Is our presence and commitment this new year simply a vestigial remnant left over from our ignorant hunter gatherer ancestors, perhaps akin to the human appendix - at best useless, and at worst life threatening? What are we doing here?
I found a possible clue in two novels that I read this summer. One is Jonathan Safran Foer's strange yet powerful Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close. The novel is told from the point of view of a nine year old boy in New York named Oskar who lost his father in the towers on 9/11. Rummaging through his father's closet one day, Oskar finds on a high shelf a jar with a key inside it. The key doesn't open any lock in the apartment or any other obvious place. Oskar spends the next several months trying to find the lock which that key opens, hoping that solving the mystery of the key would help him to understand his father better, and perhaps the meaning of his father's life and horrific death. When he finally figures out the solution to the mystery, he tells his grandfather that he found the lock. "I wish I hadn't found it," the boy says. "It wasn't what you were looking for?" the grandfather asks. "That's not it," Oskar replies. "Then what?" "I found it and now I can't look for it." (pp.303-304).
Something about the continuing search, as frustrating and quixotic as it was, gave Oskar comfort in his grief, and also provided a link between him and his father that was undermined by the apparent resolution of his quest. There was a truth that Oskar discovered about the lock, but there was a deeper truth about the father that still eluded him, and Oskar needed a way to keep searching for the latter truth even if the former quest was resolved.
The other novel I read this summer is very different, but I think bears a similar message. It is a French novel called A Corner of the Veil, by Laurence Cosse. It bears superficial resemblance to The Da Vinci Code, in that it concerns a conspiracy and cover-up inside the Catholic Church. But in the case of this novel, it's not an ancient mystery that is being covered up but rather something new - an obscure Jesuit priest derives an irrefutable empirical proof -- for the existence of God. Anyone who reads this proof finds that their life is immediately and irrevocably transformed. They lose all temporal ambition, and feel an indescribable oneness with the universe. As one character describes the effect of the proof, "God was no longer mysterious. Evil was no longer a mystery. God was no longer either heart-breaking or heartbroken, and the question that for centuries had woken men in the night would no longer arise, the hideous question of whether He had or had not a role in evil."
(p.29)
What makes the novel interesting is that, while we might have thought that the church would be absolutely delighted with this proof, as it clearly confirmed the existence of a belief which the church had been promoting for centuries, instead, the church hierarchy seeks to cover it up. One of the church officials who seeks to have the proof destroyed (along with those who had read it), explains his position as follows:
Doubt about the existence of God was the only formula viable for mankind. People who wanted to believe could believe; those who preferred not to didn't have to. No greater certainty for one than the other...Certainty, on whichever side, breeds fanaticism... at the Crusaders, the Inquisitors, as well as the atheist revolutionaries: all of them slashed and burned and guillotined, completely confident that they were doing the right thing. In the end, doubt is the only counterweight to human madness. It's reason, that's what doubt is. (pp.232-33).
And here we come to the essence of my argument with the atheist writers I've quoted - it's the difference between faith and knowledge. It is clear that God does not manifest Godself in the world in a way that is confirmed through our senses or - despite the conceit of the Cosse novel -- through rational proof. I'm a rabbi, and I still can't say that I know that God exists. At least not in the same way that I know that I'm 5'8" and that I have two daughters and that the earth revolves around the sun and that if I let go of an object it will fall or if I stub my toe it will hurt. No, my understanding of God is not in the realm of this kind of knowledge, but rather it is a belief, it is a trust, it is a faith. And faith by definition comes along with, is the flip side of the coin of - doubt. Doubt is not just an unfortunate byproduct of faith for those who aren't quite strong and resolute enough. Doubt is essential to faith because it's what makes faith faith and not knowledge. It's what keeps us searching for answers which, as Oskar searching for the meaning of his father's key figured out, is the thing that keeps us close to the object of our search.
Figuring it all out, what it all means, paradoxically puts us at a dead end. And so as much as we might dream of understanding why earthquakes have to happen, or why there are sights in the natural world that are so beautiful they can take your breath away, or why certain kids get cancer, or why people are created with the capacity to pilot passenger planes into skyscrapers, or why people are created with the capacity to go down into a dangerous mine in order to rescue trapped friends, and as much as we might dream of understanding what the meaning of our life and our purpose here on earth is, how the universe came into being, who or what God really is and what we're supposed to do for Her - all that needs to and will remain elusive. We can attain beliefs about such things, whether they are the beliefs that we are reared with by our parents, or other beliefs that we adopt later on. But however or wherever we acquire them, those beliefs will never in this world become knowledge. Just as we don't know that the claims of our religion are true, we also don't know that the claims of the atheists are true. And that's a good thing, because as the Cosse book makes clear, it is knowledge that leads to arrogance and fanaticism, whereas doubt comes along with a healthy dose of humility. "It's reason, that's what doubt is."
Here's a story about faith from our own tradition, which I think makes this point well. It's from the 18th century, from the early days of Hasidism. Once there was a learned man, a man who prided himself on his education, and who boasted of being modern and enlightened. He made a practice of going from one rabbi to another to debate with them about their faith and refute all their claims and arguments, which he considered hopelessly old fashioned.
Finally he came to Levi Yitzhak, the rabbi of Berditchev, hoping to prove him wrong as well. When he entered the rabbi's room, he saw him pacing back and forth, a book in his hand, immersed in ecstatic thought. The rabbi took no notice of his visitor. But after a while the rabbi stopped, looked into the man's eyes and said, "Perhaps it is true after all!"
The man was shaken; he could not speak. Then Rabbi Levi Yitzhak spoke gently to his guest. "My son, the great Torah scholars with whom you argued wasted their words on you. After you left them, you laughed at what they had said. They could not place God on the table before you, they could not show you God's reality, and neither can I. But think my son, just think! Perhaps it is true. Perhaps it is true after all."
The enlightened man made the utmost effort to reply, but the word "perhaps" beat on his ears again and again, and he departed in silence.
How does Levi Yitzhak respond to his visitor? He doesn't reject him or attack him for his doubts. He doesn't debate with him either, but states flat out that he can't offer definitive proof that God is real. He offers him, instead, just one word: perhaps.
It doesn't sound like much at first, to those of us who crave certainty. But, as Rabbi Janet Marder teaches, immature faith is rooted in certainty, a conviction that it alone possesses the truth. It cannot tolerate ambiguity or doubt; it is threatened by opposing views. Far stronger is a Jewish faith that is rooted in "perhaps."
A faith that is built around "perhaps" would make killing someone over a Mohammed cartoon, or conducting an inquisition, or shooting down worshippers at a mosque in Hebron much less likely. A faith that is built around "perhaps" means that we don't conceive of God as a giant parent in the sky who will intervene to get us out of trouble and solve our problems - rather, it's a faith that implies we must face reality and solve our own problems, as best as we possibly can, without any assurance that the good will be rewarded and the wicked punished. The Dawkins and Hitchens crowd might consider this kind of assurance-free, unproven or unprovable, faith to be foolish or hypocritical, but our Jewish tradition has always seen a faith that is maintained in the absence of assurances to be particularly meritorious. The very first Jew, Abraham, figured out at Sodom and Gomorrah that there are no guarantees of justice from God. He might not have understood why not (as we do not), but he didn't lose his faith in God. And in the Talmud, when a boy falls off a ladder while performing a mitzvah and is killed, the sight of this tragedy causes one prominent rabbi to deny the existence of God altogether. But in response, the answer his colleagues give is eminently practical: the ladder was probably rickety (Kiddushin 39b). Olam k'minhago noheg - Nature pursues its normal course, and is morally neutral. So bridges collapse, and levees burst, and tectonic plates shift, and tsunamis form, and bombs dropped from airplanes fall and kill innocent people. We can't expect God to appear as deus ex machina to make things all right. But that doesn't mean that God doesn't exist. Our faith tells us that He does, and that our lives therefore have the meaning and significance and purpose that stems from divine intentionality and ongoing divine caring. We just shouldn't forget to tighten the bolts on our bridges and overpasses.
If God isn't a certainty that we can rely on in an already confusing world, if God doesn't intervene reliably in nature to make things work out all right for those of us who behave ourselves, then what is the value of faith? What is the benefit of working towards or maintaining or nurturing a belief that will never be confirmed, or bring us material benefit even if it does turn out to be true?
For me, what makes faith so important is that it reinforces all those very real parts of my life which are also not subject to empirical verification. When my father alav hashalom lay dying in a hospital bed, unconscious, and we stayed with him, and we talked to him and we sang to him his favourite songs, and told and retold favourite stories of his, and stroked his arm, and just kept him company, there was no confirmation or proof that any of that was having any effect on him whatsoever. And yet we did it and it was right that we did it, partly because it felt good for us at such a sad time, but also, and here's where faith comes in, because I believe that on some level not observable on any scientific instrument our presence did make a difference to him and provided him with some comfort in his dying hours.
When people in our shul volunteer at Out of the Cold in the winter, or write to their MP about Darfur, or look for ways to reduce their carbon imprint, or go make a Shabbat service for old folks at Kensington Gardens Nursing Home who are in advanced stages of dementia, there is no evidence that any of that really makes a difference. The homeless are still homeless the next day, the genocide in Darfur grinds on, the greenhouse gases we send up to the atmosphere are still increasing, and the old people at the home leave the service as confused or as sleeping as they were when they came in. So why do we do these things? I think we do them on faith. We don't know that we're making a difference, but we act anyway, because perhaps we are. In such a confusing and complicated world, we don't know what's right, but we can't use that lack of knowledge as an excuse to avoid action.
Faith operates in our lives in many realms which don't appear to have anything to do with God. When people marry, what an extraordinary act of faith that is! You undertake commitments and obligations to another human being with no guarantee whatsoever as to how it's going to work out. It's the same when we have kids, or when we take a new job. It's the same when we as a society make crucial decisions like about the Afghanistan mission, or funding faith based schools. Or when Israel faces its existential decisions about war and peace and national identity. In the absence of knowledge of how these things are going to work out, faith is what enables us to act. Without these things, without that willingness to act based on a hunch, on a "perhaps", I think most of us would agree that our lives would be much the poorer.
This is the zone where we all spend a lot of time. The zone of belief, not knowledge. And that zone is where my faith in God resides as well, and although it's not a certainty it's enough to make me want to live a full Jewish life in accordance with the mitzvot of our ancient tradition. And now at last I want to come back to those sentry birds I was talking about at the beginning. What makes them do what they do? Why sacrifice for the good of the group? It's not rational when we look at the individual. Just like it's not rational that you're all here on a Thursday when you could be getting ahead at your workplace or in school or just relaxing at home. You're all giving up something to be here, and lots of you are giving it up for a faith which is mixed up with a lot of doubt. Why? Why are we holding on after all the centuries of persecution? Why are we holding on when we have arrived in a society that allows us to just blend in if we so choose? Because we have faith, (not knowledge) that being here is important, and bestows dignity beyond the workaday responsibilities that usually occupy us.
I can't blame anyone for giving up on religion. Every day provides new fodder for religion's critics. So many abuses have been committed in the name of religion; it's enough to make one want to throw up one's hands in disgust at the whole enterprise. That's what the Hitchens and Dawkins crowd think we should do. It's a free country, thank God, and they are entitled to their opinions. But I think, I believe, that our lives as individuals and as a people would be the poorer without these ancient ideas which, as Levi Yitzhak would say, perhaps are true after all. If our engagement with the life of faith happens in the context of "perhaps", it leads to something very different from either jihad, or atheist screeds. It avoids grandiose pronouncements, absolute assurances, or denigration of others. Respecting the world's complexity, it leads us to assertions of belief which are gentle, modest, and humble3, yet which are strong enough to motivate us to act, even without empirical proof that our actions make a difference, or will achieve the desired result. It's not easy to maintain a modest faith, in the presence of those with certain knowledge pulling us to one side or the other. Paradoxically perhaps, we must be militant in our modesty if we are to hold our own. Luckily, we have each other in this effort. Especially at this time of year, we have each other in great numbers, affirming the nobility of an ancient tradition whose truth is not certain, allowing that tradition to help us move forward to being better people in the year to come, allowing it to help us find comfort in being part of a community, allowing it to help us mark moments of celebration in our lives, and also moments of loss, allowing it to help us connect with something bigger than ourselves.
And that, at the end of the day, is what we're really doing here this Rosh Hashanah. Allowing our tradition in, to help us.
We are blessed to live in a time and place where, in contrast to those sentry birds, we are not asked to give up our lives for the group. Our sacrifices are less dramatic, but are still real. Some might be: time spent in Hebrew school when you could be playing ball; frustration over some of what goes on in Jewish communal life; agonizing over the ethical dilemmas posed by the existence in our time of a sovereign, but vulnerable, Jewish state; the psychic energy expended on wrestling with difficult texts, or practices, from our tradition; precious funds that are expended on Jewish education, synagogue membership, contributions to Jewish charities, trips to Israel; time away from work and school to be with the community on holidays like these, and on Shabbat. All these are sacrifices which, if we as individuals make them, will strengthen the group as a whole and will, I believe, also ennoble us as individuals. Is it all worth it, for the sake of a "perhaps"? My faith, says yes.
Shanah Tova.