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My Epiphany: Why My Children Won't be Religious

I've got my issues with religion, but I always felt that religion is good for those who are able to buy it. If you can swallow all those myths/fabrications/legal fictions/laws/restrictions/beliefs/warped ethics, that bundle of bullshit, then I think you’re going to have a pretty happy life.

First of all, whenever anything goes wrong you can blame—or rather thank—God. You missed the train? Well, obviously God wants you to be on the next train. Or purify the Kingston Avenue station’s air a little longer. Or miss your appointment. Or whatever. Point is: God’s always watching out for you, making sure you miss the trains that you’ve got to miss, and make the trains that you’ve got to make. If you play the numbers 770613 every week, and the week you don’t play them, 770613 wins the jackpot, well God has a great plan up his sleeve that will work only if you don’t play 770613 punkt this week. You can trust God.

When things go right, it’s not just a-sheesh-that-was-lucky occurrence. Rather God Himself is peeking out from behind the clouds saying, “Great! I got a chance to repay my faithful servant Yukel Todres! Oh, I’m so glad he passed his test/found five dollars on the street/recovered from cancer! Y’know I almost killed him last week. His friends and family members were only producing an average of 92.3 chapters of Psalms a day—and the quota for lung cancer sufferers is at least 300 during the first two weeks of chemo. It’s a good thing they put his name on www.misheberach.com--those additional 37 misheberachs on Monday and Thursday and 423 on Shabbos just put him over the top!”

In short, Someone’s always looking out for you, making sure everything happens just when it should.

When it comes to decisions, religious people again have it easy. Should I go to LA or Toronto? Should I buy a Dell or Compaq? Should I accept the new position, or keep my old job? Should I get divorced or stay married to the bitch? Should I post something on my blog or read what some dead rabbi has to say about cooking chickens in human milk? (It’s prohibited because of ma’aris ayin in case you were wondering.) There is no such thing as a hard decision for a religious person. You weigh the factors, think it over a couple times… then ask your mashpia, follows what he says, and live happily ever after, because you know that no matter what, you got a guaranteed correct answer because your mashpia told you to do it. Great, isn’t it?

Of course religious people never need to ask themselves any hard questions, but that’s an entirely different subject.

The point is that religion a great security blanket for adults—if you can buy it. B’avoinoiseinu horabim (English: because life’s a bitch), some of us ask the tough questions, forcing us to make hard decisions and not allowing us to blame everything on God’s will. Well, it’s a tough life being a disillusioned yeshiva bochur. But once you taste the forbidden fruit (i.e. Richard Dawkins) there’s no going back into the garden.

As you can imagine, with my moderately benign view on religion, I thought that if any of my children would feel the need to BTify themselves (English: stick their heads in the ancient Talmudic/Hassidic sand) I would be thrilled. That child would have an easier, simpler and more certain life. Not to mention, s/he’d get along a lot better with the extended family.

Well, something happened today that changed my view forever. Today I met a bochur who works in my little brother’s yeshiva. My little brother just started yeshiva, and I’m very anxious to see him do well there—I wouldn’t want him to go through the hell I went through in that yeshiva. Anyhow, the bochur comes over to me and tells me how my little bro is doing.

Bochur: You’re brother is doing great!

Me: Cool! I’m glad to hear that!

Bochur (thinking that he’s sharing good news): I was sitting next to him at a farbrengen (English: indoctrination session) and he was pashut crying that Moshiach (English: Rabbi M. M. Schneerson, 1902-1994) isn’t here yet. He wasn’t doing it to show off, he really meant it!

Me: !!!!!!?????

And then I had my epiphany: When you’re religious, your life is not under your own control. Do you want to eat that split-pea soup—the one that was cooked in a dairy pot—together with a hot dog? Sorry, two dead rabbis argue about what another dead rabbi meant. So buddy, you got no choice but to listen to the more stringent of the two because we can’t, heaven forfend, risk disobeying the original dead rabbi (the one whose words we can’t understand). (Now in Yeshivish: it’s a machlokes Rama and Mechaber how to teitch the sugya of Dagim shealu beka’arah. See Code of Jewish Law, Yoreh Deah 95.)

Not only do dead rabbis tell you what to do. They also tell you what to believe. That's right, some guy who never stepped foot in a laboratory, knows more science than Albert Einstein. Did some dead rabbis say that bugs can form spontaneously from rotting garbage? Well then, we’ve got no choice but to believe it. Yes, I heard about Lois Pasteur, but how could Lois Pasteur know more than those ancient Babylonian rabbis? Look at it this way: just because no scientist ever saw spontaneous generation, doesn’t mean it can’t happen. Maybe those bugs are still generating themselves spontaneously as much as they did in Talmudic times, just they punkt can’t do it in a lab. The lab environment just doesn’t do it…

Or maybe those dead rabbis just didn’t know what they were talking about.

No way! Can’t be!

Listen, who are you fooling? Aren’t you the same one who said that bacteria couldn’t have generated spontaneously out of the primordial soup, because of irreducible complexity and the wondrousness of the DNA? Don’t kinim (that’s the bug that the Talmud says generates spontaneously) have DNA much more complex than ancient bacteria?

Well, I’m just gonna believe the Sages. After all, in Deuteronomy it says concerning the sages “You shall not turn away from the words which they tell you right or left.”

Hmm, it was the Sages who told you that’s what that verse means, no?

Sorry dear readers, I just got carried away arguing with myself. I am Jewish after all, and arguing is in my blood. Anyhow, the point is that if the rabbis tell you “This is how it is!” then that is how it is.

And that’s why I felt nervous after hearing that bochur’s report. For me, Yeshiva was one long pain in the ass, with a couple interludes of euphoria as I deluded myself that I was climbing towards heaven. After every interlude, I always fell back to earth with a thud. I’m glad that my brother isn’t going through that. He is enjoying the benefits of religion which I wrote about earlier.

But his life is not in his control. If some dead rabbi (in this case the Lubavitcher Rebbe) tells him, “You have to be ‘crushed and broken’ because we’re still in exile,” (see Ma’amer V’ato Titzaveh) he has to listen. He has no choice but to crush and break himself. Then that same rabbi says, “Moshiach is coming ut ut (English: Messiah is coming in 1992. Oops, 1992 was 18 years ago, well we’ll figure that one out eventually). Be happy and rejoice, because it’s happening right now!” Now my little bro has to be happy and joyful and crushed and broken simultaneously. It is doable. Rabbi Shimon Bar Yochi’s son (English: a figment of Moses de Leon’s imagination) did it—it says so at the end of Iggeret Hateshuva (English: a figment of Rabbi Schneur Zalman of Liadi’s imagination).

Even if it’s theoretically doable, it’s still very hard. Some people (think Detroit) just try to crush and break themselves. Other people (think Tzfat and the yellow circus in 770) just try to be happy and joyful. Nobody can just opt out of the entire mess, saying “The Messiah is the figment of some people’s imaginations (Isaiah, his cronies, the Lubavitcher Rebbe, and Pat Robertson). I think I’ll just live life and forget about your delusional happiness and joy as well as your never-to-be-relieved brokenness.”

No siree-sir. Opting out is not an option. If the Rebbe said it, then that’s how it is. It’s the sad truth. My brother can keep on crying (sincerely) that Moshiach hasn’t come. I think he’s gonna be crying for a long time, and there’s nothing he can do about it. His opinions are not his own. Once you accept the yoke of the religious authority (Hebrew: Kabolas ol) you lose all autonomy. And that is not something I want for my children.