What I Believe

BBS: Mayberry BBS
Date: 12-11-94 (22:29)              Number: 41
From: SHLOMOH SHERMAN   Refer#: 4259
To: TOMMY USHER                 Recvd: NO  
Subj: What I believe              Conf: (41) WN_Religion
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TU>>SS> * OLX 2.1 TD * Ecclesiastes 1:18

TU>>Interesting choice.  Your words echo those of the Preacher.

TU>>If I could be so nosy, what has brought you to this point?  I sense you
TU>>have suffered some hurt or loss.  And yet, I sense that you are not
TU>>willing to completely let go.

I suffered many years in a miserable marriage in which no one in my community, whether lay or cleric, was willing or able to be of help to me. In that community, INTIMACY was not allowed, not encourgaed. People treated each other in a beastly fashion. I was no exception to the ill treatment.

Life dragged on and became increasingly more painfull for me. I lost emotional and intellectual touch with the people who were suppowed to be my community, my surrogate family. I became a non-person in my community as I became a non-person in my marriage. Waking up and devoting my day to the service of G-d became tedious, and a bore. Finally something snapped and gave way. I began to feel the weight of being Orthodox at about the time I began to realize that there was no healing for my marriage. I walked out of that marriage and walked out of that community, and I walked out of that way of life without even knowing I was doing so - until one day I realized that I was just not in it anymore.

Being with people and being INTIMATE with them became more important than either being with Jews or serving G-d. Yet I was still tied to the religious community by a very thin wire - my daughter is still a religiously Orthodox Jew. My love for her has kept me on a thin tether. How can I be willing to completely let go of what I am? I had to explain this to Marlyn elsewhere because she had never met anyone like me and did not initially understand. When she first met me, she referred to Judaism as my "former" religion. I said - no. It is not my former religion. It is my religion. I am stuck with it as surely as I am stuck with being a Jew. I can never be anything else but what I am - regardless of the fact that I no longer believe. When the Jews celebrate the holidays, they come together to be close to God. When I celebrate them, I come to be close to the Jews.

The TALMUD says of the APIKORSIM that they used to "hang out" on the back steps of the synagogue. That is quite an image and I am sure that the men who wrote that 1800 years ago knew psychology at least as well as our modern psychologists. That image speaks loud and clear. The APIKORSIM had become defiled so that they no longer were able to take an active part in the day to day life of the community. They were not able to "sit with" the committed Jews in the synagogue. Yet they were also not able to LEAVE THE VICINITY of the synagogue - for where would they go? Even though they stepped out in to the non-Jewish world, they did not step that far that the back steps of the synagogue were ever completely out of thweir sight. But to me the most amazing thing about that image is this. That those still committed Jews inside the synagogue ALLOWED THE APIKORSIM TO SIT ON THE BACK STEPS AND DID NOT DRIVE THEM AWAY. On one day a year, the APIKORSIM would quietly open the back door and sneak inside, keeping a low profile. The Jews inside the synagogue knew fully well that the APIKORSIM had snuck back in but they pretended not to notice. That day was YOM KIPPUR, the Day of Atonement. As the service began, the one who lead the service intoned, "By the authority granted to us by the Heavenly Judge, we declare that it is permitted to pray alongside the sinners in Israel.