It’s hard to be a Jew, insists an old Yiddish saying. The degree of difficulty has increased lately with escalating antisemitism and rising intra-Jewish discord over the nature and conduct of Israel.
It’s even harder to be a humanistic Jew. We see ourselves as part of the greater Jewish experience, though as nontheists we reject the traditional belief that Jewish law is divinely ordained or inspired. We look to human ethics and agency. Yet recent human behaviour – from persistent racial and religious discrimination to ongoing wars of aggression, from the selfishness fueling climate change to the mass obliviousness toward Covid – hardly inspires confidence in our species.
Where, then, do we find sources of happiness and hope? Holocaust scholar Deborah Lipstadt, the U.S. State Department’s antisemitism envoy, recently addressed the Jewish portion of that equation.
She encouraged an audience at a New York synagogue to “bring the joy” of Judaism, the New York Jewish Week reported. “We have to be as much propelled by the pulls as we are enraged by the pushes,” she said.
What are those “pulls”? I recently posed that question to members of the humanistic Victoria Jewish Culture Project during our weekly Zoom discussion. One participant mentioned her love of Jewish learning through books, online classes, and research, then sharing that knowledge with others.
Another member spoke of tikkun olam, the Hebrew term for “repairing the world.” Indeed, he’s an activist in the local Jewish and arts communities. One of us studies and sings in Yiddish, a thousand-year-old Jewish language. “I feel like I’m tasting the same flavours and spices that my ancestors did,” she explains. I remarked that Jewish music, which I collect, study, and share on a radio show, excites me as an expression of the Jewish spirit and window into my people’s history.
Several of us agreed that Jewish humour – poking fun at ourselves, appreciating irony, and “laughing through the tears” – helps us cope with problems large and small.
To find joy and hope in humankind writ large, I begin on the personal level, reminding myself to treasure the friends and family who have sustained me emotionally, spiritually, and even physically. I marvel that friendship and love can link people across thousands of kilometres, a lifetime, and even after death.
I’m also encouraged that I’ve learned from some of my many mistakes, as other people learn from theirs. And I’m inspired by the activists, artists, scholars, and everyday folks who strive to understand, elucidate, and improve the world.
This academic year, I’m honoured to be the Winnifred Lonsdale Graduate Student Fellow at the University of Victoria’s Centre for Studies in Religion and Society. The centre brings together scholars from around the world to conduct interdisciplinary research on topics that concern religion and public life. Fellows, former fellows, and staff regularly gather to hear and discuss scholarly presentations. Topics have included achieving equality within various nations and helping youth cope with the emotional and physical effects of climate change. The conversations are always respectful and inevitably mind-expanding as the group explores fresh ways to understand and improve our world.
The overriding lesson for me is that in a complex, often distressing world, we can achieve happiness and cultivate hope through embracing community and pursuing our own interests within that community.
Then we must support and learn from others who undertake similar quests. Let’s also be open to teachers who enhance our learning, and role models who inspire our doing.
I dare say this approach – humanistic for me – would also work within a religious framework. If that would be your path, blessings upon you.
Andy Muchin is a member of the Victoria Jewish Culture Project, a graduate student in public history at the University of Victoria, the Winnifred Lonsdale Graduate Student Fellow at UVic’s Centre for Studies in Religion and Society, and host of the “Sounds Jewish” radio program available at PRX (https://exchange.prx.org/series/32262-sounds-jewish).
You can read more articles on our interfaith blog, Spiritually Speaking at https://www.timescolonist.com/blogs/spiritually-speaking
* This article was published in the print edition of the Times Colonist on Saturday, July 20th 2024.
