I visit my wife in the bathtub most mornings. A ritual of unemployment, or of the new employment, the home office. My wife is into yoga, and she told me about the feeling of a world community in yoga: anywhere she goes in the world, she can find a group of likeminded people engaged in an exercise that has a spiritual component and, like other religious congregations, calls on its members to be their best selves.
It reminded me of what a friend had said at his son's bar mitzvah not long ago. The son was the product of an intermarriage and the friend, giving the parent's speech that has become a staple of bar mitzvah celebrations, explained why he had compelled his son to take part in a tradition that he might well abandon the minute the tent was down. Because, he said, he will always be part of a community that goes round the world. In India or Australia, he will be able to find a group of kindred souls. And that community is not just extra-territorial, but extra-temporal: it goes back thousands of years. The words he says were murmured thousands of years ago, too.
At the time it had seemed to me a little mechanical. But my wife said that she likes the fact that yoga goes back thousands of years. You like feeling that it's not a fad, that it's tried and true, she said. It's not like phrenology or something.
Like my own, my wife's original religious community is in a crisis. In my case, organized Jewry is worried about the trend I represent, intermarriage, and is marshalling forces against the demographic threat. In my wife's case, the liberal Protestants aren't going to church any more. The Episcopal church is being rocked by change.
I have to believe that the trend in her church is related to the change in mine: that intermarriage, or the idea that it represents, of the uselessness of our relatively narrow religious traditions in a multicultural age, is affecting the privileged Protestants as much as it is privileged Jews (Let me say it again; we're the richest group by religious denomination in the U.S., per Pew). And of course many of the privileged Protestants are marrying Jews, being in the same ruling-class cohort. Thus: yoga. People have a hunger for lasting, global religious communities that address the actual conditions of their lives.
The Islamophobes use yoga to attack Islam: Globe: Throwing Rocks at Muslims.
Its true. People seek meaning in life.
There are MANY parallels of Jewish religious thought (not the neo-religious nationalist form) to yogic thought. Even the idea of an exceptional mission passed on by combination of genes and teaching.
In Tantra thought for example, the primary metaphor is of inner struggle, to remember the profanity that supercedes and saturates the mundane. In Jewish thought similarly, and even in similar terms. I've heard Sufis speak of Jihad in the same language, as PRIMARILY an inner struggle to manifest the profound and certain.
In Ananda Marga philosophy, there is a concept of "sad-vipra" which refers to the cultivation of personality and community to "turn the corner" on primary social fulcrum. ONLY those that are firmly and consistently committed to a very high and authentic standard of ethics in thought, word and deed, are even prospectively capable of that turning.
For most, social action, even social comment, is partially a form of personal compensation, and NOT a clear and artful social jiu-jitsu, not leadership in any substantive form.
Even "cutting through the bullshit", is barely a starting point to that vocation.
I told a Chabad friend about my plan to see Norman Finkelstein speak last night. I expected him to be very defensive and say something like "well, there are many self-hating Jews". His response was that Israel has not acted in a moral manner, and that has borne unintended consequences, that there were other options. He did repeat the oft-quoted line "Its just to kill someone before they kill you." And, he acknowledged that avoidably killing or harming civilians was not that.
I said that the spirit of Abraham motivated me. "If there are ten righteous in the city, spare it." Stated to God, entreatingly, beyond just conversation.
I told him that I've met more than ten Palestinians that I consider humane, righteous, morally courageous, which he took in.
For those that CARE about their ethical practise, THAT is the way to reach them, to convey clearly that the "other" are human, and that there are many that are willing to reconcile in a fundamental way.
It confronts the neo-religious rationalization that somehow taking the land is commandment of Torah. It can be argued that that is a spiritual materialism, a form of idolatry.
It can't be argued insincerely. It can't be argued in anger.
Wittyisms galore as per usual.
You know, as an atheist and product of mixed marriage myself, Phil strikes me as intolerant of those who want to pursue traditional religious faith.
I know he likes to dress it up in progressiveness etc…but it boils down to plain old hard boiled intolerance. That's why he attracts a lot of haters to this blog.
Thanks Witty.
No thanks Suzanne. Except you are correct in one respect: you are the hater, the intolerant voice. We see that very clearly. Glad to know you are absolutely sure there is no God of any nature whatsoever.
Phil,
There's another side to your inter-marriage theme, and that is the decision to not have children, to not pass on either genes, personality, lifeway.
If it wasn't by decision, please forgive me.
aha! So I am the one attracting (and quoted by) David Duke and Stormfront.
I had NO idea.
Anyway…one of the regulars (an attempt to make the anti-zionists look more numerous, perhaps?) has a wee bit of a problem with my atheism. So very tolerant. NOT!
"the uselessness of our relatively narrow religious traditions"
So – you're nearly completely disconnected from the Jewish community, but are trying to portray yoga as some different kind of community? I don't get it unless you buy into the religious practices that underly traditional yoga, in which event you're substituting one religion for another. Yoga is practiced by religious Jews, religious Muslims, religious Catholics and non-religious. It's no more of a "community" than are people in spin classes or running leagues etc.
In fact, you're real religious group that you belong to now is Anti-Zionism. It is a self-contained belief system that Israel can do no right and is always in the wrong. It doesn't admit to any other viewpoint than that Israel shouldn't exist and doesn't abide any rationalist arguments for the existence of a Jewish state or any criticisms based on the hypocrisy of supporting the fascist Hamas regime as a necessary component of the Anti-Zionist belief.
So Phil may say he's an atheist, but he has substituted a deity-based religion with a cause-based religion which is as un-yielding towards heretics and infidels as any religion, and, which in the case of Anti-Zionism, has the negative energy of being against other people living their lives within their age-old culture. Phil – unless you are living the culture, please don't pretend to be part of it. You are part of your anti-Zionist cult now – that is what defines you and that is your community. But, unlike Zionism where one can be proud of the culture and the success of the Israelis, and actually want to live in the society that they have created, how many non-Palestinian anti-Zionists would actually want to live in even a Palestinian-controlled Tel Aviv, with Hamas mandating Sharia law restrictions on your life? The answer is none – and that is why your anti-Zionist racist-based religion is hollow and doomed to be unfulfilling for you. Go practice yoga – it will relax you and may actually clear your head to get rid of your hateful prejudicial new doctrine that you've adopted as your life's creed.
"the uselessness of our relatively narrow religious traditions"
One more point. Do you include Islam in the traditions that are "useless". If so, what is your point in fighting for yet another Islamist-run state? Do you think they will just give it up if Israel goes away, or do you believe, with Netanyahu, that land doesn't matter, but the economic improvement of the Palestinians is the real goal and way to achieve peace. Maybe you are a Likudnik after all.
The Episcopal Church is fragmenting because its leadership fell completely for the idolatry of our "multicultural age."
They forgot that people need boundaries in their communities, and the knowlege that others in their communities respect the same scriptures, rituals, and traditions. These common, tribal qualities, have the power to link the past with the present and the future.
I have often agreed with Witty's remarks about your religious life, Phil. I think that are missing out on a great deal. The equation of Judaism with political Zionism, liberalism, or bagels is a very recent historical phenomenon.
I hope that you will give Torah (well, the whole Tanakh, actually) a serious chance sometime. Human beings have not changed so much since biblical times as we would sometimes like to believe.
@ Witty
"Phil,
There's another side to your inter-marriage theme, and that is the decision to not have children, to not pass on either genes, personality, lifeway."
What are you driving at Mister Witty? I find myself agreeing with Phil nearly all the time, and I have an inter-marriage, and we decided to have children. My wife likes yoga too. What's your point? Please explain. Thanks.
@ Fenton & David F
When I look at history I see religion and ethnic chauvinism or any combo of them, like nationalism, as being at least as much a force for bad as for good. Face it, some people embrace more of the world than others. Actually those who do not have always been in the majority, and it's arguable that is because
they simply have less courage, empathy, and imagination, whether through nature or nurture. Of course security is a worthy objective–everybody would like that. Now, again, who's missing out?
Phil
Tell your bar mitzvah friend that the bar mitzvah was only invented in 1848.
"The words he says were murmured thousands of years ago, too." No, they weren’t.
Here’s the story.
[As for your statement: People have a hunger for lasting, global religious communities that address the actual conditions of their lives, you’re dead right. This will be made more apparent as the Millennials grow, and become 92 million voting strong by 2016.]
Jewish History, Jewish Religion, Israel Shahak, pg. 27
Thanks MRW–that's a slice of history suggesting I'm not all wet. And just look at the USA today–the life
all citizens can enjoy compared to other times in history.
Suzanne, you seem to be totally obsessed with david Duke and Stormfront, as if their very existence proved something. There is no rational argument behind your continual invocation of them, unless it is that we need total thought control in the USA to prevent such types from ever arising — a position which no one will share, if you state it explicitly, since it makes Stalin look like a liberal.
David Duke LOVES the Shahak book that MRW just endorsed as part of his neo-nazi library collection.
The Mondoweiss-David Duke-Stormfront connection gets more and more obvious every day.
How shallow can you get–Suzanne's guilt by association theme. Doesn't hasbara have anyone better to offer? David Duke is more astute than our Suzanne. He at least tries to convince us in more sophisticated ways. Must be her low IQ.
She just doesn't see that the fact that x likes y says nothing about y as such.
The real rationale behind her making this link ought to be 'giving aid and comfort to' – at least that's intelligible – but nobody explained this to her.