A friend sent me this interview with the late Israel Shahak the other day, the anti-religious chemistry scholar and author. It’s very good. Shahak puts anti-Semitism in the category of xenophobia, and puts anti-Christian activity in the same category. I like when Shahak does not dispute the flowering of Jewish genius across Europe in the 1800s. He says that it came about because Jews overthrew their religious authorities, the rabbis, who would give them 613 rules to live their lives by.
I was reading Keith Richards’s beautiful autobiography this morning, penned by James Fox of White Mischief; and it begins as a social history of England during and after the war, and Richards says that his family was always irreligious. They never set foot in churches. Richards’s earthy spirit was in a renegade family tradition.
Organized religion is all around us; they were all against gay people, right? Islamic societies are sorely in need of reformation, the Vatican is full of shadows, and in Jewish life, the religious feelings around Israel are now formally shutting down the secular tradition of freethinkers. Because everyone must say that it is fine and dandy for religious zealots to burn a Palestinian shepherd’s flock alive. Oh, that can be explained! And the entire American Jewish establishment bites its tongue about it and breaks bread with fundamentalists. God help us.
So in this holiday season, I give thanks to irreligion. This site wouldn’t be here without it.
