Work Gods

    I finally got around to reading a fascinating piece forwarded to me by a Temple Sholom congregant from the New York Times, entitled "When Your Job Fills in for Your Faith, That's a Problem" by Dr. Carolyn Chen.

    I was reminded of a High HolyDay sermon series that my father gave decades ago at Temple Beth El in Somerville.  He brought up how people exercise (in those ancient days, he noted playing tennis, not pickleball) "religiously" and wondered what the metaphor meant when people no longer practiced their religion religiously.  (I personally have always been fascinated by the American mindset that takes a spiritual practice like yoga, culturally appropriates it into an exercise practice, and then re-spiritualizes it as a spiritual discipline.)

    The article talks about how people's free time that they previously gave to religious and service communities is now taken up by work (without even mentioning how e-mail has put everyone to work 24/7) but emphasizes how companies have built up work cultures that fill particular personal needs that religious communities have heretofore filled, such as personal fulfillment and a moral framework.  I am reminded of certain drugs that fit into dopamine receptors in the brain that mimic natural body processes of feedback, that create shortcuts that lead to addiction and cut off healthy response.  The piece mentions what happens when a person who has found this type of faith community in their work moves on to another job, and the loss of support.  I would argue that one of the points of a faith community is not just to find a place to strengthen your moral code, but also to find people outside of the other cohorts of your life (in different fields, of different ages, in different life situations) to balance the mono-cultures in which we may find ourselves for the majority of our weekday hours.  It is tough to find support for losing your job from the people you no longer work with and see everyday, all day.

    The more insidious aspect is the creep of workplaces consciously proselytizing themselves as sources of purpose and meaning in life. Certainly, it is hoped that as many of us as possible can find meaning in our employment, and even feel that what we are doing makes the world a better place and is good for others as well as ourselves.  However, most work is for companies that, in the end, need to turn a profit or benefit their shareholders.  Even in the non-profit world, there is still a bottom line in the budget.  The ideal may be benefiting the world, but the paycheck is still slave to the means to do so.  For many, the idea of volunteering - of giving without getting any money back - is actually a welcome change, and needful contrast to the daily grind.  We must also lift up those who work long hours, with little rest, in unpaid positions - giving care to family members - who may find the chance to volunteer outside of home and family a welcome breath of fresh air and a place to have different conversations with different people.

    We talk a great deal about "work/life balance" as if the two are opposed.  Perhaps companies have begun to respond to this dialectic by coopting life into work.  We need not hold the two as opposites, but we can also spend the time to find communities of purpose (and faith) that give us other ways to engage than those we are being compensated for.

Made Up God

It has been a while since I last posted here.  I want to get back to sharing what congregants have shared with me, to broaden conversations, especially those that help us and give life, rather than diminish it.

    Susan Sedwin shared with me this morning, an Op-Ed from the New York Times by Scott Hershovitz, which you can find here.  I had also read it this morning and thought about God, and how we discuss God,* as well as thinking rather positively about how we teach God here at Temple Sholom.

    Michelle and I have a difference of approach.  When someone tells her, "I don't believe in God," she follows up with the question, "Exactly which God do you not believe in?"  On the other hand, when someone tells me they are more of an atheist, I ask if they are a strict a-theist (and do not believe in a theistic God - one who created the world and answers individual petitions or prayers) or not?  Usually this leads to a longer conversation, as many members of the congregation can tell you - one or two of which has extended the conversation to a regular lunch habit.

    Thoughts like these are what led us to make theology (and God) a central topic of our Temple Sholom trimester curriculum.  We spend one trimester of our four holiness trimesters on the holiness of God.  Why?  The story that I like to tell is that when we just teach Bible stories, or the simplified versions often found in older textbooks, students develop what I call the "third grade idea of God".  You can all fill in the details - throne, big white beard, book with everything written inside.  This God is formulaic - do good, get reward; do bad, get punishment, with some leniency for those who pray well.  Mature observation of the world around us leads us (as it led our Biblical ancestors who placed this question in the book of Job) to the question that Hershovitz and his son raise - theodicy (If God is good AND all-powerful, then why is there evil?).  

    Therefore, if the only understanding of God that Judaism provides for you is the simplistic and you challenge its premise, your obvious conclusion is not to believe in God.  However, our ancestors, and Judaism as a whole, have had many different understandings of God (all gathered under the umbrella that the entity behind the word "God" is beyond our human understanding) that often tell us more about the person theologizing than the object of their philosophy.  Arthur Waskow coins the term "Godwrestling" to lift up the Jewish idea - from the very beginning in the book of Genesis - that we are named Israel after a literal struggle with humanity and God that our ancestor Jacob experienced.  I also commend again the work of my classmate and college, Rabbi Brian Zachary Mayer, who talks about engaging (The) God (of Your Understanding).  So, we teach different theologies to kindergartners - because who knows when their personal theology will be challenged and they need to know that they are still comfortably within the bounds of Judaism, or that there are many ways to understand and struggle with the Divine?

    Back to Hershovitz, who propounds a "fictionalist" theology - that we know God is not real, but believing in God makes/challenges us to make the world a better place, and helps us live our lives, so we might as well believe or act as if we believe.  I cannot say that is too different from my own theology, although I would never call it fictional.  As human beings, we have created the words and concepts by which we order the world.  Even when we analyze and quantify natural laws, we doing so with our own symbols and logic.  All of it is fictive, created.  I do not know for sure about the God who created the universe in which I dwell.  Yet, it is here and, miraculously, I dwell in it.  For that I am thankful, and will continue to search for meaning and believe that if given a gift, my responsibility is to extend that gift to others, while doing what little I can to make it better for all.  I call that a real Jewish theology.

*I use the term "God" here as a pronoun, referring to a concept that we all may not agree on exactly.  "God" is not God's name, and has no holiness in and of itself, only in the meaning that we give it.