Contradictions and Consistency: Three Things I Believe That Don’t Hold Up -- Part One: Why Be Different?

          This is the first time in over a month I have written something essentially unrelated to the hurricanes!  May there be more such occasions soon.

Have you ever met someone who was completely consistent?  Someone who lived their lives with no obvious logical lapses, or ways in which their arguments or beliefs did not always add up?  On occasion, I believe I have met such individuals.  A few of them.  And, as I recall, they tended to be extremists, of one form or another.

          It’s not that I don’t think we should try.  Rank hypocrisy is… not rare, but still distasteful. It’s a good thing to think through what we believe, and to test it to see how it holds up – against reality, and against everything else we say we stand for.

          So it bothers me to realize… that there are three things I believe which don’t quite hold up.  There is, within my positions, a contradiction.  And yet, somehow, I believe these things anyway.

          What are my inconsistent positions?  (At least, the ones I am aware of and live with.)   One relates to spirituality.  The other to community.  And the third, somewhat connected to the second, to identity.  The first is about God and Judaism, universalism and particularism.  The second is about ways in which Jews are connected to one another.  And the third is about, well, Jews for Jesus.

1.   If God is one and everything is connected why do we promote being different? 

          The most important foundation of my own spirituality, and my understanding of divinity, comes from the Sh’ma.  It is the basic statement of the oneness of God, and with it the unity of the universe.

          Now, to my regret, as I have come to understand as an adult, this is probably not what the Sh’ma meant originally.  Despite what we all learned in Sunday school, in contrast to the solemn proclamation of some kid in Cleveland that he will now recite the “washword of our face” (because, after all, what is a watchword, and what kid can say the word “faith”?), many Biblical scholars challenge the idea that these words were first meant as any kind of pure declaration of monotheism. 

In contrast, they say, the Sh’ma did not actually deny the existence of other gods.  This was not a theological statement about ontological reality.  Instead, it was a way of connecting to a community, or reading oneself in.  These words were…  a loyalty oath.  And they were not about monotheism, but  some form of henotheism, or monolatry, both of which meaning that while there may be many gods… we ourselves have only one!  Not: “Hear, O Israel, the Eternal our God – the Eternal is One,” but:  “Listen, you Israelite! YHVH is our god… and only YHVH.”

But, okay, fine, so the central understanding of Jewish origins I had as a child was wrong.  I can live with that.  It remains the case that these words came to be understood as a proclamation of the unity of God, and it is in this way, and their connection with particle physics, that they speak to me.

So, what is the Nobel Prize in Physics, waiting to happen?  What is the formula which, once worked out, will guarantee the one who solves it a place in the pantheon alongside of Einstein?  It is the Grand Unified Field Theory, the idea that all the basic forces of the universe can be described... by a single set of mathematical equations!  Even if… even if the math only applies… for the first billionth of a second of the life of the universe.  And even if it will take twelve spatial dimensions for the equations to work!  (As I understand it, that is what cosmological string theory is all about.)

But think about it.  If this is true, even for a limited time, and in a way beyond what we can ordinarily imagine… then what we are saying is that, with the mystics, everything really is connected.  That all we see as separate is really only a superficial difference, that every “thing” around us is merely energy congealed in a transient, temporary form, but basically all beating to the cosmic pulse of the universe, all part of a divine symphony which we can but faintly hear.  That which seems to be separate and distinct… is merely a matter of faulty or limited perception.  Anything” is really “every” thing,   And borders and boundaries and distinctions and definitions are malleable, permeable, deceptively described, and temporary at best.

I believe that about life, the universe, and the way the world works.  My basic understanding of berakhot, of blessings, relates to the idea that a berakha is a way of opening our eyes, to help us see the divine, the sacred, the underlying awesome connectedness of all, in moments which seem to be mundane and discreet and distinct.

So, fine.

But then: how come so much of Jewish life is about… making distinctions?  And separation?  And being apart?  This is kosher, and this is treif.  This is Shabbat, and this is the rest of the week.  This is holy, and this is not.  This is the land of Israel, and this is outside.  This is a Jew, and this is not.

In a universe of connection, why the boundaries?  If reality is universal, why celebrate particularism?

And if you say that separation is just an aspect of a broken world, an unredeemed sphere of existence, a phase before we step back into some cosmic Kabbalistic Unity of All… really, still, why would the distinctions matter?  Is all of our effort to maintain our identity, promote our community, is all of it just a holding pattern, some kind of exercise in differentiation while we wait for the real time of ultimate togetherness to come along?  Why be Jewish, why be anything individual, if all definitions will ultimately fail and all differences fall in the end?

A “universal” faith (the word “catholic” actually means universal) in fact anticipates this oneness, but in a hegemonistic fashion.  The world will be one…when everyone becomes just like us.  But Judaism truly does not envision this kind of sameness, this urge to merge.  Maybe it is just hard to picture, but I don’t think many Jews actually anticipate or even desire the whole world becoming Jewish.  We are fine, even in traditional settings, with the notion that there are different paths to God.  So I circle back to my own dilemma.  If God is one and everything is ultimately connected, why be different?

I can fumble a response, approximate an answer.  But this remains one of the central spiritual questions of my life.  What’s your answer here?

And that… is the first of my three things I believe, which have a contradiction within them.