JUDE

I am a Jew. For the first half of my life, I was a relatively observant one. I would go to synagogue on Saturday mornings, celebrate every holiday, and even lead Yom Kippur services before being Bar-Mitzvahed. As I grew up and ventured into different social and intellectual circles, I found myself becoming ever more distant from my religion. Eventually, I renounced my belief in God and disassociated completely from the establishment that defined the majority of my childhood. I became an atheist.

Recently however, I have come to understand and accept Judaism as much more than a religion. It is more than a culture, it is more than a heritage. In the words of Rabbi Yakov Fellig, Judaism is an ‘is’, a predetermined state of being. Once a Jew, always a Jew. Upon entering college, I slowly reentered the Jewish world I had left behind. I still do not believe in the stories of the Torah, but I do feel a powerful connection to Judaism, one that I believe has helped me cope with a world that seems to be increasingly intolerant of who I was and who I am.

On the last day of the decade, I sat down with Rabbi Yakov Fellig in the Coconut Grove Chabad, the temple in which I spent countless hours as an excited religious youth, to discuss some of my lingering questions about Judaism.

How has Judaism changed in the past 20 years?

“The way I look at it, when we grew up, the world was finite. If you were to tell someone in the 50s that we would send someone to the moon or be able to send a picture to China in a nanosecond, you would’ve been committed. Today, when I talk to someone your age, everything is possible. 30 years ago, when you spoke to people about God, it was so difficult to comprehend an infinite god that you cannot see. But today, I find the younger people don’t have such an issue with that. Whether they believe or don’t believe, they don’t have an issue with the impossible and infinity of God. Anybody who is an intelligent person will never tell you ‘that’s impossible’. I think that has been a real advantage both on a spiritual and human level.

I think that people believe in themselves much more today. You look at yourself with much more potential than I did growing up. And I think some of the foundations of Judaism are those two things; number 1: something greater than ‘us’, and number 2: the potential of all human beings. We believe that human beings are incredible. We can make a big impact on the world, we have what to say.”

What are your views on the increasing rates of Atheism within Jewish communities?

" The God that you have trouble believing in, I don’t believe in that God either. ‘Do you believe in God?’ is not the question we should be asking. The real question we should be asking is ‘what kind of god do you believe or not believe in?’ Our biggest problem is that we haven’t conveyed that message properly. Once people are open to learning about the difference between the mitzvah of believing in God and the mitzvah of knowing what kind of God to believe in, I think most people will have an easier time reconciling their beliefs.

In the same breath you tell me you’re atheist, you tell me you’re Jewish. What does it mean to be Jewish? The whole notion that there is a thing called a ‘Jew’ is only because there is a Torah that God gave to Moses at Mt. Sinai. You take that away, there is no such thing as a Jew.

What is Judaism?

“Judaism is an ‘is’. In other words, if you are born to a Jewish mother, you are a Jew. You haven’t done anything that has proven your Judaism, but you are a Jew. You can be a Jew and not know you’re Jewish.

A lot of people say, ‘if you put on teffilin, and you do this, that, and the other thing, then you’re Jewish.’ But what I say is ‘You are a Jew and because you are a Jew, you can decide to perform those actions.’ What is it as Jew that you do on a regular basis that makes you Jewish? Not much, but that’s still who you are.”

The times I feel most Jewish are after Antisemitic attacks. Why?

“I don’t confess to have all the answers, but i see it like this: we have two choices. Either we are going to let ourselves be defined by others, they look at us with their view of what being Jewish is, or we write our own story. We have to define ourselves. All of us are like a canvas and our lives are our paintings. The question is, who is doing the painting?

What do you know about Judaism? Do you know more about what Judaism is or what Judaism is not? Most people only understand Judaism in comparison to Christianity in that we do not believe in Jesus as the Messiah. So we know what we shouldn’t be, but not exactly what we should be. To be honest is not a Jewish value, it is a human value. We have a lack of knowledge as to what and who we are. If you don’t have and live your definition of what it is to be a Jew, your Judaism is defined by the antisemite.”

Why does there seem to be so much Antisemitism right now?

"The gentile world recognizes that the Jew is not like everybody else. I look different, I don’t eat the same foods or celebrate the same holidays. I’m really living a different life. So you can say people are upset because I didn’t assimilate or integrate, but there are five million Jews in America and 90% of them are assimilated into society. And when people say they don’t like Jews, they don’t just mean me, they don’t like you. Even though you look like them, eat like them, and live like them, they still don’t like you. And when you can ask ‘What is it that you don’t like about me? What have i done?’ They can’t explain it either.

If you look at Jewish history, the hate is a cycle. The Jews right now are very visible. I can give you spiritual reasons, but none of it makes a difference. The reality is, throughout Jewish history, all the countries that were the best to Jews and allowed them to prosper and assimilate, turned on us. The more integrated we became, the more they turned on us. Right now, in America, there are a lot of Jews assimilating. I don’t know if there is an answer to why, it’s just a question as to how we are going to deal with it.”

How are we going to deal with it?

“The world reacts to strength rather than weakness. Appeasing the wills of the oppressors is never the answer. If we Jewish people stood up and made it known that we are proud of who we are, then I think the world will back down. When we are weak, that empowers them.”