Thoughts after Yom Kippur

I knew a person once who was an atheist. He used to say: "People use G-d as a crutch. Whenever they can't decide or explain something they turn to G-d for help."

I was discussing some religious issues with my best friend yesterday, and amazingly, she almost said the same thing, even though she never met the above-mentioned guy. She said: "You use religion because you are facing a difficult decision, and you want someone else to make it for you. So you turn to a religious text and try to find a "message" there that applies to your situation."

And so it is - non-believers think that living a religious life is much easier than being a non-believer. Sure, whenever you want something, you pray to G-d. Whenever you face a difficult decision, you turn to a religious text and try to find an answer. You never have an ethical dilemma, because all the ethics comes from your religion, and whenever you blindly follow it, you feel fine. Being religious is easy. It's when you don't have a "higher authority" to guide you, everything kind of falls on your own shoulders. No crutches.

For me, it's the other way around. I can't count the times when I wished I could be a non-believer. There is nobody to answer to when you "miss the mark", as we say on Yom Kippur. It's like working with no boss. You miss the deadline - nobody cares. You turned in a sloppy report - no big deal, nobody will read it anyway. You are doing a bad job - it's a customer's problem, let him figure it out, and if he doesn't you fix it later. There is nobody to check on your work. It's easy. It's a presence of a boss that makes most people disciplined. Not all of them of course - some do not need a boss to be responsible. But many do need an authority to check on them.

So it is with religion. It would be so much easier to live your life without fear of judgement. Or punishment, whenever we "miss the mark". Every religion has its own ideas about punishment. Christians believe in hell. I don't believe in hell. I am more afraid of punishment in this life. Especially when you are not punished directly, but indirectly, through your loved ones. That's the worst kind of punishment. Especially when you can't even explain why you are being punished. It doesn't really matter - you know you are not perfect, you must've missed the mark at some point, but it would be easier if you could see the logic behind it somehow. Like when you eat too much, you get high cholesterol and all that comes with it. That's non-religious way. It's easy and logical. G-d doesn't work this way. That's why bad things happen to good people. G-d makes things happen and doesn't explain why. It makes sense to Him. It often doesn't make sense to us.

That's why, when making a difficult decision, I agonize about it - I am answerable to a "higher authority." I can't take it just because I want it so badly. I can't take it just because it's there. Am I allowed to have it? Do I deserve to have it? Will my decision ruin somebody's life? If I make the wrong decision, will I get punished, maybe not right away, but later, down the road? Will my loved ones get hurt? It would be much easier if I believed that bad things just happened randomly and I did nothing to bring them on whatsoever. Not so - I know that when bad things happen, I will spend all my time thinking that it was somehow, someway my fault.

And so it is, my friends the non-believers. G-d is not a crutch. It's a never-sleeping eye that follows you everywhere. It's a teacher that constantly gives you problems to think about. It's a judge that punishes you for the wrong moves you make. It's not easy to live with that kind of authority, so you my friends choose to ignore it, and your only moral authority is yourselves. When nobody is watching, "missing the mark" doesn't matter.

My first Bar Mitzvah

Today I attended my first Bar Mitzvah. And not a minute too soon, considering that my older son will be having one in a little over a year. Bar Mitzvah ceremony is so important it's often referred to by the Jews as a "wedding". I needed to see how it was done, and I've never even been at one before until today.

We've known Jonathan's parents for a while. My husband took college classes with his father, Avi. When my husband introduced me to him and his wife, Marcia, I liked them immediately, which is saying a lot because I am usually slow to warm up to new people. Marcia is a delightful woman. She always has a lot to say, to share, or to add to the conversation. Even our social differences - her being somewhat liberal, and me being a lot more conservative - do not take away from the pleasure of communicating with her. She is 10 years older then me, which made me even more proud to be considered her friend. Before, I've never had a friend who was so much older (and wiser).

When Marcia got pregnant, she decided not to find out the sex of the baby before its birth. Her husband did want to know, so they decided that he would find out and not tell her. It did not work out very well because at the end she did find out. After she knew she was having a boy, whenever we saw them, we discussed the baby names, and her heart was set on Jonathan.

We first met Jonathan at our wedding, where he arrived in the hands of his father (my husband's best man), being 1-month old. When our first-born was having a bris, the rabbi asked what his Hebrew name was. Being terribly ignorant of Jewish tradition, we did not even know we were supposed to pick a Hebrew name for our son! We picked the only one we knew - Avishai, Jonathan's father's name. So far we love it, and it even starts with the same letter as his secular name, but it was totally spontaneous.

I was sitting in the synagogue listening to Jonathan deliver his speech, but even more attentively listening to his parents speak. Boy, do I need to start working on my speech. It's so important, and I am a terrible public speaker. I am already nervous. But Jonathan's parents do a great job, and so does he. He is growing up into a wonderful young man. Mazal Tov, Jonathan. Grow healthy, and make your parents proud.