I sat in synagogue on the first day of Rosh Hashanah listening to the Rabbi’s sermon about how we should bring our Judaism into our everyday lives and I started thinking about how my faith has always been a part of my life a great or lesser extent, even when I was in college and apparently told my father that I didn’t believe in G-d, something he told said to me years later was the most upsetting thing I’d ever said to him. The irony was that I didn’t even remember saying it. I was like, “Dad, I was in college! Doesn’t everyone question their faith when they’re in college?”
My ritual observance has had its ebbs and flows, but ultimately my neshama, my Jewish soul, calls me back. I’ve gone from being devoted as a tween, to questioning as a teenager, to agnostic in college, to searching for a deeper meaning in my twenties, and becoming more observant in my thirties and forties.
My first book, CONFESSIONS OF A CLOSET CATHOLIC, was about spiritual explorations, and how Jussy, the book’s protagonist, learned to find her own relationship with G-d and meaning in faith as opposed to merely accepting the path laid out by her family. Although I never went into my closet and confessed to my teddy bear, there was a strong autobiographical element in her spiritual confusion and questioning.
Sitting in shul on Rosh Hashanah, I was thinking about how Judaism is actually a religion made for teens and here’s why: it’s a faith based on ARGUING.
The teen years are all about questioning. Who am I? Why do I have to empty the dishwasher? What do I really believe in? Can you believe she wore that? Why can’t I have the car keys? What do I want to be in the future? Why did I have the misfortune to be born to the most EMBARRASSING MOTHER IN THE WORLD?
Questioning leads to discussions, which, more often than not, leads to arguments. Teens are very good at arguing. So are Jews. Ever heard the expression: “You put ten Jews in a room and you get eleven opinions” ? It’s true.
The reason is that arguing is an integral part of our people’s history. The Torah is filled with references to arguments between the Patriarchs and G-d. Dennis Prager wrote a terrific article about the lesson these biblical arguments provide for parents:
Parents who allow their child to argue with them retain (and even enhance) their authority, are more likely to be loved, and even more important, guarantee that the child will continue to talk to them. A child who is always forbidden to argue with a parent will eventually stop communicating.
One of my favorite festivals (except for the cleaning beforehand and the effect that eight days of eating matzo has on my digestive system) is Pesach, or Passover.
In the Haggadah, aka the Seder Instruction Manual, which we read from at the festive meal it says:
It once happened that Rabbi Eliezer, Rabbi Yehoshua, Rabbi Elazar Ben Azaryah, Rabbi Akiva and Rabbi Tarfon were reclining in Bnei Brak. They were discussing the Exodus from Egypt all that night until their students came and said to them: "Our teachers, the time has arrived to read the morning Shema."
We take pages and pages of the Haggadah to talk about how these four prominent sages were lying around all night arguing about the possible meanings of “the hand of G-d” and “his outstretched arm” and “all the days of your life,” and why we’re enjoined to talk about the Exodus from Egypt at night instead of during the daytime. PAGES, I tell you. When I was a little and stuck at the kiddy table I just couldn’t understand why we wasted so much time reading about all these long dead sages who sat around arguing about the meaning of words all night.
But that’s the whole point. They were arguing. In Judaism arguing is okay. It’s what we do. In fac Add a Comment