Religion, what is it good for?

Our time is distinguished by wonderful achievements in the fields of scientific understanding and the technical application of those insights. Who would not be cheered by this? But let us not forget that human knowledge and skills alone cannot lead humanity to a happy and dignified life. Humanity has every reason to place the proclaimers of high moral standards and values above the discoverers of objective truth...What these blessed men have given us we must guard and try to keep alive with all our strength if humanity is not to lose its dignity, the security of its existence, and its joy in living.

-Albert Einstein

I am shocked by people who oppose religion. Why would any intelligent person be opposed to that field of study which investigates the meaning of life and the consequent moral value of our actions? What could be better for the world than for people to learn how and why to be more moral? Certainly, there is much room for disagreement within this field, but to oppose the field of knowledge itself? This would be akin to opposing science because you disagree with a particular theory.

At first I concluded that they were merely ignorant of the meaning of the word. Perhaps they had been taught that religion means superstition, and merely meant that they were opposed to superstition. This is true of some people, and since it is just a matter of which words are used, it is a simple matter to set them straight.

Others say they oppose religion because it is the cause of all wars. This argument is fallacious in so many ways that I hardly know where to begin. Religion never caused a single war. Let us take a specific example that is often used, the Crusades. The claim is that it was their being Christian that led them to massacre so many people. If only they would have been opposed to religion themselves, no one would have gotten hurt. According to that, if there would have been more Christians there would have been more deaths. So if everyone in the world were Christian, it would have caused the most number of deaths. This is not so. If everyone would have been Christian, there would have been no need for them to fight against the Muslims, for there would have been none. It was not the religion itself that caused the Crusades, but intolerance for other religions. The very sort of intolerance that those opposed to religion espouse, except that they are even more intolerant, because at least the Crusaders were tolerant of Christianity. But in hating the Muslims they were the same. If the Crusaders would have been opposed to religion, it would perhaps have been much bloodier, because they would not have had to contend with the Christian teachings about turning the other cheek and the Golden Rule.

The subject of war is a good example of the important need for religion. The Nazi ideology that led to the holocaust came from the most respected secular thinking of the time: racism and eugenics, both considered up and coming new fields of science based on Darwin's theories. Racism applied the evolution of species to humans, with Africans as the least evolved race, and Europeans the most evolved, with the German "Aryan" race at the pinnacle of evolution. Eugenics applied survival-of-the-fittest to humans by advocating that inferior humans be killed out so that only the most evolved pass on their genes. The conclusion was that all inferior races, including the "Semitic" race, as well as those with any disability, infirmity, or deformity, must be systematically eradicated. Hitler only very thinly masked his hatred for religion, declaring the Ten Commandments to be "the worst thing the Jews have ever done to the world." He had to wait longer before he could gradually bring public opinion against Christianity than against other religions, because most Germans were Christian. Countless people felt compelled by their religious convictions to risk their lives defying the Nazis by sheltering Jews and others targeted for annihilation, because even though the secular thinking of the time advocated their deaths, religion placed the value of human life above all else due to the moral value inherent in every person.

The world is replete with examples of the important role that religion plays in the well-being of society. The vast majority of hospitals and charitable organizations in the world were built by religious institutions. It could not be any other way.

If we scrub language of all religious content, we forfeit the imagery and terminology through which millions of Americans understand both their personal morality and social justice. Imagine Lincoln's Second Inaugural Address without reference to "the judgments of the Lord." Or King's I Have a Dream speech without references to "all of God's children." Their summoning of a higher truth helped inspire what had seemed impossible, and move the nation to embrace a common destiny.

... Frederick Douglas, Abraham Lincoln, Williams Jennings Bryant, Dorothy Day, Martin Luther King - indeed, the majority of great reformers in American history - were not only motivated by faith, but repeatedly used religious language to argue for their cause. So to say that men and women should not inject their "personal morality" into public policy debates is a practical absurdity. Our law is by definition a codification of morality, much of it grounded in the Judeo-Christian tradition.

-President Barack Obama

Yes We Can

Moses said a lot. A lot about standing up and changing things for the better. And he didn't just say it. He did it. He showed the world that the impossible is possible. He took a nation of slaves to freedom, and the world hasn't been the same since. Because now we know that we don't have to be slaves to the world around us. We are free to change. No one can tell us that we can't.

When a group of colonists struggled to build a new nation dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal, the world was against them. The winter at Valley Forge was a dark one. They were losing the war. A light shone in the snow. It was Channuka and one of the soldiers had lit a candle of hope. He explained how a small team of Maccabees vanquished an entire army. Freedom had won, and so would they.

When slavery was the law of the land, the negro slaves compared themselves to the Hebrews going out of Egypt, and they knew that their freedom would come. They called Lincoln, Moses.

When Jews were trapped behind the indestructible iron curtain, people all over the world rallied together in quoting Moses: "Let my people go!" and the walls fell.

So many have changed the world, and there will be many more to come. It was Moses who taught us how, who taught us that yes, we can.

Transcript of the video:

It was the bold encouragement offered by Moses to a nation yearning for freedom

Yes, we can!

It was the phrase that kept our hopes alive during history's harshest times

Yes we can

It was spoken defiantly to those wishing to stamp out religious freedoms

Yes we can

When triumph seemed beyond reach; G-ds miracle was not. In hidden caves, attics and cellars His people courageously whispered:

Yes He can

THIS was the message that G-d sent the world when a small team of Maccabees vanquished an entire army

Yes we can

And was the comforting answer to the Jews in Communist Russia who wondered: Will the Menorah ever shine in my life

Yes. We. Can.

On Chanukah we celebrate freedom. We celebrate with pride. We celebrate in public, in the open because we can! Whether you lit the menorah last year, or 20 years ago, celebrate this Chanukah with family. Celebrate with Chabad

Start lighting YOUR menorah Sunday evening December 21st, 2008 and let the flame of freedom speak for herself:

Yes. We. Can.

Shabbat

The Holy Sabbath Day

Shabbat is delicious food, a richly-set table, the glow of candlelight, sweet singing, luxuriant sleep. It is an island of tranquility in the maelstrom of work, anxiety, struggle and tribulation that characterizes our daily lives for the other six days of the week. For 25 hours every week (from sunset Friday to nightfall Saturday) the world literally comes to a halt: the business is closed, the car stays in the driveway, the phone stops ringing, and the radio, TV and computer remain off. The pressures and worries of material life recede as if a weekly low tide to reveal the inner calm beneath.

Our focus turns inward -- to family and friends, to our inner self, to our soul. We remember that G-d created the world in seven days, and put us into it for a purpose. He took us out of Egypt and decreed that never again shall we be slaves to any alien master. Our jobs, financial commitments and material involvements are the tools with which we fulfill our divine purpose, not the masters of our lives. This recognition gives meaning to everything we do and makes our lives holy. Shabbat is one of the most powerful ways to actualize our Jewish values and pass them along to our children. Indeed, the Jews have kept Shabbat for 4,000 years, through all the ups and downs of our miraculously long history.

Shabbat is a day of holiness, set apart and elevated above the rest of the week. The unique quality of Shabbat derives from two types of mitzvot. First are the mitzvot that celebrate and sanctify the day such as lighting the holy Shabbat candles and reciting the Kiddush over a cup of wine. Equally important are the mitzvot which require that we refrain from certain activities termed melachah, or "work".

The Mishnah explains that there are 39 different categories of melachah, which encompass all forms of human productivity. These melachot are not a haphazard collection of activities, and do not necessarily represent physical exertion. Rather, the principle behind them is that they all represent constructive, creative effort, demonstrating man's mastery over nature. (This is why modern innovations such as flipping a light switch or driving a car are included in these timeless principles. They qualify for one or the other of the 39 categories because they represent a very clever manipulation of one's sorroundings.) Refraining from melachah on Shabbat signals our recognition that, despite our human creative abilities, G-d is the ultimate Creator and Master.

Jewish Unity

1949, just after the establishment of the state of Israel, I heard the voice of David Ben Gurion, first prime minister and first minister of defense. He was on the radio between 7 and 7:30 PM on Yoman Hachadashot, News Journal. I will never forget it. He had come back from a visit to the biggest army camp which there was in Israel at that time, Sarafin, near Ramalah. "I saw there," he said, "the dining room at lunch. All the soldiers sat at the table eating lunch. One soldier stood on the side, not sitting with the others, a loaf of bread in one hand and a tomato in the other. He was eating a piece from the bread and a piece from the tomato. I called him over. I said, 'Are you crazy? Why don't you use a plate, a fork, a knife? Why are you standing? How do you eat like this?' "

"He said, 'I am an observant soldier. I only eat kosher. All the food which is brought here is kosher, but the cutlery, the plates, and the pots are not. In the same pot that they cooked dairy in the morning, they cooked a meat meal for lunch. I can't use anything which is prepared in this kitchen. The bread and the tomato I can eat, but nothing cooked.' "

"I gave an order: All the kitchens of the Israeli Defense Force must be kosher. The same will be in the hospitals and in prison. Why? We are one nation. If there are a thousand soldiers, one observant and nine hundred and ninety-nine liberated, the observant soldier may not eat non-kosher, but the liberated ones may eat kosher. So the kitchen must be kosher. Because we are one nation. We have one army."

This became a law in the IDF until this very day. If there is something not kosher we are to be blamed for it. Maybe the rabbi supervising did not do well. But the orders are strict. All public kitchens must be kosher because one out of a thousand was observant.

I spoke to a group of Members of Knesset. They asked why I insist on halachic conversions. I said, "Aren't you aware of the wholeness of the Jewish People? The unity of our nation? Conversion is the way of entrance to the Jewish family. If you make it halachic, according to Jewish Law, it is accepted by everyone. Thier children can marry my children, and my children can marry thier children because they are converted halachically. All other ways, you can call them whatever; if they are not accepted by the one out of a thousand, create a split in the nation. Is this what you want? To divide the people? To rend it and cut it apart? Or to preserve the wholeness of the people, the unity of Israel? Love of one's fellow Jew. One nation, one family. To ensure the eternity and to ensure the wholeness, and to be loyal to the Torah. What's wrong with that? To ensure that we exist and we are not in a decline, God forbid.

I don't interfere in your synagogues and temples. I do not oversee your prayer book. I do not supervise your meals. If you mix meat and milk, it pains me, but I am not trying to stop you. I have no power to control your behavior. But when we speak about conversion, this is the identity card of our nation. This is the way to enter the Jewish club, the Jewish family, the Jewish nation. There must be one way. This will be the iron bridge. Otherwise it's a paper bridge. We will collapse.

- Rabbi Yisrael Meir Lau
Chief Rabbi of Tel Aviv and Former Chief Rabbi of Israel
in a talk at the Eternal Jewish Family's third national conference
on Adopting Standards for Universally Accepted Conversions in an Intermarriage
in Boston MA on October 30, 2006.

Freedom

We most often think of the stimulus/response theory in connection with Pavlov's experiments with dogs. The basic idea is that we are conditioned to respond in a particular way to a particular stimulus. We are slaves to our environment. Whatever happens to us determines what we do.

Victor Frankl was a determinist raised in the tradition of Freudian psychology, which postulates that whatever happens to you as a child shapes your character and personality and basically governs your whole life. The limits and parameters of your life are set, and, basically, you can't do much about it.

Frankl was also a psychiatrist and a Jew. He was imprisoned in the death camps of Nazi Germany, where he experienced things that were so repugnant to our sense of decency that we shudder to even repeat them. His parents, his brother, and his wife died in the camps or were sent to the gas ovens. Except for his sister, his entire family perished. Frankl himself suffered torture and innumerable indignities, never knowing from one moment to the next if his path would lead to the ovens or if he would be among the "saved" who would remove the bodies or shovel out the ashes of those so fated.

One day, naked and alone in a small room, he began to become aware of what he later called "the last of the human freedoms" – the freedom his Nazi captors could not take away. They could control his entire environment, they could do what they wanted to his body, but Victor Frankl himself was a self-aware being who cold look as an observer at his very involvement. His basic identity was intact. He could decide within himself how all of this was going to affect him. Between what happened to him, or the stimulus, and his response to it, was his freedom or power to choose that response.

In the midst of his experiences, Frankl would project himself into different circumstances, such as lecturing to his students after his release from the death camps. He would describe himself in the classroom, in his mind's eye, and give his students the lessons he was learning during his very torture.

Through a series of such disciplines—mental, emotional, and moral, principally using memory and imagination—he exercised his small, embryonic freedom until it grew larger and larger, until he had more freedom than his Nazi captors. They had more liberty, more options to choose from in their environment; but he had more freedom, more internal power to exercise his options. He became an inspiration to those around him, even to some of the guards. He helped others find meaning in their suffering and dignity in their prison existence.

The Talmud teaches us that, "a prisoner cannot free himself from his prison." No one rises up out of the pit by tugging at his own hairs. He needs someone else to pull him out. How does one gain the freedom to choose their response? The redemption from Egypt gave us the ability to do so. It is in that sense that the sages say, "not only has the Holy One freed our ancestors, He also freed us with them." How so? By making us aware of an entirely different aspect of our choices and actions. The moral dimension. Something may be enjoyable to do, but not right. Before we would have done it without question. We would have been enslaved by our stimulus response. Now we can think about what we are doing. Is it right? If not, I can choose not to do it. That is the only true freedom.

The sages say that "no one is free except one who studies Torah." Seemingly, the opposite is true. The Torah contains rules which restrict our lives. Don't kill. Don't steal. How does that make one free? Because these moral principles enjoin us to rise above our automatic responses. The choice is now on a level that is entirely in our control. Will we do what is right or what is wrong? That is the one thing that is entirely up to us.

Like happiness, self-actualizing is an effect, the effect of meaning fulfillment. ...If he sets out to actualize himself rather than fulfill a meaning (out there in the world), self-actualization immediately loses its justification.
-Victor Frankl, The Will to Meaning, p.38

It is this message of freedom that the Haggada is meant to teach us. "Not only has the Holy One freed our ancestors, He also freed us with them." It is this vital message that must be passed on to the next generation through the expert interactive teaching technique of the Seder. This is the special gift we Jews have inherited and must pass on. Freedom.

The story of Victor Frankl is quoted from The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen Covey.