The religious tradition, which I enthusiastically embrace, Judaism, is replete with strict and unwavering dicta governing every aspect of human existence. My Bride and I live in Vancouver, Canada, and, recently arrived, are between community commitments as we sort out what our life here will be like, so we have established no organized religious practice. While in Ireland, where we spent almost ten years, in the end, I felt most comfortable in the Orthodox rite in which I was raised. I remember that in ancient times, in accordance with our written records, even minor breaches of prescribed rules were subject to instant judgement and punishment, by G-d, the community, ecclesiastical authorities, or a zealous neighbour.

Today, most of this is left to individual conscience, and where not in conflict with the laws of the lands we inhabit, justice is meted out by the Prime Mover, the judgement in accordance with a timetable and a reckoning that we do not have the capacity to comprehend. We are told that we can avert the harsh decree by the actions we may take to right the wrongs we have committed. We have free will, so we have the freedom to choose our path.  

I am not a religious man, or pious. I have almost a criminal capacity to forgive myself the breaches of cant and rote of which I am fully cognizant. Although I do not encourage these acts for others, as I perceive the utility and merit of traditional observance as an expression of community solidarity, I still prefer my private struggle with doubt and contradiction. I have parted from my earlier cohabitation with Spinoza and his fellow travellers because I have no other explanation for the physical existence of the cosmos other than an inexplicable intervention by a Prime Mover.

I must reject the idea of a disinterested force because I cannot rationally explain the continued existence of the Jewish people. Jewish survival for eons, and their stubborn insistence on their assigned task of “tikun olam”, repair of the world, that most Jews accept, at least, unconsciously, as a personal obligation and mission, as individuals, or as communities, wherever they are found, in whatever they undertake, performed in our societies out of all proportion to their numbers, is beyond any rational explanation!

This has become more evident in the wider society since the “Enlightenment”. Initiated with the translation of the Hebrew Bible into German by Moses Mendelssohn, (the grandfather of Felix Mendelssohn,) and furthered by the granting of citizenship to Jews by the Napoleonic reforms, Jews entered the main streams of society in the Western world.  In spite of the hate and envy they have faced, consequent on their exceptionalism, they do not fail, in the main, to do what they do.

The remarkable record of the Jewish State is a case in point. Superlatives abound in almost every arena of human endeavour, not least of which is the creation of a thriving democracy, (including for Arabs, twenty per cent of the population, with parliamentary members in vigorous opposition to Jewish national goals,) in a region dominated by oligarchy, dictatorship, chaos and active and bloody hostility. Absorption of the homeless, technological, medical, scientific, agricultural, and literary and social sciences leadership, advancing the human condition on a world-wide basis, while under continuous physical and political threat; it is all there on the public record. All this with an apparent absence of physical resources on a minuscule land base. Can any state created in the last hundred years compare? It boggles the mind.

Judaism preaches individual responsibility for living in a just way, and judgement meted out by The Unseen Hand. And the laws governing this way of life applied to all equally, ruler and subject alike, thousands of years before the Magna Carta. Its focus is on living the fullest possible righteous life. That is the imperative from G-D in the Judaic dogma, in this life, not the next. Scattered among the nations for many centuries, most of us have accepted the right of all to choose their individual path to their deity. All viewpoints are represented in the collective, including the desire not to belong to the club, but we worry about how many are making that choice.  A growing number among us hearken back to the rigid strictures of biblical Israel; at the same time as a growing number leave the fold. The number of Jews is mathematically equivalent to a rounding error in the world’s total of human beings. How is it that we are the focus of so much of the world’s attention?

What is justice and who or what shall make the judgements? Annually, we Jews ritually subject ourselves to this question. Many of us ask ourselves, assess ourselves, and notionally submit ourselves for judgement in the highest court in the world. Well, maybe, not most of us. Well, perhaps, some of us. Under this self-scrutiny, some of us may make judgements about our behaviours that will affect the way we act in the future. Just a quick spot-check. How can this be bad? Isn’t that a good idea anytime? My Bride urges me to always look behind me in case I have forgotten something. There are a lot of things in my past that I might not have done if I had just done that quick spot-check of the things I really believe in.

In what myriad of other ways does The Unknowable intervene in our lives, all we of common clay? Are we to be tried like Job or blessed like David? Prophesy unto the people!