Between "Fire and Brimstone" and "Everything's Cool": How to Talk about Being Jewish

In his book, Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, James Joyce wrote a creative first-person narrative about an author coming of age in Catholic Ireland.  The book traces the linguistic, spiritual and emotional development of this young man.

The religious education that the narrator received was rather austere, not exactly lovey-dovey.

Corporal punishment was frequently used in his school and in one extended passage, one of the priests delivered a real fire and brimstone speech, designed to terrify the students listening into obeying the rules.  Here is a video of Sir John Gielgud portraying the priest as he delivered the sermon.

I watched the first two minutes of it and was terrified.

Now we might be tempted to think that the the Torah doesn’t aim to frighten us like that.  But of course, that’s not true. 

There are terrifying passages in the Torah, like the extended curses in the book of Deuteronomy that promise all manner of hardship and tragedy for failure to observe God’s commands.

And we read a terrifying passage this morning about the sons of Aaron who were consumed by fire for having brought an offering that God had not requested.

A passage often read in conjunction with the above is about a man who reached out to catch the ark of God while it was in transit and about to fall and was zapped by God.

I want to address the fear factor in religious life.  Sometimes it comes from outside, sometimes from within.  I wonder how many of us, in the course of growing up, were made to feel that if we didn’t perform some religious task, something horrible would happen to us. 

I know of more than a few people who had some experience of religion being presented in an intimidating way.  I hear from parents of bar or bat mitzvah children whose rabbi or teacher, 30 years ago, said something intimidating or threatening about religious practice that stuck with the person and not in positive way.

It’s understandable why fear would be used as a tactic to inspire religious commitment.  It’s a powerful force.  Perhaps the Israelites who witnessed the killing of Aaron’s sons were extra careful moving forward. 

And perhaps the young man, Stephen Dedalus, who sat with his peers listening to the fiery sermon in a Dublin school, was frightened into religious submission.

Except, truth be told, neither commitment lasted very long.  The Israelites, even the generation who witnessed the killing of Aaron’s sons, went on to engage in all kinds of sinful behavior.

And while Stephen Dedalus’s religious training caused him to loathe himself in multiple realms, he didn’t manage to avoid sinful thoughts or even behavior.

It’s one thing to encourage people to consider the implications of their actions and to feel responsible for the repercussions of their choices.  It’s another to posit artificial outcomes like, eat this and lightening will strike.

So here we are, over a decade into the new millennium.  The buzzwords and catch phrases are “autonomy” and “multiple narrative.”  The “Millenials” don’t seem too constrained by fear of horrible things happening to them if they don’t obey the rules.  If they fear anything, it seems, it’s missing out on something or the negative reactions of peers.

And it’s not just Millenials.  For decades, the American ethos has encouraged us to construct our lives around what we find personally meaningful, not what other people or organizations tell us we should be doing.

Themselves products of this outlook, religious leaders outside of the most fundamentalist realms are as far in thinking and approach from the priest in Portrait of the Artist as you can imagine.  For instance, the rabbis I associate  with today almost never invoke fear as a motivation.  Which is probably a good thing. 

But the problem is that we don’t talk much to people about what they should be doing altogether. 

We’re so afraid to chase people away by appearing threatening or coercive that we don’t say much of anything.

We should be telling people in our community of all ages to keep kosher and to honor Shabbat and to give tzedaka and to find Jewish partners with whom to share their lives.

Not because if they don’t they’ll get sick, or descend to some horrible place, or even make grandma and grandpa terribly disappointed (though who wants to do that?)

But because the contours of a Jewish life expressed in the ritual, ethical and social realms make life more worth living.

Deanna’s mother grew up in a classical Reform home and her father grew up in a traditional Conservative home.  The home she grew up in was not kosher; his was.

The rabbi who married them, Saul Teplitz, knew that they came from different backgrounds but he wanted to encourage them to keep a kosher home. 

He spoke about the potential impact of keeping kosher on basic sensitivity and Jewish identity and at one point said that Kashrut brings poetry into the home. 

That impressed Deanna’s mother and they did keep a kosher home.  Years later, she told me about the phrase he used, which she remembered.  Recently Rabbi Teplitz passed away.  And shortly after we heard the news, Deanna’s father told her that in his opinion, the Kashrut of their home was a major factor in shaping her Jewish identity.

Perhaps Rabbi Teplitz didn’t succeed in urging every couple to keep a kosher home, but think about the effect of the conversations he had regardless of the choices people made.

I fear that too often, out of misunderstanding or reticence or who knows what, we have replaced the religion of fire and brimstone with the religion of “everything’s cool.”

I want everyone in our congregation to learn more and do more ritually and ethically.  I want our young people to share their lives with Jewish people and to build solid Jewish homes together, filled with poetry of kashrut, Shabbat, prayer and tzedaka for all people in need.

I want Temple Israel to continue to be a place that teaches and engages and encourages in all of these areas because all of these things are the medium through which Jews bring light to the world.

Every religious community is struggling with how to urge commitment without terrifying.  The new Pope speaks a language of love and encouragement.  Yossi Klein Halevi, in his book chronicling his efforts to pray with different faiths in the Holy Land, meets one Muslim leader he calls The Sheik of Anger and the other he calls the Sheik of Love.

Maimonides, centuries ago, wrote in his Laws of Repenance, Hilchot Teshuva, that a person should serve God, not out of fear, but out of love. 

There is an alternative to fire and brimstone, on the one hand, and “everything is cool,” on the other.

It’s found toward the end of the Book of Esther which we read just one week ago.  ליהודים היתה אורה ושמחה וששון ויקר Layehudim hayta ora v’simcha v'sason viy'kar.

The Jews had light and gladness, joy and honor.

That’s what we need to tell each other, our children and our grandchildren.  Our tradition brings light and gladness, joy and honor, for us and for others.

That’s not an intimidation.  That’s an invitation.  In the long run, I'm confident that most will accept.