CLAL Special Features
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Jewish Public Forum Seminar:
“What Is Religion For?”
November 19, 2001
Pre-Seminar
Response
“What Is Religion For?”
By Richard Lipton
What is religion for? Religion is for
helping with that most challenging of tasks, being a human being. It is for helping us develop meaningful
relationships on multiple levels: with ourselves, with our families and communities, with
the broader world, with G-d. Using relationships as a framework the following questions
come to mind:
Self
to self: What is my place in the world? What tradition of wisdom can I use to
comprehend the incomprehensible? What do I believe (or what stories do I tell myself)
about who I am, where I came from and what is expected of me? Are there ways to make my
ordinary, sometimes incomprehensible life more meaningful? Can I ever feel that the world
was made for me, that I was made in G-d’s image and simultaneously know and feel okay
about being dust and ashes? I have known gratitude and joy but gratitude and sorrow elude
me. Can I find permanence in the impermanent
cold? What will sustain me in my trials and in my joys?
Self to Family and Immediate Community: What are the core values, beliefs,
history, traditions and practices (rituals) that we share? How can we come together to
create meaning, to make sacred time and sacred space? How do we retain our individual
identities in the context of communities that share some but not all of the same values?
How can we take the tradition of our faith(s) and own it, use it, transform it, imbue it
with meanings that are sometimes highly personal and sometimes shared and sometimes, when
we are very lucky, both at the same time? How can we be the grandparents, parents,
brothers, sisters, children, grandchildren and friends that we would want to be? How can
we define those aspirations in a changing and uncertain world? What do I tell my children
about their safety, about the threats to their safety? How do I help my children become
themselves while simultaneously giving the opportunity to benefit from what I know and
believe? How can we build ethical, pluralistic communities that embrace diversity without
fear? How do we define “them” and “us”?
Self
to Broader Community: Who is the “other” and how can I understand them? What
if there are no “thems” in G-d’s eyes? What if it is just us and we are all
G-d’s children following different paths to a common homeland? What does it mean to
be bound together by the human experience? How can I understand and deal with someone (or
a group) who hates me and wants to destroy me, sometimes for several reasons? ( I am an
American; I am a Jew, etc.). How can we protect our families and ourselves when they need
protecting without becoming xenophobic and closing ourselves of to the width and breadth
of human experience?
Self
to G-d: What does G-d want from me as an individual, from my community and from my
people (across the generations)? In what way are we created in G-d’s image? Do I pray
for G-d or for myself? Why did G-d create the universe? “Can you answer? Yes, I can.
What would be the answer then?” Should I pray using someone else’s words or my
own? How can we reconcile the High Holiday story with free will and moral responsibility
(even if the Book of Life is just a metaphor)?
Community
to Community: How do we create a world where differences are not threats and diversity
is celebrated? How do we understand and prevent the harm done in the name of religion?
What are the boundaries between faith and fanaticism?
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