Gawd is a Neurosis

On the most stubborn obstacle facing our people.

At the beginning of my journey back to yiddishkeit, I recall asking my father, alav hashalom, his thoughts on G-d.

“Freud,” he answered, “says gawd is a neurosis.”

My father, a psychoanalyst, and not an observant Jew, passed from this world roughly a decade after that conversation, and we never again broached the topic, so I'm unsure if his views ever changed.

But his answer points up an essential problem facing Jews today, both in Eretz Yisrael and chutz la’aretz, both among believers and kofrim.

The existential problem is the essential Jewish problem.

Does G-d Exist?

And the consequences of how one answers are formidable.

Backgrounder:

I'm posting this, in part, as a response to a conversation I had with a “Jewish Studies” professor on Substack — someone who purports to be a Jew, although his understanding of Judaism is, as one would expect from an academic, atheistic and flaccid.

From this university accredited expert, I was treated to the followin gem: "One does not have to believe in G-d to be a Jew," and other such Solomonic pearls.

Another reason for the post is to address a very active conversation taking place on Jewish Substack regarding adult yeshiva types (of the Lakewood variety) who are apparently going off the derech in great numbers — for whatever reason — and meeting to discuss the matter over pepperoni pizza and cherry cokes.

In any event, it's a widespread enough phenomenon that the discussion is hearty and impassioned, and an example of what it looks and smells like can be found HERE.

Note the comments, too.

So…

What follows is our attempt to reveal what we believe to be the root cause of the issue, written, of course, from our own mangy, (yet adorable) Hilltop perspective, with the hope that someone, somewhere might benefit.

If you venture a gander at the threads describing Lakewood’s current angst, you'll see that there are those who are keen to assign blame, some who are more interested in finding ways to stop the haemorrhaging, some who are actually in favor (!) of the development, chas v'shalom, and those that just want to share their own, individual stories.

Though our purpose is somewhat different here, it calls upon all of the foregoing to inform it.

“And who nominated you…?”

No, we’re not especially qualified to address the issue. But because we traversed that route that winds perilously higher from the 49th level of tumah (or thereabouts) to the glorious heights of being a happily brainwashed baal teshuva, we have a certain perspective on what worked for us and what didn't, and more or less why.

We also know what 30+ years of reflection on finding purpose and meaning within Judaism can offer, where the doors (and trap-doors) may lie, where the windows and light might be found, and where some of the endless hallways and dead ends are situated.

Now, of course, you might aver that our experience is exclusively ours and therefore subjective and not applicable to others.

And that’s b'seder.

If it were our goal to convince everyone that our way offered a cookie cutter solution to all affected, indeed, we'd be lost from the get-go.

But that's not where we’re coming from.

We acknowledge that a single dose of our potent Hilltop aspirin is not for all those seeking a cure.

That said, we are of a mind that there lurks a single root cause not only behind the Lakewood dropouts, but at the heart of what's plaguing the majority who are suffering Jewish-related anxiety and dis-ease at present — like our “Jewish Studies” professor-friend.

And that is…

The problem stems from a global zeitgeist to which every Jew is subject. And its the one we opened with — the notorious “existential” issue.

And Now We Serve The Meat

Just a wee more introductory rambling, if you please...

It’s not our purpose to execute a deep dive into 20th century philosophy, nor do we believe it’s necessary for the current task. Those outfitted with an understanding of existentialism in all its varieties will understand the problem pronto.

For those who don't, here's a brief tamtzit —

Generally, existentialists see the world as random, arbitrary, meaningless and absurd — and therefore terrifying. And its from that terror that they attempt to build meaning and purpose in their lives, thereby providing some measure of comfort and protection from the suicidal dread that inevitably befalls them.

Academics will tell you that there exists a religious form of existentialism, too — even a Jewish brand! But the truth is, it's so crackheaded and contrived as to be useless to anyone who might try to espouse it. Existentialism is a gawdless philosophy that, by rights, shouldn't even attempt to make religious pretenses, and certainly not Jewish ones.

A Xtian variety, i.e., Kierkegaardian existentialism, is also alleged to exist, but as it's based on avoda zara, it turns out to be as godless as the rest of them.

Judaism, on the other hand, is the precise opposite of existentialism.

Judaism begins with G-d and a universe manifestly teeming with meaning and purpose. Individual lives are also invested with meaning, and Judaism invites all its adherents to actively uncover and, ultimately, luxuriate in it.

To be pithy (and perhaps unhelpful): the existentialists claim that ‘existence precedes essence’, that we're literally thrown into this void of a universe as mere ‘existents’, and it's up to us to determine our ‘essence’ — who we are and what our life's meaning and purpose should be. We make ourselves after our own image (according to the existential creed) in light of whatever we believe might be in our best interest.

Authentic Jews, of course, believe the opposite — that the essential part was always there, i.e., G-d (who always existed), and its only through Him that the world and our own personal existence derive any meaning or purpose. Essence, for a Jew, precedes existence.

In any event, to discuss Judaism through the limiting lens of existentialism gives us no pleasure and almost certainly diminishes it, so we're going to stop right there.

The reason we introduced the idea in the first place was merely to help cast a light on today's ‘Jewish problem’, as outlined above.

So, Does G-d Exist?

The last two centuries brought the world a repast of rampant atheism with a side dish of destructive ideologies to replace the gawd idea — ideologies that offer humanity very little that's spiritually nutritious.

Existentialism was one of them, yet to its credit, it was honest enough (in most cases), to admit that without G-d, a man's life is reduced to hopeless nausea and an ever increasing desire to self-extinguish.

For good and for bad, most of the Torah world lived insulated from those trends. On the one hand, it maintained itself safely beyond the threats of anomie and vacuousness that dominated the modern West; but on the downside, it also failed to recognize the tension its members were under until very late in the game, and was therefore less able to properly address it.

That tension was articulated best by the existentialists in their voracious search for meaning.

It turns out the yeshiva types were searching, too…

How'd it happen?

The last century saw two World Wars, the Holocaust, the Cold War, revolutions in the world of race and gender, never before dreamt-of technological innovations, abundant opportunities to forge a life of wealth and ease — and all under an impending threat of nuclear annihilation. In short, the 20th century did a number on the entire planet, to put it mildly, and Jews — even religious Jews — were not unaffected.

Trying to cope with exposure to all those realities and still hold on to the certainties of Jewish life that our great grandparents took for granted proved too strenuous for many.

The world's arbitrary outward appearance, it's absurdity and randomness overwhelmed the average yeshiva bochur, who saw these developments in all their shocking immediacy — as we all did.

And as expected, he asked, “what does it mean?”

But he got no answer.

Modernity, with its scientific penchant to atomize and analyze, for most rebbeim was not seen as a threat. Some grasped it for what it was, to be sure, but most ignored it, and almost no one explained it to those generations that were perplexed and bedeviled by it.

No one took the time to clarify in Jewish terms how all these trends and developments might be interpreted to add to a Jew’s belief, how they might be used to build one's trust in the Al-mighty, how they might better demonstrate how He runs His world — all of this, unfortunately, was by and large neglected.

There were some clear sighted rabbis who saw the issue and attempted to address it. Rabbi Avigdor Miller was particularly bold in his efforts. But there were others. Recognizing how late 20th century reality was alienating Jewish youth and young adults, Rav Meir Kahane in 1977 penned a book with the almost existential title, Why Be Jewish? And he, too, had great success bringing aimless Jews back into the fold.

Rabbi Moshe Weinberger is another example of a contemporary leader who dared speak about G-d, and gave chizuk to a great many in the process.

And that's where we are now.

Lots of yeshivas and yiddishkeit, and not nearly enough Hashem.

Regrettably, in the mainline yeshivas the discussion remains confined to halacha and poskim, which is, admittedly, the proper domain of a yeshiva. But a broader discussion of what ‘in the name of G-d’ the Creator was up to over the last hundred years (!) was glaringly absent.

The essence was always there, to use the existentialist terminology. But no one was teaching to it.

By contrast, the baal teshuva movement and its institutions were more successful in serving something both nutrient-dense and tasty, but only because they had no choice. Their clientele were non-believers from the get-go and they were davka looking for answers to those questions regarding a world gone mad, as well as meaning and purpose in their own lives.

Consequently, they taught a Torah that connected the individual directly to G-d via the sources. A number of chasidic streams also adopted this approach with great success.

In the traditional yeshiva world, teaching to meaning and purpose and a connection with G-d remains underemphasized to an alarming degree.

And the results are now being published all over Substack.

Truth is, the number of people falling away from orthodoxy will only abate once we recognize that it's not enough just to know how to exist as a Jew, i.e. halacha with all its outward trappings. It’s not enough to ‘play Jewish’, as they say — or, as Rabbi Kahane put it — to be an “atheistic practitioner of ritual.”

There’s going to have to be more.

To put it bluntly, we're going to have to return to essences. To G-d. To our connection with Him. To understanding how He operates in the world, and to what end.

Only with those answers in place and with a full appreciation of Hashem as the G-d of history, can we then turn to our own lives and begin to see His intimate hashgacha, and to understand more clearly where He's trying to lead us, and to reveal to ourselves the avoda that's best suited for us to serve Him.

That's the call of the day.

May we merit to find teachers and yeshivas ready to guide us on that path.

Dean Maughvet

NEXT WEEK…

A Life Without G-d is a Neurosis!

Our take on what exactly Hashem is up to — ramping up global antisemitism, inciting major regional wars, sending extreme weather, food scarcity, a pending global financial (and economic) disaster, globalist totalitarianism and absolute technological surveillance.

What happened to the Big Guy’s sense of humor…?