Plea for understanding

In times like these where hate, divisiveness, and lies seem to spread like wildfire, I can find myself feeling powerless against forces of evil that appear inextinguishable. Thankfully, I am armed with the most powerful weapon. Although at times it may be difficult to find, this weapon has the potential to instill within me courage and fight off my fears. This weapon is my faith. Faith that there exists a source to all creation, to our world, to our universe, to space and time themselves. 

Living within our universe, bound by space and time, I can never truly know what exists “outside” of the universe and “before” it was created. However, I can work to understand the artist by examining his masterpiece – the materials he used and the set of laws that shape his creation, like lines that give structure and order to an otherwise unidentifiable and incomprehensible work of art. The clues of her intention are everywhere, in every system, in every contrast, in everything that inspires, in everything that is beautiful. But this intention and purposefulness can be missed to the eye blinded by ego and selfishness, to the heart that is afraid to stop, to be uncomfortable, to question, to challenge, to search, to imagine, to love.

As children, we believe in magic. The world is teaming with beauty and complexity, with newness and mystery. As adults many of us lose our humility and our appreciation of the world. We begin to believe that we know enough about the world to comfortably live our lives each day within the cage of ideas we have built for ourselves, taking what has become familiar for granted and feeling justified for not loving others who look different or appear to think differently than us. Some of us become so certain that we know the purpose of life, that we possess the whole truth, that we are unwilling to listen and learn from others. Unbeknownst to us, these others may very well possess the missing piece to our puzzle, a puzzle that we, perhaps unconsciously, have worked so hard to deny exists at all. And this is okay. 

The diversity of humanity, with each of us radiating a different level of humility, paints our world with a spectrum of color that together creates the contrast and balance necessary to reveal the artist’s intention. But unlike a painting that appears static, a representation of an intention captured in time, the masterpiece of our universe, of humanity, contains movement. It is evolving, each second revealing more and more of the Creator’s intention, revealing more and more of the purpose he has intended for each of us as individuals and as a part of the family of humanity. Of course, a work of art is meaningless to those who are moving too fast to stop and examine it, to those who are so sure that what they are doing and where they are running to is of the utmost importance, to those whose ego has conquered their childlike curiosity,  to those who are unwilling to listen or learn from the unfamiliar, or to those that take being alive for granted.

My most powerful weapon is my faith that we all come from a common source. This belief alone instills within me a sense of unity and connectedness with other human beings. I crave these feelings; they can be hard to come by in a world that often feels divided. But my belief in the existence of this common source, alone, does not shield me from fear. My shield from fear is my faith that the essence of this common source is love, that our reality was created out of love, to provide each one of us with the best possible experience that we could ask for. Despite the waves of pain and divide we feel, our human family is bound together by love that continues to grow over time. Love that is possible only after fighting, after experiencing shared pain, love that forms only when the burden of hate becomes too exhausting to carry anymore. 

When our childish ignorance and teenage rebellion have been beaten out of us by the consequences of our actions, and we gain the wisdom characteristic of getting older, we learn to love our sisters and brothers no matter how different they are from us. Love is easier when we see how closely related we are to one another. A unique bond exists between family members, one that is rooted in the mystical nature of creation and life itself. Our apparent reason for coming into existence, our common ancestor, can be traced to a shared place and time. As such, it is easier to see that we are made from the same substance, that we are both human and deserve to experience goodness and love.

We want the best for our family. We see them almost as an extension of ourselves. Although we may experience conflict and disconnection at times, we are often more willing to forgive them and seek to be close to them. We learn to forgive the fallibility of our parents, appreciate the struggles they faced, and look to learn from their experience. We do not have to agree on everything. We have had our own experiences and we have developed our own truth, but we can still learn to love them, learn to speak our mind but also compromise and let go of things that stand in the way of peace between us. There is nothing more beautiful than coming home to a house filled with family who love one another and work to preserve the peace between them. 

My faith is that the Creator has created the world for this beautiful purpose, for us to be united as one people. How this will be achieved for a family of eight billion seems complex and I’m grateful that I am not responsible for working out the details. But I have faith that as time progresses, we are moving towards a more perfect and whole existence. I can contribute to this superior intention by working to keep the peace within my home – starting with my original home, my body. I first working to instill peace within myself, letting go of the hatred I have for certain parts of me, learning to accept them and love them because they have shaped me and continue to shape me into the colorful person I am meant to be. After establishing this goal and working to maintain a level of inner peace, I work to have loving and peaceful interactions with those outside of me – my family, my Jewish brothers and sisters, and ultimately all the children of G-d I encounter throughout my day.

This way of life at face value may sound straightforward albeit challenging, but it is far more difficult than it seems due to an additional element – the unreconcilable evil that exists in the world. This evil cannot be reasoned with, cannot be appeased by mercy, and cannot be converted through love. It is like cancer within the body and must be completely obliterated, leaving no trace of its existence, or else be faced with the threat of its return. Sparks of this evil exist inside all of us, feeding off hatred and lies, and left uninhibited, grow to overpower our values and loving nature, so much so that our humanness becomes unrecognizable. We can each do our part to extinguish this evil within ourselves, but as members of the human family, we are also responsible for working to do so within our society.

How do we remove this evil? How do we know when one has been so consumed by evil that they have lost the ability to return to goodness? Faced with this question, one which seems so crucial to humanity yet almost impossible to answer, I feel fortunate to have access to the wisdom of my forefathers and their carefully guarded traditions. Their knowledge has protected the Jewish people for thousands of years, and today enables me to act with verility against evil with a relatively clear conscience. When my life or a member of my family’s life is being threatened, there is no room for me to remain silent or neutral. If I want my brother to live, I need to pick sides and work to defend him.

I believe that the Jewish people have a right to exist and a right to defend themselves and their homes wherever they may live. The Jewish people have continuously lived in some capacity in the land of Israel for thousands of years. Most of the Jewish population of Israel was exiled and scattered around the world following the destruction of the Second Temple in Jerusalem. Since this exile, Jews were pushed from country to country, considered undesirable and second-class citizens, were discriminated against, and often hunted down and killed. Over the last two hundred years an increasing number of Jews chose to return to Israel, in large part due to the unwavering persecution they experienced in the lands they had been exiled to. They purchased land and built homes in the land of Israel in growing numbers. Living and cultivating the land of Israel is at the core of Jewish belief, and denying the legitimacy of this belief is denying the legitimacy of being Jewish. 

As an atheist at the age of twenty-one, I never expected to embark on a spiritual journey that would result in my eventual admission that I believe it to be more likely than not that there exists an infinite creator. This creator can be expressed as an existence unbound by space and time, who sees me, hears me, feels me, and understands me and all that I do. This existence is responsible for the creation of our universe, the matter and the forces that exist here, and the movement that pushes this matter through pathways in time in order to create a world perfectly balanced with all the components necessary to result, at the end of it all, in absolute unity. 

Even after I had extensively researched many ideologies, philosophies, sciences, and religions, it was not obvious to me that I would grow to believe that being Jewish is essential to my understanding of truth and my developing a relationship with the Creator, or G-d as it is commonly referred to. My process of coming to believe in the existence of G-d was both heavily intellectual and emotional and required me to fearlessly and meticulously examine my human experience. I worked to describe my consciousness in all of its parts, the ugly and the shameful, the forces and narratives that drive my passion, anger, inspiration, and love. I worked to articulate what I had been taught to be true about the world, about the laws that govern nature and societies, and why I believed these things to be true. 

How had I determined what was true or false? I had grown up in a society that regarded the scientific method as the sole determiner of truth. Was this in fact the only way of knowing something, or was this even a valid method for determining truth at all? What assumptions did I make about reality and my understanding of it in order to conclude that the scientific method necessarily reflects truth? For example, for the scientific method to represent the whole truth in the most accurate way, I would have to assume that the physical laws governing the universe remain unequivocally constant over time, are able to be understood in their entirety, and that the act of observing and recording data does not alter reality. While researching my answers to these questions I learned that according to our understanding of quantum physics, a model that in theory describes the material of our universe at the most fundamental level, the very act of observing or recording appears to change the behavior of matter and energy. Therefore, it is not farfetched to consider that when we make observations and collect data, we are merely accessing a dimension of this reality that is observable or recordable. In other words, when we observe or record matter, it adopts a form and characteristics that we are “allowed” to see. Thus, it is likely that a truer description of our reality would comprise possibilities for the behavior of matter and energy that go beyond our understanding of the laws of physics today, and possibly go beyond any model of the laws that govern our existence that we are capable of designing. 

An indication of this truth is in the randomness we observe in our universe. As scientists we often assume that there exists a finite series of equations that, if we were to delineate them accurately, behavior that appears random would be revealed to be the sum of explainable forces, thus not random at all. Although we have been able to demystify many randomlike occurrences in our universe, in reality, there could exist a truly random force that influences our universe, hinting at the truth that, despite the clear existence of measurable order, there exists an element of infinite possibilities that is uncalculatable in its essence. This would be a force that is not bound by the limits of space and time or anything else that we can comprehend. Therefore, it is entirely possible that there exists a force outside of those we can observe and record that influences the world and each of our lives.

This former is just one example of an assumption that I considered to be true before understanding that it is riddled with uncertainty at its most fundamental level. Understanding how little I could actually prove about reality allowed me to realize that I had been living with faith in something all my life. I had what appeared to be unfaltering faith that our scientific understanding of the universe was sufficient for me to understand reality and disprove the existence of G-d, that our universe was not created for any particular purpose, and that my life had no inherent purpose. Inasmuch, I believed that there was nothing that I should necessarily aspire to achieve with my time here. Upon understanding that I was living with mere faith in these assumptions all along, I chose to thoroughly examine reality and my first-person experience of it in order to consciously and logically choose what to have faith in. Long story short, after years of research and toiling with my findings, I chose to have faith in love and unity. I chose Judaism in its truest existence. 

Judaism represents a vast and mystical well of knowledge and potential that deeply nourishes my soul, more so than anything that I have come across. Its secrets which I work to reveal and understand serve me on my journey to be more at peace with myself and the world around me, and have allowed me to feel closer to myself and to my Creator than I ever had been before. Judaism is the greatest treasure I have uncovered, and I have only scratched its surface. As such, this treasure is worth defending with my life. The Jewish people are essential to the preservation of Judaism and to carry out its intention. The purpose of being a Jew is to bring forth light, balance, and peace in the world. This is the most beautiful reason I could have imagined for being alive, and if this purpose is threatened I must act to defend it – albeit in a way that is consistent with Jewish laws and principles. 

I am writing this not to instill within you a love for my truth; not everyone is created to connect or appreciate Judaism. I believe that each person has a truth that is meant for them to discover, and by working to discover this truth, they do their part to assist the overall revelation of truth in the world. There are many paths each of us can take to instill goodness and purpose into our lives. I am writing this to ask for your identification and understanding. Your identification that there exists goodness, values, and people that are worth defending. With the existence of evil in this world self-evident, I hope you can understand why I choose to act the way I do. If you believe that the Jewish people have a right to exist, then you will stand up against the evil that, at its core, has sworn to carry out their extermination. I hope that the growing pains of humanity will be minimal as we continue on our path toward a peaceful world. Each one of us has a purpose, a voice, and an influence. I pray that you will find yours, that you will learn to love especially when it is hard, and that we will see peace in our lifetimes.