Let’s confront a painful truth. Judaism has failed. Despite billions of
dollars spent over the past 40 years to bring Jews closer to their tradition, we
have barely moved the needle on the 50 percent assimilation and intermarriage
rate. Israel has the worst reputation of any country with the possible exception
of Iran and North Korea. The facts are indisputable but the question remains
why. Is it because the Jewish religion is inherently impotent and Israel really
is harsh, or rather that our model of promoting both is fatally
flawed.
The real failure is Jewish insularity and
isolation. Judaism for Jews is too narrow, too particular to really
inspire. The vast majority of the world’s Jews want to live mainstream and fully
integrated lives. But every form of Jewish outreach – from Reform to Orthodox –
is designed to bring them back to the Jewish community. News alert. They
left 200 years ago during the great emancipation and they aren’t coming
back.
There is, therefore, only one solution: Judaism for non- Jews. A
global movement to disseminate Jewish values and spirituality to all Earth’s
inhabitants, making no distinction between Jew and gentile.
Two thousand
years ago a still mysterious man named Saul of Tarsus saw that the ideas and
values behind Judaism were so breathtaking that they could change the world, if
only they could be stripped of their ritual demands and be mixed with a human
deity who was more accessible than Judaism’s invisible God. Thus, from the
foundations of Jewish spirituality Christianity, and later Islam, was born. The
time has come for the original progenitors of the ideas to offer the world the
original source, not by converting non-Jews to Judaism but by reviving an
ancient “associate” status that allows them to live lives deeply influenced by
Jewish spiritually and values while retaining their own identity.
In
ancient times there was a middle ground between Jew and non-Jew - Judaizers – a
vast movement that existed in ancient Rome before the birth of Christianity. The
American religious sociologist Rodney Stark explains in
One True God, Historical
Consequences of Monotheism that “Jews constituted 10 percent of the Roman world,
and attracted many pagan God-fearers to their synagogues... Jews in
general and the synagogue in particular were attractive even to non-Jews. The
simplicity of Jewish theology (belief in the one God), the ethical standards
(the Ten Commandments) and the many festivals exercised a certain fascination
among many in the Greco-Roman world. Some even made a full conversion to
Judaism. Others remained in a kind of ‘associate’ status – what Luke in
Acts refers to as ‘God-fearers’ – perhaps unwilling to take upon themselves the
peculiarities of Judaism. It is very likely that many of the non-Jews who
embraced Christianity were first exposed to the Jewish scriptures and Judaism
through their association with the urban Diaspora synagogues in the Roman
Empire.”
I HAVE no interest in converting non-Jews to
Judaism. That would betray the core Jewish belief that all humanity are
equally God’s children as well as the Jewish insistence on enrichment through
diversity. Rather, becoming a Judaizer would involve bringing Jewish values and
spirituality to an existing religious or cultural identity, much like Westerners
who have brought meditation or yoga into their lives.
For the past six
years I have been working on a book, to be published shortly, on a new
understanding of Jesus as prophet rather than deity, based exclusively on the
New Testament. The real story of Jesus as teacher of traditional Jewish
spirituality to his disciples lies explicitly in the text. I have lectured
Christian audiences about rediscovering the uniquely Jewish Jesus as a way of
deepening their spiritual understanding of Christianity and stripping it of any
acquired pagan coating. The response has been overwhelming.
In every part
of the world, there is a growing spiritual crisis. Religion is either not
addressing the spiritual needs of the people or inspiring extremes. In Europe
the ability of Christianity to influence societal values has been so compromised
that last week in Spain I debated a megaselling author from France who wrote a
book titled
Forty Reasons Not to Have Children. The pedophile-priest scandal has
a choke hold on Catholicism, and in the US evangelical Christianity is extremely
successful but obsessed with issues like gay marriage and abortion that utterly
ignore the crisis of materialism and an increasingly narcissistic
populace.
Becoming a Judaizer would entail a seven-step program of
living:
1. Observe Friday night as family night (see
www.fridayisfamily.com) by tuning out all electronic interference and
focusing on children, friends and community.
2. Eat kosher food (20
percent of Americans already look for kosher symbols for cleanliness and purity)
and separate milk from meat as a symbol of the affirmation of life and its
negation from all forms of corrosion and death.
3. Celebrate the themes
of the Jewish festivals. Passover Seders, emphasizing the human capacity to rise
above material enslavement (President Barack Obama already hosts his own annual
Seder), transcending a reliance on material comforts by returning to the
essentials of nature on Succot, lighting lamps on Hanukka as a symbol of the
human capacity to illuminate a dark earth and heal a painful life, and
reorienting ourselves to the essential laws of ethics and morality on
Shavuot.
4. Studying Judaism’s great texts, from the Torah portion of the
week to selections of the Talmud, to the epistles of Maimonides, to kabbalistic
and hassidic works.
5. Observing the marriage laws, including the monthly
act of sexual separation thereby creating an erotic barrier that enhances lust
and pleasure (see my book
Kosher Sex).
6. Appreciation of, and respect
for, the feminine, including codes of alluring modesty for women, and
domesticity and marital commitment for men, all necessary in an age where teens
like Miley Cyrus are already pole-dancing and stars like George Clooney can’t
commit.
7. A commitment to acts of communal kindness, such as regular
visits to hospitals and homes for the elderly and giving 10 percent of one’s
income to charity.
ALTHOUGH INFORMAL, the campaign has already begun. In
the US, the most sought-after speaker for Jewish organizations is Mayor Cory
Booker of Newark, who served as president of my L’Chaim Society at the
University of Oxford, where we studied thousands of hours of Jewish and
African-American texts together. He is now electrifying the nation with
speeches, heavily based on Jewish values and wisdom, about living an inspired
life of communal devotion. Likewise, Madonna, Ashton Kutcher and the Kabbala
Center have done much to highlight Israel, Jewish spirituality and kosher
living.
But this campaign needs the investment of global organizations
like the World Jewish Congress, the Jewish Agency and even Birthright Israel,
which might create a program for non-Jewish youth to visit Israel.
Having
non-Jews become excited about Judaism is the most effective way to address
assimilation, because Jews would now be blending into a culture that embraces
and honors their tradition. There would be no escape. Similarly, having tens of
millions of people – from Russia to China to Brazil – who look to Judaism for
spiritual sustenance would create unshakable support for a Jewish homeland
whence that spirituality stems.
A few weeks ago at our Sabbath table, we
made the rounds of guests toasting L’chaim. Michael Jackson’s former manager
Francesco Cascio raised his glass and said, “I am not Jewish and have no plans
to be. But I live my life according to Jewish values and spirituality.” I
believe millions more the world over wish to do the same.
The writer
heads This World: The Values Network, an organization dedicated to promoting
universal Jewish values to heal America. He has just published a book on
spiritual spirituality for non- Jews called Renewal: A Guide to the
Values-Filled Life. Follow him on Twitter @RabbiShmuley.