Let's talk about God, baby...

More discussion growing out of a religion thread on That Message Board -- I've said things like this before, but not sure if I've posted them here, so for what it's worth here it is!

My advice to you, Jewel, is to focus on how you would like to live your life more than on abstract questions of belief, doctrine, or theology.

The joke version of Reconstructionist Judaism is "There is no God, and Mordecai Kaplan is his prophet."
But there's an element of truth there, and it's pretty close to what I "believe" (i.e., the model that works best for me in terms of intellectual honesty and my understanding of the world) about God -- that God has no independent or transcendent existence, but is valuable to me as a conceptual and poetic embodiment of our highest and noblest ideals, a divine force that represents the best in us. Kaplan called it "the Power that makes for salvation," among other things -- but he didn't "believe in" God as an anthropomorphic SuperPerson.

You could call this "belief" of mine a species of atheism. I don't believe in the God that many theists believe in, and "God" doesn't mean to me what it means to them.

And yet you'd be hard pressed to look at me and see what people think of when they say "atheist," or even "secularist"/"humanist" (which are terms I would embrace in some contexts, though not so much in opposition to religious identifiers). I work at a synagogue, I'm a leader in several different member-led (not clergy-led) Jewish worship/study communities, I keep kosher, I keep Shabbat, I wear a kippah most of the time now...

I live a life in which "our God and of our ancestors"--words that open the Amidah, the central prayer that traditional Jews say 3 times daily as the core of the prayer service--has a meaningful presence. I've said those words twice today (afternoon & evening services--I skipped the morning, and the only day of the week I regularly make it through all 3 of the prayer services I'm "supposed" to do is Shabbat...), while fasting in observance of Tisha B'Av (the 9th of Av--commemorating the destruction of the Temples and other historical disasters).

I hope that the spiritual preparation of this practice of prayer, and my engagement with the ethical teachings of my religious tradition, contribute to making me a better person, one who will make her world a better place -- which is, in my book, an act of godliness.

So if the God-who-does-not-exist-independently-of-us-all speaks to me through my involvement in the tradition, through the love I feel for friends and family and the love they feel for me, through natural beauty and music and art... is it really accurate to say that God has no place in my life, because I don't "believe in" God?

I would say not. But I would also say it doesn't matter. I know what my God, who does not exist, wants of me, in the words of the prophets of my tradition (not because they saw God, not because they were especially holy -- but because these words are true and beautiful and right):

He has told you, O man, what is good;
And what does the Lord require of you
But to do justice, to love kindness,
And to walk humbly with your God?
(Micah 6:8)

May God bless and keep you...

There's a discussion going on over at the Shefa Network about Birkat Kohanim. Here's the 2 cents' worth I had to contribute:

For what it's worth, until 1991 (my first year of college) I had never been in a shul where Birkat Kohanim occurred at any point--and these were all shuls that DID give Kohen & Levi aliyot, not rishon & sheni.

At the student-led egalitarian Conservative high holiday services my roommate and I went to, she was apparently the only person (male or female) whose father was a kohen and so could perform Birkat Kohanim. Her parents had not been observant Jews and had raised her without much of a religious upbringing, but she had become far more interested in traditional Judaism and had in fact been keeping kosher since 10th grade (telling her parents she was becoming vegetarian, since bad blood between them & an Orthodox relative made her reluctant to thrust her new observance in their faces). In this case, the tradition of having the person pronouncing the blessing be "fed" it word by word had exactly the desired effect: having never performed this ritual before -- indeed, probably never having seen it performed before either -- she was able to convey this blessing to all of us, without concern about whether she would remember all of the words. It was a wonderful moment.

Since then, I can count on one hand the number of times I've seen birkat kohanim done in any shul of any sort*, but in many of those places it had been added to the practices of the shul or minyan relatively recently, having either never been done or not done within memory of anyone there.

Me, I can take it or leave it -- as with kohen-levi aliyot vs. rishon-sheni -- as long as all those whose fathers are kohanim or levi'im (i.e., including b'not kohen/levi) have these ritual roles/honors extended to them regardless of gender.

But I concur in the understanding that several have voiced here that birkat kohanim, which is extended through but not on behalf of the kohanim, need not be anathema in a shul that dispenses with kohen/levi aliyot -- as well as in thinking that other ways of conveying this blessing may also be valuable in making the members of the congregation feel the impact of receiving this blessing in some way that is more striking or immediate than its recitation by the shaliach as part of ordinary Amidah repetition.

* Those occasions were:

• Rosh Hashanah at an egalitarian Conservative syagogue in Albany, NY (done by both women and men whose fathers are kohanim);
• a Sukkot service of traditional egalitarian Conservative minyan members in a friend's backyard in Washington DC (both men and women whose fathers are kohanim -- though I heard some grumbling/challenging from some traditionalist men re: having a bat kohen up there);
• high holiday services at a Conservative synagogue in Maryland (egalitarian shul, though only men were up there; according to one authority I asked afterwards, b'not kohen are also allowed to do so -- but I heard from others that at some point in the past a bat kohen had done so & then been given some grief about it);
• chag services at Young Israel in Manhattan (Orthodox, not egalitarian, so only men);
• Pesach services at a Chabah shul in Cleveland (ditto).