As I was preparing a sign to take to last night's demonstration in Jerusalem against right-wing thuggery, it occurred to me that I've been doing this for a long time. Not often enough, I admit, but I started going to demonstrations (against the Vietnam war) in high school, and I'm now well up in my sixth decade.
So where has it gotten me, all this demonstrating? Has it had an effect? Is the world a better place?
With age, I become more skeptical. The world -- the human world -- doesn't seem to be showing any less warts than it did 40-odd years ago. Or 4000-odd years ago, when the Torah had G!d declaring that "the inclination of the human heart is wicked from its youth." Is peace in the Middle East possible? Can humans learn to live together tolerantly, without exploiting, shunning, wounding and killing? Can religion inspire without giving way to obscurantism? Can the natural world survive us?
No, as I grow older, I tend more toward the perspective of Ecclesiastes, though perhaps there are some new things under the sun. Our urge to mass slaughter and environmental destruction have not changed much, but our ability to make good on them has grown.
Do I think G!d will save (the state of) Israel? Did G!d do that in the past? No, I think G!d's pretty much put that in our hands. And our hands are shaking a lot, lately. Messiah is something accomplished by humans of faith, who can produce good leaders (who stay good) and follow them in good directions. Think about it.
So if I think our efforts are unlikely to redeem the world, and more likely to make us look like laughingstocks in a world that glorifies money and power, why am I still at it?
That, my friends, is faith. I believe in the Torah's commands to do good and be just, however short I fall. I believe we are commanded to keep trying, tenaciously, no matter what. Even if there's little hope of success. Even if they laugh at us or throw things at us. That, too, will keep happening. The world hangs between destructive and constructive forces. We are commanded to keep trying to tip the balance, and to create faith communities for that purpose.
I believe, too, in the extraordinary power of art, in the inspiration to beauty rooted in Spirit, in truths that lie beyond what we can intellectualize. It's not just the hand of the artist, natural or human; it's our eye -- our senses and mind -- programmed to receive and recognize all this, to be inspired and, sometimes, to inspire. To see and, sometimes, to be changed.
There's a spiritual dimension to human relationships, too -- to our ability to connect, communicate, empathize, share and help. And somehow, from what I have seen, those relationships grow best in communities that create common ground and prioritize connecting, communicating, empathizing, sharing and helping in light of a common purpose.
Do you need to be a religious Jew, or a religious person, to believe in all this? Well, no. Sometimes religion can distract from these very purposes. There are many paths of truth, of the same spirit that shows itself in art and in relationships. There are also many paths that lead astray, and even some of them have sparks of spirit in them.
To me, though, it is faith that keeps turning me toward the big issues, bringing them into focus even in the cacophony of religious voices pointing in several different directions. It is faith that keeps directing me to go back and try again. That spirit that shows itself in the pursuit of the good, the just and the holy, in bringing communities together, and in the appreciation of beauty -- my word for it is G!d, though some have other words for it. And I've found nothing better than a community of faith to create and bind human relationships, by rooting them in the joint pursuit of the holy. Ultimately -- because I do live in a community -- it is religion that holds it all together for me.
And that's why you'll still find me at another demonstration -- for a cause that may not be identified with religion.
