Frequently one thinks that one's ideas are original and no one has arrived to the same conclusions, only to discover that ideas are floating in the air and many have cought them. Holt in Takimag seems to be one writer whose mind works on the same frequency as mine, so we have received the same ideas floating around in the ether. I would say Holt has the clarity of thought and the spiritual courage to put it out in writing, a thing which I never did. While his mind cuts like a hot knife in butter, my mind is confused and troubled by fears. Holt writes:
there seems to be two ways to have a replacement fertility rate in the modern world.I have seen this law in practice during my life: My uncle Moishy made aliyah from Auschwitz to Meah Shearim and lived all his life piously in the famous Batey Ungarim, the houses of the Hungarians. The Abelesz are a tribe once more, they had run out of names of the deceased to give to the newborns. On the other hand, you have my Mother and her sisters, who lost their religious upbringing and lived a more comfortable life, what is commonly called in religious circles as "apikursim" (a corruption of Epikoros, a Greek philosopher). I am an only child and have only one cousin. The only difference was religion.
A) Be really religious.
B) Be really r-selected.
Since Europeans aren’t Africans, that leaves option (A) as the only proven method for replacement Caucasian fertility.
My parents did not know that they were followers of Epikuros of Samos (pic), as the West in general ignores that their fate is, in fact, a philosophical dispute between a Greek sage and Moses and Aaron, founders of the Jewish religion. For Epicurus, the purpose of life was happiness and tranquillity, characterized by ataraxia, peace and freedom from fear, and "aponia", the absence of pain. He taught that pleasure and pain are the measures of what is good and bad, that the gods do not reward or punish humans, that events in the world are ultimately based on the purposeless motions atoms in empty space. Jewish religion is the very opposite of Epicurus's philosophy: The universe was created by God with a hidden purpose, human life has a definite purpose, that things are either sacred, pure (kosher) and permitted, or they are evil, forbidden, contrary to God's will. Good deeds (mitzvot) are accounted for and evil acts are punished in some mysterious way. We a people of priests and have to live according to the Law and fulfil God's plan. Christianism and the Islam have similar outlooks.
I tried to "return" to the Jewish religion, but that is unpracticable after certain age. I am physically unable to read the long texts that Jewish practice consists of. I certainly cant believe in Biblical nonsense. I do what I can, which is not much. I only hope that the tide of returning to religion that is affecting Israeli society will also carry off my own family.
18 comments:
The generation in question also affects fertility. My maternal grandparents almost never attended church, yet they planned on having three kids, and ended up with four. But then my grandparents are in their mid-70's, and children were common in that generation.
What is best for the group is not always best for the individual. My cousin, a secular Jew, has a son who has become frum and is about to marry a baal tshuvah girl. They will surely have many children. Yet, from my cousin's point of view this is a tragedy - their son is an unrecognizable bearded character, who won't so much as drink a glass of water in their home anymore (might be treif). He has abandoned the pursuit of a graduate degree and instead davens all day at the yeshiva. Be careful what you ask for - you just might get it.
The irony is that (like most Jews) the period of secularization was only maybe 3 generations - mine, my parents and uncles and my grandparents (the latter were not exactly secular but neither were they frum - no sheitl, no beard). But before that and probably stretching untold generations, as frum as my cousin's son now is.
The other irony is that my cousin's son has a very un-Hasidic sounding American name. Someday his great grandson Shlomo will be named for his great grandfather Scott.
Please send my Mazal Tov to the happy new couple. I think he is doing the right thing, I would love if my daughters would marry bearded religious . I would buy paper cups to have them drink some water in my house. I would keep special Shabbat pens too, so they dont have to write with pens that have been used on Shabbat. I would make an effort to avoid laughing at them too.
REgarding former generations, I have my doubts, there was always a large section of Jews that was secular in practice.
The age at which people marry matters. If a couple ties the knot in their mid-thirties, it does not matter if they are religious or not, they will will usually end up with only one or two children.
If not for the "fact" (I find it dubious) that only religious people beget large families, would you still want your daughters to marry religious?
Not long ago in the US, rational folks had the evolutionary edge over religious folks. That could easily become true again over the next century, before any irreparable demographic change has occurred.
Not long ago in the US, rational folks had the evolutionary edge over religious folks. That could easily become true again over the next century, before any irreparable demographic change has occurred .
Not too long ago in the US secular people were rational and didn't endorse outright stupid ideas. Now it is the religious people in the US who are rational and the secular ones are irrational.
Your comment that you would try to avoid laughing at your daughter shows to me that your feelings are not as positive as you claim them to be - I think that while the idea of having many descendants is appealing in the abstract, you would not really be too wild about your actual grandchildren with their payas and their tzitzit and their shaved heads, etc. Children who would know all the fine points of halachah but to whom water engineering or Galton or a Spanish love song would be completely alien.
I can't speak for all former generations, but from my mother's descriptions, those she knew in the generation before her parents were quite strict - she describe one who slept on a wooden bed without pillows as a form of penance.
Understanding these deeply ambiguous feelings towards tradition is one key to understanding the Jewish mind.
May decent people never pass from this earth.
Anon.
Sleeping in a wooden bed? My grandfather used a tight belt (what Christian monks call cilicium) as penitence. He fasted mondays and thursdays. I am free of these inclinations, and I do have an ambiguous attitude toward some practices. Everybody has some internal filter that says "This is bullshit. I'll not do it". Some stop at the badatz kashrut, others at using the elevator on Shabat (you know, extreme rabbis have forbidden it).
Sleeping in a wooden bed? My grandfather used a tight belt (what Christian monks call cilicium) as penitence. He fasted mondays and thursdays. I am free of these inclinations, and I do have an ambiguous attitude toward some practices. Everybody has some internal filter that says "This is bullshit. I'll not do it". Some stop at the badatz kashrut, others at using the elevator on Shabat (you know, extreme rabbis have forbidden it).
This is the difference between the ordinary person and the haredi, especially a baal tshuvah who has had exposure to Western thought and should know better. A haredi has had his bullshit filter surgically removed. Whatever the rebbe says is what you have to do. No thinking allowed. No mitzvah is too stupid to observe and if you run out of things to do, you make up new ones that aren't even in the Book.
This is what causes the fundamental tension between baal tshuvah children and their parents - the parents still live in a world of reason and are looking to make their lives easier and more convenient, while the whole point of being a baal tshuvah is to fill your life with stringencies from morning to night, the better to show everyone how holy you are now. You will never be able to compete with your parents in whatever their chosen field was, so you shift the battle to a contest of frumkeit which you will surely win.
I happened to do my reserve military service in a batallion heavily peopled by American ultraortodox boys. They really spent every waking minute in learning or observing the "stringencies", yet they were very conscious soldiers. They dealt with a military problem exactly like a problem of halacha, they studied the elements and precedents, consulted with each other, and debated endlessly the halachic and ethical connections. Learning Gemara improves the thinking process. They know that the Gemara is full of bullshit, but they develope a mental gymnastics to give it some appearance of sense.
I happened to do my reserve military service in a batallion heavily peopled by American ultraortodox boys. They really spent every waking minute in learning or observing the "stringencies", yet they were very conscious soldiers. They dealt with a military problem exactly like a problem of halacha, they studied the elements and precedents, consulted with each other, and debated endlessly the halachic and ethical connections. Learning Gemara improves the thinking process. They know that the Gemara is full of bullshit, but they develope a mental gymnastics to give it some appearance of sense.
I went to law school with some boys who had been to the Yeshiva. Needless to say, they were very well prepared for law school because the method of reasoning is very similar (if not exactly identical). And of course they had a yiddische kopf. And while being observant is time consuming, it is less distracting to study than being involved with alcohol or drugs or dating, etc. - the frequent preoccupations of modern youth. But this does not mean I would want my children to become one of them.
I can see how such mental exercises would strengthen the reasoning powers of the average 120iq rabbinical student. I was always a horrible student, and there are still times when I swear I miss the obvious when reading something.
Jews are mostly immune to alcohol and drugs. You rightly mentioned dating as a wasteful time-sink, which observant young people avoid. Religious people lives a higher quality life than the "apikorsim". Specially women.
Wasn't it a Greek (Aeschylus?) who wrote that man must suffer to be wise? Do you think he was a closet Jew?
Dave!
Aeschylus was a writer of comedies.
You must be laughing at me?
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