A question of semantics

Part of the reason it can be so hard to make any progress when discussing religion is that different people think the word "religion" means different things. The rifts in definition of "religion", however, need not run along lines of belief/nonbelief, or religious/secular. Quite the contrary, believers and nonbelievers in a specific religion may in fact agree on what "religion" is, while disagreeing about whether it's true. This phenomenon partly explains the difficulty American Jews face in communicating with secular Israelis about religion.

So, what is religion?

As an illustrative example, let me explain what "religion" means to most Americans: that is, to American Christians and to American nonbelievers. For American Christians and for American nonbelievers, religion should answer the following question: What happens after I die?

Those Americans who find Christianity's answer to this question satisfactory become Christians; those who don't find Christianity's answer satisfactory reject Christianity. Of course, this is a broad simplification of a complicated social trend, but I argue that believers and nonbelievers in American Christianity share this basic expectation of religion.

Israelis have a different expectation of religion. I hypothesize that, for both secular Israelis and ultra-orthodox Israelis, religion should answer the following question: What is the relationship between God and my people?

Israelis may have beliefs about the afterlife, rooted in the Jewish tradition, but the question of the afterlife is peripheral to religion for Israelis (as for Jews generally), just as the notion of peoplehood vis-a-vis God is peripheral, or even foreign, to most Christians. Israelis who find in the Jewish religion a satisfactory answer to the question of peoplehood vis-a-vis God generally become orthodox. Israelis who do not find in the Jewish religion a satisfactory answer to that question generally become secular.

And what about American Jews? I hypothesize that American Jews have a hard time communicating with secular Israelis about religion because American Jews have a different definition of religion. And what is the question which American Jews expect Judaism to answer? I'm not sure, but as an attempt, let me quote the Cambridger rebbe (who, to be sure, has started many sentences with "Judaism is..." only to finish them differently). He said, "Judaism is the conversation about what Judaism should be."

I realize that the foregoing "question" is not a question at all, but an elliptical statement. I further recognize that it is self-referential in a way that neither the "American Christian" nor "Israeli" definitions of religion I have proposed are, and that therefore my "American Jewish" definition of religion is not parallel to my other two. But, in a way, I think this lack of structural parallelism accurately evokes the difficulty American Jews have in talking about religion with Israelis: not only do we define religion differently, but we define religion as two different kinds of things entirely.

The Israeli may say simply that he rejects Judaism, and such a statement is logical according to his definition of religion. By rejecting Judaism, he means that he finds Judaism does not satisfactorily inform him of the nature of the relationship between God and the Jewish people. Perhaps he doesn't believe in God, or perhaps he has found the meaning of Jewish peoplehood elsewhere, such as in secular Zionism--there are many possibilities, and they all amount to a denial of Judaism, for the Israeli.

But the American Jew, exhibiting his stereotypical erudition and penchant for acrobatic philosophical posturing, cannot comprend the Israeli's rejection of religion. The reason is that, under the American Jew's definition of religion, it is utterly impossible to "reject Judaism", except if it be by simply ceasing to think about Judaism at all one way or the other. Try it! The circularity is sternly inclusive:

Under the American Jewish logic,
(1) to reject Judaism would mean coming to believe that Judaism inadequately answers the question of what Judaism should be;
(2) yet for a skeptic to believe that Judaism fails adequately to answer the question of what Judaism should be implies that our skeptic holds some rationale for judging a reasonable answer to the question of what Judaism should be;
(3) and if our skeptic holds a rationale for judging answers to the question of what Judaism should be, he is davka already participating (at a rather high level) in the conversation about what Judaism should be;
(4) making him...QED...an exemplary Jew.

As American Jews, with our bizarre, sternly inclusive, circular definition of Judaism, we can be quite comfortable with participating in Jewish ritual life and traditional Jewish study to any greater or lesser degree. The whole spectrum of religious observance becomes an open field for trial and subsequent reflection. And if we are inconsistent in our practice, it is only because we are searching.