Trying To Decide What I Believe
By Gabriel Zimmerman
June 16, 2001
My journey from childhood to adulthood is partly about discovering who I am. What’s important to Gabe? What does Gabe believe? What groups of people do I feel a part of? Where do I fit?
Adults say to me, “Be true to your self,” and “How strongly are you ready to fight for what you think is right?” I think answering these questions will take a long time. The project I have chosen for my Bar Mitsve has helped me start the search for some answers.
I was adopted at birth by secular Jewish parents. My biological parents are Christian. Sometimes I think of myself as Jewish, sometimes Christian. Being among secular Jews is much more familiar, because I was raised in a Jewish home. But I am not completely comfortable in Jewish groups. I’m not sure I fit. Another part of me feels I should learn more about my Christian background because I want to respect the culture of my biological parents too.
The questions that I have been exploring in last few months are: Can I be both a secular Jew and a secular Christian? Must I choose one or the other, or can I combine both traditions?
One of things I know about myself is that I like making friends and feeling close to whatever group I am around. The question of whether I am a Jew or a Christian has made a difference at school. I went to a Jewish nursery school, and being Jewish meant I felt like part of the group. At elementary school in the early grades, most of the kids were Christian. Some of the kids didn’t like Jews, and I wanted to be a Christian to fit in.
The kids at my current school are a mix of Christians and Jews. Friendships in middle school don’t depend on having the same background as other kids. But explaining to others what I am has been difficult.
One reason I want to find out what I am is because it will help me to find other people that I might feel close to—and other people who might feel close to me. Thinking about friendship and belonging to groups brings up some new questions:
Exploring these questions took me to the Bible, and to some strange web sites, some boring web sites, and some interesting web sites too. I am sure you are aware of the Sholem web site, and maybe the web sites connected to The Society for Humanistic Judaism. All of the many Christian groups have web sites too. And, you can look up any part of the Jewish or Christian Bible at a “born again” site called: “The Blue Letter Bible dot org.”
Also useful was www.atheists-for-Jesus, and a site put up by something called the International Forgiveness Institute.
Some of the best things I learned, however, came from interviewing people I have listened to: people from mixed Jewish and Christian homes, an ex-Baptist, a Quaker, an Episcopalian, a Unitarian, a Secular Humanist, and several Secular Jews. They talked about their relationship to the religion or traditions of their parents, and what parts of those traditions they kept for their own lives.
My dad was my best source of information about the Zimmerman-Frankel brand of secular Jewishness. On both sides of my family, the following things are part of a single package: being Jewish, liking people who have a good sense of humor, understanding the economic forces in world history, and working for social justice. My grand parents, on both sides, were active in progressive political movements over the last 70 years. And, my great-grand parents on my father’s side were active in the labor, Yiddish, and communist movements of the first half of the 20th century. For the Zimmerman-Frankels, working for political, economic, and social change is an expression of their Jewishness.
I interviewed Jack Plimpton, who is an AIDS-activist in the Episcopal Church. For Jack, Jesus Christ’s message is about love, and about helping people. We looked at the “Book of Common Prayer”, and he talked about how the health of his mind, body and spirit all depend on a faith in his God.
Marguerite Siegel, a Sholem member gave me a starter course in being a Quaker. She spoke of the challenge of listening and looking for God in everything. How it is up to all of us to see each person as an part of an “intelligent force” in the universe. She told how much she enjoys Quaker monthly meetings, and how her ethics and values need a spiritual base. Marguerite stressed the need to feel a part of a larger force from which she pulls the strength to love and forgive, and work for a better world.
Among the people I interviewed who came from families with mixed cultural or religious traditions, none of them felt they had to choose one parent’s background over the other. Several people explained that they took some things from both of their parents.
Fellow Sholem member Jordan Blumenfeld talked to me between bites of lox and whitefish at a local deli. He said that when he is around Jews, he feels like a Jew. But, because he grew up in a mixed Jewish and non-Jewish home, when he is around non-Jews, he still feels at home. He feels he was lucky to have non-religious parents, who worked hard to combine Jewish, Christian and pagan celebrations and holidays.
Sholem member Bill Ratner taught me a little about the Unitarian church. Unitarians do not believe that Jesus was the son of God. They do believe in the moral and spiritual teachings of the Hebrew Bible and the Christian Bible. Bill claims that back in college, Jews and Unitarians were the only kids who were not angry at their parents’ religion. Bill had to re-connect with the Jewish and Unitarian influences of his youth. His mother was Protestant, and his father was Jewish. But his father completely rejected his Jewish background, and he raised Bill as a Unitarian. Bill finds value in both traditions, but is strongly attracted to the pain and humor of Jewish culture.
For several of the people I interviewed, it was very important to break with the beliefs of their parents. My friend, Lamont Everett, was raised in a strict Baptist home. Lamont is a generous and passionate teacher, who acts out his beliefs on a person-to-person level. After he left home to join the Air Force, he found that traditional Christianity was too limiting. After traveling the world, and eventually marrying a Buddhist, he now looks for new traditions and new ways of understanding the world that have nothing to do with his family’s background. This point-of-view seemed to ring true to me. Why not be a person that combines different traditions to fit my own needs?
I am not religious. I don’t believe in the God of the Hebrew Bible. And I don’t believe that Jesus was the Son of God. Non-religious Jewish traditions are part of my family life, and are a part of my education at Sholem. Finding secular Christian traditions has been more of a problem. Even the most liberal Christian and non-Christian groups seem to believe in the super-natural.
I found one non-religious humanist group, which was neither Christian nor Jewish. But the beliefs of their leader did not ring a bell. The director of the local Secular Humanist organization seemed to put the scientific method in place of religion. He seemed bored by anything that was not proven by science. This doesn’t feel right. I can live with no God, but I want to feel that something, beyond science and history, glues the universe together.
Feeling a part of my adoptive or biological parents’ culture is not something I’m interested in right now. I like different foods than my parents. I like different music than my parents. I do, however, want to feel connected to my family by sharing their moral and ethical values. For this project, I spent time learning more about the ethical teachings of Secular Jewish, Christian and other Western traditions.
For example, I started with Jesus’ “Sermon on the Mount”, in Matthew, Chapter 5: “And seeing the multitudes, he went up into a mountain, and when he was set, his disciples came unto him: And he opened his mouth, and taught them, saying, Blessed are the poor in spirit: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are the meek: for they shall inherit the earth. Blessed are the merciful: for they shall obtain mercy. Blessed are the peacemakers: for they shall be called the children of God.”
Jesus also says: “Ye have heard that it hath been said, Thou shalt love thy neighbor, and hate thine enemy. But I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which use you and persecute you.”Christians talk a lot about love and forgiveness. This was also true for the people I interviewed who do not think of themselves as Christian, but were raised in liberal religious traditions, such as Unitarians and Quakers. These more liberal friends share the belief that each human being is a part of God. They don’t believe in hell, and they feel that the rewards for being a good person are here on earth. They also place great importance on responsibility to family, community and humanity. Unitarians say every Sunday, “Love is the doctrine of this church, truth is its sacrament, and service is its prayer.”
I don’t know whether my biological parents are religious or not. But I can guess that they would say, “Jesus’ main teaching was love.”
Secular Jews, on the other hand, are passionate about justice and equality. They believe that history teaches that action, more than forgiveness, can make the world a better place. For example, on Yom Kipper the Sholem community recites the words of the Prophet Isaiah, who says that the traditional holiday fast should remind us to work for a better world, and not just to show how sorry we are for our sins.
Isaiah says:
“This is the fast that I have chosen: To loosen the bonds of injustice, to undo the bonds of the yoke. To let the oppressed go free by smashing every yoke! It is to share your bread with the hungry, and to bring the outcast poor to your home. When you see the naked, that you clothe them; and not hide yourself from your own flesh. Then will your light break forth as the morning, and your righteousness will go before you. Is not this the fast that our history has chosen?
LOVE, FOREGIVENESS, JUSTICE, EQUALITY. As values to live by, some parts work for me, other parts do not.
I want to do things in life that support the poor and the powerless in fighting for social and economic justice. But on the other hand, I like the moral value of being a peacemaker, not a fighter.
I feel that people should love their neighbors. But if a person or a group has unfairly used their power over others, I don’t think that they should be forgiven before there is justice, before things are made right. I am still trying to decide if these values can be combined, and how they relate to every-day life at school and to the situations I hear about in the news.
Both my parents have found a way of making a living outside of corporate America. However, my mom is very concerned that because we live a comfortable life, I won’t feel a connection to people who have less. I do think it is unjust for people to work at very hard jobs for little pay. I don’t think that people anywhere in the world should have to work in sweatshops. Homelessness bothers me a lot. And, I see how racism is everywhere.
It’s not possible for me to ignore the poor; they are all around us. Everyone deserves a decent job and a home. Everyone should be treated with the same respect no matter what his or her income.
But fighting for these things is not a part of my everyday life. At this time in my life I am focusing on my schoolwork. When I get older, I hope I can find a way to do more.
I don’t love the poor, identify with them, or think they are blessed. I want to help people who have little, out of a sense of justice, because everyone should have an equal opportunity to get enough food, shelter, medical care and self-respect.
Does this make me more of a Jew than a Christian? Probably not. I do finish this Bar Mitzvah project feeling closer to the secular Jewish parts of my family and of me. Of course, this has a lot to do with being raised as a Jew, and I will probably take another look at Christianity at a later time in life.
One of the main results of my working on this project is that I can now say very strongly: Choosing one people’s tradition alone doesn’t feel enough. The people I have met, and who I respect the most, take parts of different cultures, and ways of understanding the world, and find ways to combine them, and make them their own.
Thank you very much for joining us this afternoon.
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