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June 16, 1963

To Be A Jew, Part 1 - Mebasser Reprint (1963)

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The Bene Israel of India (1961)

Does Judaism believe in "metempsychosis" – the doctrine that the soul makes many voyages in this world, each in a different guise? This is the kind of question that was asked of me after almost every one of the more than thirty lectures I delivered in early 1961, when I visited the Indian Jews on behalf of the U.O.J.C.A. It indicates both the similarities and the differences between the Bene Israel and our Westernized Ashkenazic Jews. On the one hand, there is a deep loyalty to Torah and a love of all our people. On the other, the Indian Jews, in their long winter of isolation, have absorbed many of the superstitions of their pagan environment. A casual American Jewish visitor would not recognize anything specifically "Jewish" in the appearance of the Bene Israel, of which there are some 16,000 in Bombay and who form the majority of India's 22,000 Jews. Their color ranges from almost-white through shades of brawn to near-black. They have lived in the area, according to their tradition, for some two thousand years since their fourteen ancestors survived a shipwreck whilst voyaging from Palestine in the days of the Macabbean revolt. Their mother tongue Is Marathi, one of India's many languages. They read Hebrew, but hardly any of them understand the language. They are devoted to Torah and the nd tzvot to the best of their ability — their extreme poverty prevents them from observing some of our basic commandments. Despite their lack of Jewish education, they are most anxious to improve their lot. That is why they asked me, as I mentioned at the beginning, If some of their cherished beliefs, obviously taken over from their Hindu neighbors, are compatible with Jewish thought. Many of them actively believe in ghosts, use amulets to ward off evil, and even exorcise dybbuks. (In this they are not much different from the Iraqi Jews in India.) The Bene Israel women generally dress the sane as their Indian neighbors — sari, etc•, but without the typical Hindu red spot on the …
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To Be A Jew (1963)

It was never easy to be a Jew, but it was never as hard as it is to-day. I do not refer to the restrictions and prohibitions that limit the activities of the observant Jew. For the Jew who believes, these practical regulations are a joy, an expression of love. Nor do I mean the exposed political position of the Jew in modern society, a role that has, to some in extent, become even more difficult for him in the Diaspora because of the State of Israel. For the Jew who chooses to identify himself with his people, these obstacles are all part of the unfolding of the great and long-awaited drama of redemption.I mean, rather, that it is hard to feel like a Jew, to experience the depth of Jewish religious emotion that scans the spectrum from fear and awe to love and joy. It becomes more and more difficult seriously to engage G-d in a dialogue which will lift us above the commonplace and the pedestrian to a new level of vision and purity. Oar hearts have run dry. The spirit is parched. The soul is overladen with the dreaded dust of despair.Our society and culture are composed of many elements, and all of them conspire against us. Protestantism tells us to look Into ourselves first for the source of religion. And so we look and we find nothing. The pay-chologiats tell us to consider only the experience of religion, rather than its practice or creed, but we experience nothing. Scientists present us with a cold, depersonalized world, in which man's eyes turn heavenward only to follow the orbit of the newest satellite. And 80 it 18 not worth looking at all. G-d seems to have vanished from dis world, to have packed a suit-case filled with all the pleasures and agonies, the awe and the ecstasy, formerly reserved for Him by His people, and to have left without so much as saying "Goodbye.”What, then, are wo to say to the Jew, enstranged from the sources of the Jewish tradition, one who feels himself awkward in the milieu of maximal Jewishness but yet pines for some sensation of pi…
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To Be A Jew, Part 2 - Mebasser Reprint (1963)

The way out of the dilemma, then, is to reverse the order to which we have become conditioned by modern life. First live like a Jew, so that later you may love like a Jew. Begin with a full life of Torah and Mitzvot, so that afterwards you may experience the mighty range of feeling that is reserved for the truly devout. One cannot possibly be uplifted by the majesty and mystery of the Shabbat until he has first fully observed its regulations. The pleasures and the wonders are incommunicable; we can only talk about them, we cannot transmit them themselves. Only a personal participation can accomplish that. So, he who waits for inspiration to pray—will not pray. He who prays anyway may yet rise to full inspiration. The Halakhah does not demand full kavvanah before one begins his prayer (except for the beginning of the Shema and the first blessing of the Amidah); it demands only that nothing be present which will hinder kavvanah should it arise.But we must go one step further. In order to be a Jew, one must not only act like a Jew in practice. One must also act as if he were experiencing the emotional wealth of Judaism. In other words, what is recommended is a bit of conscious self-delusion. We must emulate the outward manifestations of religious experience in order to arrive at the experience itself. We must convince ourselves that we have kavvanah so that we may indeed ultimately possess it. We must, in good conscience, tell ourselves that we love G-d and fear Him, that our hearts are filled with awe and joy, so that in the end they really will be.Norman Lamm
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