The God Upgrade: Finding Your 21st-Century Spirituality in Judaism's 5,000-Year-Old Tradition

Introduction

RUNNING GOD SYSTEM 1.0 IN A 2.0 WORLD

We shall require a substantially new manner of thinking if mankind is to survive.

ALBERT EINSTEIN

My husband, Jeff, who owns a high-tech Web development firm, has a manual Hermes 3000 typewriter on his desk. It was his mother’s typewriter from her college days in the 1960s. Remember the ones that made a bing sound at the end of a line alerting you to manually move the carriage return?

One day our five-year-old daughter Sadie noticed the typewriter and asked what it was. Jeff explained it was for typing. Sadie walked over and easily typed in Sadie, then her sister’s name, Ori, and then asked, Now what? She was dumbfounded when he explained that was all it did. No touch screen, no mouse, not even a monitor. The point of the contraption eluded her and she returned to a build-your-own roller coaster game on Jeff’s iPad.

As I watched her, it occurred to me that God, as explained in the Bible, fits into our modern world about as well as a manual typewriter from the 1960s does. That’s not to say great things were not created based upon the ideas presented in the Bible, just as the PC ultimately evolved from the typewriter. But the interface between our world and the biblical concept of God works about as well as trying to upload videos to YouTube on your typewriter. (Good luck with that.)

The typewriter was a great improvement on what came before it (What did come before it? Movable type? Scribes?) just as the biblical God was a great improvement upon the God ideas that preceded it. For one, the new God banned child sacrifice, a practice often required by prebiblical God. Presenting this change in practice is the primary point of the Akeida, the biblical story in which Abraham takes his son Isaac up Mount Mariah to sacrifice him, but is stopped when an angel of God tells him to kill a ram instead. Through the narrative, God lets it be known that He no longer demands or desires child sacrifice (Genesis 22:1–19). (I refer to God as a He here because the authors of this story certainly viewed their God as a male even if I do not. When I am discussing my own God concept you will notice I do not use gender. If you are bothered by my use of He, please be aware that I use it ironically and pointedly, further displaying why this concept does not fit with our modern world.)

But let’s face it: despite the improvement from sacrificing children to sacrificing animals to please God and stay on God’s good side, the whole biblical idea of God rewarding and punishing us based on our obedience is no longer believable to many of us. We look around our world and see that bad things happen to good people all the time. Certainly the equation cannot be so simple as God takes care of those who please God.

Fortunately, there have been numerous upgrades to our God concept over the centuries. But all too often the people with whom I interact don’t know about them and think Judaism still subscribes to the God in the sky who writes down our deeds and rewards and punishes us accordingly. Who can blame them? That is what our prayer book says on Yom Kippur, the only day many Jews step foot in a synagogue. Why would they know about the other theologies? By the time the rabbi gets around to the sermon when he or she might explain modern God concepts, all too many of the congregants are bored, busy counting ceiling tiles, or too tuned out to listen.

My goal in this book is to introduce you, in a very approachable way, to some of the God upgrades that have been introduced over the years. We will start with the early Jewish God concepts we read about in the Bible and move on to big innovators like Maimonides (1138–1204), who brought rational thought to Judaism, and Spinoza (1632–1677), who took it a step further, advocating that we throw out anything that doesn’t make rational sense. Next we will explore some of the most influential modern theologians, such as Martin Buber (1878–1965), who taught that we access God through relationships, and Harold Schulweis (1925–), who teaches that God is in our actions.

My aim is not to be the ultimate source on each of these theologians (there are plenty of books by and on each of them) but rather to give you a taste of their belief systems in order to better inform you of their thoughts, and to remind you that you are part of a long line of people who have interpreted and reinterpreted our tradition to make it their own. I don’t advocate throwing out meaningful history and tradition. Rather, let us build on the thousands of years of wisdom we have inherited. Let us reclaim and interpret our Judaism so that our tradition can help us make sense of our world and our lives. In this way, Judaism is far more like an iPad than a typewriter; Judaism is interactive, urging us to move beyond the limitation of typing static words on a page, to engage deeply with our narrative in myriad ways.

I will share my own theological struggles and my own God concept, one that is deeply intertwined with my relationship with nature. I’ll model for you how my study of other theologians combined with the development of my personal practice has enabled me to create a God version 2.0 that works for me. I have never given up on the belief in God, but I did need to move away from the classical definition of God presented in the Torah and the old prayer books and develop my own answer to the question What is God?

The act of reclaiming our religion and updating it is a very Jewish concept. I hope that this conversation will give you the vocabulary to talk about God and explore ideas that work for you. My agenda is not to convince you that my God concept is right for you, although it may be. My agenda is to help you start thinking about what God is to you. Despite what my detractors may tell you, I am not trying to start a theological revolution or dismantle Judaism as we know it. I am simply trying to remind you that it has long been the Jewish tradition to upgrade our God concepts as we learn more about the world around us. Through learning, discussion, and debate, we can shed some of the baggage the term God has collected over the centuries (and it is not carryon baggage!) and come to understand God in a way that is relevant in our modern lives.

Dr. Neil Gillman, professor emeritus of philosophy at the Conservative movement’s Jewish Theological Seminary, insists that each rabbinical student should be required to develop and articulate his or her own concept of God, a study culminating in the writing of a personal theology statement. Consider this book your invitation to take part in this valuable assignment, without the anxiety of being graded by the esteemed Dr. Gillman!

Not surprisingly, once we have reclaimed the word God and redefined God in a manner that makes sense in our world, Judaism itself is altered; how we live as Jews and how we practice as Jews require redefinition. Once God changes, Judaism changes. In the last section of the book we will explore some of the pressing questions related to Judaism 2.0 and explore how Judaism is still relevant to our lives today.

My first book, God in the Wilderness, described the spiritual lessons we can learn outdoors and the unique nature-based work I do to make Judaism relevant, accessible, and meaningful. This book in some ways serves as a continuation of that book in that it addresses the question, Why bother? Why bother bringing Judaism up to date so that it can fit into our lives? Why bother recreating this archaic culture that has its origin in animal sacrifice and fear of a wrathful God?

This takes us back to Sadie’s typewriter experience. Clearly, Sadie was quickly bored by the limited capability of a typewriter. You can’t make the letters blue or pink and it doesn’t read the words back to you, let alone read them to you in different languages. (And, frankly, at five years old, Sadie can’t spell that many words.) But if based on her disappointing experience she tossed out the entire technology thing altogether, she would miss out on so much that makes her life fascinating, fulfilling, rewarding, and fun. So, too, we need not toss out all of Judaism simply because the God concept we hear about in the Torah doesn’t resonate with our worldview. We just have to get the upgrades.

It pains me when I see Jews jettison their Judaism because they have not experienced anything beyond cookie-cutter bar or bat mitzvahs (Today you are a man; tomorrow you go back to seventh grade), Federation fundraising campaigns (I wouldn’t be calling if the situation were not so dire and the need so great) or the 30-Minute Seder (amusing and accurate but not particularly thought provoking). Judaism offers us so much more.

I should explain that my goal as a rabbi is not to keep people Jewish for the sake of maintaining Judaism. It’s not to get more members for synagogues or more people to come on my Adventure Rabbi retreats or even to get Jews to marry Jews. Those outcomes may be results of the way I present Judaism, but they are not my goal. My goal as a rabbi is to keep people Jewish because I believe Judaism can make our lives better: more meaningful, fulfilling, and peaceful.

Judaism has so much to teach us about how we treat ourselves, each other, and our planet. What Judaism is about is teaching us how to build community and how to be good companions, how to cultivate our courage and our compassion, how to be content and kind. Of course, you can learn these values elsewhere. But as a people, Jews have thousands of years of experience turning this kind of stuff over and over. We’ve made hundreds of upgrades and have had millions of users working to debug the system. Rather than look to other sources for guidance, let us turn to our own people’s past to discover what it has to say about our present and our future.

Our people used to talk about a covenant with an almighty deity. I don’t think we have that kind of covenant anymore, but we do have a covenant with each other: to learn with each other, to look out for each other, and to care for each other. Judaism helps us understand what being part of that covenantal group means.

So join me on this mind adventure as we explore the changes we Jews have made to our God concept over the many centuries until we arrive at a Judaism for today—a religion that is inspirational, encouraging, and thought provoking.

Part I

THE ISSUES WITH

GOD 1.0

CHAPTER 1

Looking for Lightning

If triangles had a God, God would have three sides.

YIDDISH PROVERB

The biggest stumbling block when it comes to religion is God. There, I’ve said it. Any lightning strikes? No? Okay. So far, so good.

What keeps people away from religion? Expensive fees? Rambling sermons? Boring religious schools? Pushy fundraisers? Inconvenient holidays? Religious zealots? None of those help, but I believe the biggest problem is God.

If you believe that God can heal the sick, mend a broken heart, or bring peace to Earth, please do us both a favor and go read a different book. This is not the book for you.

This is a book for people who equate religious services with counting how many pages are left in the service or counting windowpanes or noticing how many people are wearing the same outfit. This book is for those who are as likely to willingly join a prayer circle as to go bowling on the moon.

Often, when I am sitting in a Sabbath service at another rabbi’s congregation, diligently reading the responsive prayer in sync with the other congregants, I feel like I must have missed a very crucial explanatory meeting. It feels like the congregation has reached an agreement on how to understand the God in the prayer book and I am the only one who doesn’t know it. Did they all agree to say words they don’t believe?

The other day we came to these words in the prayer book: You are our God and our Shepherd; we are Your people and Your flock: If only today we would listen to Your voice.

Everyone reverently read along with the rabbi and I wanted to stop and ask someone to explain it to me.

I could imagine myself raising my hand and saying, Excuse me, man in the third row with the blue sweater and khaki pants, do you really believe God looks out for us like a shepherd protects his flock?

Or, Sorry for the interruption, but woman in the fabulous red dress and black heels with the two adorable kids, do you really believe that God has a voice we can hear? Have you ever heard it?

The rabbi would probably turn to me and say, Jamie, it’s not literally a voice like we have a voice. God doesn’t have vocal cords, obviously! But as humans, our descriptions are limited to the words of our language. It’s a metaphor.

I would look around at the congregation and ask, Does everyone know that when we talk about God in the prayer book that it’s a metaphor? When we praise God’s ‘wondrous creative power [that] filled Heaven and Earth…. Awesome and Holy God be praised!’ and when we ask God to ‘cause peace to reign among us,’ that this is all a metaphor? Did you all agree to that when I was in the bathroom? What is the metaphor anyway?

That might be a good cue for the rabbi to have us turn to page 97 for the silent prayer. We Jews don’t like to talk about God.

It’s a metaphor is one of the common answers I hear when I ask questions about the God concept that I read about in our prayers and other holy books. It’s one of the answers that sounds