I often hear my co-religionists say that they are a “bad Jew” because they don’t keep kosher, observe the Sabbath, attend services weekly, and so on. I believe they think so because they have unfortunately accepted the Orthodox as their model, and so assume that to be a “good Jew” is to strictly observe all the ritual requirements under Jewish law. This is a fundamental mistake that has the grievous consequence of alienating Jews from their own faith.
One of the main goals of my Come Now, Let Us Reason Together is to correct this misconception. My argument is based on a thorough review of Judaism’s classic sources, including the Tanakh, Talmud, and Midrashim. There is too much material there to adequately summarize in a blog post, but I will adduce here two important pieces of evidence.The first is the writings of three of the prophets whose sayings are collected in the Hebrew Bible: Amos, Isaiah, and Micah. These men all prophesied in the 8th century BCE, while Solomon’s temple still stood. In that society there were vast inequalities in wealth, and each of these oracles decried the behavior of those who made a great public show of piety by lavish sacrifices to God while neglecting the needy. Perhaps Micah’s denunciation is the most eloquent:
Would the Lord be pleased with thousands of rams,
With myriads of streams of oil?
Shall I give my first-born for my transgression,
The fruit of my body for my sins?
He has told you, O man, what is good,
And what the Lord requires of you:
Only to do justice,
And to love goodness,
And to walk modestly with your God;
Then will your name achieve wisdom.
I would hurry to add that these prophets are not condemning all ritual observance, as this is an essential aspect of Judaism; they are decrying the use of ritual for improper purposes. However, I do contend that their declarations establish, that God gives us susbatntial discretion in how we choose to prioritize and integrate the demands of ritual and ethics in our Jewish lives.
The second indicia of Judaism’s inherent pluralism is taken from the Talmud (b. Yevam. 14a), where is discusses the differences in Sabbath observance in the locales that followed R. Eliezer’s interpretation of the law and those that followed R. Akiva’s:
In the locale of Rabbi Eliezer, where his ruling was followed, they would cut down trees on Shabbat to prepare charcoal from them to fashion iron tools with which to circumcise a child on Shabbat…. whereas in the locale of Rabbi Akiva, for instance, no, they would not do so….In other words, one might have thought that the permission to tolerate diverse customs in different places applies only to other prohibitions, whereas the prohibition of Shabbat is so severe that it is unacceptable to allow different customs, as this might lead people to disrespect Shabbat. Therefore, the baraita teaches us that even in the case of Shabbat there can be different customs in various locales.Accordingly, there are virtually an infinite number of ways to be a “good Jew” and no one should be alienated from their faith by falsely thinking that they aren’t one.