November 7, 2007

Just say no: Reluctant atheist celebrates Judaism without God (J, the Jewish news weekly of Northern California)

by Dan Pine
reprinted from J, October 19, 2007

Lawrence Bush wants to believe in God. Really, he does. But, for reasons of personal temperament, constitution and bedrock skepticism, he can’t.

That doesn’t mean he has abandoned Judaism. For most of his life, Bush has worked in the Jewish world — as a journalist, as a speechwriter for the late Reform leader Rabbi Alexander Schindler and now as editor of Jewish Currents magazine.

Still, Bush is an atheist, albeit a reluctant one. His book, “Waiting for God,” explains his take on faith and doubt, with a little John Lennon thrown in for good measure.

“Most liberal-minded Jews struggle with issues of faith and skepticism,” said Bush during a swing through the Bay Area. “The difference between my book and most of the new atheists is, I don’t indulge the scorn. I approach religion as one who worked in religious life, with great respect.”

By “new atheists,” Bush means writers like Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens and Sam Harris, all authors of recent books blasting organized religion — and the unorganized kind as well.

Instead, Bush has delved into Torah study, and even published commentaries on the weekly Torah portion.

He even found a way to reconcile his leftist politics with Judaism. “The fundamental principle is Psalm 24: ‘The earth is the Lord’s and all the fruits derived,’” Bush said. “I saw in Jewish law a mixing of community responsibility with the acknowledgment of people’s fearfulness and ambition. Economics are social. Judaism, with that psalm, acknowledges that.”

Bush grew up in a secular home in Queens, N.Y. He received little Jewish education, but he did know to skip the words “under God” when reciting the Pledge of Allegiance.

If he got religion at all, it came in the form of the Fab Four. Calling the Beatles the “central aesthetic experience of my life,” Bush cites John Lennon as a key influence. “My strength as a writer is self-examination,” Bush said.

“I identify with Lennon’s style that way.”

Lennon influences him still. Consider the song “Imagine.” It begins with what Bush calls the four no’s: No countries, no possessions, no heaven and no religion.

“Does atheism bring with it any affirmation, or is it basically no, no, no, no?” he asks. “It may just be about saying ‘No, no, no.’ But there’s something about saying no — about not trusting our own senses — that frees us.”

Bush is quick to differentiate between religion and spirituality. He’s the first to admit he, too, has had spiritual experiences. He just doesn’t ascribe anything supernatural to them.

He views spirituality as “the emotions that happen when you recognize interconnection. We are interconnected. But we substitute God — the ‘You’ — for the ‘We’ that we can’t possibly express. All I ask is: What if we look at what we’re really talking about, which is the ‘we,’ not the ‘you?’”

At Jewish Currents, Bush has a forum to express his views on politics, religion and Judaism. Founded as a socialist outlet, Currents teamed up with Workman’s Circle, expanding readership but at the same time furling up the socialist banner.

“We have 12,000 more readers,” Bush said, “with a range of liberalism, radicalism and conservatism. The one principle is skepticism.”

Skeptic, yes. But Bush says he, his wife and their 20-year-old twins never miss tashlich during Rosh Hashanah. Near their upstate New York home, they stand before a creek and cast their woe-begotten bread crumbs into the waters.

“It’s a remarkable thing to have your children express love,” Bush added. “It is remarkable to see them bond within this Jewish ritual. It bonded us to Jewish identity, and was one of those things as a family we walked away from as high as a kite.”

But not to heavenly heights. Bush remains godless, though he may turn up at a local Shabbat morning class alongside his most fervently religious neighbors.

“The Talmud is where Judaism begins,” he said, “and the more liberal down-to-earth conversations begin. It’s a big civilization.”


“Waiting for God: The Spiritual Explorations of a Reluctant Atheist” by Lawrence Bush (194 pages, Ben Yehuda Press, $16.95).

Copyright J, the Jewish news weekly of Northern California

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September 20, 2006

Jewish Ledger interviews Rabbi Shefa Gold

The Jewish Ledger speaks to Rabbi Shefa Gold about Torah Journeys: The Inner Path to the Promised Land:


Take a few words from a prayer in the siddur or a short verse from the Torah. Look at what those words really mean and how they connect with your life. Now add a melody, and chant those words mindfully and repeatedly and meditatively based on your newfound understanding of them. Add 50 or 100 men and women chanting that one prayer, those few words for, say five minutes n often with harmonic parts or in intricate rounds, and you begin to appreciate what Rabbi Shefa Gold brings to the art of Jewish liturgy.

full story here, reprinted below:

Jewish Renewal rabbi takes people on a journey through the Torah

By Leonard Felson

Take a few words from a prayer in the siddur or a short verse from the Torah. Look at what those words really mean and how they connect with your life. Now add a melody, and chant those words mindfully and repeatedly and meditatively based on your newfound understanding of them. Add 50 or 100 men and women chanting that one prayer, those few words for, say five minutes n often with harmonic parts or in intricate rounds, and you begin to appreciate what Rabbi Shefa Gold brings to the art of Jewish liturgy.

Now, the popular Jewish Renewal rabbi, best known for the hundreds of unique chants she’s composed from the liturgy, has written her first book called, “Torah Journeys: The Inner Path to the Promised Land” (Ben Yehuda Press). She will speak about the book, and lead chants, next Thursday, Sept. 28, at 7:30 p.m. at the Hartford Seminary, 77 Sherman St., in Hartford. The evening is co-sponsored by Congregation P’nai Or and the Seminary.

Speaking from her home in New Mexico n she grew up in a Conservative Jewish household in New Jersey, Gold says the event will provide “a little taste of the book by taking people on a journey through the Torah.

“There’s a way I understand and receive the Torah as a journey of the soul and it’s been a very useful text in my own spiritual life to reflect on the inner landscape. I don’t read it as a historical document or even as a document of the mitzvot or commandments,” says Gold.

Instead, as she reads it, she asks of every chapter, every verse and often, every word, where’s the blessing here? “And I have my eyes peeled and ears cocked to what are the spiritual challenges being given n so when I come across a passage that triggers me in someway or upsets me or makes me defensive n those become doorways to understanding what the spiritual challenges are that Torah is pointing out.” But her reading of the Torah doesn’t end there.

Once she’s uncovered those challenges, Gold says, she asks herself what’s the practice I need to do to rise to the spiritual challenge and to receive the blessing of Torah.
Gold, who is a leader in ALEPH: the Alliance for Jewish Renewal, received her ordination both from the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College and from Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi. She has produced nine albums and her liturgies have been published in several new prayer books. She teaches at workshops and retreats on the theory and art of chanting, spiritual community building and mediation.

The book lays out this practice and is organized in chapters following the 54 parshiot or portions of the Torah that come in a year. With Bereshit or Genesis, the first portion of the Torah, Gold concludes, for example, that the blessing comes with the realization of physical reality or “the palace” as the Zohar describes Creation. It moves on to uncover a spiritual challenge when G-d asks Adam, “Where are you?” Adam responds by hiding, saying, “I was afraid because I was naked.”

That interchange unveils a spiritual challenge, according to Gold, who writes: “The spiritual challenge of this Beginning time is to know that we are utterly naked and vulnerable. Yet rather than hide, we are challenged to stand in our nakedness…We are required to stand in our vulnerability, to open to the power that moves through us.”

Between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, Gold and Rabbi David Ingber will lead a retreat over Shabbat Shuvah, Sept. 29-30, at the Isabella Freedman Jewish Retreat Center in Falls Village. The two also will lead a Yom Kippur retreat there Oct. 1-2.

For Gold, she says, the special Shabbat of return between the two major holidays, “is meant to prepare us to rise to the challenge of Yom Kippur.” Each program will include chanting and opportunities for participants to examine issues they are going through in their lives.

“The way I experience Yom Kippur is almost as a death and rebirth experience,” she says.

Posted by yudel at 3:59 PM