{"id":47,"date":"2014-09-07T05:11:42","date_gmt":"2014-09-07T05:11:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.aniyostsef.com\/index\/?page_id=47"},"modified":"2021-10-09T07:19:35","modified_gmt":"2021-10-09T07:19:35","slug":"my-our-jewish-path-from-religious-to-secular-humanistic","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"http:\/\/aniyostsef.com\/index\/my-our-jewish-path-from-religious-to-secular-humanistic\/","title":{"rendered":"My (Our) Jewish Path – from religious to secular humanistic!"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Blowing the shofar on Rosh haShanah 5779<\/p><\/div>\n

I’m a Jew who’s “doing Jewish differently,” as it is said in the IISHJ community. I am decidedly secular – even atheist – in my beliefs. But, I still embrace the ethics and traditions of my people, the literatures, the languages, the rituals and, even the daily, weekly, yearly lifecycle rituals – in a typically traditional way, just minus beliefs in the supernatural. There is still a lot of halakhah I abide by, but I do it out of choice – not because I imagine some god is telling me to do it. I infuse very traditional Jewish sounds with clearly secular Jewish liturgy or liturgy clearly secularized. No saying archaic formulations of ritual words for me! I “say what I mean, and mean what I say.” I embrace biblical criticism, science, and evidentiary history, while still finding it immensely enjoyable to entertain the traditional religious perspectives as a comparison.<\/p>\n

I believe that it is a mistake to try to apply “a litmus test” to those who I will engage with, based simply on whether they have a theistic view of the world or not. In both Judaism and within the Jewish people, this attitude has always been counterproductive to Jewish survival. I believe that we must embrace “God” as a central figure of the stories that have defined us as a Jewish people, even when we don’t believe that this god is anything more than a product of human imagination. Understanding your ancestral past is vital to understanding your present and future. The simple fact is, Torah is the ancient literature of our people and, thus, it is an inheritance for all of us – secular\/atheist Jews through the spectrum to the most religiously insular. As secular Jews, we still need to embrace it for the simple reasons that it informs us our ancestral heritage and connects us to the time honored tradition of passing our Jewishness along to the generations to come. Just be openly honest about it and our understanding of it.<\/p>\n

What makes us Jewish individually is an acceptance of us within an actual Jewish community and, even more vitally, our infusing “Jewishness” into the every day aspects of life and maintaining rituals to mark occasions with. Through thousands of years of “practice,” we have many established alternatives to choose from, and we always have the option to invent anew. It is the rituals that have sustained our people – not an imagined god – even while our beliefs, theologies, and approaches to religion and rituals have dramatically changed over the years. And, boy have they changed – from family polytheism to Temple henotheism, from henotheism to Rabbinic monotheism, from monotheism to ritual non-theism!<\/p>\n

————-<\/p>\n

\"Joseph-Tsefanyahu-Farkasdi-Humanistic-Jew\"<\/a>

A now devoutly Secularist Humanistic Jew.<\/p><\/div>\n

As a lifelong science geek and secular aficionado, how could the religious indoctrination of childhood be sooo deep that it took me over thirty adult years of “reasoning to exhaustion” to un-indoctrinate? Was my religious indoctrination as a child that intensive and life-affecting? (rhetorical question, for I already know the answer!) – Joseph T Farkasdi<\/p>\n

“I am Yosef ben David v’Keren of Szatm\u00e1r. A Sephardi by all fathers before me. An Ashkenazi by relationship. <\/p>\n

Though I may be neo-Hasid post Shoah (shomea Chasid), I honor the teachings of \u05d1\u05e2\u05dc \u05e9\u05dd \u05d8\u05d5\u05d1 Baal Shem Tov! <\/p>\n

I am Joseph Tsefanyahu Farkasdi (from Farkas and Gancz marriages). Sadly, our story is incomplete, courtesy of Christianity, courtesy of Nazi Germany. But the \u05e4\u05bc\u05d9\u05e0\u05d8\u05e2\u05dc\u05e2 \u05d9\u05d9\u05b4\u05d3 pintele yid survives on!<\/p>\n

\u05d0\u05e0\u05d9 \u05d9\u05d5\u05e1\u05e3 \u05d1\u05df \u05d3\u05d5\u05d3 \u05d5\u05e7\u05e8\u05df \u05de\u05e1\u05d0\u05d8\u05de\u05e8.
\nI am Yosef ben David and Keren from Satmar.<\/p>\n

Do you know who you are? As assuredly as my blood tells me who I am? An indigenous of Judea-Samaria, I am. And I am tired of legitimate colonizers telling Jews who and what we are! I am tired of USA Jews treating us people as just a religion among many.<\/p>\n

\u05d0\u05e0\u05d9 \u05d9\u05d5\u05e1\u05e3 \u05d1\u05df \u05d3\u05d5\u05d3 \u05d5\u05e7\u05e8\u05df \u05de\u05e1\u05d0\u05d8\u05de\u05e8.
\nAnd I’d like to relate with other Farkas – Gancz descendants around this world, until I find a community that my blood says … is home!”<\/p>\n

My name is \u05d9\u05d5\u05e1\u05e3 \u05d1\u05df \u05d3\u05d5\u05d3 \u05d5\u05e7\u05e8\u05df Yosef ben David v’Keren, or simply \u05d9\u05d5\u05e1\u05e3 \u05e6\u05e4\u05e0\u05d9\u05d4\u05d5 \u05e4\u05e8\u05e7\u05e9\u05d3\u05d9 Joseph Tsefanyahu Farkasdi. I am a humanistic cultural Jew, an ethnic Jew – a very religious Jew that embraces theism and non-theistic Judaism, being doubtful of the actual existence of our ancestral national Creator god. I know too much about the real history of our Jewish civilization to not be understandably doubtful. I know too much to be settled and complacent with just the smallest part of what it means to be Jewish, that of maintaining some kind of religious adherence to our civil-ritual tradition. I love our mythologized history, the legends of the Torah (and TaNaKH) and the touches of its continuance in Talmud and Mishnah, and in the daily, weekly, monthly, yearly rituals and holidays of our ethnicity. But, I know them in their place, and non-theistically, because they were written and devised by men – all of them. Again and again redacted till canonized, since the first formation of our family-nation back as far as 1200 BCE. I know too much from an inquisitive mind about the nature of our world and universe, and the human’s actual scientifically demonstrable place in it.<\/p>\n

I know too much. Yet, I am so very well aware that I still know nothing yet! Only that we as a family-nation have survived because we willed it upon ourselves and took it upon ourselves to ensure this survival. This is historically demonstrably so, even demonstrably in the very archaeology of history itself, regardless whether we dress it in times past and in these days in an anthropomorphized command and direction kind of way by a supreme god. I don’t know if this supreme god really exists, and faith of it being so is just simply not enough, at least not enough for me. But, I do know that our culture, our ethnic Jewish civilization, exists and is full of beautiful traditions both religious and secular. I embrace all of Judaism, all of what it means to be Jewish in this world of humans. Just being religiously Jewish or secularly Jewish is simply not enough for me, either way. I need to embrace and express it all, for all of it has informed me of who I am and where I come from. I have a vested interest in where we are going and becoming as a Jewish family-nation, all because of all of it! So, there was a time where I went OTD<\/a> (off the Path). I became unpious<\/a>, while still wrestling with the guilt-induced need to behave as if I were still pious. But, this wasn’t the end of the story for me.<\/p>\n

———————<\/p>\n

Did you say you want Egyptian? Does a Western cantilation not do it for you? Here’s a version of our secular daily chant ritual based on the Egyptian Jewish te’amim sounds, starting first with a Moroccan piyut. My personal favorite, always, for it feels right to me (even though I fear I’m personally tone-deaf)!<\/p>\n

A Meditative Secular Tachanun\/Nefilat Apayim<\/p>\n