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June 4, 2001

“I still haven’t found what I’m looking for” - U2

Lately, I’ve been giving some though to what exactly it means to me to be Jewish. I consider my Jewish identity very strong, but what it all means isn’t particularly straightforward. Why is it such an important part of my identity? It was always something I just accepted without questioning, but in truth, "because it is" is no answer at all.

Religion is just one of many answers to the questions that most human beings spend their lives searching for. Maybe that’s why so many strongly religious people are so at peace with themselves and with the world. Everyone’s looking for meaning in life, from all kinds of different sources. It’s human nature to want connection, a sense of belonging to something greater than ourselves, and a sense of community. We want connection to our pasts and our heritage. We want answers to the big questions: where do we come from? What’s the meaning of life? Why do good people suffer? Why is evil often rewarded?

Religion provides solutions to many of these questions, to those who believe, but it also provides many new questions. Some people can settle those nagging doubts with blind belief, but those who question religion and point out its many contradictions usually become disillusioned.

Furthermore, religion is divisive. Now, itself, religion does not cause conflict and war, people do. So technically, blaming religion is unfair. People may use religion as an excuse for divisions, but divisions would happen anyway - by age, sex, skin colour, taste in clothing, home town, speech style or language, field of employment . . . the segmentation possibilities are endless, something I as a marketing student am well aware of. And it’s human nature to look for these divisions. For instance, in my all-Jewish high school, religion couldn’t be a dividing criteria, of course, so we created artificial divisions - Ashkenazi versus Sephardic, Dollard versus St-Laurent, and the like.

No matter how homogeneous a society is, divisions will get created. And in itself, that’s perfectly okay. The key lies in not equating "different" with better or worse. Different can - and should - be equal. Maybe one way we will get to that Utopian ideal, but of course, that’s highly unlikely. Sociologists use in-group / outgroup theory to explain our tendency to equate people the same as us as better than those who differ from us. Religion is just one more way that people do that.

That brings back the question of what exactly it means to me to be Jewish. To some, it’s a belief system, but I’m unsure as to whether I even believe in G-d. I certainly don’t believe in the bible as a literal account of events. I’m more traditional than some people and yet I follow very few of the customs and even less of the laws. And I’d be hard-pressed to explain why I follow some and not others. But if Judaism is simply a belief system or a set of laws to follow, then people wouldn’t be born into it, they’d have to come to it on their own. However, I’m Jewish because my parents were and my grandparents and my great-grandparents.

To me, Judaism is more of a culture than a religion. Especially here in Montreal, it’s a community, but it’s also a heritage and a connection to the past. Of course, if that’s true, then how can someone convert to Judaism? They can’t create a new past, can they? And yet, people do convert. So it can’t simply be a history and a heritage.

So what else is it, then? Perhaps it is a separate entity that exists both because of the people who make it up, and influences them, much like the definition of a society. As much as I hate hearing "society made me do it" as an excuse, I don’t dispute that society has influences that are greater than the sum of its parts. Judaism as a worldwide society is the closest I can come to defining it. On one hand, if there were no Jews, it wouldn’t exist. On the other hand, it is something greater than myself, something I choose to participate in whenever I go to a Passover seder or donate money to Israel. Some people are far more integrated in it than others, and it holds different meanings for everyone.

Ultimately, though, all people are looking for the answers. Whether their path is through religion, obsessive meditation, staring at crystals, running fifty kilometers a day, or talking to the walls, everyone has to come to their answers on their own terms. Aerosmith said "Life’s a journey, not a destination". Well, maybe the destination is the answer, and once you find it, there’s no more reason to live. I kind of like the idea of life as a search for meaning. It seems so much more purposeful than simply spending each day killing time.