The List - Part 1

I'm reading a LOT of books these days. This isn't unusual for me; I tend to keep a rotating selection of 3 to 5 books in scattered locations around the house and in my office to keep things spicy. I've been told before that I am fickle. But actually I'm just interested in a lot of different things and get easily bored if I have to choose any one thing to pour my energies into. That's not to say that I don't have my obsessions. Clearly I do. Religion is one of them; not piety mind you but, rather, an intellectual drive to understand the motivations and foundations of religious belief and practice. Of course, like anything that a person spends a lot of time digesting, it is impossible to remain completely passive in such a pursuit. The ideas tend to soak into the soul after awhile. A person cannot (in my opinion) face the sunlight of study and not be warmed - or even burned - by the radiance.

The unusual aspect of my current reading list is that it is comprised entirely of books about Judaism. Usually, I'll have a non-fiction title in the mix of thriller, sci fi, and historical fiction titles - say... something about the diamond trade, or a travelogue about summering in Provincetown, or a memoir of some sort (a recent example is Reading Lolita in Tehran <--- great book, by the way). Between Stieg Larsson, Orson Scott Card, and Bernard Cornwell it's nice to get a dose of reality with Brian Greene or Stephen Ambrose. But not lately. Since I made the decision to head back into a Religious Studies graduate program I have become rather passionate about what is really tangential to what should be the primary focus of my educational attention, which is relearning Biblical Hebrew after a seven-year hiatus and teaching myself rudimentary Koine Greek and Latin. All of these languages are essential to doctoral program study of Second Temple Judaism (my intended area of scholarly concentration). But with one exception (L. Michael White's, From Jesus to Christianity) my stack of books is piled high with titles concerning modern Conservative Judaism. I picked up a copy of Conservative Judaism: Our Ancestors to Our Descendants (Elliot Dorff) at Half Price Books the other day. I think that it is intended as a Bar/Bat Mitzvah study guide since it was organized by the United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism Department of Youth Activities, but it really is a good overall introduction to anyone looking for a safe entrance into the world of Jewish Studies. Of course, why is there a need for a "safe entrance" into the topic of current Judaism if my research interest is Judaism in the ancient world?

This is where the visibility of my spiritual path gets a bit hazy. Superficially, my conscious decision to renew my conversations with Amy about her conversion was driven by the similarity in our respective spiritual paths over the past several years. While her questions led her from the Baptist Church directly to Judaism, my own search has taken me from Pentecostalism to Catholicism to Agnosticism to Mindfulness Yoga to Buddhism back into Christianity via Episcopalianism (of the barely recognizably Christian sort) and now to the front door of Judaism. Twists and turns abound, I know. So, you can see why I forgive people who think I am fickle. Maybe I am. But if the search for one's own place of familiarity in spiritual practice leads him through many different lands isn't the journey worth it? These days I don't feel embarrassed as much as I used to about my spiritual wanderings. Part of that just has to do with getting older and caring less and less about what anyone else thinks about my decision-making skills; there will always be detractors and eyeball-rollers, especially among those who know you best (read: family and best friends). Mostly though, I am beginning to realize that most humans are just sleeping through their lives, not really concerned about attaining Awareness or finding answers to questions about the belief structures in which they were raised. The simpler answer seems to be to just throw everything out without sorting through the wreckage of our spiritual lives to locate the Truths that are still significant and meaningful. I don't fault people for not wanting to undertake the work involved; it definitely isn't for the fainthearted. True spiritual exploration - asking the hard questions without any expectation of finding a firm answer - is an immensely daunting exercise. I don't wish the pain on anybody, but I do wish that the people I love could experience the joy that bubbles up to the surface now and then when this challenge is met with perseverance.

Of course, I would be lying to say that my academic interest isn't fueled by the same deep-rooted questions and doubts that have tugged at my brain since I was an adolescent. My entire Master's program experience was the result of a need to be able to read the text of the Bible for myself to figure out what lay behind the severe interpretations of the text rendered into a Puritanical filter of the English language (King James Version of the Bible) that I'd been force-fed at home all through childhood. The inconsistencies, the contradictions, and the literalist theologies demanding suspension of rationalism and real scholarship that followed were all too much for my wayward, rebellious personality to accept. I needed permission to understand and find applications for scripture-based theology to my life. I needed a safe space to ask my big questions, a place where the only answer I might receive would be the echoes of my own questions bouncing off the clouds.