Assaf Wohl
צילום: זיו רון
Keep God out of email
Assaf Wohl unimpressed with emails that aim to ‘prove’ superiority of religious lifestyle
People like to forward emails, period. The sound announcing the arrival of a new email apparently causes most of our brain cells to stop functioning immediately. We simply forward to all our friends any kind of electronic piece of junk without exercising good judgment even for a moment.
Yet recently I noticed a new trend in the emails I’ve been receiving. No longer do I see marketing efforts or silly hoaxes, but rather, attempts to influence my religious views via email. Most such emails have a similar basis: An inane theological-philosophical claim enveloped in a witty story. In all those emails, in line with the tradition of stories about the wise rabbi and stupid priest, the religious person has the upper hand, while proving the intellectual futility of seculars.
You want some examples? Who hasn’t yet seen the email about an elderly ultra-Orthodox man who encounters a scantily clad woman at the bus stop? The man buys an apple and gives it to her while saying: “Eve also didn’t realize she wasn’t dressed before she bit into the apple…” Yet the worst part is that the end of this story was deliberately left out. In another version I found, the young woman encounters the pious old man a day later, yet this time she is the one to offer him an apple. After he expressed his bewilderment, she responds: “Adam, after eating the apple and being expelled from the Garden of Eden, learned that he must start working.”
Another story I received is about a secular man who complains that the rabbi still hasn’t answered his question about why Jewish law is so insistent on seemingly trivial details. The rabbi says that he already responded, but forgot to add a period before the word “com” in the email address, thereby prompting the delayed response. Therefore, explains the rabbi, trivial details must also be strictly adhered to.
The rabbi’s theological worldview in this story is particularly fascinating, as he compares God to an email server – a sort of brainless entity that cannot do a thing unless it receives accurate instructions.
Is God benevolent?
Yet an email I received this week outdid all the others. I am talking about a presentation that introduces several facts: For example, if the sun gets too close, we shall burn, or if the level of oxygen in the air was different, we would die. The conclusion of this: There is a God. Wow.
The question of proving God’s existence is a well-known obsession among those who try to convince seculars to become newly religious. Yet what’s the problem proving it? After all, anyone who saw Freddie Mercury perform knows that there is a God. Yet it’s much more difficult to understand what exactly God wants, or to prove that God is benevolent. It indeed has the ability to facilitate all the great things mentioned in the presentation, but also to arrange the killing of a million and a half children at extermination camps. Therefore, before this issue is resolved, proving that God exists contributes nothing to the abovementioned electronic industry.
So what can still bring Jews closer to Judaism? Perhaps if religious Jews start conducting themselves in a less patronizing manner, there would be some who would want to move closer to them. Should their way of life be perceived as a positive model to follow, many would naturally wish to join in. Yet for the time being, reality is the complete opposite; and if we can learn something from the emails I’m receiving, it is that for the time being, the attitude displayed by the religious to the secular is arrogant, contemptuous, and an insult to intelligence.
