Entries posted in June, 2008

Judaism knows that Questioning is an important part of Religion.

Godwrestling apparently has a long tradition in my family.  My grandfather—who serves as my primary rolemodel—seems to have been quite a Godwrestler himself.  The only son of a Chassidic Rabbi from Romania, he came to New York around age 11 certainly expecting to be the next Rabbi of his father’s line (that’s how things were done in Chassidic families), but by the time he was 16, he was attending engineering classes on Friday nights (the Sabbath) at Cooper Union College, and ultimately became a civil engineer instead of a Rabbi.

His life seems full of religious contrasts:

• He almost couldn’t marry my grandmother because he didn’t want to set foot in a synagogue at the time.

• He gave my mother and uncle Hebrew lessons after dinner every single evening as they were growing up.

• He was a member of one of the largest, most impersonal and non-spiritual synagogues around during his kids’ formative years.

• He and my grandmother were founding members of the first Reconstructionist synagogue in Denver.

• He spent hours each night in his basement study writing his own commentaries on Talmud, Jewish Ethics, and Psalms

But, you know, Godwrestling is the most fundamental of Jewish practices.  In fact, Yisra-El (Israel—as in “the people Israel”) literally means “the ones who wrestle with God”.  So to me, my grandfather’s legacy is one of a dedicated Jewish life—continually searching for meaning in a tradition that he loved, but a tradition that offers more questions than answers.  I have always found that reality to be both the most frustrating and the most invigorating realities of Judaism: that the tradition simply helps focus each of us on the key questions of the universe—origins of the world; good & evil; tragedy; mortality; efficacy of prayer; etc—but demands that we seek our own answers by mining the tradition and our own hearts.

Please contact me through my website , via email at RebYitzi@yahoo.com, or by phone at (831) 594-YITZ (9489).