Emotion and Reason

A few words for this morning…

What started my spiritual journey was a singular defining moment, it took a solid week of build up to get that moment but in the end what did it for me was my eighth day on Birthright. I had spent the previous days talking about the meaning of life as I knew it; I listened to others do the same only there was a new element to it that I had never really heard before… God, Torah, halacha, etc.

On the eighth day (a number in Judaism that represents perfection) I wrapped tefilin for the first time and said the Shema. In doing so I became a Bar Mitzvah and then I approached the Kotel and prayed. I had never really tried to pray before, but this time was different, no one thing can be pointed to but it changed everything. In those moments, hours, lifetimes…?? I found something that I knew I could not let go of. Yes I found God. It sounds so cliché…whatever it happened. I tried denying it for a while but it did. I also found love. I met a girl who I dated for a long time and who I was able to open up to.

Both experiences taught me something that I thought I understood but didn’t and that is this: some of the things that are most real in this world aren’t logical, they aren’t neat, they are a little messy. I can’t prove that I love you, I can do things to show you, but in the end you must feel deep down that I do or all those gestures are meaningless. People seem so concerned with rational proof that I think too often they over look this essential part of life. They demand rationality with such fervor that they forget some of the most real things in this world are not rational.

In Torah I found that passion that I wanted and explored it. I read and talked with people and learned and learned. I never gave a thought to keeping kosher, or Shabbat, or really any mitzvahs. Yes I learned the Shema and acquired a pair of tefilin and started wrapping them (pardon the pun) religiously. But though all that I found the idea of the halacha appalling, antiquated. In the end though I’ve come to accept it; not necessarily because I wanted to but because I’ve come to realize that the very reality where the emotional part of the Torah comes from also has a rational basis that surrounds it. The two complement each other and to only pay attention to one is to deprive oneself of the richness and depth of the other. I still struggle with this, but I never thought I’d make keeping Shabbat a priority when I began learning, or that I’d have kosher dishes, the list goes on and on.

I think what I’ve come to accept is the whole reality of the Torah, not just part of it, not just the part that I’m comfortable with, not just the part that got me off. I have through a lot of hard work (writing this blog has helped immensely) come to accept the reality of it as a whole.

…whether the fields in science that have advanced the fastest in our time are those that have also lost the most of the earlier, more encompassing understanding. This sort of historical probing of the rejection of emotion is contrary to what B.F Skinner says about the value of history, absolutely essential to an understanding of modern events. But beyond this is a forging of the reconciliation between emotions and reason…that Quality is generated at the interface between emotion and reason. The western religions have contained elements of this idea for a long time. In Judaism, for example, Torah, the central pillar of the religion, is composed of two equally essential and entirely interwoven elements: the Pentateuch, which represents the emotional or spiritual element, and the halakhah, which is an originally oral tradition of formal rules, laws, rituals and customs – a kind of logical, rational system for interpreting and codifying the spirit of the five books. - The Arrogance of Humanism by David Ehrenfeld, chapter 4, Emotion and Reason, p.172, 173