Shmotkin Defends Himself

By Rabbi Yisroel Shmotkin
Special to The Wisconsin Jewish Chronicle

Honestly, I would have felt disappointed if there had been no reaction to my statement, “There are no secular Jews,” in the article “Do U.S. Jews belong without believing?” in the Dec. 19 Wisconsin Jewish Chronicle.

I therefore welcome Michael Tarnoff’s remarks in his letter to the editor in the Jan. 9 issue.

As for my response, I should like to preface by saying that I believe that the very desire to “belong (even) without believing” is itself an expression of a Jew’s spiritual DNA, which is essentially “holy” and not secular.

Now to the core of the matter. I wish to address Tarnoff’s statement that “more than half of Israeli Jews and many American Jews consider themselves to be secular Jews.”

Obviously, as mentioned in the article, we of the Chabad Lubavitch movement are fully aware of how these Jews view themselves; and yet we hold that when all is said and done, “A Jew is a Jew is a Jew” because one’s being a Jew is not dependent on his or her belief, affiliation or practice.

Indeed, this is the great fact for us, and our belief in it does not waver even in the case of a Jew who goes as far as actually to deny his or her own Jewishness.

Tarnoff stated that “we atheists consider ourselves the intellectual equals of our religious brethren. We are very capable of understanding and rejecting the religious message,” followed by the views of psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud and physicist Albert Einstein.

Ignorance, not intelligence

No one belittles the intelligence of atheists as a whole or questions their ability to make informed decisions. To do so would be ludicrous.

Further, the question of intelligence is not even the issue. Everyone will agree that being a great engineer or a gifted physicist or mathematician does not justify one’s making medical decisions and, conversely, that being studied in medicine does not give one the proper credentials to build a bridge.

Intelligence is not the issue, for being intelligent does not mean that one is educated in all fields. So too, it is not the intellectual acumen of Jews who consider themselves to be atheists that is being called into question, but rather their degree of advanced knowledge in the study of Judaism.

Indeed, I venture to say that the same surveys that find that “more than half of Israeli Jews and many American Jews” consider themselves secular would also confirm that only a miniscule percentage of them know anything about Judaism — including what the Ten Commandments are, the Torah’s account of the giving of the Torah, the story of the enslavement in and exodus from Egypt, or even as much as the names of the Five Books of Moses — let alone anything else of the Torah or Jewish tradition — philosophy, law, ethics, metaphysics, etc.

Would anyone just hanging around a doctor’s office dare to offer an opinion on medicine? Would one who read a book or two about Plato or Newton be considered an expert on their philosophy or science?

We often hear statements like “I don’t believe in kosher” or “I don’t believe in Shabbos,” etc. To that I say, “Do you know what ‘kosher’ or ‘Shabbos’ are that you can say you do not believe in them?”

A friend of mine who is very liberal in his worldview and considers himself very secular (and I would say that he’s very intelligent and well-read) once told me:

“You need to understand that my concept of religion and G-d is that of an eight-year-old. My friends and I grew in the knowledge of the sciences, history, politics, literature, etc. However, our understanding of religion stopped at religious school. We never had an opportunity to learn and develop an enlightened understanding of Judaism and Jewish philosophy.”

May I add what I once heard from an elder Chassid, who invited a professor to join a Torah study group. The professor responded that he is an atheist and does not believe, to which the Chassid responded, “The same G-d that you don’t believe in, I don’t believe in either!”

Attitudes change

After 40 years of community work in Wisconsin, I have had the opportunity to deal personally with hundreds of Jews, many of whom considered themselves to be irreligious or even completely secular.

It has been my experience that once a Jew is granted an exposure to even a nominal level of knowledge, his attitudes are immediately changed.

Indeed, I have yet to meet a single, solitary “secular Jew” who has maintained his fiercely protected secularism after allowing even a small amount of time to learn, to question and to discuss Judaism with an informed Jew.

How much more so are the changes in attitude apparent in someone who has given serious time to study Torah. The activities of Lubavitch in Wisconsin and all over the world are testaments to this fact.

Who did the Chabad House in Mumbai, India, serve? And who visits Chabad in Thailand? Who participates in Chabad Nepal’s largest seder in the world? And who finds his or her way to Chabad in Bolivia?

They are Israeli backpackers and others who, in their homeland, would not bat an eye at a dati (observant) Jew in Israel.

Nevertheless, as became known the world over just over a month ago, the very same people, once they encountered a rabbi and rebbetzin who treated them with respect and love and presented Judaism in a way they could relate to began seeing Judaism in a different light and in many cases even changed their lifestyles.

Also, in my years of experience, I’ve met many of the “more than half of Israeli Jews” who consider themselves to be secular, yet when they come to the Diaspora they cling to a traditional environment. It is then that they discover that their belonging is rooted in believing.

The one claim Tarnoff can legitimately level against me is that I view all Jews — religious or secular, observant or not — as Jews.

At the core of the Lubavitch mode of operation of offering Jews the chance to do a mitzvah such as tefillin, mezuzah, etc., is the belief that we do so not in order to make them Jews, or to make them religious Jews, or even to make them better Jews, but rather because they are already Jews; and therefore, things like tefillin, mezuzah, kosher and Shabbos already belong to them.

And it is our privilege to return to them what is rightfully theirs.

Rabbi Yisroel Shmotkin is director of Lubavitch of Wisconsin.