September 20, 2020

Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur the beginning fall high holy days holidays bring back memories from my childhood to today. My sister and I grew up in Far Rockaway and then Lawrence, New York on Long Island' south shore. My first nine years we lived in an apartment building on the fourth floor then we moved to Lawrence in a single family house then moving around the corner to a shared home which we changed again during high school to another shared home. My parents were not religious but they wanted me to have a Jewish education so I went on Sundays to Hebrew School. The Jewish holidays were celebrated mostly during my life through relatives visits on Passover to the Zetikoffs in Queen's (mother's uncle) at their apartment for Passover and then when in Hebrew School I went to the orthodox services at Temple Emanual in Far Rockaway. In this synagogue the men were separated from the women who watched modestly upstairs. I learned the prayers and songs by rote learning and reading the text in Hebrew but never learned to understand the text nor language. Hebrew school was tolerable since after regular school I was given some coins to go to the neighborhood shop to buy candy mostly sugar dots on paper, sugar syrup in soft wax containers in which you bit off the top, and other candies. My fellow classmates then attended the school and we learned to read in Hebrew and learned the various stories of the bible (old testament) from our teacher who was tolerant but negatively taken with some of our antics as preteen's. Nearer the time of becoming thirteen I was assigned a teacher to learn to chant the haftorah section during the Saturday service I was assigned. A record was cut for me to mimic and I learned gradually the chanting singsong in my preadolescent high pitched voice. I attended Saturday services becoming familiar with the traditional Saturday orthodox Ashkenazy service. I weathered my Bar Mitzvah  succeeded to chant my Haftorah section and the prayers while my parents with their friends attended. I have little memory of the party afterwards. My attention to the Saturday services and afterwards the bagel and cream cheese snacks I had with the congregation of men was pleasant. I was taught to lay tefillin (phylacteries) so after my bar mitzvah I went early in the morning a few days of the week with a group of men and sang the songs, sometimes beat my chest, said the prayers for wrapping the leather straps around my forearm and placing the phylacteries on my forehead. I recall some peak experiences of communion with the god and lord I was venerating. But I succumbed to the changes in my body with growth spurts and onanism. My attendance to the Saturday services were a thing of the past and I was full on group conscious horny adolescent. What persisted was my interest in attending services some years sporadically but later when married more consistently the Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur services and Passover meal with some prayers at home. 

Ann, my wife then, born into a Jewish family had no religious education with her parents more involved with Ethical Culture and humanistic more liberal concerns about our cultural differences and prejudices. She tolerated my high holy days interest so we joined Congregation Sof Ma'arov and attended the various holiday events. Our children went to Jewish preschool organized by Ann and some friends. Ann was not religious but wanted our children to have some grounding with the Jewish culture including the food changes and holidays. We were curious about learning other humanistic knowledge some of which is past down from religious sources. We both separately participated in EST (Erhard Seminar Training) and went to gestalt groups. Our children attended Temple Emanu-El Jewish education school and Ann allowed me to bribe them into getting bar and bat mitzvah. So David was the first. I assisted with helping him with the chanting of the haftorah. Joshua and then Sarah followed and I paid their bribes. David got an Apple computer version two at the time. Joshua got his Betamax and TV and Sarah got a very large round trampoline. Ann  tolerated all of this since none of my children got bitten nor swallowed the religious training they received. They continued the holiday festival celebrations of Passover with us and themselves. Kai my grandson when around eleven or twelve did attend one Rosh Hashana services at Sof Ma'arov with me. Afterwards at our home, he was enthusiastically explaining the service to his mother who had n o experiences in these services. Towards the end of the service the ram's horn shofar is blown in various rhythms. He explained to his mother how this impressed him the blowing of the shofar but his mother heard blowing the chauffeur and her eyes dilated with a great surprised look on her face which just caused our gathered family to laugh uproariously for minutes. 

So now I am a humanist with respect for the stories, myths, traditions, foods, and moral teachings of the different religions. I marvel at our human yearnings for connection to the supernatural and our artistic heritages related to these religious practices. I recall in college or beyond reading The Brothers Karamazov by Fydor Dostoevsky Book Five Pro and Contra describes how Christ is imprisoned and has dialogue with the Grand Inquisitor in Spain. The Inquisitor says to Christ  "Why hast Thou come now to hinder us? For Thou hast come to hinder us, and Thou knowest that... We are working not with Thee but with him [Satan]... We took from him what Thou didst reject with scorn, that last gift he offered Thee, showing Thee all the kingdoms of the earth. We took from him Rome and the sword of Caesar, and proclaimed ourselves sole rulers of the earth... We shall triumph and shall be Caesars, and then we shall plan the universal happiness of man." To Dostoevsky the pope, Grand Inquisitor and other religious leaders Christs basic teaching threatened their authority to interpret Christs and Gods teachings so their power and authority could persist. 

This and other readings and experiences I have had in my life has convinced me of my search for understanding our yearning for religious experiences (from William James to other great thinker throughout the ages) is part of a heritage that can be possibly traced back to our evolutionary past. Narrative thinking and reasoning and our love to hear and create stories is related to religious pursuits. Our fast and slow thinking (see previous post) where group affiliations and group commandments to censor your thoughts, limit your exposure to opposing viewpoints and prejudice for the righteous of us versus the evil of them has led in our history to religious wars and persecutions that were horrific and cruel causing untold suffering and death. So the experiences of my youth in my religious experiences are very positive to me but the dark sides of religious group think causes me pause.

Energy can be changed from one form to another, but it cannot be created or destroyed. The total amount of energy and matter in the Universe remains constant, merely changing from one form to another. This is the first law of thermodynamics. In all energy exchanges, if no energy enters or leaves the system, the potential energy of the state will always be less than that of the initial state. This is the second law of thermodynamics otherwise called entropy. The third law of thermodynamics holds for any system - classical or quantum mechanical. It basically states that absolute zero (0K or -273.16°C) cannot be reached and that its entropy is zero. These are laws of physics that have withstood attempts to refute them. They apply to all things including us. They apply therefore to our thinking, behaviors, genetics, chemistry, art, religion, all our works, and what we understand about the universe.  

Richard Dawkins an evolution researcher has branched out into a popular writer and lecturer using history, science, and rhetoric to propose that the supernatural does not exist. Religious conception of God as an all knowing maybe loving and benevolent or  judging for salvation, damnation, or oblivion has been a narrative construct of us human beings. There is no entity out there seeing our faults, attributes, and maybe intervening to help us on our life course except what we have created through our history and narrative thinking. Prayer does no good in changing anything and scientific double blind experiments so far have disprove this notion. Prayer may have other psychological benefits but the supernatural is not involved. 

Entropy will eventually increase to the extent that not even atoms can cohere and all that is left is quantum chaos that may result in another big bang or crunch. The changes due to probabilities believed to be the stuff of quantum physics may result in the infinite many universe theories. String theory with many more dimensions than the usual three influenced by gravity and time with the speed of light being fixed are now believed possible explaining everything. To sum up these theories our consciousness, our perception of free will, our artist pursuits, our poetry and music, our great achievements are all subject to the three laws of thermodynamics which leads to increased entropy, chaos, and eventually the end of life with the decay of atoms, etc. 

So I still strive to be a better person. I do not think I or anyone else should have the rights to force themselves and their beliefs on anyone. I think that we can choose more wisely but that these choices should be allowed in an environment in which knowledge and opinions are not censored or forbidden. I know that much of what I just wrote is incorporated in some religious beliefs and institutions. I applaud those virtues in these religions and the music, art, poetry, narrative expressed in their practices and legacy is part of our human history and striving. 

Happy High Holidays!

Leonard

Kai 5 Miya 3 Obaachan arranged traditional buddhist ceremony with traditional clothing and makeup