From time to time (although it's been a long time since the last one), I will be writing about my reasons for choosing "Pesach Sheini" as the name for my blog. The more I have thought about the name, the more I have felt that it chose me and not the other way around. What follows is the fifth installation. To read the first four click here.
Dear Rabbi
_________________,
After a
recent discussion by email, you sent me an email where you spelled out your
philosophical and theological views, and asked me to respond in kind; “And you, Reb Pesach -- how do the pieces of your worldview
fit together?”. I responded that I was not sure whether I wanted to try
and summarize my beliefs, but I would think about it. After much thought, I
have decided to respond, with one caveat.
I cannot tell you how the pieces of my
worldview fit together, as a unified theory is not something I seek to produce.
I’m not sure if anything more than being mine, is what holds them together. One
thing which came across quite strongly in your email is that your beliefs are
long-held. I suspect, and please correct me if I am mistaken, that you could
have used the same words to describe your beliefs five years ago, and probably
much earlier than that. I cannot say the same for myself.
When I first started my blog “Pesach
Sheini”, the name seemed to make sense. It was my way of saying that I had come
through a long, complicated, and painful religious struggle, and that what
emerged was a new me. While that was in many ways correct, I made the mistake
of thinking that whereas before I had subscribed to certain philosophical and
theological beliefs, which, like yours, I would call for lack of a better word,
rational, now I had new beliefs which no longer fit that term. What I did not
realize was that though I may not ever need a Pesach Shelishi, my new beliefs
were not just different, but were also much more fluid.
By way of thinking about how to answer
your question, I took a look at the sefarim on my bookshelf. I not only noticed
the sefarim which get frequent use these days, those of the Piaseczna Rebbe,
Rav Kook, and R’ Hillel Zeitlin, I also noticed the sefarim which I haven’t
used much in a bunch of years, although they were helpful to me in the earlier
stages of “Pesach Sheini”. Among those sefarim were those from R’ Isaac Breuer,
Rabbi Eliezer Berkovits, and Rav Amital. This is not to dismiss any of them as
having importance to me. Rather I use to point out that my hesitancy in
answering your question is due to the fact that my religious understanding is
anything but static. In fact, if you had told a year or two ago me that ideas
from The Baal haTanya and Rav Hillel Paritcher would be part of my religious
experience, I would have looked at you like you are crazy.
Please don’t mistake this as meaning that
there are no core beliefs. I would be surprised if the Piaseczna Rebbe and his
Torah ever stops being of great importance to me. I don’t think I could ever be
a chasid, but if the Piaseczna Rebbe was alive, who knows. The same goes for
Rav Kook’s and Hillel Zeitlin’s Torah.
As for specifics, beyond the fact that my
worldview is mostly mystical, I’ll just share a few brief thoughts. While I
understand the reasons why you and others try to take a more rational approach,
that worldview has very little appeal to me. Ultimately, no how much we try to
rationalize religion, it is anything but rational. It ultimately stands on a relationship
with a God, who cannot be touched by the world of rational thought. As such, I
take God at his word in the Torah, as did the rabbis in the Talmud, that
tefillah is real communication, and that God is directly involved in our lives.
While you are correct to note that this approach raises questions, all
approaches do.
To sum it up as well as I can, and I do
realize that I have left quite a bit unsaid, I try and stand in serious
relationship to HKBH, and believe with every fiber of my being that it is a
real two-way relationship. Does it all fit together? It does in the sense that
this is me. I have no desire to convince anyone else of the correctness of any
of my views and beliefs. My desire is nothing more than continuously try and
think about, develop, and grow in my relationship with God.
Pesach
