Project of IISHJ

Month: June 2015

Feelings

Posted on by Sherwin Wine

The Jewish Humanist, October 1986

Feelings.

They are a very important part of our daily life. They are the energy of our desires and motivation. They are the source of our pain and our pleasure. They are the signs’ of our success and failure.

Understanding our feelings and learning to control them is the theme of our New Year celebration. Ultimately the quality of our life is determined by what we do with our emotions and by what they do to us.

Our feelings present us with many problems.

We do not choose them. They just happen. If they enter our consciousness we cannot command them to leave. Fear, anger, love and guilt arise from unconscious causes over which we exercise no control. The only way to avoid certain feelings is to avoid the situations that provoke them. But many life situations are unavoidable, especially if they involve family, friends, and work.

Emotions are difficult to control. They trigger our behavior. When the conscious mind is uncooperative emotions bypass it and make us do what we do not deliberately choose to do. Changing behavior can be very difficult, especially if our feelings are in conflict with our behavior.

Our emotions do not share a common agenda. Each feeling wants its own way and seeks to command all our energies. Our love and our anger compete for, the same body, driving to use it indifferent ways. No easy internal harmony prevails in the human mind.

If our feelings are allowed to run wild, if they are given complete freedom, they are able to wreak havoc in our lives. Since they have the short-run goal of discharging their energy, they often stand in conflict with the long-run goals of our reason. The planning part of our mind is concerned about later. Our emotions tend to be focused on now. They often make us do things that give us immediate relief from tension, but which have rotten consequences for our future happiness and success.

Our emotions love to hide. If they are embarrassing for our conscious mind to handle, if they offend our self-image, we sometimes have the power to expel them to the “basement” of our mind. While’ they fester in the darkness we can pretend that they are not there even though they really are. Trying to hide from our feelings uses up an enormous amount of energy and often exhausts us.

As you can see, simply asking people to be spontaneous can be very dangerous. Indulging hate, anger and jealousy can be just as spontaneous as indulging love. And expressing love may not always be appropriate, especially if the people we love exploit us and abuse us.

So, in the face of all these problems, how do we establish an effective control of our feelings so, that they serve our long-run goals for survival and dignity?

The path of self-control is hard but absolutely necessary.

We, first of all, have to accept our feelings and stop running away from them. We cannot be held responsible for what we do not control. Emotions are not dangerous unless we allow them to be. Fear, hate, and sexual lust are normal and human. They make their appearance in every psyche. If we pretend, that they are not there, they will hide in the unconscious and do their dirty work against our will. If we are willing to confront them and to own up to them, then we will have a chance to discipline them. We cannot control what we refuse to acknowledge.

We have to clarify our long-run goals. We have to go beyond the present and determine what we want for our future. What are the human relations we want to maintain? What are the work skills we want to acquire? Self-indulgence is inevitable if we never use our reason to go beyond today and plan tomorrow.

We also have to calculate the price of spontaneity. What will be the consequences of our behavior if we allow any particular feeling to take control of our body? In many situations spontaneity works and makes us happier. In many circumstances it disrupts friendships, undermines family loyalty and destroys useful work. Being a warm person does not mean being a foolish person.

We have to train our will. We do not have to be the victim of every passing feeling. Our conscious mind gives us the power to control and restrain. The word “will” denotes the complex mental process which enables us to say “no” when our feelings say “yes”, to say “yes” when our feelings say “no.” The best way to exercise our will and to give it strength is to force ourselves to do what we are afraid to do. Endless introspection is depressing and weakens our decision making power. Only by acting and discovering that indeed we are able to do what we did not think we were able to do can our will become a reality. If we always wait to make decisions until we are no longer afraid, we will never be decisive. Practice gives muscle to our will.

On Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur I will expand on these observations.

Choosing to be Ethical

Posted on by Sherwin Wine

The Jewish Humanist, September 1987

For Humanistic Jews morality and ethics are the heart of the good life. Being a moral person is much more important than being a religious person.

But what does it mean to be moral? How do you tell the difference between right behavior and wrong behavior? In a world in which so many people believe that ethical action is on the decline, these questions are important – so important that they will be the theme of our New Year holidays.

For many people right and wrong are very clear. The main problem is motivating people to pursue the right and avoiding the wrong. For others choosing to be ethical is not quite so simple. They believe that right and wrong are not so obvious, that specific situations do not offer easy moral answers.

Certainly, in a time of so much social change, old answers do not seem as obvious as they used to. Work, love, pleasure and marriage are not what they were. And the relationship between them and community welfare is not what it was. In fact, under new circumstances, the moral action of yesterday becomes the immoral action of today. Multiplying babies is right for an undercrowded world. It is wrong for an overcrowded one.

Choosing to be ethical today starts with many difficulties.

In an age when we feel that we have a right to personal happiness and fulfillment, it is difficult to figure out the proper moral balance between individual need and community need. When is it appropriate to be self-centered and to pursue my own agenda? And when is it appropriate to sacrifice my own pleasure and happiness for the sake of the pleasure and welfare of others? In a traditional society, which accepts the justice of human suffering, this dilemma never occurs. But, in our fulfillment-centered society this is a recurring problem.

In a world where romantic love has become supremely important, it is difficult to negotiate the claims of love and the claims of duty. In fact, the harshness of the concept of duty seems a cold contrast to the warm appeal of loving attachments. But the feeling of love is a fickle experience. If human relations depended on love alone, they would become the victims of a flaky anarchy. What I love today I may not love tomorrow. There must be some other moral value that allows for stability, continuity and commitment.

In a psychotherapeutic world which has banished the notion of guilt from respectable values, it is difficult to deal with rotten people who have rotten behavior. Guilt is a form of fear and intimidation, which has been successfully used for most of human history as a way of controlling human behavior. If inducing it is immoral, then one of the most effective techniques for persuading other people to change their actions – and for others to influence as to change our actions – is eliminated. It is almost impossible to do the business of ethics and avoid guilt.

In a time when people are very much caught up with their own subjective feelings and ideas and where the opportunities of an affluent society create so many options, it is difficult to talk about an objective ethics: which applies to everybody. Many men and women, in the name of personal equality and autonomy, deny that there is a single ethical standard for all people. What may be right for you may not be right for me. And, what may be validly moral for me may not be validly moral for you. My conscience is just as authoritative as your conscience. And where they disagree – well they just disagree. If this argument sounds familiar, it certainly is. And if it seems a bit chaotic, it certainly is too.

In, a shrinking world of international trade and technological wonders where isolated communities no longer exist, it is difficult to figure out what loyalty to the welfare of the community really means. Historically, moral behavior was action that placed group survival over individual survival. But, in a place where each individual belongs to many communities – familial, local, national and transnational – this standard is confusing. What may be good for my family may not be good for my city. What may be good for my city may not be good for my nation. And what may be good for my nation may not promote the welfare of humanity. Group loyalty now is more complex than it ever was. Chauvinists who are willing to die for their nation and their nation alone may not be as noble as they used to be.

On a planet where large urban centers bring strangers together into single communities, it is difficult to kindle moral concern for people we barely know. Giving up time, energy and wealth for members of our family we can understand. Sharing our assets with friends and fellow workers can arouse some enthusiasm. But worrying about people we do not know and whom we do not want to know is hardly natural. It takes an enormous discipline of mind and will to include distant strangers within our ethical commitments. “Foreigners” do not win our hearts in the same way as members of our own “tribe.” And we find convenient ‘moral excuses to exclude them.

As you can see, choosing to be ethical is not as easy as some make it out to be. We need to explore its difficulties and what we can do about it.

Israel at 50

Posted on by Sherwin Wine

The Jewish Humanist, May/June 1998

 

Israel is fifty years old. But the birth day ‘party’ is not as festive as many Israelis and Jews would want it to be. The American government is not very happy.

After fifty years of independence and one hundred years of Zionism the state of Israel can boast some extraordinary achievements. It has molded a new Jewish ethnicity, a blending of European and Oriental Jews. It has transformed ancient Hebrew into the unique language of the Jewish State. It has developed a viable economy of farming and manufacturing which has brought Israel into the ‘first world’. It has fashioned democratic political institutions, which are imperfect, but which allow for a high level of personal freedom. It has created a stunning military, which wields a power out of proportion to its numbers. It has even forged a long-lasting alliance with America, the leading military and economic power in the world.

It has also experienced some significant failures. The losses of the Yom Kippur War and the Lebanon War embarrassed the Israeli army. The dichotomy between the living standards of European and Oriental Jews breeds resentment. The unique farm experiment of the kibbutzim is collapsing into socialist failure. The laws of the Jewish State ironically deny full religious freedom to Jewish alternatives to Orthodoxy and compound the inequity with large subsidies to orthodox institutions. The secular character of the early Israeli State has been replaced by the growing presence of aggressive religious fundamentalists. The enthusiastic support of American Jews, the largest and, most powerful Jewish community in the world, has been compromised by the refusal of the Israeli government to resist the demands of ultra-Orthodox Jews who despise the liberal Judaism of the United States. The economic and political status of Israeli Arabs remains inferior to that of Israeli Jews; Above all, the acquisition of new land in the Six-Day War triggered Palestinian nationalism and Palestinian rebellion.

Even the alliance with America has become a troubled connection. The fall of Communism removed the attractiveness of the Israeli military as a bulwark against Soviet expansion and the Arab allies of the Soviet Union. America now wanted to woo the Arab world as a counter-force against the new danger of Muslim fundamentalism pouring out of Iran. The vested interests of the United States began to clash with the vested interests of the Jewish State. Certainly the Gulf War demonstrated the necessity of winning the support of moderate Arab regimes.

Most of the old Israeli establishment, the leaders of the Labor party, read the ‘handwriting on the wall’ and were willing to yield to American pressure, and to make an accommodation with the Palestinians and the moderate Arab world. Their decision was reinforced by the continuing problem of Palestinian resistance in the occupied territories, the war exhaustion of the Israeli public, the vision of an economic opening to the Arab world and the anxious desire to preserve the Jewishness of the Jewish State by excluding the Arab presence. It was also clear that no peace could exist with the Arab world so long as the conflict with the Palestinian Arabs continued. The popular leader of this ‘peace’ faction was Yitzhak Rabin. The assassination of Rabin effectively undermined the power of the accommodationists.

Today the extremists, who are determined to resist all American pressure, are in charge. They are an odd coalition, united by their hatred of the old Labor establishment. They include conservative military officers, secular chauvinists, Orthodox Jews, Oriental Jews from the Muslim world, and recent Russian immigrants. Their leader is Benjamin Netanyahu, the present Prime Minister of Israel. They view any surrender of territory to the Palestinians or to other Arabs as subversive of Israeli survival.

Their power is reinforced by periodic Arab terrorism and the ambivalence of many Israelis about the risks of territorial concessions. Despite scandals and defections, the coalition is holding its own.

The real power of this new coalition lies in the changing demographics of Israel. In 1998 Israel is no longer what it was in 1948, a secular European state. Over the past fifty years Oriental Jews and Jewish religious fundamentalists have entered the Israeli scene in large numbers and transformed it. They do not wish to make any meaningful concessions to the Arab world. They want peace; but they do not want to pay the price for peace.

The Israeli people have two choices. They can continue to support the present government, subvert the peace process and alienate the American establishment. Or they can repudiate the Netanyahu regime, continue meaningful negotiations with the Palestinians and other Arab nations, and cooperate with Egypt and Jordan in their resistance to religious fundamentalism.

The vested interests of the United States in the Middle East demand that the peace process continue. The collapse of the peace process will promote support for radical Arab regimes like Iraq, and religious extremism. Neither consequence serves the long run interests of America or the maintenance of law and order in the global economy.

The future is up to the Israeli people. They have to make the fateful decision. Arafat may not be the most attractive or reliable ‘ally’ for the Israeli public. But he is preferable to the storm of fanatics who will follow his downfall.

The Persians

Posted on by Sherwin Wine

The Jewish Humanist, March 1977

 

The Persians.

Jews don’t have very strong feelings about Persians. Their name doesn’t conjure up any images of holocausts or pogroms. Unlike Germans and Arabs we seem to have no good reason to hate them – or to love them.

If it weren’t for Purim, we most likely would choose to ignore them.

But they deserve our attention. In fact, for that very reason, Purim is important.

As a story, the book of Esther is only a delightful myth. Neither Ahasuerus, Esther, Mordecai nor Haman ever existed. No Jewish queen ever graced the royal court of Susa. No wicked Persian prime minister ever plotted the genocide of the Jews.

The Esther story is a Mardi Gras myth dramatizing the victory of spring over winter, of life over death. Esther is the barely disguised Ishtar, goddess of fertility. Mordecai is none other than Marduk, guardian chief of the gods and the fatherly enemy of evil. The tale, in its origin, is Semitic and Babylonian.

The story of Esther was long resisted by the priests and rabbis because its thinly covered polytheism. Yahweh allowed no rivals. However, historical luck rescued it from oblivion. When the rabbis turned against the Maccabee kings of Judea because they had dared to call themselves kings, they abandoned all the holidays honoring that warrior family. Hanukkah was discarded and ignored for centuries. Nicanor’s day was also abandoned.

What is Nicanor’s Day?

It was a holiday, falling on the 14th of the Hebrew month of Adar (March), and commemorating a Maccabee victory over the Greek general Nicanor. In the days of the Second Commonwealth, it was more important than Hanukkah.

The rabbis pushed Purim, because Purim fell on the same day and because it would allow the people to keep their festival without having to pay honor to the Maccabees. Although it violated their theological purity, the changed the name of Nicanor’s Day to Purim and kosherized the book of Esther to justify the change.

Purim, n some strange historical way, is connected with Hanukkah and the Maccabees. Hanukkah (as well as Nicanor’s Day) was the holiday of those who loved the Maccabees. Purim (despite its Persian setting) was the holiday of those who hated the Maccabees and who wished to erase their memory.

Nevertheless, modern Purim has forgotten this old political controversy. It retains its importance for two reasons.

The first reason is fun. Purim is nothing less than the Jewish Mardi Gras. Even if it were called Nicanor’s Day the laughter would be the same.

The second reason is history. By the coincidence of the myth’s national setting, Jews are forced to pay attention to their Persian connection.

The Persian Connection?

The Persian Connection is that set of ideas, books and institutions which the Persian conquest of the Jews brought to Judaism. Around 530 B.C. Cyrus, the young and bold king of Persia, set out to create an empire through the conquest of foreign countries. When he was finished, Egypt, Phoenecia, Syria, Armenia, Assyria, Chaldea, Media, Parthia, West India and Judea were his possessions. The Persian Empire was the first true world empire. Cyrus was no longer merely king. He became the king of kings.

What did the Persian Connection mean for the Jews?

The PC gave us monotheism. Theological ideas do not arise in a vacuum. They reflect the political and social realities of their day. A world god is merely the image of a world king projected into the sky. The first real world king was Cyrus, ruler of the Persians. The first real world god was Mazda, the chief god of the Persians. If Yahweh, the god of the Jews, was to survive his competition, his devotees would have to make him Mazda’s equal. In the end the Bible, Yahweh’s professional portfolio did exactly that. The priests of Jerusalem, who did most of their editing of sacred texts in the Persian period, elevated Yahweh to universal rule – and claimed, with enormous chutzpa, that Yahweh was simply using the Persians Or any nation for that matter, as a way to reward or punish the Jews. In order to survive the Jews had to imagine themselves more important than the Persians and their god more significant than Mazda.

The PC gave us the Torah. The Torah, as the political constitution of the Jewish state, is a document which gives supreme power to the Jerusalem priests. These priests were called Zadokites. They were the editors and completers of the Torah. Under the leadership of Ezra, they came home from Chaldean exile with Persian permission. They ruled the Jews in the name of the Persian king. They were favored by the Persian court because they were clergymen who would be incapable of leading a military rebellion. Needing to justify their right to rule the Jews (as opposed to the non-traditional royal house of David) they completed the Torah and used the Torah to enforce their authority. A peaceful theocracy, diverted by ritual excess from armed revolt, was convenient for the Persians. The Jews were now too priestly to fight.

The PC gave us the Diaspora. In the Persian period for the first time in their history, the Jews found themselves part of a world empire. National boundaries were now irrelevant. People of different nations could now move freely from country to country. Living in a small mountainous country, bad for agriculture and harsh for survival, many Jews decided to emigrate for economic reasons. Some became merchants and settled in the cities of the Empire. Some signed up as mercenaries in the Persian army and went as far as southern Egypt to patrol the boundaries. Others wandered, without fixed skills, to more fertile places. An international empire spawned an international people.

Today the Persian Connection is less dramatic. The modern Persian calls his country Iran and himself Iranian (a pretentious title linking the Persians to the ancient Aryans). He has exchanged Allah for Mazda and given up the conquest of land for oil (a more lucrative substitute). The king still calls himself King of Kings, Shah in Shah, but he is hardly made of the stuff of Cyrus. The Rothschilds would be better models. Although Muslim, modern Persians hate the Arabs, as cultural rivals and former conquerors. They discreetly supply the oil’ needs of Israel and treat their local Jews as well as any Muslim country can.

Modern Persia is not terribly important for Jews.

Ancient Persia was.

Purim reminds us of this Persian Connection.

 

The Philosophy of Confirmation

Posted on by Sherwin Wine

The Jewish Humanist, January 1982

 

Growing up.

It deserves a celebration.

Most cultures arrange for one. A new adult is a useful addition to a traditional family. He is a promising asset to a struggling community.

Even in a modern industrial urban society growing up is important to more than the individual. Every society needs the talents and skills of its young people. They are the promise of the future.

Judaism arranged to celebrate this experience in a ceremony called Bar Mitzvah. It was for boys alone. And it was fairly uniform. Reading from the Torah or some other book of the Bible became the ritual, since the Torah was the constitution, it represented adult responsibility.

Now we in the Birmingham Temple, as proponents of Humanistic Judaism, find growing up to be a significant experience. But we find the traditional way of celebrating it to be less than adequate.

A good Jewish ceremony should satisfy the following criteria.

It should provide for equality. It should be available to both boys and girls. Bar Mitzvah should be complemented by Bat Mitzvah. In fact, calling it simply the Mitzvah ceremony avoids the hassle. The Hebrew word mitzvah means commandment and suggests that the celebrant is now eligible to be responsible for the requirements of his own life.

It should provide integrity. The symbols and words should honestly express what the celebrant believes and what the community stands for. If the Torah is only a famous book and no longer the constitution of humanistic Jews, it should not be the central future of this important celebration. Above all, at a moment when a child is reviewing his idealism and testing his commitments, sincerity should be a minimal requirement.

A good ceremony should provide inspiration. The adolescent should be able to focus on his interests and his talents and find connection with those who share them. An arbitrary Biblical reading is too impersonal to be meaningful. Choosing a heroic figure out of the Jewish past or present who can serve as a role model to the boy or girl and who captures the enthusiasm of the student, makes a lot more sense.

A good ceremony should provide a sense of competence, a feeling of achievement. The student should believe that he is now able to do something well that adults normally do. Presenting a competent lecture to an adult audience may be only one of many options. (On the secular kibbutzim in Israel community service is stressed). But it is certainly an effective one.

A good ceremony should reinforce a sense of roots. Jewish roots from the humanistic perspective, are not only religious roots. They are secular ones also. Music, dance, humor, science and business are as much a part of Jewish culture as worship.

It is very important that the student feel that he has real roots in the Jewish past. He may not be able to identify with his grandfathers’ dietary habits. But he can identify with his love of family.

A good ceremony should allow the community to experience its own ideals and its own commitments. The celebration is not only for the child. It is especially for the assembly of adults who need periodic opportunities to affirm their own beliefs. A young adult is an important symbol to a congregation. He is an expression of hope.

A good ceremony, above all, should occur at the right age. In a modern urban culture, thirteen is hardly the entrance to adulthood. It barely makes adolescence. However, it is a time of important physical and mental changes. The most creative alternative is to have two optional ceremonies – the mitzvah thirteen to celebrate the beginning of adolescence and a mitzvah (confirmation) at a later age (16 or beyond) to mark the entrance into adulthood.

These seven criteria have guided the development of our own growing up ritual. They define our goals. In the years to come our procedures may change. But our moral requirements will continue to direct change to valid alternatives.

 

The Message of Humanistic Judaism

Posted on by Sherwin Wine

The Jewish Humanist, June 1977

Humanistic Judaism is the Birmingham Temple. It is also more than the Birmingham Temple.

Humanistic Judaism is Deerfield Temple Beth Or, the Westport Congregation for Humanistic Judaism; the Congregation for Humanistic Judaism of Greater Los Angeles, the Toronto Jewish Humanist Congregation and dozens of individuals in Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Washington, Miami, Houston and San Francisco.

Humanistic Judaism is the Society for Humanistic Judaism. Established in 1969 by members of the Birmingham Temple, the Society serves as the link among all self-proclaimed Humanistic Jews in North America and beyond.

Our Temple is unique. It is the pioneer congregation of a new religious movement. It is the community voice for hundreds of Jews whose ideas and opinions need to be heard in the Jewish world.

Humanistic Judaism allows us to reach beyond the parochial boundaries of a single congregation and find the broader fellowship of like-minded believers.

This year Westport, Connecticut was the setting for the annual meeting of the Society. Delegates from all over North America came together to share achievements, to exchange ideas and to plan for the future.

The general consensus was that we have a distinct and unique message for world Jewry – different from the message of Orthodox, Conservative, Reform, Reconstructionist and Secular Judaism.

What is this different package of ideas and practices which Humanistic Judaism represents?

In order to articulate the ‘Humanistic’ answers we have to first spell out the questions we share with all other branches of Judaism.

There are six questions.

  1. How do we define the nature of Jewish identity in an age when the spectrum of Jewish belief ranges from Lubavitcher piety to Marxist atheism?
  2. How do we deal with the historic primacy of the Torah at a time when the Torah life style corresponds in no way to the behavior of most Jewish people?
  3. How do we bridge the gulf between the Jewish personality of the past – pious, faithful, reverent and traditional – with the Jewish personality of the present – challenging, rational, skeptical and creative?
  4. How do we deal with the fact that the vocabulary and world-view of contemporary science In no way corresponds to the vocabulary and world-view of historic Judaism?
  5. In an age when a God who intervenes directly in the lives of people is no longer believable, is there any part of the religious enterprise which is still valid?
  6. In a cosmopolitan world where ethnic and religious groups live intermingled how open should Jews be to the non-Jewish world?

The six answers which follow are the ‘quickie’ summary of Humanistic Judaism.

Jewish identity. A Jewish identity which can embrace both Lubavitcher piety and Marxist atheism cannot be a religious identity. Neither a set of religious beliefs nor a single life style can define Jewishness. The only category which is broad enough is ethnic and familial. To be Jewish is to be a member of an international ‘nation’. This ‘nation’ has its center presently in the state of Israel. But Its members are citizens of many countries, speak many languages, embrace many political opinions and indulge a wide variety of cultural styles. The very nature of Jewish identity forces Jews to work for a world community. Because only a world community can give official sanction to the international character of Jewish identity.

Life Style. Unlike all the other liberal branches of Judaism Humanistic Judaism does not seek to save the words of the Torah while rejecting its substance. It boldly admits that the Torah is historically interesting but intellectually irrelevant. In an age when information about people and the world continuously changes, no sacred book is appropriate, even as a symbol. Wisdom comes from the testing and insight of contemporary science, which allows no absolute truth. New rules have to be invented for new situations all the time.

Jewish Present. Humanistic Jews find the Jewish present just as interesting as the Jewish past. The secular world of science and technology has given the Jew more education, power and intellectual clout than he has ever enjoyed before. By virtue of their unprecedented affluence and freedom, contemporary Jews are, at least, the equals of their desert ancestors. An appropriate Jewish history gives as much time to Einstein as to Moses.

World View. The ‘God’ vocabulary of historic Judaism cannot fit the naturalistic view of contemporary science. Saving theology is a waste of time. The language of prayer and worship is so inappropriate that it cannot be rescued. A successful Judaism seeks to use the language that the modern Jew uses in his daily life.

Religion. Much of the old religious enterprise is useless to Humanistic Jews. Contacting supernatural power is an act of futility. Character building and ethical training are the aspects of historic religion which are still appealing. The religious community is an extended family with shared values. The congregation translates these values into practical behavior. Rationality, trust, cooperation and generosity become skills for learning.

Openness. Humanistic Jews start with Jewish literature but do not stop there. They are open to receiving wisdom about solving problems from any ethnic source. The affirmation of human power, human reason and human happiness is-more than Jewish. It is also universal. Humanistic Jews find their ‘brothers’ and ‘sisters’not only among other Jews. They find them also among other humanists.

These six brief answers are a unique combination. They are the missionary message of the Society for Humanistic Judaism. They unite us with hundreds of Jews outside the Birmingham Temple.

The Society needs your support to spread the ‘word’.

Happiness

Posted on by Sherwin Wine

The Jewish Humanist, March 1987

The pursuit of happiness will be the theme of our Temple retreat this year.

While the Declaration of Independence guarantees us the right to happiness, it does not tell us what it is. Nor does it tell us how to get it. We generally agree that happiness is something everybody wants. But we are not sure that everybody wants the same thing.

So what is happiness?

Before we can answer the question we have to confront certain realities about happiness.

  1. If we concentrate too hard on happiness it generally goes away. People who worry constantly about whether they are happy or not rarely are. Happy people do not spend a lot of time thinking about happiness. They are absorbed in compelling projects, work or leisure, that do not allow much time for introspection. When happiness becomes the goal of life, it is rarely achievable. Only when we pursue other more specific goals does happiness emerge as an unintended consequence. The most joyous people I know do not choose to talk about joy. Like the micro-particles of physics it changes, or even disappears, when you look at it too hard.
  2. Getting away from problems does not make us happy. It is an illusion to imagine that it is possible to achieve a problem-free life When one set of challenges goes away another replaces it. Even retirement from work or the departure of children is no guarantee that happiness is around the corner. Uselessness and boredom are often worse than conventional stress. They make us focus on all the minor negative things in our lives we never notice when we are busy. Many of the happiest people I know are overscheduled and overcommitted. They simply love what they are doing, even though what they are doing gives them stress and anxiety. Life in heaven, in the end, may be more taxing than life on earth.
  3. Pain is part of happiness. The hedonism of immediate gratification; is no path to lasting pleasure. If we need our “fix” now and are unwilling to wait for later, we are pursuing self-destruction. Almost all things worthwhile require the postponement of pleasure and sometimes even the endurance of pain. Education, sport skills and Successful parenting take time. They often also involve painful testing, wasting and failure. If we are afraid to risk pain, we shall never be happy. Our lives will consist of momentary pleasures that are tied together by depression.
  4. Small things in life can be important. There is a chemistry to life which reveals itself in the realities of human relations. Certain people attract us and we do not know why. Certain people annoy us and we can find no important reason to explain our response. Certain personalities make us feel good. Certain personalities, with no apparent defect, make us feel rotten. We look for the grand reasons why we should choose one person over another. But often the small things make the difference. A sense of humor, a willingness to listen, a disposition to be kind-each little characteristic embarrassingly trivial determines our choice. Out siders often wonder what we see in the people we like and love. But outsiders are looking for the big reasons and cannot see what makes us happy.
  5. Life needs variety. It is so easy to become obsessed with the things we need and do not have that we imagine that one and only one thing will give us happiness. If only we found a lover, if only we can have a child, if only we can secure interesting work, if only we can live in a warm place – then everything will be marvelous. But no lover alone can bring us happiness, nor can any child, job or climate. People who try to put their happiness eggs in only one basket find that the basket is too small. Long-run pleasure needs variety. It requires love – but not all the time. It asks for work – but not every hour. It revels in leisure – but not day after day.
  6. What other people think of us does make a difference. So many of us imagine that what counts in our life is what we think of ourselves that we rebel against pleasing others. We maintain that if we say to ourselves that we are worthwhile that we will be. But self-esteem does not come from self-congratulations. It starts with our ability to aim the approval of the people we love and respect. Since we are social beings, we are molded as much by others as by ourselves. The hostility of others is not incompatible with happiness, so long as the people we admire standby our side. To go through life, never willing to please, arrogantly indifferent to the demands of parents, friends and teachers is no sign of self-esteem. It is certainly no path to long-run fulfilment.
  7. Winning is preferable to losing. So much current advice focuses on the virtue of trying that the consequences of trying are largely ignored. Boldness and persistence are not enough for happiness. If we try for goals we cannot achieve, if we pursue people who always reject us, if we strive for work Our talents do not fit, then relentless failure and rejection will depress us. It is simply no fun to lose always, no matter how thrilling the effort. In the end, happy people choose goals their skills can realize. They may lose from time to time. But they do not arrange to lose always. They reach out to try things they have never tried before, but never so far as to be pretentious. There is a distinction between good-humored adventure and “suicide.”
  8. The world is a little bit crazy. Unhappy people always expect the world to be orderly and fair. They do not like surprise and resent imperfection. In the end, they stop playing the game of life and spend most of their time complaining about the rules of the game. Because they expect the world to be sane they go crazy. Happy people know that the world is disorderly and unfair. They expect surprise and do not insist on perfection. In the end they prefer to play an imperfect game to playing no game at all. Because they see the world as “nuts,” they stay sane.

So what is happiness?

Happiness is an enthusiasm for life, an eagerness to solve problems, a confidence in our strength to deal with reality, even when that reality is less than we want it to be.

 

Humanist Affirmations

Posted on by Sherwin Wine

The Jewish Humanist, Winter 1975-76

Humanism is a life style. A life style is a way of responding to our own needs and to the needs of other people. It is a way of coping with the continuous demands of our environment and of our society.

Coping needs power. A good life style makes us aware of our power and helps us test it. Self-esteem comes from the successful use of our personal power.

A humanistic life style includes the following personal affirmations of power:

I have power to live with uncertainty.

In most traditional religions certainty is regarded as a virtue. The dogmatic and fanatic believer is preferred to the doubter and to the skeptic. Believing strongly – in spite of the evidence, or believing strongly – in the absence of evidence, is reason for praise.

Humanism finds no virtue in the fanatic believer. The age of science is an age when all statements about the world are open to public testing. If they are true, they are true in a limited way. They depend on the stingy help of limited evidence. They live with the possibility that tomorrow they may be refuted on the basis of new experiences and new discoveries. They accept the fact that they are fallible. They are willing to resign from truth and knowledge when new evidence asks them to. Unlike dogmatic theological statements they are truly humble. They do not have to be true forever and ever.

The true humanist avoids rigid belief. He has strong beliefs, based upon strong evidence, just as he has weak beliefs, based upon weak evidence. But his strong beliefs are not so strong that he cannot alter or replace them. He does not invest his ego in statements of truth. He invests his ego in the skill he possesses to believe with reservation, to be open to new ideas and theories, and to give up what the evidence can no longer sustain. He especially values the skill he has to live with no answer to important questions. If the origins of the universe are unknown, he can live without knowing. The need for answers, the need for certainty is a sickness. Healthy people prefer responsible reason to irresponsible faith.

I have the power to be generous.

Traditional religions speak a lot about sacrifice. Sacrifice is the act of diminishing myself and my possessions, for the sake of others. Sacrifice is giving myself up to the needs of others. It is a form of self-destruction. As a gift, it can only give the giver a strong sense of guilt. Both the traditional Christ figure and the stereotyped Jewish mother are expressions of sacrifice.

Humanists avoid sacrifice. They prefer generosity. The generous person assumes that when he gives to others he does not take away from himself. Since his essential identity is not to be found in the things he owns but lies in his own personal skills, the act of giving is an expression of personal; power – the power to be useful to others. If I am a poet and I give away my poems, I can still write another. If I am a carpenter and I give away my chair, I can still create another.

Generous people are neither anal nor extravagant. They do not insist on receiving equal rewards for services rendered. They do not dispose of their own goods so carelessly that they harm their own survival and the happiness of those who depend on them.

I have the power to be attractive.

Traditional religion prefers humble and reverent people who confront life by denying their own power and by affirming the power of God.

Humanism applauds the humility of living with uncertainty. But it does not commend the humble behavior of prayer and worship.     It may be true that human strength is limited and that human weakness is extensive. But dwelling on helplessness is a lifestyle of despair. It is a loser’s lifestyle. It is transferring the survival technique of infants to adult life. Helplessness is attractive in infants. It is ugly on people over ten – especially if it can be avoided.

Humanists assume that they have the right to win at the game of happiness. They focus in on their weaknesses only long enough to figure out what skills they need. They do not arrange to lose before the game starts by choosing to be pitiable. Only babies and Southern belles have ever won with that technique.

Humanism, in the end, is an aesthetic option. It finds beauty in people who do not choose to whine or complain – but who dare to test their strength against the overwhelming power of a sometimes indifferent universe.

Visiting East Asia

Posted on by Sherwin Wine

The Jewish Humanist, September 1996

I have just returned from five weeks in East Asia. I had been there three times before, the first time as a Jewish Chaplain in the American army in Korea. My memories of Korea were poverty and devastation. I was anxious to see what the economic revolution of Asian capitalism had done to the settings of my memories. China, Vietnam and Indonesia were added to my voyage. I had seen China and Indonesia a decade before. Vietnam was new to me and, because of the terrible war, the most intriguing of my destinations.

I was aware, from my reading, that great transformations had taken place. I knew that the most dynamic economies of the world had their home in the Far East. I knew that the old Communism had given up its ghost and had embraced the consumer culture. Only authoritarian regimes and empty Marxist slogans remained. But I was unprepared for the dramatic difference to the past. The new urban centers of skyscrapers, expressways, automobiles, high tech factories, shopping malls, banks and motorbikes startled me. American culture had crossed the Pacific and had made a comfortable marriage with the fresh ambition and talents of eager Asians. The “goodies” of the Western world are more fascinating to these once hungry people than they are to us, somewhat jaded from overexposure.

As a Jew, visiting East Asia is different from visiting Europe or the Middle East. In the Western and Middle Eastern worlds there is an old and significant Jewish presence. The stories of both Christianity and Islam cannot be told without the Jews. The cities of Germany, Russia, Turkey and a dozen other neighboring countries have profound Jewish memories, both pleasant and unpleasant. In fact, our Jewish ancestors helped to make them great.

But China, Korea and Vietnam have no long-run significant connection to Jewish history. We all know about the native Chinese Jews who had their origin in the arrival of adventurous Persian Jewish merchants in the days of the Sung emperors. We also know about the Russian and German Jews who found their way to Harbin and Shanghai in this century, the agents of an expanding Russia or refugees from Hitler. But they are gone, a brief but exotic chapter in the saga of the Jewish people. They left no imprint on Chinese culture or Chinese memory. Tourists can find a few relics of their past in old Kaifeng or in the fast-changing streets of the former international settlements in Shanghai.

Yet in some strange way, East Asia is very Jewish to me. The young people remind me of all those Asian students in the United States and Canada who are replacing Jewish students as the winners of the top honors in science and mathematics. They are ambitious for education and success, in the same way that the Jewish immigrant children I grew up with in the ghetto of Detroit were eager for academic and worldly achievement. Their faces and food were not familiar, but their values were.

Communism had not been able to destroy the Confucian values of family loyalty, family ambition and self-discipline. As a Jew, these values were familiar to me. They were at the foundation of Jewish success. Add to this the Confucian reverence for the written word and scholarly study, embellish it with lingering bourgeois skills in commerce and trade – and you have the perfect setting for winning in an education oriented capitalistic world. In many respects the Chinese in Southeast Asia are resented in the same way as the achieving Jews in the Western world.

My experience in East Asia stood in dramatic contrast to my experience in the countries of the Muslim world. In the Muslim places where there is no oil, deep poverty prevails. While there is reverence for the written word, the text of the Koran, most study and learning are directed to religious study. The secular sciences of Western society are viewed as dangerous and subversive of the faith. A powerful religious establishment hates Western culture and offers resistance to its ideological advances. Iran, Algeria, Saudi Arabia and many other nations live with this hostility and the civil war it creates.

What unites the Jews and the people of East Asia is an overwhelming embrace of secular education. It is the key to their mutual success. No powerful Buddhist or native clergy remains in the Far East to oppose the appeal of scientific thought. Old values have been wedded to new thinking, without the reactionary intervention of fundamentalist religion. The consequence is social discipline and worldly success.

Of course, modern urban industrial capitalist civilization has brought the problems of overcrowding, crime and rudeness. They are the unavoidable accompaniments of a dynamic economy. But the growing victory over poverty outweighs their annoying intrusion. East Asia is way ahead of Eastern Europe, the Middle East, Africa and Latin America. In a few decades its emerging affluent nations may become the economic and political center of our planet.

It is quite possible that, in the twenty first century, Jewish ambition and the energies of the Pacific Rim will come together in a new chapter of Jewish history. Shanghai will not be Minsk, but then neither was London, New York or Los Angeles. Maybe the Jewish love of Chinese food is a prophecy!

Lifestyles in Transition

Posted on by Sherwin Wine

The Jewish Humanist, February 1977

People in transition. We are people in transition.

We are moving from one life style to another.

Our behavior is changing. As husbands or wives, as mothers or fathers, as employers or employees, as men or women, we are no longer behaving the way we used to.

The change is overwhelming. Divorce is ordinary. Pre-marital sex is conventional. Career women are legion. Artificial birth control is the norm for American Catholics. Even abortion has become Italian.

The change is so overwhelming that we often deny it. It makes us feel so insecure, so guilty. We try to imagine that our moral values have remained the same. We try to avoid confronting our behavior.

Moral schizophrenia is the psychic disease of many people in transition. It is the self-destructive defense against fear and guilt. Our conscious beliefs go one way, our behavior goes another. Our stated values are fantasies. They are unrelated to the substance of our actions. When we are challenged , some of us get very angry because we are resisting the painful truth. Some of us shrug our shoulders because we are embarrassed by our own ambivalence.

Moral schizophrenics are always the victims of change. Since they deny that it is happening, they can never control it.               They simply change and grumble. Unconscious needs and dumb social forces push them on relentlessly. Their resistance, when it comes, is both hysterical and ineffective. They are the victims of their own cowardice.

Healthy people are always fighting ethical dishonesty. They want their stated values to coincide with their behavior. They want to be aware of .what they are doing and why they are doing what they do. They want to be in control of their behavior and to consciously select the changes which are best suited to their needs. They want to resist irrational fear and non-productive guilt.

As people in transition – who can no longer live according to the dictates of old social scripts and who want to preserve their own moral integrity – we need a healthy style for coping with change. We need to admit ultimate responsibility for our own lives. Blaming others for bad decisions may be justified but is generally useless. Blaming destiny or irresistible social forces may be accurate but is usually a way of avoiding doing anything. Peevishness is fashionable. If we cannot be in total control, then we will not be in control at all!

Assuming responsibility is merely the good-humored awareness that conscious decision does make a difference.

We need to identify our most important desires. A healthy life style should serve our needs, not violate then. We have to be honest about our feelings. Anger and depression are signs that we are missing what we really went. Pro-longed anxiety Indicates that we haven’t come to terms with what we really fear. We have to know our needs before we can choose to satisfy them.

We have to be able to put our wants in some order of priority. Since we cannot satisfy all our desires simultaneously, we have to pick and choose. Human needs are complex. They cannot be reduced to single desires like sex, love, power or serenity. Simplicity is intellectually neat but pragmatically naive. On a practical level, we are messy jumbles of wants, each demanding center-stage and enormous amounts of energy. Knowing desire is never enough. We have to figure out the order of desire. If we don’t do it consciously and rationally, then we will do it unconsciously and irrationally. The former procedure is less spontaneous – but it is also less dangerous.

We need to know how to make rational choices. Irrational choices are decisions that serve the interests of dead people – that serve the needs of ancestors who cannot be served. Irrational people are always citing tradition and historical convention to justify their life style. Rational people always justify their behavior by pointing out how decisions serve the needs of the living. ‘I can’t help myself; that’s the way I feel’ is the standard reply of people who are traumatized by ancestral disapproval and who refuse to take the painful step of resisting the past for the sake of living needs and future good consequences.

We have to be able to resolve incurable ambivalence. Most of us want both independence and togetherness. The current psychotherapeutic fashion is for people to say that they want to run their own lives. But they generally want to run their own lives together with someone else. They want the ecstasy of intimacy and the pleasure of separateness at the same time. Total independence and total intimacy are not compatible. If we want one, we cannot have the other. Self-fulfilment is more than selfish independence or masochistic merging. It is a good-humored compromise called responsible intimacy.

We need to know the life style options. The traditional world allowed only one script for each sex and for each class. The contemporary world is a supermarket of life styles. Open marriage, communal child-rearing, living together, single swinging, nature simplicity, leisure careers – are still novel but increasingly legitimate choices. Even conventional long-run relationships, whether in marriage or work, require new stimulation to rescue them from boredom. Keeping ourselves aware of alternatives is necessary for both hope and sanity.

We need to resist stereotypes. As: children of our genes we are indeed programmed. But our programming allows for wide options. Men are not violating their nature when they are soft, gentle and dependent. Women are not resisting their essence, when they are strong, aggressive and publicly commanding. Our society requires greater flexibility than the tradition allowed. We need to be more open to variety. People do not exist to fit life styles. Life styles should be designed to fit people.

We need to be individually real. Before the present transition family, work and ethnic identities were primary. For a growing minority they have become secondary, although still very important. This minority are an avant garde, sensitive to the problems of investing self-awareness in groups. Groups no longer provide the stability and security they used to. Being able to see oneself as independently real of any group identity is becoming necessary for many people. In a world of serial careers, intermarriage and feeling young at fifty, it is dangerous to find one’s self-image in a group label.

We above all, have to be able to deal with the value of the temporary. Our conditioning so values the eternal that we often view marriages and careers that do not last forever as failures. We deny the importance of our pleasure and our joy because it does not last forever. In a world of rapid change this conditioning is conducive to neither happiness nor survival. Seeing change as painful but often desirable will, make us less possessive and more attractive.

We are people in continuous transition. We need the skills to make that transition worthwhile.

Note on sources: The Jewish Humanist  was the monthly newsletter of The Birmingham Temple. The periodical Humanistic Judaism was the quarterly journal of the Society for Humanistic Judaism. The Center for New Thinking was Wine’s adult learning program beyond Humanistic Judaism. Selections from Wine’s books are appropriately cited.
All texts, photos, audio and video are © by the Literary Estate of Sherwin Wine, whose custodian is the International Institute for Secular Humanistic Judaism – North American Section. All rights reserved.