Is This What Judaism Is About?

All right. So, here was a video that was going around. It popped up in my social media feed of a young Jewish man talking about his take on why Jews do what we do. I did not make it double speed. Alvin and the Chipmunk speed. That's how he posted it. And I'm just going to play a clip from that right here. >> We don't EVEN BELIEVE IN GOD 90% of the time. 75% of the time. I don't know. And like no one likes it. NO ONE'S HAPPY ABOUT IT. WE DO IT CUZ WE FIND community in it, not cuz we like are like whoopdedoo. Woohoo. I love it. No. If you were doing Judaism alone, you hate it. You would hate that. Being Jewish alone sucks. Being Jewish with people is great. It's great. When you're with the community, it's amazing and lovely and awesome. If I was on a desert island, bro, I would be eating the pigs. >> Okay, there's much more to it. First of all, I want to be positive and say it is wonderful to see a young person so passionate about his Judaism and creating content. Marvelous, beautiful. Keep it up. really. And I'm not saying that sarcastically. It's keep it up. I completely disagree with you, but you should continue to make content and continue to be passionate about your Judaism. Here's why I completely disagree. And I'm not saying you're wrong, by the way. This is not one of those objective things where one person is wrong so that the other person can be right. Two Jews, three opinions, like we famously say. So maybe you're right, maybe I'm right. Maybe someone else is also right. >> [sighs and gasps] >> You look to be an enlightened young man, open-minded, caring, compassionate. So, I just want to let you know that your description of Judaism right now. Put aside the fact that I'm a rabbi. I'm not even going to speak about this on theological grounds. I'm just going to speak about this on on a human level. That was totally neurotypical coded. The notion that it's awesome to do something because we're doing it as a community, but it would be miserable to do it on your own. That's something that a neurotypical person would say. Um, somebody who is neurode divergent would listen to that and be like, I don't even understand the argument. What are you trying to imply? You're trying to imply that there's something that does not have absolute value. It's not true in the deepest sense, in the in the epistemic sense of the word. Um, it's just something that we do because of convention, because [laughter] of we agreed to do it and we're going to all do it together and now it has value. My dear brother, I just want to let you know there's plenty of us who look at that and we're like, that sounds like misery to me. Like doing something together cuz we're all doing it together. First of all, I don't I barely want to do things together that I like to do, things that I like doing. But if you we have to do it as a group project, it already makes it a little bit less desirable for me. Just the fact I have to do it in a group. Okay. But to do something I don't even want to do and you're telling me has no intrinsic value, but we'll do it as a group and that itself gives it value. You're not selling me. You're not selling me, brother. Okay, here's the deal. If it's true, I'll do it even if I'm the only fool in the world doing it. If it's not true, you're really not enticing me by saying it's a group project. I heard one time somebody said, um, when I die, I want all the people who I was ever assigned to a group project with to be my pawbearers so they can all let me down one last time. Okay. Um, that's my reaction just from a human level. Now, let me speak theologically for a second. As a rabbi, we have a concept of hoy aim. That's one of the prophets speaks about Abraham is Abraham. The biblical Abraham. Abraham was a one. What does it mean Abraham was one? It means he was the only guy. He was the only guy. Okay. And he was called a hive. I is often trans translated as Hebrew. Abraham the Hebrew. But I has some you know like most biblical words it has layers of meaning. So one of the meanings i is from the word which means from to cross over from the other side. It means that a abbraham was on one side ideologically and the entire world was on the other side. So Abraham was this completely unique mind. Of course he was a genius. He figured out the unifying field theory basically on his own. Meaning he figured out it's all oneness. all the forces in the universe are really are one are unity and he figured that all out on his own. Um but here's the thing. He was deemed by many to be crazy. He was deemed by many to be hostile to be a threat. Uh King Nimrod who was the king at the time uh wanted to kill him because he saw him as a as a threat [sighs and gasps] because pagan uh polytheism was was the was the respected institution. That's that's what everyone was enjoying doing as a community. By the way, Tower of Babel, okay? The whole world was united in one cause. They were doing it as a community. All right? God didn't like it too much, right? So, just because it's a community doesn't necessarily mean it's uh has inherent value. At any rate, Abraham was the only mishuger like him. And then what did he do? Slowly, he started bringing people over to his cause. He would speak with them and explain things to them. But here's the point. Judaism originates with the idea that even if you're the only wacko in the world doing this, if it's from God, it has intrinsic value. Therefore, we do it. And to argue that something suddenly becomes valuable because community is doing it. Now, I understand that if somebody's coming from a secular point of view and they have to explain why we still practice Judaism in 2026. So, the argument that often comes up is tradition and liberal secular Jews like that argument. There's a certain warmth, you know, to it. Um, and it basically it says that like you gave the example of not eating pork. Okay. So, not eating pork is basically the same as uh drinking black cherry soda and uh telling jokes with Yiddish punchlines and it's all just a cultural thing and it's fun. It's Jackie Mason. It's, you know, it's gilafa fish and it's all cultural and we do it because it's our culture. That's wonderful. Okay. And I'm not saying that it isn't our culture. I'm not saying that it doesn't have some appeal to certain types of people because it's our culture. What I'm saying is A, that's not a compelling argument to neurodeivergent people. B, the theologically it's pretty much the opposite of the whole premise of Judaism, which is we started with one guy. Even when the religion expanded and we became a whole nation, like the Torah says, you are the fewest of all nations. So, we've always been a minority. We've always been a minority. That's sort of part of the the MO of the Jewish people is to be a minority. Uh not in some weird persecution victim complex way of like, oh, look, look at us. We're so tiny, but more like listen, we understand that what we're doing is not normal. This is not what 8 billion people need to be doing to be fulfilled human beings. That's why, like you say in the rest of the video, which I don't play. We don't believe that non-Jews have to become Jewish because if God made you a non-Jew, more power to you. That's you can live a perfectly fulfilling moral life as a non-Jew. You don't have to follow our weird rules like not eating pork, okay? Or resting on the seventh day or whatever else or not mixing wool and linen, whatever other things we do. But here's the thing. For us, we do need to do it not because community is doing it, but because it has inherent value. absolute value, absolute truth because it comes from God. At any rate, just to bring it back to positivity, I love the fact that you're talking about your Judaism. Um, if you do choose to respond to this, I hope that we keep it uh positive and friendly and uh in the spirit of a real Shabas dinner conversation where we can scream at each other and argue with each other and we know that we love each other not only at the end but beginning, middle, and end. While we're screaming at each other, [laughter] specifically as we're screaming at each other, that's when the real love comes out. Okay. I love you, brother.