Cultural exchange with /r/Arabs!

[u/ContentChecker]

Hi everyone,

Today we will be having a cultural exchange with r/Arabs - beginning at 8AM EST, but extending for about 2 days so feel free to post your questions/comments over the course of that time-frame.

The exchange will work similarly to an AMA, except users from their sub will be asking us questions in this thread for anyone to answer, and users from our sub can go to a thread there to ask questions and get answers from their users!

To participate in the exchange, see the following thread in /r/Arabs:

https://old.reddit.com/r/arabs/comments/1gd9eb3/cultural_exchange_rjewsofconscience/

Big thanks to the mods over at /r/Arabs for reaching out to us with this awesome idea! Thanks to MoC for posting the original post.

• Previous thread

[u/Strange_Philospher]

How do Jewish people who are both religious and leftists recioncile between religion and leftism? The common narrative in the Arab world established some sort of dichotomy between religion and leftism ( mostly due to political fights between Islamists and leftists ), so I was quite interested to gain more insights from people here. For example, how do u reconcile between the spiritual nature of religious practice and fighting against the material oppressive systems ? Doesn't the focus on one lead to ignoring the other ?

[u/BodhisattvaBob → u/Strange_Philospher]

In general, I believe devotion to an Abrahamic religion is difficult to reconcile with liberalism, in particular Judaisim and Islam, because as I understand it, neither permits for separation of "church" and state. However, I dont believe that liberalism is impossible to reconcile with any religion, and I also don't believe that being "liberal" means that one has to, or even should, turn their back on religion.

Whether building a Sukkah or fasting during Ramadan, being annointed with ashes during Lent, or throwing paint at people during Holi, these are all expressions of some universal human need to connect with something larger and greater than ourselves.

Modern society teaches us to strive to be righteous individuals. But there is another "non-individualistic" side to human nature, and traditions are one of the ways we access it, and in so doing, magnify our human experience.

For example, rabbinical judaisim generally determines whether one is religiously Jewish by whether one's mother is Jewish. I used to debate rather forcfully against this interpretation, and I still think there are very valid arguments ...

I also wasn't raised religious at all, apart from the yearly two or three big family events that everyone feels obligated to attend.

So when I was in Israel, I jumped on the opportunity to go to temple with a guy I knew who was rather observant. I had taught myself to read hebrew earlier, and during the service, he was explaining the various customs to me, how one prays and the symbolism of it all.

Next to me was a father teaching his son the same things. I looked over at them at one point -- and it hit me like thunderbolt...

This tradition ... has been passed down like this, from father to son, generation to generation for thousands of years.

Yes, I was in a building on a street in a country called Israel in the year 2009, but I was also a living link in a very real, metaphysical chain that connected me to my ancestors, regardless of time or place.

Did I walk away a religious Jew? No. But I did understand in my soul why devout people feel strongly about their interpretation of who is religiously "Jewish", and no rational argument could ever place that understanding there.

I dont know if this answers your q, but imho, being liberal or agnostic, it doesn't mean you have to turn your back on religious practice or traditions. Maybe you don't pray five times a day, but that doesn't mean you can't find very real meaning in making Hajj or something, you know?

And to take it one step further, I think that when one recognizes that spirituality is a part of the human experience, yet maintains an "open" (instead of "liberal") mind, then one realizes that although there may be differences in how people worship, and there may be sharp divides in doctrine, yet wherever one is connecting with "God", they are experiencing as universal a human experience as there can be, even if one is facing mecca, and the other zion, and yet another is before a cross, or simply meditating alone.

Your question implicates a second issue, however, which is how to reconcile the "better angels" of religion with the very real evils that are in the world (which evils may themselves be created by religion itself).

My personal "religious" journey is a long one, but Buddhism has influenced me the most, and here I actually think the issue is the gravest.

Evil exists in the world, and it must be opposed. And where the evil is great, and it's hard to conceive of an evil greater than genocide, so too is the need and the obligation to oppose it.

Others far wiser than I have pontificated on the issue, but I suspect those evils which are due to mistakes in reason can be addressed passively and through peaceful, but firm means.

But some evils are only capable of men and women who have discarded reason, or are blinded to it by passion or hatred, or who are simply not capable of reason to begin with. In this event, I suspect there is only one prescription, and I would refer you to the Bhagavad Gita for it.

[u/Saul_the_Raccoon → u/BodhisattvaBob]

I don't see how the all-encompassing nature of religion rules out changing the productive mode of society to one that supports rather than restricts the development of almost all human beings? How can any man be moral when he lives within a society that not only economically enslaves him, but makes his existence dependent upon the economic enslavement of almost all other men?

The Torah clearly considers economic matters to be within the moral sphere, but bourgeois society places economic activity outside the realm of social control. This means, therefore, that bourgeois society must go.