On Being Right and Being Authentic

On Being Right

When I was young, I was confident that I was right. I lacked confidence in most other things, but I had to be right. Some of the smartest people I knew were always right—and they knew it too. They were certain of it. They told me they were right time and time again, and some even proved it, and their arguments were always convincing, always right. I thought of myself as smart too, so I knew then that I, too, should only ever be right.

Of course, people can’t always be right, but as long as they were only wrong about the right things, that was okay. They could never, ever be wrong about the wrong things.

At some point, that changed. Not only did I grow older and wiser, I learned to feel what I can only call God’s presence when I look into another human being’s eyes and realize, “Holy #$%! They’re right!”

There’s a famous Jewish joke that goes like this:
One day, two respected members of the community came to the rabbi’s house to discuss a dispute. The rabbi listened respectfully and attentively as the first person passionately defended their case. The rabbi nodded and said, “You’re right.”
The second man immediately jumped in to argue his side of the story. The rabbi listened just as carefully and, after a moment, said, “You’re right.”
At that point, his wife, who was listening in from the other room, yelled, “But they can’t both be right!”
To which the rabbi replied, “You’re right, too!”

I’m still waiting for the punchline.

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On Being Authentic

I used to be obnoxious about my Jewish knowledge. There are far greater scholars of our tradition than I, but I had bought into the belief that many Jews don’t know anything about being Jewish—despite the obvious internal contradiction in that statement. Their practices and religious insights, I thought, were worthless to Judaism because they came from a place of ignorance. Judaism is an immersive religion, and they weren’t immersed in the “right” environment.

I cynically believed that such institutions only survived because people leaving “authentic” Judaism trickled down to them. After all, how many of their teachers come from Orthodox backgrounds? I used to think there was a single, clear way it had always been done, and anything else was corruption.

But too much of that knowledge had little to do with living in the real world. Our sages tell us, “Ein lo l’dayan ela ma she’einav ro’ot”—“A judge only has what they see with their eyes.” The assumptions underlying many traditional rules and policies about observance often do not translate well to the experiences of our communities. As a rabbi, they don't reflect what I see with my eyes. By the same token, there is plenty of wisdom and righteousness in some of the practices I once criticized as corrupt. 

I used to be obnoxious about observance. Even in my most atheistic days, I thought the traditionally observant Jews were wrong but at least they were consistent. They tried to follow everything to the letter and accepted it all as God's command. I used to think, "why believe in any of it if you aren’t going to believe in all of it?" Over time, though, I’ve had the opportunity to learn more about our traditions and, in my humble opinion, I don't believe there ever was an “all of it” to keep. There was never a clear way it had always been done. 

To me, authenticity doesn’t mean mimicking the past or reenacting in detail what we remember from our religious role models—or what we find in a book, or on YouTube, or TikTok. It is learning from the past decisions of our role models and ancestors, using them to help us think through our problems. That often means finding new ways of doing things to meet community members where they are at. It means listening closely to what they say about the world they live, respecting the wisdom they have learned from living their lives, and using Torah to help them further navigate and enrich them. Just because we participate in something that looks the same as it did a generation ago or ten generations ago doesn't mean it is an authentic Jewish experience for everyone today, not if it fails them spiritually.

And yet, “They are right, too.” There is so much beauty and wisdom in our tradition, and it continues to inspire rabbis, cantors and other teachers of Torah of all backgrounds and movements who discover it through lifelong learning. But there is little doubt in my mind that much of this wisdom is largely preserved through the practices of communities committed to reenacting customs and studying our texts.

For Judaism to survive, it needs traditional communities. But for it to remain relevant to most Jews, it also needs progressive communities. Both have the capacity for authentic and inauthentic Judaism. I am not God. Unless I can stand in someone else's shoes, I cannot decide what is authentically Jewish for them in their situation. That is between each individual, each family each community and God.