Letting go of the blame

GUEST POST BY The Candy Man

O no, I see,
A spider web, and it's me in the middle.
So I twist, and turn...

Singing I, I never meant to cause you trouble,
And I, I never meant to do you wrong...

They spun a web for me,
They spun a web for me.
--Coldplay, Trouble

A net is spread over all the living.
--Rabbi Akiba (Avot 3:20)

The one good thing about arguing is that sometimes it helps you understand yourself. Last week, I found myself debating an Anglo expat living in Israel. This fellow was worried about his 15-year-old son, who would have to enlist in the Israeli army in a few years. After a particularly heated exchange, I wrote the following:

Feivel, for every ounce of concern you feel for your son, there is a Palestinian mother out there worried about hers. You guys are caught up in something bigger and more powerful than either one of you deserve. I wish you all the best. I do not have the answers to these problems, but I do feel for them and for you. I hope we have peace soon, so we can stop worrying about such terrible things.

I think this sentiment translates well to my own struggle. As a "skeptic," lapsed Ortho, or whatever you might call me, I have felt my fair share of righteous indignation towards the Orthodox world over the years. After all, the Orthodox world is not a kind place to skeptics. Philosophical differences lead to differences in practice, and these are very difficult to reconcile. This has been incredibly frustrating for me, and led to a number of very serious personal conflicts within my family. The situation has caused everybody a lot of pain and anger. Who can I blame for this situation?

First off, I don't blame myself for this situation. As the Talmud says, A judge has only what his eyes show him. If I can be blamed for my predicament, it is only because I was too idealistic, too naive, too ambitious. As a child, I got carried away with religious fervor. I spent so many hours working away on this stuff. I took my rabbis at their word, and tried to obey them. I was a model bochur. I didn't talk to girls. I learned in my free time. I wasn't the best person in the world, but I was a pretty model Orthodox Jew. I spent years after high school learning in Israel. And still the skeptic viewpoint found its way into me! No, I tried my best, my friends. I do not blame myself. I don't even regret it. After all, I am a product of all that studying, that deep conviction. My ideas today developed from those seeds, and I am proud of them, not ashamed.

Can I blame my parents for our family's situation? For sending me to a religious school? For not foreseeing the danger of raising children in a fundamentalist philosophy? My parents are gentle people. They were not raised Orthodox, they came to it in college, together. It is the cement of their marriage. They love Judaism and cherish it, and they believe every letter. Can I really fault them for trying to instill that same faith in my own heart? They were only trying to do what was best for me. You cannot fault a parent for trying to do the best for his or her child. If anything, my parents tried to steer me away from my own instincts, tried to keep me from getting too carried away with all the religious stuff.

What about my rabbis? After all, they should have known better! They learn Torah all the time! How could they not realize that Genesis was written by multiple authors? How could they fail to notice the ethical wrongs they were preaching? Many times have I faulted these rabbis, called them failures. Rav lachem b'nei levy! You take too much power into your own hands! It's easy to blame someone if they're not around. But when I go back to my old neighborhood, when I see my old rabbis again, it's not anger or indignation I feel. I feel compassion. They are getting older, and I can see that they had no more clue about anything than I ever did. They are just men, teachers, trying to make their students' lives a little clearer. Keeping us away from the bad stuff. They believed what they believed, and they were only trying to help. I cannot blame them any more than I can blame my parents.

We are all caught in a web. You the reader, me the blogger, Orthos, skeptics, Jews, Christians, atheists. My parents, my rabbis, the gentile housekeeper whose life I made a living hell as a child -- we were all born into it. You see, the world is not a perfect place. It's a mess. We are all learning the ropes together, and it's the school of hard knocks. There's a lot of nonsense out there in the world, a lot of history, a lot of anger, a lot of hate. And each of us is just a tiny cog, a little piece of dirt, trying to avoid getting crushed by the gears.

We are all together in this boat. No one watches the watchmen. There is no quick fix. We cannot break free by cannibalizing each other. The best we can do is feel a little compassion, and let go of the blame.