The Existential Stakes of Judaism
Jewish culture as a strategy for coping with theism’s absurdity
Are religious beliefs true or false? For the moment, who cares!
Let’s ponder instead their existential status.
After all, truth is bound up with utility. Scientific models, for example, are deemed true when they work for humanity. What would it mean, then, for a religion to work? How do different religions help us cope with our basic condition in life?
The Jewish identity
Let’s start with Judaism. To evaluate the existential role of Judaism, we should consider what distinguishes this religion. At the heart of Judaism is how a way of life has been set out only by Jews’ sacred writings rather than, say, by their civilization or empire. Jews have been “people of the Book.”
Of course, Jews had little choice in the matter because they were often nomadic, having found themselves repeatedly conquered and scattered. Their temple in Jerusalem was twice destroyed, first by the Babylonians and then by the Romans. For centuries, Jews had no homeland, after the Jewish-Romans Wars, so they clung to their scriptures which set out their culture.
Jewish culture revolves around a curious, self-negating monotheism. As Jack Miles…
