The "Orthodox and Liberal" Post I've been meaning to write

The Israeli TV series "Serugim" about single religious people in Jerusalem will always have a special place in my heart. For one thing, watching episodes online from an apartment in San Antonio, Texas helped me make up my mind to try living in Israel. But more importantly, it was one of a very few artistic self-representations by modern Orthodox people, and in a lot of ways for me it hit the nail on the head. It told the kinds of stories we tell about ourselves, and one of the most meaningful presentations came in the first episode.

In the last part of the episode, a lead character goes from a warm and full synagogue to an intimate Shabbat dinner with friends, and ends the night at home in his apartment alone, taking a magazine to sit on the floor in the dark hallway so he can read by the only light that's on - in the bathroom. This scene has stuck out in my mind for years because first of all, it's incredibly accurate and the kind of thing that only happens to Sabbath-observant people. But I think one reason it has stayed with me is because it speaks to something deeper. (Long lead-in for what's supposed to be a political blog post, no?)

Sitting in a dark hallway to read by the light of the bathroom because you won't turn on the lights is a distinct and profound portrayal of something significant that can be pretty hard to represent. The character in that show does something difficult as a matter of principal and commitment. I want to hold up that example as the right frame of reference when talking about Orthodox Judaism and liberal politics.

The reason I think it's so important to set the stage in this way is because there's something that really tears at me about most attempts to address the relationship between religious Jews and American politics (this article for example). Too often the subtext or message of discussions of "the problem" of being observant and liberal (or liberal people being observant) ((or observant people being liberal)) is that the author sort of anchors on there being a right answer, or focuses on the "complaint" part of the struggle these people experience. That posture of conflict seems like the natural one, because if that tension weren't there, you wouldn't be reading an article about it. But the problem is starting from the tension or conflict as if it were resolvable or as if writing about it were part of the resolution does particular violence to part of the very nature of the thing it talks about. For many of us, being religious is about commitment and principle, and so focusing on "the tension" or "the conflict" among more than one set of commitments rather than the commonality or strength of those commitments sort of undermines the point of the whole thing!

God created the Universe and wrote the Torah and gave it to the Jewish people. And sometimes what that means for us is joining together with a hundred people at warm and uplifting kabbalat Shabbat, and sometimes that means sitting on the floor in the hallway in your own apartment reading by the light of the bathroom.