David Brooks, yet again

In my column this past January, I wrote about The New York Times columnist David Brooks (b. 8/10/61), who came to the newspaper in September 2003, to replace William Safire as their “designated conservative.” As I pointed out at that time, it seems that over the years Brooks has been sliding leftward from a fairly traditional “rightish” Republican stance to a man who could be defined as a political and social moderate who occupies a position a bit right or a bit left of center, depending upon the particular issue; he now appears to be a man who is trying to lay out a path that can bring together the redder and bluer sections of America into a single red, white, and blue United States.

Much to my surprise, this past Dec. 22 Brooks departed from his usual political/social analysis and turned inward in search of his own soul, devoting his long Sunday “Opinion” piece to “My Decade-Long Journey to Belief.” Now, at age 63, he writes about his formative years, when “You could say that I was religious but not spiritual. I grew up in a Jewish home where we experienced peoplehood more than faith. I went to a Christian school and camp where I sang the hymns with pleasure, not conviction. I lived through decades of Jewish adulthood (kosher home, the kids at Jewish schools) but all that proximity still didn’t make me a believer.”

During the past couple of decades, Brooks has had certain “numinous experiences…scattered moments of awe and wonder that wash over most of us unexpectedly from time to time.” In April 2013, Brooks entered a Manhattan subway car and had the overwhelming sense that every person in the car possessed a soul, leading to his conviction that the entire universe has a spiritual element that we call a soul, God. In June of that same year his spiritual growth was strengthened by his experience of sitting solo in silence at the shore of a mountain lake in Colorado, reading passages from a volume of Puritan prayers.

As Brooks has continued his spiritual journey, he has come to see how much he has been nourished by both Jewish and Christian traditions: “Today I feel more Jewish, but as I once told some friends, I can’t unread Matthew. For me, the Beatitudes are the part of the Bible where the celestial grandeur most dazzlingly shines through. So, these days I’m enchanted by both Judaism and Christianity. I assent to the whole shebang…”

Brooks chooses to quote David Wolpe (b. 1958), a widely respected American rabbi, often engaged in interfaith dialogue: “Spirituality is an emotion. Religion is an obligation. Spirituality soothes. Religion mobilizes, Spirituality is satisfied with itself. Religion is unsatisfied with the world.”

I am not sure why Brooks chooses to include Wolpe’s quote in his opinion piece, for it is at the very root of what makes Judaism and Christianity travel down separate paths toward religious fulfillment.

The renowned German rabbi, liberal theologian, teacher (and survivor!) at the Theresienstadt concentration camp, Leo Baeck (1873-1956), wrote pointedly – and at times polemically – about some essential differences between Judaism and Christianity. He emphasizes, for example, that Judaism insists upon maintaining a balance between mystery and commandment, between a profound emotional trust/belief in God and a more rational commitment to “obey” Divinely ordained commandments. In his lengthy essay, “Romantic Religion,” Baeck writes that certain forms of Pauline Protestantism, with their emphasis on faith and grace, upset the balance between feeling and action: “The only activity of the genuine romantic is self-congratulation on his state of grace.”

Both Rabbi Wolpe and Rabbi Baeck derive their emphasis of deed over creed, action over feeling, from an oft-quoted dictum found in  section of our Talmud known as Pirke Avot, Sayings of our Fathers, which I translate as “It’s not the teaching itself which is of the essence, but the doing.”

Ever since I became rabbi of Temple Habonim in Barrington, where I served from 1974-2007, I have participated at several differentlevels of interfaith activity. Whenever there was an appropriate opportunity, I underlined what I consider to be a significant difference between Judaism and Christianity with regard to the intricate relationship between law and love. Over time, I developed the following formulation: For the Christian, love (agape, not romantic, not sexual) renders law unnecessary. For the Jew, it is law that renders love possible. Law – understood as doing the “right thing” no matter what you happen to be feeling – provides needed structure for your emotions, negative as well as positive.

As Brooks states midway through his essay, “So these days I’m enchanted by both Judaism and Christianity. I assent to the whole shebang.”

I wonder whether Brooks fails to see such major differences between Judaism and Christianity or rather chooses to ignore them.

JAMES B. ROSENBERG is a rabbi emeritus at Temple Habonim in Barrington. Contact him at rabbiemeritus@templehabonim.org.