I’ve heard Rabbi Dr Rafi Zarum speak before so the clarity, candour, and incisiveness with which he spoke should not have come as any surprise.
Yes, he’s an eminent Jewish educator but he’s also a scientist, a doctor of physics no less, so he told us firstly how we shouldn’t dodge the difficult questions in Judaism nor feel guilty if we ourselves feel inclined to ask them. He addressed areas of doubt as fundamental in Judaism as the creation, the flood and the Akeda which he told us his own mother struggled with on every level.
While he said that no-one had successfully proved there was a God (any more that they could prove they loved their spouse), equally no-one had disproved the existence of a god and disproof was the ultimate scientific test! He was unafraid to dip into subjects as delicate as “where was God in the holocaust” and as raw as how could Hersh Goldberg’s mother still speak of belief when her son had been murdered by Hamas. He felt the answers to many questions lay in recognising our own lack of knowledge or understanding, or perhaps that we just don’t yet understand certain concepts. He reassured us that this applied to rabbis too and so long as there was a will and desire to learn and find out more, understanding and ultimately belief would follow, but not necessarily immediately. There is no Instant gratification in belief. It’s a journey as much as a destination.
After his discourse, he took questions from the floor which were both testing and wide ranging, but he didn’t shy away from any of them. Judy Levy asked how people could continue to believe when Jews are so widely hated but he argued that statistically this hatred probably wasn’t as widespread as she thought and suggested that fear of hatred could be addressed by overcoming self-doubt in belief! Andrew Kelion asked how sure we could be that we were more right in our beliefs than other religions such as Hinduism, which is not entirely monotheistic. Rabbi Zarum argued that some Hindu spiritual leaders believed their gods were in fact different facets of their Krishna and so not all Hindus are polytheistic. In fact, he observed that over half the worlds population believed in monotheistic faiths which could be compared with our own.
Although the audience of 30 was rapt, Rabbi Green brought proceedings to a close and invited the assembled crowd to thank Rabbi Dr Zarum Before he sat down to sign copies of his book, Questioning Belief.
If you missed out, it’s available online here and would make an excellent read or gift ahead of the high holydays.