Texas Jewish Post (Fort Worth, Tex.), Vol. 40, No. 16, Ed. 1 Thursday, April 17, 1986 Page: 3 of 36
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i
Jewish Cult Members. •
And The Judaism They Left Behind
r
BY CHARLES
SELENGUT
Jewish community agen-
cies spend hundreds of
thousands of dollars annual-
ly on anti-cult activities in
the belief that these move-
-^ments use coercion and
^brainwashing in efforts to
' have young Jews join. A
publication of the Jewish
Community Relations Coun-
cil of f^ew York City for
example, says “no one is
immune to the insidious
activities of these groups.”
tfyAnd Martin Dann, a former
1 [director of a Jewish Feder-
ation task force on cults,
claims that new religious
movements “alter and con-
trol behavior through mind
control.”
, ■ As recently reported in
i Midstream (January 1986), a
Jfctudy I conducted with 100
Jewish cult members has
convinced me that such
stereotypes are untrue. I
found that Jews who join
cults are not unthinking or
brainwashed robots but peo-
ple in search of religious
1 ,neaning. Unfortunately,
■most of the young Jews I
spoke with claimed they had
never experienced deep
piety or spirituality in the
Jewish community and al
most all were unaware of the
wide array of Jewish spirit-
fcjjjal paths including the
MJopular mystical tradition of
"the Hasidim.
Who are the young Jews
who join cults? Our studies
show they come from social
backgrounds quite similar to
the bulk of American Jewry.
IjjA clear majority — more
^fUthan 75 pecent — come from
families who were formally
affiliated with a synagogue
and more than 90 percent
practiced such popular home
rituals as Passover Seder
and lighting Hanuka can-
■ wdles. Very few of the
.^families kept kosher but
'■'more than 50 percent of
those interviewed had at-
tended some type of supple-
mentary religious school.
In spite of these "reli-
gious" activities at home,
J^the cult members spoke of
. w their family backgrounds as
“non-religious.” When dis-_
cussing their family back-
ground all but one described.
the Jewishness of their
families as ethnic or cultural
rather than religious. Tvpi
Jj cal was the remarks of one
I M young man, now a Hare
Krishna follower, who was
raised in a predominantly
Jewish neighborhood in
New York City:
"My father was basically
kri anti religious. He thought
Tj religion was all superstition.
‘ *ff My mother, however, would
keep the holidays. She
would cook for Passover,
we'd recite the "Fier Kash-
os," the four questions, and
invite the whole family. And
on Rosh Hashana and Yom
Kippur we'd also invite the
family. But these celebra-
tions lacked a conscious
spiritual orientation. They
weren’t really religious.”
Other respondents ex-
pressed disappointment ov-
er the absence of religious
understanding in their e x-
perience with Jewish ritual
life. Typical of this at-
titude was the remark of one
current member of the Uni-
fication Church.:
"The thing that bothers
me most about my Jewish
upbringing was that I didn’t
understand the meaning of
things Jewish. When some
Orthodo x people visited U5
at our California center,
they got up real early and
put on phylacteries —
tefillin, 1 think you call them
— and e xplained it all to us,
about the head and arm and
worshipping God with the
whole body. I really found
that inspiring. My Judaism
had no such understanding.
We just did some things but
it never seemed related to
religious thinking."
Still others felt that the
religiosity of the home was
removed from any mystical
or transcendental reality.
“We did many rituals at
home,” said another cur-
rent member of the Hare
Krishna, “but it was a very
rational activity. I always
thought my parents did it
for the kids and not out of
any real religious fervor."
It is important to recog-
nize that the Jewish reli-
gious experience of these
converts to cult movements
was a kind of “cultural
religion” emphasizing child
oriented and family activi-
ties. Such religiosity had the
merit of providing some
Jewish folkways for the
home but it avoided incor-
porating religious norms and
meanings into everyday life.
It is an ethnic religiosity
that can be temporally and
spatially separated from the
whole of one’s life.
The emphasis in such
religious-cultural activity is
the selective remembrance
of an ethnic past without
centering upon nor neces-
sarily acknowledging trans-
cendental belief and re-
ligious authority. The fami-
lies of many cult members
enacted some religious rit-
uals but such activity .was
unrelated to an active belief
in the reality of God, and
specifically religious impera-
tive and intellectual and
theological understanding.
While cultural Judaism
may be the prevailing
pattern in American
Jewish life, Jewish con-
verts to cult move-
religiousness unsatisfying.
What they seek is a religious
system which would include
divine law and sacred
meanings into everyday life.
“True religion,” said one
“should make you think of
God and serve Him all the
time.”
Given the meager reli-
gious experience of the
Jewish cult members it
would be incorrect to por-
tray affiliation with the cults
as a radical identity trans-
formation. They are not
pious and deeply involved
Jews who, at one moment in
time, convert to a strange
and foreign religion. Rather
their involvement reflects a
larger biographical and reli-
gious search which pre-
dates conversion to the cult
movement. As one respon-
dent put it “I was always
interested in serving God
but the Judaism I knew was
so ethnic and nationalist it
wasn’t religion.” And the
Krishna devotee son of
Jewish, Marxist oriented
parents put it this say:
“Jewish cult
members come
from those sectors
of American Ju-
daism most affect-
ed by seculariza-
tion, which has led
to the loss of the
sacred in Jewish
communal and
family life. ”
“Sometimes my parents
ask me, ‘if you wanted
religion so badly, why didn’t
you get it from Judaism?’
The fact that I did not
experience a vibrant, ful-
filling Judaism led me to to
Krishna Consciousness
where I have found spirit-
ual satisfaction. This does
not mean that Judaism does
not offer it but I never got it
there.”
The Jewish cult members
come from those sectors of
American Judaism most af-
fected by the seculariza-
tion and modernization of
Jewish life. Secularization
has meant that American
Jews have become accul-
turated to modern society
and its life-styles but it has
also resulted in the decline
of the centrality of the
sacred in Jewish communal
and family life.
This loss of the sacred
dimension in Jewish cul-
ture has resulted in a
chronic crisis of meaning in
defining Jewish identity and
specifying an authentic Jew-
ish religious modernism.
Jewish religious activity,
having lost its sacred imper-
atives, has become proble-
matic for many modern
Jews. In the view of the
Jewish cult member, cult
communities do not suffer
from the absence of ulti-
mate meaning and divine
imperative. The “inner
logic” of human action, in
these groups, always entails
theological meaning and
cosmic truth. Norms are
legitimated with distinct
reference to the religious
belief systems which are
seen as reflecting transcen-
dental truth. As a result, the
former “ethnic” Jew now
feels he or she is living a
meaningful religious life.
Most sociologists explain
the high proportion of Jews
in cults as the result of an
“oversupply of young Jews”
without deep religious so-
cialization and experience,
viewing it as a direct conse-
quence of the secularization
of American Judaism. Rod-
ney Stark and William Bain-
bridge in their recently
published book, The Future
of Religion, point out that
Jews have lower levels of
religious affiliation than
non-Jews, and even among
Jews who are synagogue-
affiliated only a small per-
centage — less than 20
percent — are frequent
attenders. Protestants and
Catholics by contrast, show
much higher levels of reli-
gious activity.
A significant Jewish issue
emerges from the study of
Jewish cult members. In
their experience even the
“religious” activities of child-
hood — Seder, bar mitz-
vah, Hanuka lights, religious
school, perhaps synagogue
attendance — were them-
selves transformed and ex-
perienced as non-religious
cultural expressions. Put
simply, these activities were
not encounters with the
holy; they were emptied of
specifically transcendental
meaning. The pervasive
secularization of American
Judaism noted by American
socilogists is not only to be
seen in the low rate of
synagogue attendance or
ritual performance but per-
haps more importantly by
the removal of religious
observances themselves. We
can, speak of a double
secularization process with-
in contemporary Jewish life,
general secularization refer-
ring to the diminution of
Jewish religious identifica-
tion and observance and
internal secularization speci-
fying the loss of religious
meaning and sacred ele-
ments within the context of
ritual and synagogue life
itself.
I am of the opinion that
the way to deal with the cult
phenomenon is not through
anti-cult legislation, which
would result in the curtail-
ment of free choice, but
through active demonstra-
tion of what a full Jewish life
entails: the holiness and
transcendence of the Sab-
bath, Jewish prayer, and
Jewish learning, and the
particularly Jewish sense of
enthusiasm for the spiritual
and transcendental in hum-
an experience. The re-
sources of the Jewish com-
munity, therefore, must be
marshalled for the full
development of Jewish con-
sciousness. This means that
Jewish communal organi-
zations and their budgets
must place a higher prior-
ity on Jewish education.
Moreover, we need to make
it clear, as individuals and as
a community, that a life of
the spirit, of piety, is a
legitimate and desirable way
Mm
m
“To view cult involvement only as
the result of brainwashing or coercion
and not as part of a more general
crisis of Jewish identity in modern so-
cieties is to ignore the socio-cultural
conditions of Jewish life in America. ”
wmm
To view cult involvement
only as the result of brain-
washing or coercion and not
as part of a more general
crisis of Jewish identity in
modern societies is to ignore
the socio-cultural conditions
of Jewish life in America.
of living Jewishly. The best
way to fight the cults and
keep the commitment of our
children is through a redis-
covery of our spiritual roots
and the renewal of our own
Jewish commitment.
Passover. . . Birth Of Liberation
continued from page 2
world has witnessed with
jubilation the ouster of Ferd-
inand Marcos, the roguish
and unconscionable Philip-
pine dictator and his coun-
terpart, Baby Doc Duvalier
of Haiti.
Ultimately, each of these
successful, political upheav-
als as inspirationally fed
through the “umbilical cord”
of the mother Liberation
Movement — the first march
to freedom, the departure of
the Israelites from Egypt on
their way to the Promised
Land — reconstituted in our
time as the State of Israel.
In response to the ques-
tion why the Children of
Israel deserved redemption
from Egyptian bondage, the
rabbis offer the following
meritorious reasons :(1) they
retained their original Heb-
rew names; (2) they did not
assimilate lineuisticallv but
maintained the usage of the
Hebrew language and (3)
they did not succumb to the
widespread immoral life-
style of the then debauched
Egyptian society by meticu-
lously safeguarding the pur-
ity of family life (Num-
bers, Midrash Rabba Ch.
20).
A people possessed of
such commendable qualities
are just not the mold in
which slaves are cast. In
essence, they were spiritual-
ly and psychologically free
long before the moment of
their physical liberation had
struck.
Shortly after his arrival in
Israel, Anatoly (now Natan)
Shcharansky was asked how
does one get used to being a
free man. He replied:“I have
been a free man for the past
12 years ever since apply-
ing for a visa to Israel. I
walked to freedom npt in
West Berlin, but in Moscow
years ago when I decided to
fight for aliya. Then I
resolved not to make any
more moral compromises. So
I was even a free man in
prison . . .”
No other event was so
enshrined in Jewish history
as the Exodus from Egypt.
Such was its importance
that the Scriptures make
mention of it in no less than
160 passages. The Exodus is
mentioned daily in the
recitation of the Shema, on
Sabbaths and festivals and
in the Kiddush blessing,
aside from its annual com-
memoration on Passover.
And no wonder, for it
marked the beginning of
Jewish nationhood and was
the precursor of all sub-
sequent liberation move-
ments.
PAGE 3 DALLAS THURSDAY, APRIL 17, 1986 PASSOVER ISSUE TEXAS JEWISH POST
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Wisch, J. A. & Wisch, Rene. Texas Jewish Post (Fort Worth, Tex.), Vol. 40, No. 16, Ed. 1 Thursday, April 17, 1986, newspaper, April 17, 1986; Fort Worth, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth753045/m1/3/: accessed April 19, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; .