What This Is

I've been Jewish my entire life and have had trouble with my faith as I get into adulthood. The more I learned on my own, the more I realized my issues with Judaism aren't with the religion itself but how it's taught and interpreted. I kept thinking of "gotchas," but after going deeper and talking with rabbis, I realized I was the one who was "gotchaed". I believe that most people who stop believing are grossly miseducated (not uneducated). So many times, I'd hear from my siblings that their Jewish school teachers would tell them nonsensical stuff that, if you looked into it, would be wrong. Mistranslations, misunderstandings, and stubbornness have corrupted a lot of modern Jewish ideologies, and I fell into that trap.

Here, I want to document what I have learned and hopefully help people be at peace with their faith. Faith is a fantastic thing that gives us comfort, and Judaism is ripe with teachings that can apply to everyone.

While I'm not equating this to it, the printing press popularizing literacy in Europe created a rebirth of Christianity. For the first time, Christians started reading their bibles and realized these ideas differed from how they were told. These books are full of metaphors, not rules. Everyone will (and should) have their interpretation. After Christians read the bible, they created new sects like Catholicism and Protestantism.

It feels like, over time, we've been told, "This is how it is, and follow it exactly." I think the idea of eternal punishment affected it. Why bother looking deeper and trying new things if I risk forever suffering? We put the same standards of the Tanakh and bible as we do the US Constitution, as if the lives we had thousands of years ago are even close to what we have today. We are taught history but not idealogy. There is a significant emphasis on conflict in Hebrew or Jewish day schools. Almost all of our holidays focus on when and how we were pushed by society. People need to remember the key points of this. Why do we celebrate Yom Kippur? Is it a punishment for our sins that year, or is it a mitzvah for all the good we did that year? We're so focused on what went wrong that we forget what makes us Jewish.

So, I consider this an open journal of what I have learned and will continue to learn. I believe there is a lot to Judaism that people miss, even rabbis and teachers.