Jeremy Rosen
Challenging Conversations: Has Religion Failed Us?
Summary
Jeremy Rosen discusses why, as somebody who would be described as a religious person, he is not proud of much of the role that religion has played in our world and civilization. In this lecture he makes the case both against religion and for religion in order to explore whether there is any way we can possibly resolve the conflict.
Jeremy Rosen
Manchester-born Jeremy Rosen was educated at Cambridge University England and Mir Yeshiva in Jerusalem. He has practiced as an orthodox rabbi, as principal of Carmel College in the UK, and as professor at the Faculty for Comparative Religion in Antwerp, Belgium. He has written and lectured extensively in the UK and the US, where he now resides and was the rabbi of the Persian-Jewish community in Manhattan.
Well, look, it depends what you mean by that. For example, let’s take the classical case. If you are religious, technically you should abide by the rules of your religion. The rules of your religion are expected to make you a better person. So you can’t abide by the rules of your religion and be a thief or to be a bully or to be a cheat or to be a liar. Now on the other hand, just belonging to a religion in itself doesn’t make you a good person unless you abide by the rules. So the question sometimes people ask, can you be a good person without being Jewish or Christian or Buddhist? Yes, of course you can. Does every Christian and Jew and Buddhist and Hindu who says they are religious make them a good person? Definitely not. And therefore, the straight answer is you do not have to be religious to be a good person. But in theory it ought to help in the same way that there are many atheists who are good people and many atheists who are bad people. It’s the same everywhere.
That’s an excellent question. And I’ve always believed and some of the greatest rabbis have believed, it is the obligation of a person to go on looking for the right way and the good way to live throughout their lives. But if you wait until you found the answer before you change the way you live, you may never find an answer. And therefore his suggestion, rabbi Saadia Gaon living in Babylon a thousand years ago, his answer was, if you have come into a tradition, that’s where you begin. But then you have to ask yourself as a thinking person, what do I expect of my tradition? What do I want of my tradition? I want of my tradition that my tradition will give me certain experiences, a certain feeling of identity, a certain sense of belonging, and therefore I also want a way of life. And in pursuing and trying to find a best way of life, I look around and see which one works better for me. If I’m a rationalist, I want a more rational one. If I’m a mystical, I want a more mystical one. I believe that individuals have the right to choose how they’re going to live their lives and therefore they should on one hand adhere to what their family and their tradition have offered them as a basis and then use that as a basis on which they should build.
Religion can be described as a profession of faith, your faith, what do you believe? But it can be something that’s got nothing to do with belief. It’s got to do with what is your practise. How do you behave? What is your life? It can also be what is your nation? It can be all kinds of different things. And that’s one of the reasons why you have to define your terms before you can have a sensible conversation.