the path leading to existence. When he looks to the horizon and sees the rising or the setting of the sun, he knows that each occasion comes with commandments to be performed, the morning Shema, the laying on of tefillin, and so forth. When he comes across a spring, he knows what uses the water can be put to: immersion, expiation of sin, drinking. He has blessings for each occasion and prayers for each action.”
These rituals and blessings root the earthly life. Judaism, Soloveitchik continues, is a “concrete religion, a religion of the life of the senses, in which there is sight, smell, and touch, a religion which a man of flesh and blood can feel with all his senses, sinews, and organs, with his entire being.” At the same time these commandments also point upward to an ideal. They hold up an ideal standard and describe the relationship between our concrete reality and divinity. “Transcendence becomes embodied in man’s deeds,” Soloveitchik continues, “deeds that are shaped by the lawful physical order of which man is a part.”
The Jew does not experience faith primarily in solitude. He or she experiences it primarily in community, in what one does with others. The synagogue is not the locus of Jewish life. The Shabbat dinner table is. My general rule is that most church services are more spiritual than synagogue services, but a Shabbat dinner can be more spiritual than any church service.
The Jew is not looking for some eternal and purified existence in some other world on the other side of death. “Better is one hour of Torah and good deeds in this world than the whole life of the world to come,” an ancient scholar declared. In Judaism this world is the stage upon which holiness can be achieved. The Jew is looking to fulfill the 613 commandments that govern life on this earth. Very few of these commandments have to do with religious belief, and fewer than 5 percent have to with the things a person should say, such as prayer and vows. Sixty percent of them, the American philosopher Abraham Kaplan points out, have to do with physical ritual, the lighting of candles, the ritual bath, or using palm branches in a certain way—they have to do with doing stuff.
These rituals and good deeds are a kind of language, Kaplan argues, and in performing them we are acting out the rules of grammar and syntax of a language that is too deep for words. After a while, the rituals don’t feel like acts that some book has told you to perform; they seem to emerge from the center of your very being.
Judaism demands creative action. “Holiness is created by man, by flesh and blood,” Soloveitchik writes. Many Jews have sort of a mental block when thinking about the afterlife. The first problem with the next world is that it’s already perfect, so there’s no need to build and repair it. So how could it be so great?
Occasionally Christianity would make a visit into my life. For example, at a cocktail party in 2004, somebody mentioned an unfamiliar name, John Stott. I called a friend, Michael Cromartie, who told me that if evangelicals had a pope, Stott would be it. He was arguably the most influential active evangelical. I did a little research and found that with one exception, in 1956, his name had never appeared in The New York Times. So I decided to learn about him and write a column called “Who Is John Stott?”
To anybody who lives in the secular culture, one’s first encounter with a joyful intelligent Christian comes as something of a shock. We’re used to looking down on the Franklin Graham / Pat Robertson types, but it’s unnerving to encounter a Christian you would, on balance, very much like to be. Stott’s voice, I wrote, “is friendly, courteous and natural. It is humble and self-critical, but also confident, joyful and optimistic. Stott’s mission is to pierce through all the encrustations and share direct contact with Jesus. Stott says that the central message of the Gospel is not the teachings of Jesus, but Jesus himself, the human/divine figure. He is always bringing people back to the concrete reality of Jesus’ life and sacrifice.” It’s about putting on the mind of Christ.
In Stott I met someone entirely confident in his faith, yet drawn to its paradoxes. Jesus teaches humility, so why does he always talk about himself? What does it mean to gain power