Darin Strauss on Faith
Graphic by Angelie Zaslavsky
Darin Strauss’s most recent book, “Half a Life: A Memoir,” is now available. His posts are being featured this week on The Arty Semite courtesy of the Jewish Book Council and My Jewish Learning’s Author Blog Series. For more information on the series, please visit:
Faith is a private issue. At least, I consider it to be one. (Try telling that to Tea Party evangelicals, though…) I consider myself a Jewish writer — even if my characters frequently are not Jewish — in the same way, I guess, that I consider myself a Jewish man, even though I don’t often attend shul.
In another post I’ll talk about my books (particularly “Chang and Eng,” a novel about the famous and Asian conjoined twins, and “Half a Life,” my non-fiction book about me). Here, today, I want to discuss faith.
I felt sheepish this week when I admitted to someone that I pray each night. My prayer is improvised — though like some standard jazz performance, the improv happens within pretty strict parameters — and asks for nothing. It wasn’t always this way.
I prayed every night for as long as I can remember — at least since my Israel bar-mitzvah some 27 years ago. But until recently I would ask God for favors. Nothing extravagant, nor even of a material nature. But my prayer was a homemade mix of thanks and request. I didn’t use a standard, Jewish prayer-book prayer because 1) I don’t speak Hebrew, and 2) it seems to me that if one doesn’t know the meaning of what one is saying, that ignorance is an impenetrable barrier between oneself and God. Now, I could’ve learned Hebrew, sure. But it seemed (and I’ll admit this may have been my laziness) that talking to God directly was a better way of expressing my own personal feelings of belief and appeal and doubt and gratitude.
But recently, as my own comprehension of my faith increased, I realized there was much I didn’t believe. Or, not that I didn’t believe, exactly, but that I had serious doubts about a few things. For example, it struck me as unlikely that God involves Himself with the daily minutiae of every single life on the planet. That an omnipotent creator of life would find himself shackled with that duty seemed improbable — it struck me as beneath Him. Also, how to explain the conflicting nature of some prayers? E.g., What to do when a million people pray for one thing, and another million its opposite? And what about not only the Holocaust, but every year’s untold tsunami and earthquake victims? Hadn’t they prayed? And sick children, etc.
All the same, I believe in God, and also that Judaism is closest to what my conception of God is — not to mention I have a steep cultural attachment to this religion and her people. And so I decided to keep on praying, but just not to ask God for anything. The thing is, I truly am profoundly thankful to God for all the blessings I have received in my life, beginning with the gift of life itself. Now, whether my not asking for good things to happen to me is subconsciously intended to win me brownie points with God is something I can’t answer. But I do feel the need to give thanks, and also not to feel hypocritical by asking for things when I have doubts that God would answer me.
That is not to say I haven’t broken my little rule; that I haven’t taken up the mantle of hypocrisy now and again. But I do so for my 3-year-old son. (He has been diagnosed with Rheumatoid Arthritis, and I have prayed, and will continue to pray, for his health and comfort.) It seems to me a little hypocrisy in the service of fatherhood may get a bit of a divine pass. But who knows.
This homemade ritual feels right for me; I’m not saying anyone else should embrace it. I hope others would give me the same wide faith devotional berth.
Darin Strauss is the author of “Half a Life: A Memoir,” “More Than It Hurts You,” “Chang and Eng” and “The Real McCoy.”
The Jewish Book Council is a not-for-profit organization devoted to the reading, writing and publishing of Jewish literature. For more Jewish literary blog posts, reviews of Jewish books, book club resources, and to learn about awards and conferences, please visit www.jewishbookcouncil.org.
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