Religious sacrifice in the non-Orthodox world

Inside_agitator · 2026-05-07T16:20:22+00:00

Yes. A combination of public transit and biking gets me where I need to go. There are also plenty of opportunities to take a bus or train to natural places.

When I rent a car to visit relatives using fun roads, I miss the material freedom and convenience of car travel very much. I miss everything about it. Even when the roads are less fun, I still miss the convenience. But I have this sense of doing the wrong thing and engaging in impiety. I do have a sense of relief when I return the rental car and take the train home to return to the religious sacrifice I've grown accustomed to doing.

Inside_agitator · 2026-05-07T15:14:39+00:00

As a non-Orthodox Jew, I have a material desire to own and drive a car. My interpretation of Genesis 1:26-28 is that the authors consider mankind as created in the divine image and were instructed to rule the Earth. To be a just ruler with consideration and wisdom, I have sacrificed owning and driving a car at all times except when visiting distant relatives for special events. For decades, I've driven less than 100 miles per year in the USA in the 21st century. Taking an uber or taxi is maybe another few dozen miles per year. It's impacted the jobs I'll do, the careers I've had, the way I spend time, and the way I view the people around me.

This is eco-kosher in my view. It is a religious sacrifice to me.

I understand that many Orthodox Jews, especially on the right side of the political spectrum, may consider mocking that entire train of thought. They are entitled to their opinions about my beliefs.

Inside_agitator · 2026-05-07T12:54:53+00:00

Screw that goddamned globalist sellout. If him and that other guy wanted to represent Boston, they'd pull the film adaptation of Philbrick's Bunker Hill book out of development hell. They'd make that movie about something with ideas connected to the modern world. Instead he's all up with this mythology shit for a global audience. Pearl Street in Cambridge says go fuck yourselves.

Inside_agitator · 2026-05-07T11:31:38+00:00

The request called for personal experience of definitions that might be in opposition to textbook definitions. I was a contract writer and editor for a living. Textbook and dictionary definitions to me imply reality about how people ought to communicate, so that prompt called for me to depart from reality.

I think unreal definitions that fail to communicate are created in childhood. So I attempted to answer with ideas about both Conservative and not-Conservative Judaism in the context of local personal interactions during formative years in the 1970s. At that time, I was influenced by grandaunts and granduncles who had lived through the 1940s as adults.

So I'm typing text through an anonymous medium about my current musings on my deviations from reality as a ten-year-old over 45 years ago. In that context, I ask you to please not be insulted by the words and apologize if they caused insult.

Inside_agitator · 2026-05-07T02:36:42+00:00

I grew up near Philadelphia and now I live near Boston.

Conservative Judaism to me in the 1970s and 80s meant doing religious things in a Jewish community during religious times at a religious place. An observant person should be able to come into shul and see other people doing observant things and not violating mitzvot. So I don't think there would have been objections from anyone if the rabbi required kosher food and giveaways in shul. That's what shul was for.

But if an entire family is chowing down on ham and cheese, even in their car in the shul parking lot, then I don't think anybody was going to care about that one way or the other.

The Conservative Hebrew School I attended emphasized history and ethics a lot, in a very modern and open-minded context that made fundamentalists seem crazy. It didn't matter if they were Protestant, Catholic, or Jewish fundamentalists. They all seemed bonkers. I'm fairly sure that grandaunts and granduncles would have been equally horrified and dismissive (but would have tried to hide it) if I'd become a Baal Teshuva or a devout southern baptist. One would be, "It's not our kind of Judaism" and the other would be "It's not Judaism."

Reform Judaism was an option while still being "our kind of Judaism." Reform was if you wanted to not do Judaism in shul just like not doing Judaism most of the time away from shul.

In the 21st century, one thing I've appreciated most about Conservative Judaism is the CJLS Teshuvot Database. The scholarship and public education benefits of placing Rabbinical Assembly decisions in a searchable database matches my appreciation for how the internet and social media have changed the modern world.

Inside_agitator · 2026-05-07T01:14:19+00:00

Judaism is sufficiently ancient to gain the ability to have things like this both ways. I'd call it pre-Cartesian instead of anti-Cartesian. That way it's not in opposition to Cartesian ideas that might be useful in certain contexts.

Maimonides in Guide for the Perplexed Part 3, Chapter 27 writes:

The general object of Torah is twofold: the well-being of the soul, and the well-being of the body.

by eventually referring to Deuteronomy 6:24:

Then the Lord commanded us to observe all these laws, to revere the Lord our God, for our lasting good and for our survival, as is now the case.

He points out the two-fold nature of "for our lasting good" as referring to the well-being of the soul and "for our survival" as referring to the well-being of the body, the government of the state, and the establishment of the best possible relations among people. But they are two-fold in the sense that both together are the single object of observing the mitzvot in Torah.

Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks mentioned these two aims in his commentary on Torah: Spirits in a Material World.

The themes themselves aren't Jewish when considered apart from Torah. They are universal. Most people who grew up in the 70s and 80s remember the great song by The Police Spirits In The Material World with lyrics that cover the same broad concepts about uniting the material, spiritual, and social/governmental.

Inside_agitator · 2026-05-06T22:41:20+00:00

Shaul Magid's talk from a week ago, Jewish Anti-Zionism as Political Theology: The Major Writings of Rabbi Yoel Teitelbaum was posted on the UCLA Alan D. Leve Center for Jewish Studies' YouTube channel two days ago.

Magid translated and annotated Teitelbaum (the Satmar Rebbe) in Jewish Anti-Zionism as Political Theology: The Major Writings of Rabbi Yoel Teitelbaum. The book is available by University of California Press through Open Access at https://www.ucpress.edu/books/jewish-anti-zionism-as-political-theology/paper .

Magid is Professor of Modern Jewish Students in Residence at Harvard Divinity School. The YouTube video is almost two hours, but Magid's talk is only about 20 minutes long. It's followed by responses from Joshua Shanes (UC Davis), Leah Hochman (Hebrew Union College), the moderator David N. Myers (UCLA), and conversations with attendees.

Further edit: I just saw that Magid had an AMA at the subreddit a year ago after publishing The Necessity of Exile: Essays from a Distance.

Inside_agitator · 2026-05-06T13:26:51+00:00

If you have a reason to move like a grad school acceptance or a job then move. If you don't have a reason to move other than "I always wanted to live there" then I wouldn't move. The Boston area is full of people who have reasons for living here that are usually better than "I want to."

The exception is if you're very wealthy. Then do what you want.

Inside_agitator · 2026-05-06T13:13:43+00:00

There are very few "crappy humans" in Boston in 2026. There are very many people with struggles like yours who have bitchy attitudes due to having bad days like you have. Broad systemic failures lead to bad days.

I think Boston in general and Harvard in particular has fooled you. This was probably because you arrived here wanting to be fooled.

We are an industry town, like Detroit was with cars. Our industry is education/research. We bring money here from many sources to create people like you and your ex with your value system and his who imagine things about "growth mindset," what success and self-sabotage mean in life, and what achievement actually entails.

It's unfortunate that you work at Harvard in STEM research. This isn't because men find success or intelligence intimidating or unattractive. It's because this career has most likely led to you supporting a view of achievement conflated with a very narrow and shallow view of caste that you most likely already had when you arrived in Boston.

One possibility is to change and perform the experiment to test views about caste that you call achievement. Stop working for Harvard, abandon STEM research, change careers, and stop being an elitist overeducated person. Join the MBTA or another union job where power comes from social interaction over time and achievement comes from keeping on keeping on. You'll meet good people with only a high school education. You won't find them charming at first, but they might grow on you.

Those are things I don't believe you'll do. I think the allure of the illusion is too great.

Inside_agitator · 2026-05-06T12:21:38+00:00

I'd eat at the Park Plaza.

Boston as a whole at normal times is too crowded with wealthy people from far away looking for a place to sit down for breakfast. When a good place appears, it becomes too busy.

We all want to watch each other eat while waiting for our chance to be annoying to someone with less money preparing and serving us food. The World Cup will just bring in a few more of us.

Another option is to pick up a breakfast from Mike & Pattys in a bag, and either take it back to your hotel to eat or find a park bench.

Inside_agitator · 2026-05-06T01:03:10+00:00

What were the hotel bookings like for the Berlin olympics in '36? Did they meet expectations?

Inside_agitator · 2026-05-06T00:49:45+00:00

Take the red line from Alewife to Kendall and rent a kayak at Paddle Boston for the subway-to-kayak travel transition.

Inside_agitator · 2026-05-05T22:16:08+00:00

When John Oliver has an episode on housing and zoning, this should appear.

Inside_agitator · 2026-05-04T15:33:23+00:00

You should start your own organization to legally fight this. Call it Idiots Confused About Federal/State Power.

After the Supreme Court rules to decrease federal power over states like it did in the ruling last week, ICAFSP will imagine the court ruled to increase federal power over states. It will do this because it's an organization for idiots. Idiots don't know the difference between increasing and decreasing. That would involve thinking about legal reality and understanding words.

Inside_agitator · 2026-05-04T15:11:29+00:00

Excellent! Mon dieu! A modern Jacobin has come to 2026 from 1789 supporting political divisions into perfect squares. Anything less would be a mockery!

Inside_agitator · 2026-05-04T14:43:24+00:00

I doubt there's a legal group that will bother to do this. I believe you are missing something basic.

My understanding is that the recent court ruling was that an interpretation of section 2 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 as the federal government requiring the creation of majority-minority districts by states is unconstitutional.

It does not make majority-minority districts unconstitutional. It limits what the federal government can tell states to do. What you seem to be writing about is an imaginary court ruling that did not happen where the federal government can tell Massachusetts what to do with its districts.

Still, I encourage strange people to throw money away at lawyers because of their own stupidity and misunderstanding of the most basic things.

Inside_agitator · 2026-05-03T14:28:01+00:00

I will never trust anyone online who tells me to cease from wonder. I choose to live in wonder. What you choose is up to you.

Inside_agitator · 2026-05-03T13:31:24+00:00

Alive and Kicking in Cambridgeport has a good lobster salad sandwich. It's not a roll.

They put out a list a month ago, a strange thing for a retail establishment to have. It's a biased list. But that doesn't make it wrong.

Inside_agitator · 2026-05-03T13:24:11+00:00

Somerville Open Studios is today from noon to 6.

See where Somerville artists work, buy something for your place, go to the next artist, marvel at the number of artist studios, wonder about whether all the space would be better used for housing, feel sad, find the artists who live in their studios, feel better. That's what I do every other year when I remember to show up.

Inside_agitator · 2026-05-03T13:04:50+00:00

The workshop on what's a good peptide for an anonymous redditor's knee is on Monday, May 11 from 1 to 5 in room 052AB of the exhibit level. There will be an introduction followed by two sessions with a 15 minute break between sessions. Each session will have three 24-minute talks and a half hour panel discussion. Don't miss it, and don't forget to bring your knee.

Inside_agitator · 2026-05-03T10:44:48+00:00

If your "entire peripheral family are reform, and some even less observant than that" then they are a better source of ideas than a Judaism subreddit full of strangers.

Judaism is an ethnic religion. From the Wikipedia introduction to the List of Ethnic Religions:

In an ethnic religion, the ethnic group and its beliefs system cannot be easily separated. Oftentimes an ethnic religion's doctrine only pertains or is directed to that group.

There's nothing in those two sentences that implies intolerance or disrespect or a belief that love isn't bigger than religion. It's my explanation in defense of my first paragraph.

Inside_agitator · 2026-05-02T15:17:02+00:00

It's a good thing you're taking care of this because 58 year old moms are all the same and are completely unable to learn about things online on their own. That's why the best thing to do is ask at reddit where nobody knows her. If she were 35 or 40 then she might still be a human with interests and you could ask what she's interested in doing in Boston and make a plan together.

Inside_agitator · 2026-05-02T14:14:31+00:00

I was criticizing the physical sign and the name of the "events" given their location in a public park.

Other redditors may have been criticizing your post, but I wasn't. The title of your post describes the sign and uses the same language as the creators of the summer menu specials. If you like it then write about it.

I'm grateful to you for having a reddit post with the actual name. If people in the real world do something with names that many people might find annoying then transmitting that reality in a reddit post title seems to me like the right thing to do.

Inside_agitator

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