“Rabbi, I’m a bad Jew.”
There may be no statement that I hear more often when I introduce myself as a rabbi to a new person who happens to be Jewish. It is an odd thing, this immediate and reflexive — inherited? — confession.
I should be used to it, but it always catches me a bit off guard, “No, I’m sure you’re a wonderful Jew,” I find myself stumbling. Or, “Believe me, I’m not here to judge what type of Jew you are.” Or even, “What does it mean to be a ‘bad Jew’ or a ‘good Jew’?”
My responses are meant to demonstrate warmth, to be disarming, to welcome people in, baggage or no. Recently, though, I have recognized that these responses are not in line with my usual pastoral presence. Normally, I show up as a listener, reflecting back what I encounter. Somehow, this talk of “good Jews” and “bad Jews” leaves me off-balance, babbling about the futility of self-judgment or epigenetics and religious guilt. When I come up against the intensity of a person’s negative self-assessment, I become a “bad rabbi.”
You see, if someone told me that they were a sad Jew, I wouldn’t tell them that, in reality, they were happy or that we are all sad Jews. I would ask them to tell me about their sadness. I would arrive with curiosity. When, as a college chaplain, someone tells me they feel completely gutted, I don’t tell them to look on the bright side. I let them know how hard that sounds. I validate. I offer care and attention. When a student reaches out about their unmanageable stress, I do my best to demonstrate that I am listening. I might say, “It seems like you are juggling a lot and you are realizing that it feels unsustainable.”
So, why, when confronted by a bad Jew confession, do I immediately try to refute their perspective or alleviate guilt? Maybe they aren’t happy with their level of engagement with their Judaism. Maybe they are disappointed in themselves. Aren’t those feelings worthy of my attention?
I consider this in light of the Akedah, or the Binding of Isaac, which we read in the week’s Torah portion, Vayera. In it, God famously asks Abraham to sacrifice his son, Isaac, as a test of his faith.
Reading this episode, I always feel like, “Didn’t we just do this?!” Not just because this same section was read on Rosh Hashanah six weeks ago, but because it feels like we are constantly contending with this story. (It is, after all, part of the daily morning prayer service.) This dreamlike tale is both fascinating and confounding. Read most simply, it is a tale of the power of blind faith, though a more skeptical reader might see in it a warning against religious extremism.
No matter how it is read, the story reminds us that, at any moment, we might be assessed by the Holy One. Pass the test, and you are a good Jew. Fail it, and you might start worrying about being a bad Jew.
I am not arguing that the phenomenon of the bad Jew emerges from the Binding of Isaac. I’m just saying that these critical self-assessments might be part of our Jewish inheritance. If we are meant to live in the image of the Divine, we might need to put ourselves to the test from time to time to see how we are doing.
Self-judgment sometimes gets a bad rap in our society. We are encouraged to lean into self-compassion, to forgive ourselves, to offer ourselves the grace we give to others. Yet sometimes we can also see ourselves in a clear-eyed way and without grade inflation. Is it such a bad thing to appraise the life we are living? I’d argue no.
Nahmanides, the 13th-century Spanish rabbi better known as the Ramban, commenting on the first verse of the Akedah, asserts, rather succinctly, that such a test “shows that a person has complete authority to perform an action; one can do what they want, and not do what they don’t want.” Being tested, according to the Ramban, allows us to behold our own agency. We judge ourselves by whether we are living the way we hope to live.
Is it any wonder that so many people feel compelled to tell me they are bad Jews? After all, these people know what type of Jews they want to be, and perhaps they feel that they aren’t quite there yet. Could there be anything more human than having a hope or an aspiration and coming up a little short?
So, what am I to do with the bad Jews whom I so often meet? Because I am no longer interested in fumbling my way through these interactions. We are here to take each other seriously; to show up as attentive listeners.
When someone tells us that they are bad, the least we can do is ask, “How did you come to that assessment?” Maybe a little better, even, would be to say, “It sounds like you aren’t happy with where you are Jewishly. Where would you like to be?” This, of course, is the question that we should all be asking.
