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Jewish Public Forum Seminar: “What Is Religion For?”
November 19, 2001 

Pre-Seminar Response to the Question:

“What Is Religion For?”

By Daniel Brenner 

Since the 12th, I’ve been thinking about what lasts forever. I can hear a faint echo of Louis Armstrong bellowing, “Gibraltar may crumble, the Rockies may tumble, they’re only made of clay, but …” and Ella comes in on “Our Love is Here to Stay, Forever and a Day…our love is here to stay.”  

That song, to me, is about the role of religion in the face of inevitable finitude. Everything around us dies.  Empires rise and fall. Mountains crumble to the sea.  Even plastic has a half-life. But in a disposable culture that trains us to believe that material can easily be discarded and replaced, these great losses seem trivial.  However, the fact that people die, that we all die, that those we love the most will diethis is too much to bear. So religion jumps in and connects each individual loss to something more. 

Whether we speak of the beyond word category (God, or the spirit) or we talk of the words we use to make sense of it all (Torah, meaning, narrative) religion functions as both a ritual and literary instrument that allows us to embrace the paradox of being optimists in a pessimistic world. 

After the 12th I have turned to religionboth to join others in expressing how horrific and unjust these attacks have been and to remind myself why I should not let them control my life.

 


    

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