CLAL Special Features
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Jewish Public Forum Seminar:
“What Is Religion For?”
November 19, 2001
Pre-Seminar
Response
“What Is Religion For?”
By Michael Gottsegen
There is evidence that since 9/11 the
church pews have been fuller than they have been in years. I do not think this indicates
that America is turning to God in hard times so much as it indicates that the church
provides a space within which Americans can come together to comfort one another and
express their solidarity with the victims, with each other and with the nation as a whole.
There are not many places in American life today, aside from the churches and synagogues,
where Americans can come together to express these kinds of feelings. In the days
after 9/11 I found myself wishing that there were non-denominational and non-religious
alternatives, and very quickly they sprung up in the form of candlelight vigils and
impromptu shrines in parks, on corners and at firehouses around New York City. Looking
beyond 9/11, I wonder if the pressure of the event has forced into the open a general
unmet need for social solidarity that had hitherto been lurking just below the surface, or
whether this manifestation was a product of a unique and unprecedented situation and will
pass as the date of the attack recedes. If the former proves to be the case, then we might
think about how to create new communal spaces to capture and nurture this need lest it
dissipate. Moreover, since many Americans clearly would prefer to express these
“religious” needs outside the confines of the churches and synagogues, it also
seems to me that we ought to explore the possibility of creating “religious”
spaces that do not take it for granted that the American people are divided along
conventional denominational or religious lines, open spaces that are not “owned and
operated” by one denominational franchise or another, spaces that would enable
Americans to be with one another on the basis of elemental human solidarity and feelings
of shared destiny. On days like 9/11, many of us do not want to be with our fellow Jews or
Catholics or family members or fellow workers but with our fellow Americans or fellow New
Yorkers and the spaces that would be conducive to such ways of being together do not exist
in sufficient measure.
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