In the past sev­er­al years, it became clear to me that The Kitchen was the liv­ing ver­sion of a few under­ly­ing ideas. Even­tu­al­ly, I want­ed to be able to artic­u­late those ideas more ful­ly to myself and to others.

When I was younger, I learned from many tow­er­ing the­olo­gians, reli­gious genius­es in their own right. Well, to be more hon­est, in most cas­es, I learned from their books, read­ing them many times over. Each one described a sys­tem of reli­gious thought: an under­stand­ing of our rela­tion­ship with each oth­er, the world, law, rit­u­al, suf­fer­ing, Torah, fem­i­nism, pow­er, Israel, the dias­po­ra, time, God, more. In their words, and in their com­pa­ny, I felt at home.

Many of these books still car­ry more than their weight in ideas, ideas I have drawn from in this book. But in recent years, I noticed few­er offer­ings for those who were sim­ply curi­ous, not nec­es­sar­i­ly about a par­tic­u­lar fla­vor or sub­set of reli­gious thought, but about the total­i­ty and mean­ing of reli­gious thought alto­geth­er — a way to approach the whole thing. And so, I want­ed to add my efforts to those that already exist, to offer just this kind of book, for our time.

I hope to bring a few ideas, once wide­ly known and dis­cussed, but increas­ing­ly for­got­ten, back into cir­cu­la­tion. I believe our moment is ripe to reclaim some reli­gious ideas, to see how they look, or, more accu­rate­ly, to expe­ri­ence how they help us see.

There are already books that argue about whether or not there’s a God, but this is not one of those books. There are books that tell read­ers how to do reli­gious things, but that’s kind of like hav­ing a recipe book when you don’t know that you’re hun­gry, or that eat­ing keeps you alive. In this book I’m going to make the case that reli­gion is as fun­da­men­tal and trans­for­ma­tion­al as eating.

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Who is this book for?

Let me offer an illus­tra­tion, one from Torah: Yitro was the father-in-law of Moses. He arrives on the scene after the Israelites have left slav­ery in Egypt, show­ing up when we’re in the mid­dle of the wilder­ness, in the mid­dle of nowhere.

Yitro is not an Israelite in any way. The rab­bis say he actu­al­ly worked for Pharaoh in the palace. But Yitro shows up because he hears a sto­ry that com­pels him to drop every­thing and to come out and find the Israelites in the wilderness.

What does Yitro hear? Well, from a quick read, it seems pret­ty obvi­ous: After all, Israel has just escaped from slav­ery, cross­ing through the sea on dry land, a full-scale set of mir­a­cles if there ever was one. But, as usu­al, the rab­bis com­pli­cate the mat­ter, decid­ing that Yitro could have heard any num­ber of sto­ries. Maybe, says one rab­bi, Yitro heard about the plagues. Anoth­er rab­bi says Yitro heard about Israel’s unlike­ly lib­er­a­tion. Still a third sug­gests Yitro heard about the great­ness of God, and so on.

We’ll nev­er know what Yitro heard. All we know is that it was life-chang­ing. It didn’t mat­ter that Yitro wasn’t there him­self when what­ev­er it was that hap­pened orig­i­nal­ly hap­pened. He leaves his old life com­plete­ly behind, run­ning out into the mid­dle of the desert to catch up on all he missed, ready to help, with­out plans to return.

In my mind, I wrote this book for any­one who sees them­selves in Yitro. That is, you could be Jew­ish from head to toe, genet­i­cal­ly and through your lin­eage, you could be quite lit­er­ate and the rest of it, but if you’re not will­ing to drop any­thing in your cur­rent life, to change any of your views, to come and see what this is about, I don’t think you need this book, at least not now. On the oth­er hand, if you are not Jew­ish at all, or you were born Jew­ish but do not know what that means, or you are con­flict­ed about being Jew­ish, or reli­gious, or you are think­ing about becom­ing Jew­ish, or more reli­gious, or you are mar­ried to some­one Jew­ish, or hope to get mar­ried to some­one Jew­ish, or maybe you are rais­ing Jew­ish chil­dren, and you heard a sto­ry, some­thing is com­pelling you to come out into the wilder­ness? Then, this is for you.

In the end, I believe this reli­gious tra­di­tion is all we have,and this com­mu­ni­ty, includ­ing you, is who we are. Many have tried get­ting rid of one or the oth­er to no avail. Instead, I pre­fer to invite every­one and sug­gest we do real things.

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Once, I was try­ing to go to Shab­bat ser­vices in Mar­seille. I was trav­el­ing by myself and had sought a friend’s rec­om­men­da­tion of where to attend. How­ev­er, when I arrived at the address I’d been giv­en, I couldn’t find any­thing that indi­cat­ed a syn­a­gogue any­where. Try­ing to look casu­al in my white dress, I stood in the street scan­ning the oth­er build­ings for any signs of Jew­ish life. Just as I was start­ing to think I’d walked real­ly, real­ly far for no rea­son, I real­ized there was a church on the same block. I sta­tioned myself in front of the church door. When some peo­ple walked out, I point­ed to myself and in my pid­gin French said, ​“I am Jew­ish,” then point­ed at the door where I thought the syn­a­gogue was sup­posed to be. I looked at them, shrug­ging my shoul­ders in a ques­tion­ing man­ner, my hands turned upward. They nod­ded, yes, yes, this was the Jew­ish place I was look­ing for. I knocked on that unmarked door and sure enough, a Shab­bat ser­vice was just beginning.

It is no small thing for peo­ple who love God to be able to help one anoth­er. I remain grate­ful to those church­go­ers who guid­ed me that night and to peo­ple of faith who have guid­ed me through oth­er kinds of nights. I hope my book can offer the same kind of extend­ed hand, or set of direc­tions, to any oth­er seek­er, lost or not. Maybe some of what I’ve worked out on these pages can help illus­trate some­thing for you, or for peo­ple in your com­mu­ni­ty. I freely use the words reli­gion and God sole­ly from a Jew­ish con­text; this is all I know. How­ev­er, I hope you feel com­fort­able bor­row­ing or trans­lat­ing any of these images and ideas so that they illu­mi­nate your own tra­di­tions, with my blessing.

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This book is also the result of a ques­tion a stu­dent asked me about twen­ty years ago. I was teach­ing an Intro­duc­tion to Reli­gion class and we were talk­ing about prayer. ​“But how does prayer work?” she asked me. She wasn’t ask­ing how we might direct a prayer to ensure a long life or access our true selves or get a new car. She wasn’t ask­ing how many prayers to say and when. She want­ed to know why we would pray in the first place, how it fit (or not) with oth­er ideas and beliefs.

Many teach­ers are loath to answer these kinds of ques­tions in the moment, and I under­stand why. First of all, the wrong response can be reduc­tion­ist, rob­bing the tra­di­tion of its inter­nal com­plex­i­ty and con­tra­dic­tions. Or a sim­ple answer might dis­cour­age, rather than encour­age, the curios­i­ty of the stu­dent, inad­ver­tent­ly deny­ing the real­i­ty of her per­son­al reli­gious expe­ri­ence and trajectory.

Fur­ther, even if we could agree on a suit­able answer, once pinned down to a series of prin­ci­ples and aims, reli­gion nat­u­ral­ly los­es some of its aura. Reli­gion points to the very kinds of things that can­not be described, the things that resist def­i­n­i­tion and expla­na­tion. It’s not unlike try­ing to pin down why a par­tic­u­lar love mat­ters. Any answer to this kind of ques­tion is bound to be incomplete.

How­ev­er, my student’s ques­tion would not leave me alone, espe­cial­ly as I was asked dif­fer­ent ver­sions of it over years of con­ver­sa­tions. I found that for some stu­dents, leav­ing things open offered per­mis­sion, but for oth­ers, the lack of an over­ar­ch­ing pic­ture only invit­ed con­fu­sion, rein­forc­ing their impres­sion of being per­ma­nent begin­ners, or worse, out­siders. They want­ed an ori­en­ta­tion and I felt they deserved one. More and more, I began to won­der how I could expect a per­son to move through the tra­di­tion, let alone claim own­er­ship of it, or reject it with any hon­esty, if that per­son was con­stant­ly feel­ing her way through the dark.

And, to be can­did, I also increas­ing­ly want­ed to know how I myself would answer my student’s ques­tion. What would a map look like that not only showed some­one how to get in the front door, but also how to find her way around once inside?

I start­ed to won­der what a kind of guide­book would look like for my stu­dents and for me.

כ״ו ְּׁבֶֶחְׁׁשָון תשפ״ו

San Fran­cis­co, California