On Consumerism and Religion

B"H

Excerpted from correspondence with my dear friend R' David Ingber:

What angle are you interested in? Jewish or secular or both? Are you interested in approaching this from a Halachic or Meta-halachik perspective?

Well, I'll tell you how I arrived at the topic, which may help. I have been taking time here and there to ripen up my "Slow Judaism" thesis, which evolved from a case for small-town Jewish community into a kind of general anti-movement manifesto. So my interest at entry is in the Jewish meta-Halakhic angle...

But I've found the ramifications of consumerism in Jewish religious life very difficult to write about with precision or consistency, because I don't have the language to describe religious consumerism in general (so I find myself haphazardly making it up as I go). What I'm asking, I suppose, is whether such a language has already been developed adequately by another contemporary writer.

One text that immediately jumps to mind is Nachmanides famous interpretation of the verse, "Be holy, for I, G-d, am holy." We are not allowed to be "Naval B'rshut Hatorah", which loosely means that Torah sanctioned decadence is prohibited and spiritually unhealthy.

Though I could see it becoming a blunt instrument, ... the first apikorsus that leaps to mind is whether the consumption (so to speak) in a particular mitzvah or class of mitzvot, to the extent that it blocks other dimensions of engagement with haShem and His Works, could be considered decadence in this sense [of naval b'rshut haTorah]. Anyway, it seems the basic notion is, for the mortal to aspire to depth in his experience, he must maintain the capacity for balance. And it is a mitzvah for the Jew to aspire to depth, therefore excess of any kind, which necessarily sabotages individual balance, is asur...

Meanwhile, my meta-halakhic angle goes something like this: All Judaism today is Modern ..., in the sense that it is produced and marketed and consumed on an industrial scale. This means all religious Jews, whether Orthodox or Renewal or Reform [or full-on, unadorned Humanistic], and all religious Jewish communities, share a common spiritual challenge, which is to identify and smash (transform, reattribute, ...) the idols of Consumerism. So, from a standpoint either of spiritual counseling or of religious community-building (and I honestly don't know which of these is my personal calling, but I suspect it's at least one of them), "movement" -- [i.e.] brand -- affiliation is irrelevant to the basic need for a way to make deep sense of our relationship with consumer choice, because consumer choice is the principal slavemaster of our age, affecting all Jews and communities more or less equally.

In order to do my real avodah in this life, I need tools for understanding the capacities of consumer choice to limit self-realization. I know that it has these capacities. I can see it all around me in this beautiful, deafening city. (And why else would the movement orthodoxies be so powerful if it weren't for a massive tide of Jews growing overwhelmed and stifled by too much choice?) But I need a way to get at it. I need a language, so I can build myself a good sandbox, and play.