How many "reality shows" are there by now? Let's see. There's Survivor 1 & 2, Big Brother likewise, Temptation Island, 1900 House, Fear Factor, Spy Camera, Boot Camp, the Mole, a few others I may have left out, God-knows how many others that are broadcast outside the United States - and more are on the way.

Let's begin at the beginning, with the concept itself: reality shows. Facing facts, seeing the reality of our lives stripped of our excuses and rationalizations, is an important part of these High Holydays. What do we do when reality shows up, when facts intrude upon the things we believe about ourselves, about others, about the world around us, and about our religion?
A week ago yesterday the terrible reality of blind hatred, religious fanaticism and perverted bigotry intruded with murderous venom into the life of our country. For many the attacks became a test of their faith. Where was God? Why did so many innocent people have to die? I believe that most people will find that after time, their faith will return. We have become numbed by a terrible pain. It will subside.

Most of the reality we face, thank God, is not like this. Good people outnumber the terrorists by millions and millions to one. But make no mistake. Awful as it is, this is a reality we will have to face.

Dr. Andrew Newberg, one of those "good people," injects radioactive tracers into meditating Tibetan Buddhist monks - with their permission, of course - and then puts them into a very sophisticated brain imaging scanner. It measures the activities in various areas of the brain while the subject undergoes different mental activities and experiences.

Here's where reality shows. Dr Newberg, a researcher at the University of Pennsylvania, claims that the religious states people have long believed they reached while meditating, a higher reality, if you will, are the result of quieting the area of the brain that orients us to where our self ends and the world begins. When this border is erased by deep breathing, undirected, free-floating consciousness, or whatever, the person feels at one with a boundless universe.
There's a whole new science, "neuro-theology" that explores religious experience not as an external reality but as the result of various mental states that are hard-wired into our brains. As Dr. Newberg and his co-author, the late Dr. Eugene d'Aquili wrote in their recent book, Why God Won't Go Away, "The human brain has been genetically wired to encourage religious beliefs. As long as our brain is wired as it is, God will not go away." [Newsweek, January 29, 2001, pg. 59.]

What are we to make of this? How do we respond to such a radical, and seemingly factual, assault on our long-cherished beliefs? Do we respond like Morris Cohen?

Is that what we do when reality shows, when facts assail our heart-felt beliefs? Just refuse to accept what conflicts with them? It doesn't much matter that Morris won't be convinced he's not talking to Sam Kaplan. But what about…

Here the refusal to respond adequately when reality showed up very likely condemned untold numbers of people to sickness and even death.

Although most such denials are not likely to be as fatal, they do nonetheless have a profound effect on us as human beings and as Jews. When we don't confront belief with questions of factual reality, there is little or no chance for growth. We remain exactly where we are. For some, this is something to be desired. But as Reform Jews, as members of a movement that believes in progressive growth and believes this was always at the core of Judaism's message, we would call this stagnation.

When those who are chosen as leaders, like Rabbis, try to apply empirical tests to cherished tenets of religion, all hell is likely to break loose. Los Angeles has the second-largest Jewish community in the U.S. This past Passover Rabbi David Wolpe, senior Rabbi of Sinai Temple, a large conservative synagogue in Westwood, told his congregation in a series of sermons that the Exodus from Egypt didn't happen, at least not in the form in which the Torah portrays it.
He didn't say such things on a whim. Mainstream experts in archaeology, such as Israel Finklestein of Tel Aviv University and William Dever of the University of Arizona, examined the evidence and found that there were no Jews in the Sinai in 1250 BCE when the Exodus was supposed to have taken place. Other major figures from various scientific disciplines have likewise concluded that the traditional saga of the Jewish people's history, for all its inspirational, moral, and spiritual riches, bears, in many instances, little relation to the facts.

What was the response to Rabbi Wolpe's presentation of something the scientific world has actually known for decades? Six Orthodox Rabbis took out a half page ad in the Los Angeles Times because they felt his questioning undermined the very foundations of Judaism. One of his congregants, who asked not to be identified (of course) said, "It's like a priest telling his congregation on Christmas day that Christ never existed." Some people just didn't want Wolpe to say such things in such a public forum. "Tell twenty people," they suggested. Rabbi Ronald Price, executive vice president of the Union for Traditional Judaism, which broke away from the Conservative movement, was appalled at Rabbi Wolpe's rational, secular take on the events precipitating the Passover holiday. "It is hard to understand the impulse that would drive one to deliver such a message with apparent pride."

Rabbi Wolpe's response: "I am sorry if I caused people hurt or anger, but I stand behind my beliefs 100%. I wanted to give my congregants tools with which to work out their own theology. My goal was to teach my congregation how to learn about its faith from modern discipline and scientific truths." [All of the material on Rabbi Wolpe, his sermons, and the reaction to them is from The Forward, May 4, 2001, pp. 1-2.]

I share those goals 100%, and have for as long as I've been a Rabbi. One of the things that most attracted me to the Rabbinate was the opportunity to shine a light of rationality on some of the folklore-encrusted legends that passed for Judaism. Like Rabbi Wolpe, my intent was never to cause hurt or anger, though I am well aware I have sometimes engendered both. I have, I know, ruffled many feathers. I am sorry for any discomfort that may have caused, but I too stand completely behind what I have said and taught.

One main cause of those ruffled feathers is the feeling that science, facts, reality, undercut or destroy cherished beliefs. Yes, they do. I firmly believe they're supposed to. Not so much to destroy beliefs, but to replace worn out beliefs with better ones. By "worn out" I mean that if reality showing up can undermine a belief, it has, by definition, outlived its usefulness. I suggest that without exception we ought to have the courage to subject all of our Jewish beliefs and practices to the "worn out" test. By "better ones" I mean new, more expansive visions that draw us out of ourselves and into the unknown.

What then? Will there be nothing left? Rabbi Theodor Friedman asks,

No matter how many beliefs wear out, there will always be more than room enough for more. There is no need to lament. Are we worse off because, even though almost everyone believed it, the world turned out not to be flat and the earth was shown not to be at the center of the solar system? No matter how many sacred cows we slay, the horizon of complete understanding will always remain somewhere ahead of us. Our choice is to stay put on the shores of the well known, or sail off into the unknown in search of new formulations of the human condition.

To be a Reform Jew is to gratefully accept that what we strive for will always be beyond our grasp:

Our Judaism indeed, all religion, deals with the inexpressible and the ultimate - things towards which we will always strive but at which we will never arrive.

On our search for our own dirt, and disease-resistant crops, and artificial hearts, and cold fusion, and meaning, and understanding, and a just and tolerant world, let us be careful not to damn the messenger who informs us that reality has shown up, reminding us that it is time to give up some of our old beliefs and forge new ones. Let us not bury in the sand the heads in which the rational thinking that is one of the crowning glories of humankind resides. Let us not lament the loss of the old, secure in the knowledge that what is yet before of us will open up wider vistas than any we have yet known.

And let us not be afraid that reason and reality will destroy the mystery and the wonder of our existence. Because, to conclude where we began, even when neuro-theology traces religious experiences to the hard-wiring in our brains, we will always be able to ask, and probably never answer: "But who do you think was the master electrician?" [Newsweek, op. cit.]