My Thoughts on Rami Shapiro

by Pseudo-Rooney

*Recently a cache of articles was found that sound remarkably like Andy Rooney. However, scientists have proven that Andy Rooney was not in fact the author of these articles; the unknown writer has been dubbed “Pseudo-Rooney” by scholars.  Since no else has seen fit to publish his writings, we’ve decided to go ahead.  Here is one of his recent pieces.

I just read an article in Tikkun magazine.  I don’t normally take Tikkun, but a friend showed me a short article that caught my interest.  It was called “Outgrowing Our Need for Promised Lands and Chosen Peoples” by someone named Rami Shapiro, and it was written in honor of Israel’s 60th birthday.

If Israel were a person instead of a country, I’m not sure how it would feel about Rabbi Shapiro’s piece.  He starts out declaring his fondness for both Israel and Massachusetts, and that he counts both as nice places to visit.  That’s a good beginning.  I like Israel, and New York, and California; I’ve visited the first and lived in the second two.  Never liked Boston much though. Too many of those roundabouts.

But then Rabbi Shapiro goes on to say that he doesn’t believe in a Promised Land, and doesn’t believe in a Chosen People—“silly,” he calls it—doesn’t believe in the supernatural, and lists out a couple of other things he doesn’t believe in either. Then he waxes positively philosophical. Who, he asks, has a “right” to land?  Who has a right to exist, anyway? What does “exist” even mean? “There is no right to exist,” he says.  All there is, he suggests, are defensive powerplays against the next guy.

That sounds pretty grim.  It kind of reminds me of that old radio ad that was meant to get people to be better drivers. They had this guy with a husky, menacing voice, and he would get on the air and say, “Watch out…for the other guy.” It could have been a trailer for one of those slasher movies, and I don’t remember if there were fewer accidents after it ran. I think it probably made people more paranoid.

For Rabbi Shapiro there’s no God and no right to exist. Which brings me to his last sentence, which is that we need to recognize the “one Reality and one moral code: justice and compassion for all.”

Now, I like the idea of justice and compassion. Who doesn’t? I just don’t see how you get there if you don’t even believe in a right to exist, because that suggests that maybe it’s OK to kill the next guy. Somehow, Rabbi Shapiro seems to think that starting from a real God ends up “soaking sand in blood.”

Rabbi Shapiro wants to celebrate Israel’s 60th, her history, her future, her potential. I’m all for the celebrations, but if the good rabbi wants to relegate God to the invention of a couple of immature people, I’m not sure someone else won’t come along with a different idea of justice and compassion. Without God, how does Rabbi Shapiro know justice when he sees it, anyway?  He has a right to his beliefs, of course. But I think that justice has to be rooted in a real God, or else all we are left with are people trying to crush one another out of existence. Can Rabbi Shapiro be an advocate for compassion and justice without believing in a built-in dignity to human beings that comes from God? Only time will tell if the rabbi’s “growth” is someone else’s stagnation.

Meantime—Happy 60th Birthday, Israel.