This is something I’ve been thinking about writing for the last couple of weeks. It’s a lot about religion (Judaism). Or, it may be anyways. I’ve been thinking of putting it down. Planning to. Just that every time I write, I write about other things instead. I hope to actually put it into coherent words now though.

It was pesach – passover here. 8 days. From shabbat – saturday to saturday. One of the concepts in Judaism is that from the 2nd day of passover until shavuot – I’m not sure what that’s translated as – is 49 days, 7 weeks. Shavuot is a Holiday about accepting the torah/bible as truth. Shavuot is supposedly the day that god came to the Jews on Sinai and all the assembled jews – a couple of million people – heard god say ‘I’m god who took you out of Egypt’. Moshe/Moses ascended sinai for 40 days – the jews all witnessed this – and came down with the luchot – tabernacles which he smashed as they were worshipping an idol. Whilst in heaven he received the torah/bible. All the jews passed down the torah/bible down from father to son to son to son in an unbreakable chain that can be traced backwards. Okay, history lesson over :). Actually not, but more soon.

I’m jewish. I’ve been brought up to be a religious jew. At the moment I’m doing my best to keep to Judaism. There are 2 reasons I’m doing this. The internal reason, the reason I’m keeping away from a lot of things and not doing what’s supposedly ‘wrong’ in Judaism is because one day I may believe it to be true. If I ever find out that it’s false, I won’t regret acting on my beliefs. If I ever find out it’s true, I’ll be glad I didn’t create distance. The external reason, the reason I externally dress like a jew and pretend to do some things I don’t do is because I don’t want to hurt my parents, primarily my dad, if I haven’t chosen anything.

The days between passover and shavuot, in Judaism, are meant to be about connection. Because shavuot is a day of accepting the torah, the days before are about becoming perfect in yourself so that you can. On the first day of passover I decided that I want to work through whether torah is or isn’t true so that by the time it comes to shavuot, I’ll know – whether or not it’s true. Whether I logically believe it happened or not.

Then I’ve come to a problem. I’m scared to work through it because what if I find out that I don’t believe it’s true? I said I’m scared of hurting my dad. There’s a whole lot more involved than that. Which is an understatement.

Something I used to say was that if I was going to choose not to be religious my father would rather I commit suicide. I’ve changed my stance since then. I don’t believe he’d rather I commit suicide. I believe, and know, that he’d rather I were dead. He wouldn’t rather I killed myself. He wouldn’t rather I died. He wouldn’t be able to handle the pain of seeing his child choosing what he believes is eternal hell. He wouldn’t be able to handle the rejection. I know I’m mentioning my father a lot more than my mother. That’s because my fathers pain in my mind is more legitimate than my mothers. My mothers pain would be how could she hurt me like this. My mother would ask what she’s done wrong. For my mother, it’d be all about her. About her alone. As is everything. Everything is a personal attack. For my father it’ll be more about his child. In everything.

I don’t want to hurt my father. I don’t have an honest/open relationship with him. I never discuss religion with him, the few times I have I’ve learned not to. His views are extreme – although he’s balanced out a lot over the past few years. I can’t discuss it with him. If I’d come to believe that torah isn’t true, he wouldn’t believe that possible. He’d think that the only way I’d be saying that is if because of my own pain (emotional pain) I couldn’t handle torah so were convincing myself that I don’t believe. His truth is that torah is true. Who said that’s my truth? I’m scared to work it through. I’m scared to see that it isn’t true. I’m not scared of finding out that it’s true, for however obligatory it is, I also don’t see it as obligatory. It’s as obligatory as I care. If I don’t care about an infinite power, or what this infinite power says, then it makes no difference if this infinite power gave the torah or not, or if judaism is true or not. It won’t affect my life in any way unless I choose to live my its’ premises. That’s a choice I’d make.

What if I come to see that it’s not true though? What then? I don’t have a way to handle that. I don’t know what I’ll do then. And there isn’t anyone I can discuss it with. If AH hadn’t left a year ago, he’d be the perfect person. Really, the perfect person to discuss it with would have been RR. Which at the moment isn’t an option. I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to trust him again. There’s also the fact that RR has told me he’d do things before that he hasn’t. He wasn’t obligated to do them, but he told me he would, his word obligated him. I know not often. I know that compared to how much he gave me, he let me down very little. It’s something I’d be able to look past if not for everything else. Either way RR isn’t an option. If I had a therapist I’d discuss it with said therapist. Said therapist is non-existent. (Even if the commissioning team say yes to my GP to therapy – NHS – it’s not something I’d be able to discuss. And I can’t look for a private therapist until I know if it’s a yes or no – hopefully yes, for it is, then I’m not starting with someone and stopping a couple of months down the line) So I don’t have anyone to discuss it with. And none of my friends can discuss it with me either.

I don’t know where this leaves me. I’m scared that knowing torah isn’t true will make me suicidal as I won’t want to hurt my father, I believe – know – that he’ll rather I weren’t here (he wouldn’t rather I committed suicide for then there’d be no chance of my ever choosing differently). Yet I want to work it through. That’s my reason not to.

I’ve all the reasons yes to. I’ve all the reasons to work through what I believe. I’ve been working through what I believe – trying to – for the past couple of years. I feel like I do everything at a snail’s pace. Slower, really. It takes me forever and a day to work anything through. Everything takes me forever and it often makes me crazy. How it’s years and years and I’ve moved a step or two. Why does everything have to take me so damn long? So there’s actually an analogy I use to describe the way I work things through in life and my world. Of a puzzle. I used to do jigsaw puzzles and the way I do jigsaw puzzles is very reminiscent of how I work through things.

When I do a puzzle I first split the pieces. Into the side pieces and the centre pieces. Whilst I organise them into 2 piles I often do a little big of colour organising – if I see pieces the same colours I put them together, although I’m not officially doing that. Then I do the sides. Then I go through the centre pieces and choose one part to work on, say the flowers. Whilst I’m separating the flowers I may be putting some tree pieces aside, or seeing 2 tree pieces that go together. So when I get to the trees, some of the tree pieces are done. When I get to the ground, quite a bit is done. When I get to the sky, there’s actually a lot less organising for me to do.

When I work through things in my world I do the same thing. I’m working through just one thing, but a lot of little things fall into place. For example with this point. Of working through what I believe. I believe that the world is finite since it started with a big bang and is every expanding and has been proven that the radioactivity in space is lessening – proof of expansion – and the world can’t collapse (there’s not enough matter). I believe that being the world is finite there has to be an infinity. That being that the world is finite and there is an inifinity, finite is part of it. Whatever, I can go on. One of the things I believe is that the world is a reflection of the infinite, because it’s created. A lot of what I believe, because I’ve worked through what I’ve worked through, if I ever decide Judaism is true, a lot of tennets of Judaism would make sense to me. Such as that an infinite power would give commandments which aren’t about commandments but about telling the humans in the world how to connect. That the world is about connection and unity.

I’ve gotten distracted. So I want to work through what I believe because it’s my life. It’s important to me to know what I believe. I want to work through what I believe because if I ever decide to date than I’ll want to date a guy with the same beliefs as me. I wouldn’t want to date and get married to someone and then find we’re living different worlds. If I’m not religious and the guy is religious that wouldn’t be such an issue, for let him live his life, so long as he’s okay with mine. If I am religious and he isn’t, I would find it an issue. I’d want to be living my beliefs with someone. I want to work through what I believe. I want to know what the truth is. And, I don’t want to know. I’m scared to know. I’m scared of the ramifications of knowing.

I’m not sure why it’s been on my mind to put this down, since I haven’t actually written anything new. I know and have known all this. I thought it through 2 weeks ago after I decided to work through what I believe. I realised then that I was scared to and I know why. It’s all still the same. I still don’t know what to do about it. Somehow when it was in my head it sounded clearer than it does here. And I still don’t know how to know what to do.