Am I Religious ?

I am Jewish because my mother is Jewish. But what makes me a religious Jew?

Is it the Shul I affiliate with? The clothing that I wear or the Yamukah on my head?

The Tzitzis on my body or the Jewish name my non-Jewish friends can barely pronounce?

It is going to a minyan, making the classic Jewish jokes, or eating Matza Ball soup?

If I meet a Jew from a different city and score over 70% on the Jewish Geography test, am I now religious?

Well, if all the above makes one a religious Jew let’s say a non-Jew could do all of the above; would that make him a religious Jew?

Or better yet, what if we take a cow and dress him up with a Yamukah, Tzitzis and a beard, teach him all the Jewish songs and blessings, let him daven Mooooosaf (pun intended) and call him Shlomo, is the cow now religious?

If being a religious Jew means following the commandments of the Torah, what if a non-Jew keeps the commandments? Do we now include him in a Minyan?

Or what happens if a fellow religious Jew is unable to keep all 613 for a legitimate reason (ex: declining health forcing him to take non-kosher medication), does that make him non-religious?

Obviously not.

A religious Jew is a religious Jew.

But if it isn’t all these outwardly externals don’t make him religious, then what does?

To understand what religious Judaism is, we first must understand that being religious is a wide spectrum of ideas based on our generationally passed down (Mesorah!) understanding of the Torah where there is no one single movement or school of thought. There is no single rabbinical body to which all rabbis are expected to belong or any one organization representing all member congregations.

This explains why there are so many unique flavors of religious Judaism.

As is stated in Midrash “there are 70 facets to the Torah”. This means that we as long as we reach the same destination (the Torah), the specific journey that we as individuals take is inconsequential.

For example, to quickly get from one side of town to another we can take run or wait for a bus a bus or drive a car and waste time finding parking.

So, what is the quickest way?

Any three depends on the situation.

If the person is a runner, he should run. If he is near a bus station he should wait for the bus and if he has a tiny car that can fit into any parking space, he should drive.

So, to answer the above question, it all depends on the circumstances and person as situationally there is no one size fits all.

Our life’s mission is to get as close to Hashem and his Torah as we possibly can.

Let use this opportunity of Parshat Metzorah which discusses the physical and spiritual consequences of slander to finally bring an end to the ridiculous gossiping and infighting between our beautiful spectrums of religious Judaism…….or we can go back to emphatically arguing whether a cow wearing a particular flavor of yamukah/hat/head covering is indeed a religious cow.