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Do you believe in God? I asked.
I do, the man answered, but I consider these questions so private they are best not discussed in public.
He was hale, in his 60s I’d guess, and a Nobel Prize winner. I was a gangly teenager at a dinner my father, a scientist, had organized. My father wasn’t drawn to religion; I wondered about the spiritual perspective of another adult who was clearly gifted in logical inquiry.
The scientist was on to something. These days, we are more likely to discuss our exercise regime than our spiritual practice. Until relatively recently, religion played a dominant role in Western political and social order, articulating a set of shared values. In the East, religious teaching drawn from Confucian, Buddhist and Daoist traditions also play an important role. In much of the West, polling suggests confidence in organized religion is weakening, even as faith in God remains very high.
My conversation with Rabbi Michael Friedman, click this link, is about his individual path, Judaism and religion more broadly, all crunched into 44 minutes. I learned a lot. On the eve of Judaism’s high holiday Yom Kippur, a day of atonement and repentance, I thought you’d enjoy this conversation as well.
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