This post is based on the following three items:

(1) I am in the middle of reading A Difficult Woman, Alice Kessler-Harris’ biography of Lillian Hellman. The following quote is from page 138: “As the political climate changed, she sometimes found herself at odds with a divided Jewish community, struggling to reconcile her commitment to larger values with her seeing herself as a Jew, often unable to see why they should be in disagreement.”

(2) In the early 1980s, when we belonged to Temple Sinai here in Washington, I remember being struck by something that then Rabbi Gene Lipman said in a sermon. I don’t remember his exact words, of course, but the gist was that he wanted his congregants to be sufficiently educated in Jewish thinking that they, when needing to make moral or ethical decisions, would be able to rely on Jewish thinking to help them. (I think this is what he said – and who can argue with me now?)

(3) Today, a good friend told me that he was recently engaged in a conversation with two other people that I know (all three with remain nameless in this post), where one of them said that they did not think that there was anything in the Torah that helped one navigate the problems of today, while the second (a rabbi) said that they disagreed with that completely, and that they were paid by a synagogue to teach people the connection.

Now, I am not a rabbi (obviously), and my knowledge of things Jewish does not begin to match the knowledge of even the least knowledgeable rabbi, but I have certainly spent a lot of time in my now long life reading about Jewish things, attending Jewish events, and thinking over what I have learned. And, after all of that, I must conclude that that, at least on the surface, my thinking about things like “right and wrong” have nothing to do with what I have learned while learning about Jews and Judaism. That doesn’t mean that I am anti-Jewish, God-forbid (ha, ha. “that I am anti-Jewish, God-forbid” — that is a funny line). But what is the connection.

There are very learned Jews who think one way, and there are very learned Jews who think the opposite. I am sure that it is the same with adherents of other religions – you know that there are devout Christians (like Pope Leo) who think one way, and equally devout Christians (like Donald Trump) who think differently. (That, by the way is another funny line.)

When Gene Lipman said, way back in 198?, that our ethical decision making should at least in some part be based on our understanding of Jewish thinking, my mind sort of rebelled. I knew that I had my own firm sense of right and wrong, and I wasn’t going to modify what I thought because of something in the Torah or some other Jewish writing. Nor did I think I should.

The quote referring to Lillian Hellman was largely dealing with the differences between 1930s anti-Fascist, Popular-Front thinking, when so many Jewish intellectuals joined the Communist party, thinking that the Communists were anti-national, certainly not antisemitic, and filled with empathy and a sense of social justice. Of course, it didn’t turn out this way, as the evils of the Stalinist USSR became apparent, and people, including Hellman, backed away from party membership or identification. But by the end of World War II, when the breadth of the Holocaust became clear and the pressure for a Jewish state on the land of Mandate Palestine became a possibility, there were changes in the thinking of many Jews. Suddenly, they were not globalists, but Jewish nationalists, and the concept of equality was put on the furthest back of back burners in the minds of people reeling from the tragedies of the war.

Hellman was still interested in social justice, helping the underdog, human equality, all virtues that seem to have been forgotten by a large number of Jews, and certainly by those Jews in Hollywood and New York City, with whom she was in contact. Hellman was certainly not a Jewish thinker. She had no Jewish education per se, and if she ever set foot in a synagogue, it escaped the sharp eyes of her biographers. But she thought of herself as Jewish and she thought that her ethics were the product in part of her background and self-identification. But was it?

It was Voltaire (brilliant man and brilliant antisemite) who said that “if God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent Him”. I agree with that – God is needed to comfort people and give them hope for a future, a future on earth and a future after one’s time on earth ends. But…..what or who is God?

I am not going to try to answer that last question for reasons that should be obvious. When asked if I believe in God (since I have no idea what the questioner means by “God”), I answer: That is well above my pay grade. And that is an honest answer, and makes the question itself totally irrelevant. Even if I have, in Voltaire fashion, invented a God to comfort me and give me hope for a future, the question is irrelevant.

It was Ogden Nash who said: How odd of God to Choose the Jews. Do I believe there was a God who chose the Jews? Not at all.

In my experience (and I  am sure in yours), very religious people can turn out to be immoral crooks, but still remain very religious. And fanatical atheists can be some of the most moral people you know. These atheists would not become more moral if they let Jewish thinking influence their ethics, and the immoral portion of the faith community would probably remain immoral even if they lost their belief in a deity.

All I am really saying is that each of us has his/her own sense of ethics, and we test that sense every day as we run into and try to solve real world problems. But you don’t need to know the Ten Commandments to know that you shouldn’t murder someone. And you don’t need the fear of an angry God to convince you that you shouldn’t covet your neighbor’s wife.

Learning about Judaism is important as a study of history, of human thought, of human religion, and as a way to understand your place in greater humanity. But beyond that, as a guide to ethical living or ethical thinking, it is difficult to determine if it causes harm or provides benefits.

This can best be judged by looking at Israel today. There is so much questionable about Israel’s actions today that many Jews who are so supportive of Israel would be just the opposite if they themselves were not Jewish. I don’t have to go into details to demonstrate this. But Israel in 2026 provides the most cogent example of the relationships between religious learning and ethical decision making. Does falling back on religious teaching (whether it is thinking about the centrality of this particular piece of real estate, or the centrality of Jews as constituting a “people” enslaved for centuries in Egypt and just now finding their freedom) help decision making on the topic of Israel or does it distort it?

Lillian Hellman wondered why her Judaism and her larger values should be in conflict. Maybe she should not have had to wonder. She could retain both, on her own terms, without relying on what others (knowledgeable or venerable as they might be) to tell her how to think, or what to think.