{Howdy! This post is up on Aish.com in a revised form. If you wanna read it, go here}

I don’t really feel like writing. There are a number of excuses I could use: There’s a lot of housework to do; it’s a beautiful day out; my nails are too long (no, really, it bothers me when I’m typing). But I haven’t written in two weeks, and that’s led to internal entropy. Any thoughts I have up there in my still-fatigued-from-Yom-Tov head are tangled together in a way that makes extricating them a slow, unwieldy process. Write, delete, think, repeat. That’s what’s going on here.

Can’t I just go back to reading my book?

I could. But to grow, sometimes we have to do things even when we don’t feel like it.

This is evident in any artistic field. Practice is necessary just to maintain one’s level, and surely to improve. There’s a quote attributed to the talented violinist Jascha Heifetz on this topic:

“If I don’t practice one day, I know it; two days, the critics know it; three days, the public knows it.”

Even on days when an artist feels yucky or unmotivated or uninspired, that doesn’t absolve them from going through the motions, just to keep their muscles from atrophying.

This phenomenon is also found in the athletic world (or so I hear), and, more to the point of this post, in the religious world.

And here it is

Orthodoxy is very much a religion of practice, of doing. In the morning, I wake up and thank G-d for creating me and giving me another day. Then I ritually wash my hands. If I’m really on it, I’ll say my morning blessings after that (though sometimes they get said a little later). Before I eat anything, I make a blessing on the food, thanking G-d for the sustenance.

When I was first getting into this whole Orthodoxy thing, I remember asking a woman I was close with about the spiritual ecstasy she must experience every day. After all, weren’t we both thinking about lofty concepts such as G-d’s sovereignty over the entire universe, the creative power of speech, and the intrinsic holiness of everything? I was an idealistic 20-something, she, the mother of several small children. The conversation went something like this:

Me: “It must be so mind-blowing to start your day off with these blessings where you get to think about how G-d returned your soul to you and how everything we need is provided for us!!!” Her: “Well, usually I just end up mumbling through them in a semi-conscious stupor.”

The honesty of her statement was, frankly, lost on me until I became a mother of several small children myself, but she touched on a deeper challenge that comes with adhering to the ritualistic aspect of Jewish life.

When you do something every day, it becomes routine. And then something which is really quite sublime can become rote. And then the emotional component of spirituality which is, for many people, a big draw, can become divorced from the physical component of spirituality. And then you get people who are just going through the motions of Jewish life, but aren’t actually living it.

I know. I’ve been there. I AM there in some areas of my practice.

So, isn’t it, like, hypocritical to keep going through the motions, saying blessings without the correct intentions, or mumbling through the grace after meals without thinking about the meaning of the words? Isn’t that just empty practice which signifies spiritual death, or the shell of a spiritual life held up only by communal pressure to conform?

Am I a total fraud?

In seminary, my rabbi once told me that even when I don’t feel like davening, I should still try to daven. Even if I feel completely disconnected from the action that I’m doing. Why? Because there will come a day when I will feel like davening, and if I haven’t been keeping my muscles in shape, I won’t be able to connect to my Creator through the vehicle of prayer. It will be so foreign to me that it will impede my attempt to connect.

So by going through the motions, even in times of spiritual famine, I am keeping the lines of communication clear. I’m weeding my spiritual garden, even though I may not be harvesting any vegetables at the time.

This is spoken of in the Talmud, in Pesachim 50b, where it says that a person should always be engaged in Torah and mitzvos, even if they’re not doing them for the “right” reasons, because simply through doing the actions of Torah and mitzvos, a person will eventually come to do them for the right reasons.

If the wrong reason is “I want to fit in with my community,” or maybe “I want the honor of being considered a Torah scholar,” then by going through the motions, a person may come to be changed for the better, to appreciate the value of their actions for their own sake.

Before a person gets to that desired state, though, there may be years, or even decades, where they’re not quite there. Their practice isn’t quite what it should be. But, little by little, they are making progress.

Then it’s fine to be a zombie? You’re okay with that?

Seriously? Of course it’s not okay to be a zombie. While the reality of my morning blessings may be that I don’t have the best concentration while saying them, that doesn’t exempt me from trying to improve their quality.

What I’m saying is that when I see another Orthodox Jew doing something that seems, well, wrong or shallow, I don’t write them off, and I certainly don’t write off the entirety of Orthodox practice.

In addition to considering the very serious Jewish obligation to give others the benefit of the doubt, it’s important to internalize that the only person’s observance we can control is our own. And guess what? People aren’t perfect. I’m not, you’re not (sorry, maybe you are). And sometimes there are serious imperfections that get distorted through the lens of religion and yeah, that can get really ugly.

But you know what else is ugly? Standing in the line in the checkout lane at the grocery store and seeing the headlines about which celebrities have the best and worst bikini bodies. And whose divorce is worth a bazillion dollars. And how you can finally lose those last ten pounds, for good.

I see hypocrisy everywhere. I see it in a society which encourages women to work but doesn’t provide reasonable childcare options (and still pays women less than men, btw). I see it in a society which deifies sports but marginalizes educators. I see it in society which still votes for president by who is the most physically attractive.

So basically, this:

If you are a religious person, or have any spiritual practice, keep it up. Keep striving to do your best and observe your practice on a continually higher level. Work through those obstacles and revel in the feeling of achievement when you arrive at your goal. And then do it again.

If you don’t style yourself as religious, maybe cut us some slack. After all, we’re people, too. And while some of us may be jerks, that’s not exclusive to religion, sadly.

I know that there have been countless wars and horrors committed in the name of religion, but from my foray into Orthodox Judaism, I see a tradition that has also brought to the world the concepts of charity, justice, loving-kindness, literacy, honoring parents, being hospitable, treating the dead with respect, gratitude, and humility.

So, yeah, even though I have been disappointed by various individuals over the past eight years of my observant life, it has not altered my opinion of religious life. On the contrary, it has encouraged me to delve deeper into tradition to learn about how to improve my own acts, and how to strengthen my own understanding of why I’m here anyways.

Is my life all unicorns prancing through a rainbow-filled forest? Not so much. Has being religious saved me from difficulties and pain? Nope. But it has made a noticeable improvement in the quality of my life and improved my ability to cope with the inevitable challenges that are part of life, and that makes it valuable to me.

And for the hypocrites? Well, I’m so busy trying not to be one that I don’t have much time to be offended by anyone else.