There is something to be said for the number of exclamation points in the postings on Hillel’s new blog, “And Thou Shalt Blog.” They are really all over the place, sometimes two or three next to each other, dancing amid giant words of all colors. Typographically depicting an extreme enthusiasm bursting out from the seams of every word, this Web site could have more exclamation points than any other blog I remember reading.
Many secular, uninterested Jews and others regard the enthusiasm that exudes from the site’s exclamation points, extreme variety of font color, and other displays of eagerness as annoying, too “Jewy,” and something to without doubt stay away from. Though it is okay that this “annoying” enthusiasm exists, many would be sure to certainly stay as far away from it as possible. As one Bwog commenter wrote: “Whoa they better calm down ... I think I just had a seizure.”
And Thou Shalt Blog’s exclamation points are an easy target for enlightened hipster eye-rolling, as is the enthusiasm many Jews, Christians, Muslims, Hindus, and other individuals have for their religious identities at Columbia. Taking for granted the rights of these groups to exist, the secular intellectual here does not go further toward acceptance. These groups are tolerated, but there is a wide gap between the tolerant roll of the eyes and an opening of the arms.
The way toleration works is interesting on this campus. Tolerance is defined by the Oxford English Dictionary as “freedom from bigotry,” “the action of allowing,” and “the action or practice of enduring pain or hardship.” Toleration is not the same thing as embracement or even openness, but rather is the moment of eating something disgusting, making a face, and swallowing it anyway. You tolerate that food but you still abhor it. Toleration implies the idea that that which is repugnant to some may still exist. On our campus, belief communities are able to form because of an agreement that one’s social, religious, and/or cultural leanings can have a formal institutionalized place as long as others can as well. In other words, we agree to tolerate one another so that we are each tolerated and so that we maintain fairness and order on campus. But toleration is not enough.
As I have written before, I do not believe this campus can be characterized as a “godless” intellectual community. The publicity that has made Hillel’s blog so visible reinforces this. But a substantial fraction of the community, like an overwhelming number of today’s intellectuals, is not so big on the whole religion thing. One of the reasons for this is that religious organizations appear to many intellectuals as narrow-minded and misguided. On a whole, these intellectuals say, religions are about indoctrination, conformity, intolerance, following an unchanging set of ossified rules, and the stifling of discovery and curiosity. Religious organizations pose a threat to the intellectual endeavor of exploration and striving toward truth. In American national life, the argument continues, such groups have hindered progressive legislation and threaten our core individual liberties.
Despite the intellectual’s claim to a cosmopolitan embracement of and openness toward all knowledge that potentially brings us closer to the truth, we find at the core of this secular intellectual snub a paradoxical shutting-out of the allegedly intolerant. This closure against religion is readily observable here, from subject changing to ignoring to eye-rolling at excessive exclamation points. On the other hand, a non-believer is often welcome and often embraced for his or her own contributions to many religious contexts here, as I have found in my explorations of religious groups for both journalistic purposes and genuine curiosity. A great many of the religious groups on campus are interested in hearing the views of others and in intellectually honest discussion. Last week’s Veritas Forum, for example, enabled much productive intellectual exchange in its engagement with non-believers, with whom the organization did not necessarily agree. Although this group’s premise is the relevance of God and Christianity for “our modern university in its search for knowledge, truth and significance,” its mission statement makes clear that they “welcome and honor skeptics and their questions.” In stark contrast to the typical but paradoxical and counterintuitive narrow-mindedness of many secular intellectuals, the message of each of these religious organizations is not “If you are a non-believer or if you are not spiritual we will tolerate you” but “Come and tell us what you think. We’ll listen.”
Hillel’s blog shows a similar interest in bringing in members of the Columbia community and introducing them to Jewish religion and cultural tradition, not necessarily in an effort to proselytize and convert, but as a way of fostering open exchange. Though I myself am an outsider to these religious groups with my own cynical and snarky tendencies, I would like to re-frame the exclamation points and all the emotion behind them not as over-enthusiasm but instead as open arms. Religious organizations here are significantly more open to listening to non-believers and providing fruitful ground for intellectual curiosity than many non-believers are to inviting into their own forums those who are most devout on this campus. Non-believers seem to be welcome everywhere on this campus. These non-believers should no longer roll their eyes at their religious counterparts and should begin to welcome them instead of just tolerating them, for they have much to say.
Eric Hirsch is a Columbia College senior majoring in anthropology and English. He is an undergraduate fellow with the Institute for Religion, Culture, and Public Life. The God Beat runs alternate Mondays. opinion@columbiaspectator.com