INTRODUCTORY UNIT - RITUALS, CULTURE AND US

7. THE PROBLEM OF CULTURAL TRADITIONS FOR THE MODERN PERSON

The underlying reason for this is not just the marginalization of the individual in relation to the traditional culture. It goes much deeper than that. The majority of traditional cultures have, central within their belief system, a fundamentally religious conception of the world, which places individual life in a specific subordinate relationship to a Heavenly power, or powers, that play a crucial role in the running of the world and the running of individual lives. The traditional life cycle ceremonies express, among other things, certain very deep cultural beliefs about the relationship of the supernatural to human beings. But, over the last two hundred years or so, a deep change of perspective has swept over the majority of humanity, which has undermined the traditional perspective towards the supernatural aspects of life and replaced these certainties with deep skepticism on the part of many people. In the western world, the intellectual movement that paved the way for this was the Enlightenment, that developed in Europe from the eighteenth century. It was the Jewish version of this movement, the Haskalah, which developed only a little later, that had the same effect among many western Jews. With the exception of those Haredi - extremely orthodox - Jews who tried to cut themselves off from the influence of the outside world, it is true to say that in one way or other, all western Jews are heirs of the Haskalah.

However, the issue is not merely one of the presence or absence of religious belief. Even among the believers, the kind of belief has changed. To a large extent, religious belief has become rationalized. Many things that were once seen as real are now seen as symbolic. Views of the role of the Divine and the part that the Divine forces play in human life have changed for the believer hardly less than for the non-believer. This has tended to create a problematic relationship with the old traditional rituals, many of which came to express beliefs that are seen as superstitions by many of the people still immersed in the culture, and of course far more so among those who are alienated from the tradition. The way that at least aspects of the ceremonies and rituals are perceived, then, even by many of those who embrace those ceremonies, is from a distant, folkloristic point of view, rather than with a wholehearted acceptance, as was the original intention regarding the attitudes to those ceremonies.