Words by Terryl

A pagan's response to the defamatory article Rabbi David Wolpe published in The Atlantic, December 25, 2023 entitled “The Return of the Pagans.” Rabbi Wolpe;

Like many pagans I was hurt and angry when I read your article in The Atlantic. I forgive you because it’s obvious you hadn’t thought it through.

At first I thought (hoped, maybe) it was a satirical piece. A Jew vilifying another religion about being tainted with and by money is ironic to such an extreme it made me hope that maybe you just had a misguided sense of humor and had whiffed it. Given that Jews have been vilified for the taint of money and usury by Christians since before the crucifixion and all.

Shame on you for trying to foist Trump off on us. He is not of our creation and nor is Musk or any of their monstrous brethren. Predatory capitalism is directly downstream of Calvinist Christianity. As for Trump, in the ugliest Faustian bargain of the century, American Evangelical Christians were so desperate to take women’s reproductive rights away they prostituted themselves to the Devil himself. The strategy was successful and the patriarchy has reclaimed right of law over women’s bodies in America, albeit at the cost of our democracy.

Your editors at The Atlantic let you down in many ways. You come off as tone deaf at best. Clueless at worst. You crow that the contribution of monotheism was its insistence that “the principal concern of God is, instead, how people treat one another.” How’s that working out for you in the Gaza Strip?

Religious scholars have noticed the broad historical trend for religions to grow beyond the sacrificial propitiatory praxis (coercive is the term you used) of their youth. Judaism required blood sacrifice early on, presumably to coerce their God in to not smiting them or demanding that they sacrifice their children. Unable to survive the spiritual devastation of the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem, Judaism did not lose faith. The sacrificial practice ended and rabbis arose to help Jews survive the loss through the understanding that God must have had a plan, a bigger point somewhere later in time. That’s what my Judaism professor taught me, anyway.

Hinduism matured from propitiation to devotion through the war between the Pandavas and their kin, the Kauravas, as remembered in the Mahabharata. Tibetan Buddhism has overlaid its history with so many layers the transgressive nature of its Tantric past has been completely obscured. And Christianity declares with confidence that Jesus was the last blood sacrifice God would ever require.

Paganism’s path was not so very dissimilar. We have been long separated from our ancient roots by both violence and time. The paganism of today bears little resemblance to the ‘coercive’ paganism of the ancient Mediterranean to which you refer. A great deal of pagan magic (praxis) now is about changing consciousness to achieve beneficial result.

Thought you might know that, doing the work you do.

You are, unfortunately, correct that contemporary paganism is beset with a far-right element that fuels white supremacy among other evils. But no religion should be narrowly defined by its fringe elements. The fringe does not define the center, but stands in theological disagreement with it. Many religions have unsavory right- and left-wing factions. Thought you might know that too.

Sour grapes. The right wing of Judaism is doing some truly gruesome work in the Gaza strip just now. The Palestinians lining up with their baby-sized garbage bags (having run out of coffins and graves) to dump them in the buckets of front-end loaders make the histrionics you introduce in your article about infanticide ring quite hollow.

I also forgive you for falling into the polarized “either or” thinking that is such a prevalent trap planet-wide, just now. We are all bombarded with hateful othering from every side these days. We have lost common courtesy and civil discourse in personal and virtual interaction. Detestable political and social rhetoric bludgeon us at every turn and I imagine it must be particularly pernicious in such an elitist, privileged, and narcissistic environment as Harvard. However, it’s up to you, especially, as someone listed as one of the most influential people in the world, to set the example, to write to a higher standard. To be courteous and civil.

For Jews to win, pagans don’t necessarily have to lose. It is spiritually and intellectually dishonest to draw false causal relationships. If someone is avaricious who is a pagan, they are not avaricious because they are pagan. Most contemporary pagans follow only one commandment, which is to HARM NONE. Do some pagans break it? Yes. Do some Jews break the myriad laws laid out in the old testament? Yes. Should the balance of humanity demonize the whole of Judaism or paganism because of it? I hope not.

Deity is vast, professor. It is utterly and ultimately beyond human ken. I turn for help to the three blind men and the elephant to explain it when people lapse into this horrible ‘my god’s better than your god’ fight they, we—you—are so sadly inclined to do. Were any of the blind men wrong about the elephant? No. But neither were any of them right, because none could grasp or understand it in its entirety.

Pagans worship a sacred more immanent than transcendent, while monotheists worship a sacred more transcendent than immanent. We all stand humble in the presence of deity. It’s not wrong, just different.

The monotheisms seek strength through uniformity. Paganism seeks strength though diversity. There is no clear, overarching metanarrative in contemporary paganism. We have no ancient canon to anchor us in a time and spiritual reality the present can barely recognize, or to fan the flames of ancient blood feuds. While this can leave us burdened with chaos and lack of continuity, it also liberates us with incredible lightness of religious freedom. Freedom that empowers us to grow vigorously and look to the spiritual future of our species. Freedom that allows us to welcome others, and their gods, to our circles. We are polytheists. All gods and goddesses are welcome, yours included, provided He is respectfully present and does not try to throw others out. There is room for all moving forward. Your good fortune is that we are syncretic enough to bring you with us into a religiously tolerant future.

Be sure you understand that I do not speak for paganism at large nor for all pagans. Anyone who claims to do so (including you, Rabbi) should be viewed with deep suspicion. We are spiritually plural and our voices are as diverse as the stars in the night sky. I have only my own perspective from a lifetime of peaceful, joyful pagan spirituality to offer here.

The problems planet earth faces in the here and now are vanishingly complex. A simple answer, like your specious dialectic, while appealing, ultimately does nothing to help us work together. It only pulls us apart. Your article was harm with intent to harm.

The single thing every human being shares is life here and now on this planet. It is the injustice of unrestrained predatory capitalism that has brought us to the brink of ecocide. It is money that’s wrong with the world, Rabbi, not pagans or paganism. Money is a weaponized abstraction, the blunt force weapon humanity uses to inflict such tremendously evil wounds on itself and on the world.

As to the other pole of your deeply flawed argument, consciousness is one of the building blocks of life. Every living thing on this planet is aware of itself as we are. Perhaps not in the same way that we are, but self-aware still. You can be sure that aardvark’s life is every bit as precious to her as yours is to you.

You should be nicer to us. Because when you succeed, when the last monotheist has finally slaughtered the last monotheist, it is we who will sit shiva for you. Your memory will be ours to carry. It is we who will bring whatever survives of your tradition forward then, perhaps as a teaching parable for future generations about the dangers of narrow-mindedness and exclusivity. You will leave us no other choice than to tell the children how bravely you survived brutal persecution but that, even while a few survivors of the Shoah yet lived, you turned and did unto others as was done unto you.

Why and to whom did you write this article, Rabbi? How would you respond if a defamatory, inaccurate and ignorant article making Judaism responsible for all the ills of the world were published in a nationally respected publication?

I feel you owe pagans an explanation, a public apology, and a retraction of your remarks at the very least.

Witchslappped, Terryl Warnock Proud Pagan

P. S. Those pagans I mentioned? The ones who are not hesitant to break our Harm None commandment? They’re throwing some serious shade your way just now. I would be happy to teach you how to protect yourself.

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Terryl Warnock is an eccentric with a happy heart who lives on the outskirts of town with her cat. She is known as an essayist, proof reader, editor, maker of soap, and proud pagan. A lifetime student, she has pursued science, religion, and sustainable communities. This, plus life experience from the local community service to ski instructor, from forest service worker to DMV supervisor, from hospitality to business owner gives her a broad view on the world.

Terryl is the author of:
The Miracle du jour, ISBN-10: 0989469859, ISBN-13 ‏: ‎ 978-0-9894698-5-2

AJ Brown, in a past life, was an embedded systems engineer (digital design engineer). He worked on new product designs from hard disk controllers, communication protocols, and link encryptors to battery monitors for electric cars.

A few years ago he surrendered his spot on the freeway to someone else. Now he is more interested in sailing, building out his live-in bus for travel, and supporting the idea of full-circle food: the propagation, growth, harvest, storage, preparation, and preservation of healthy sustenance. He is a strong supporter of Free/Libre Open Source Software[F/LOSS] and is willing to help most anyone in their quest to use it.

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