November 12, 2015

Rabbi Ralph Mecklenburger is the leader of the Beth-El Congregation in Fort Worth, Texas, an adjunct faculty member at Brite Divinity School and has served as the Jewish co-chair of the Texas Conference of Churches' Jewish-Christian Forum. Rabbi Mecklenburger was ordained at the Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion, which also awarded him an honorary doctorate degree in 1997. Prior to coming to Beth-El, he served congregations in San Francisco, California and Ann Arbor, Michigan.

The following exchange will focus on Rabbi Mecklenburger’s book Our Religious Brains: What Cognitive Science Reveals about Belief, Morality, Community and Our Relationship with God (Jewish Lights, 2015).

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Dear Rabbi Mecklenburger,

Let's begin with the very basics: what leads a rabbi to write a book about neuroscience? What kind of readers did you have in mind, and what would you like them to take away from their reading experience?

Yours,

Shmuel.

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Dear Shmuel,

I began reading about neuroscience when my son was diagnosed with Attention Deficit Disorder. I simply wanted to understand how his brain was any different from others’. I soon learned that there is always more going on around any of us than a brain can keep track of, so we filter our experience in order not to be overwhelmed, concentrating now on one thing, now on another. As you read this, for instance, you are probably unaware of the feeling of the chair on which you are sitting, or the sound of traffic outside or air conditioning inside, until I mentioned it. The sense perceptions were available, but you filtered them out to concentrate on your reading. The person with ADD (now usually called ADHD), I realized, actually has an attention surplus, failing to filter out distractions. My son learned to cope with his learning differences, but I never got over that first exposure to what, 30 years ago, was the beginning of an explosion of knowledge about how consciousness operates and thus shapes our relationship with others, with the world, even – I now insist – with God.

Before I ever realized the theological significance, I simply found it fascinating to begin to understand how memories develop and change, the appeal of music, why we are inclined to optimism, how our values are shaped by experience, the importance of emotion even when we think we are being purely rational, and more. The cognitive studies revolution has already had huge implications for medicine, education, art appreciation, advertising, law and criminology, even investing; the list goes on and on. Only gradually did it dawn on me that if the way our brains work has dramatic implications for everything else, it had to be as important for my field, religion, as well.

There are a number of theological issues which had always fascinated and sometimes troubled me, but which prior to stumbling into consciousness studies it would never have occurred to me science would have much to say about. What is a soul? If, as Judaism insists, we have free will, why do we continue to sin? Is spirituality just a warm and fuzzy feeling, or do some people actually sense God’s presence? Why, when we have so much trouble explaining how a good God permits evil, do so many people continue to believe in a personal, caring God? How do rituals, and public prayer, work? Why are some values (“Thou shalt not murder,” “Love your neighbor as yourself”) virtually universal, even among atheists? Once I realized that the way our brains are “hard wired” has profound implications for such issues I became more and more anxious to draw out the lessons which might be learned.

I realized that some of what I discovered would be controversial. But I also found that when, as a congregational rabbi, I shared some of what I had learned, far more people were fascinated than shocked. One of the secrets of Jewish survival has been the willingness of Jews in every epoch to recast Jewish ideas in terms that educated people can accept. Denizens of a scientific, technological culture were not horrified to think that a soul, which you cannot find in an anatomy book, is an important religious metaphor, a way of talking about the sensitive aspects of our consciousness and thus a function of our brains, but probably not a metaphysical add-on to our physical being. Often, on the other hand, science buttresses traditional thinking: community is vital to human well-being, and free will, though not as total as we subjectively feel, is not an illusion. 

Knowing that the very idea of neuroscience intimidates many readers, I carefully avoided technical jargon.  After decades in the pulpit, moreover, I dared to think I could explain such matters in terms that lay people could understand, and could relate them with reference to biblical and rabbinic literature. The response of neuroscientists has been gratifying, but I wrote primarily for ordinary people, Gentiles as well as Jews. Just as we appreciate symphonies more, not less, once we learn some musical theory and realize how they work, so I aim to help people to appreciate the beauty and value of Judaism and other religions more by uncovering some of the ways they operate.