Ideals Are Not Lessened by Imperfection : Religion: One’s recognition of God does not obliterate or excuse one’s human weaknesses and failings.

When Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin was assassinated by a man who calls himself an Orthodox Jew, all religious Jews found themselves under the vast shadow cast by his crime. If Yigal Amir could commit murder in the name of God, claim to have found sanction for his deed in religious texts and imagine that he might favorably impress his judges by saying he had only intended to paralyze his target, then not only religious Jews but Torah Judaism itself is seen as suspect.

The self-scrutiny undergone by religious Jews in the wake of the assassination has not been without its benefits. Ultimately, any process of self-examination can prove to be a process of growth, even if the process is painful.

For me, the process was grueling. Politics in this country being what it is, here in Israel I veer toward the right. And I’m religious. However, the secular, leftist universalism of my father, Saturday Review magazine editor Norman Cousins, is in my blood and bones. As Jewish children growing up in the idealistic stratosphere of my father’s liberalism, my sisters and I gathered without being told as much that all religions are equal and equally unnecessary. The proof was in the pudding. My parents were extraordinarily kind, ethical, honest and caring. They didn’t need Judaism to be Jews. God was too smart to make narrowminded distinctions between his children; ancient habits of tribalism were dangerously antiquated in a nuclear world.

The spiritual child within me, though, was not sated with world federalism and literature and the wisdom of Dag Hammerskold. Even Proust, even Matisse, failed to answer my underlying questions about my role in the cosmos and God’s existence or absence. When, as a young adult, I was introduced by a Yemenite rabbi to his own fervent, individualistic brand of Kabbalistic Judaism, my spiritual self and my specifically Jewish self, awoke.

My father extended to this Orthodox Jew the gratitude of any parent to someone who aids his child, since my new association with Judaism was obviously giving me a sense of identity and joy that I had not gotten from his generalized humanitarianism. His gratitude was profound, even though it frightened him to see his daughter’s mind turned toward what he considered the superstitious Old World that his parents had fled.

One day not long after observing my first Shabbat, I got a call from a New York prison. Seems that my mentor, who had known so well how to introduce me to the God of the Jews, had been sentenced to 10 years for stock fraud. And it seemed that his rabbinical status was in question, too. Oh, and something else: The school that he claimed to have founded didn’t exist. My mentor denied all these charges and would continue to maintain his innocence throughout his prison term.

The rabbi’s wife, an American convert, had several children and no money. An Orthodox Jewish social worker told the Chabad Community Center in Brooklyn of her plight, and my parents got a glimpse of Torah values. From that time on, she and her children were provided for by Orthodox individuals and institutions in every possible way, materially and emotionally. I would later find this kind of generousity to be the norm in Orthodox communities.

My parents, as kind as ever, joined me in efforts to get kosher food to the “rabbi” in prison and to help his wife and children survive their long years without husband and father. But in my father’s heart of hearts, of course, (though he would never stoop to say such a thing at the time) all this was a confirmation of his long-held suspicion that religious observance was not a guarantee of morality and ethics.

One Saturday night two decades later, a few months before my father died, my parents and I were scouring Jerusalem in search of a kosher restaurant open after the end of the Sabbath. My father turned to me, his face rather ashen from this nocturnal wandering around the Holy City in the company of several tired, cranky little grandchildren. Out of the blue, he said, “I’m glad you’re leading a religious life.”

My mouth fell open. After all, we had been carrying on a 20-year dialogue about religion, and both of us remained firm. “You are, Daddy?” I asked in astonishment.

“Yes,” he said with a slight nod of utter certainty. “It’s consistent with my values.”

That was that, and we never had an opportunity to discuss the matter again. But my father had come to see, apparently, that real Torah Judaism is based on a constant recognition of God’s reality. It does not obliterate the human weaknesses and self-deceptions that constitute what is known in the Torah as “the inclination toward evil” in the human soul. That’s why the commandments exist, precisely because they are necessary. Murder, theft, adultery--these are things that tempt us. There’s no commandment not to jump off a roof, because under most circumstances, this is not a temptation.

Just as my father suspected, calling oneself religious is no guarantee of one’s complete morality, since perfection is not a human attribute.

I am eternally grateful to the Yemenite rabbi (who may or may not have had authentic rabbinical certification), not only for introducing me to Judaism but also for teaching me not to expect wholeness from any human teacher. He managed to pass on to a thoroughly assimilated young American her own heritage, and for the first time in her life she felt proud to be Jewish.

The ideals persist, and each of us succeeds and fails in our own manner to live up to them. The ideals are not diminished by the infinite varieties of our imperfect observance.