4.2.12 WC: 191694 traditional Jewish approach to learning and ritual—doubt all you want, but do! My brother and I started that way, but ultimately our doubts carried over into action--or more precisely inaction. We stopped observing in our mid 20s. My mother couldn't understand or accept that. "I don't care what you believe or don't believe," she would insist, "as long as you go to Shul, keep kosher and don't work (broadly defined to include driving, watching television or going to a ballgame) on Shabbas." That's all she asked of us. "Is that so much to ask!" When we started to break the rules, my mother began to doubt her doubting. Doubting was good as long as it didn't lead to breaking with the rituals--as it didn't in her case. Or so she believed, until she saw, with her own eyes, the wages of doubt, in her own children. This led her to doubt doubt and to embrace certainty. She would never completely abandon her doubting nature, but she no longer believed that doubt was cost-free. It had cost her to lose her own children to "excessive doubt" and the real sin of acting on one's doubt. I certainly don't mean to suggest that our mother "lost" us in any sense other than the observance of ritual, but that was critically important to her. Although my brother and I maintained an extremely close relationship until her death at age 95--we spoke to her almost every day--it was never quite the same once we left the "club" and followed our own rules as it pertained to Jewish practices. My mother even questioned her decision to “let me go to Brooklyn College.” She insisted that I would have “turned out better” if I had gone to Yeshiva University, but I didn’t have that option, because Yeshiva turned me down. (More on that later). My mother may not have been happy with the way I used the doubt she instilled in me, but I have been ecstatic. It has become the most important quality in my life--and the most significant ingredient in whatever success I may have achieved. It certai