Rabbi's Radical Call: Stop Seeking Self-Help, Start Seeking God

Rabbi Noa Kushner, founding rabbi of The Kitchen in San Francisco, has a provocative message for modern Jews: stop treating religion like a self-improvement tool and start seeking God for God's sake. In her new book, Pretend You Believe: How to Enter Religion, Kushner challenges the consumer mentality that has crept into Jewish life, arguing that Judaism exists not to make us better people, but for the sake of the Divine.

For many Jews, the High Holidays bring an uncomfortable question: Why bother with religious life at all? Kushner's answer is both radical and deeply traditional. She urges skeptics to bypass their intellectual doubts and enter the religious world on its own terms, embracing what she calls chosen naivete.

What does Kushner mean by 'pretend you believe'?

Kushner's title is not a call to fake it till you make it. Rather, it is an invitation to follow the ancient Sinai model of na'aseh v'nishma (we will do, and then we will hear). In classic Jewish terms, doing precedes understanding. The book asks readers to bracket their doubts long enough to participate fully in religious life, with conscience and integrity.

We don't have to have it all worked out in advance in order to participate. It's saying, 'I'm going to enter this arrangement. I'm not going to say there's no God or God doesn't matter or God is off the table. I'm going to leap toward it in my action and see what happens.'

Why does Kushner reject the self-help approach to Judaism?

Kushner is explicit in her rejection of what she calls the consumer mentality in contemporary Jewish practice. The idea that religion exists to provide community, ethical grounding, or personal growth is, in her view, a fundamental misunderstanding of the religious project.

Judaism exists for the sake of God, not for our benefit. Ethics matter enormously, Kushner argues, but they cannot be the ultimate purpose of religion. As she writes, to have another end, even one as well-regarded as ethical behavior, is to misunderstand our role in the covenant.

How does this perspective reframe the role of God?

Kushner politely reframes the common question, What does God add to the equation? That question assumes we are the center of the universe, she says. Traditional Jewish thought offers a different starting point: we are not the center, and religion teaches us the humility of that realization.

Religion, Kushner explains, is there to remind us that we are holy, capable of holy words and holy deeds, responding to the gift of life from the One On High. As her father, Rabbi Lawrence Kushner, taught her, something holy is infinitely valuable in its own right and cannot be used for any other purpose.

What does Shabbat offer beyond a day of rest?

While Shabbat certainly provides rest, Kushner insists its true purpose is to help us remember our place in the universe. We are not God, and Shabbat is a weekly reminder of that sacred truth. This perspective opens vistas that a purely instrumental view of rest can never reach.

For me to be in a Shabbat is to remember there is a Holy One, and that my job is just to actually be of service. That allows me then to perhaps experience things that I couldn't anticipate or design.

How does Kushner's message speak to the High Holidays?

In the days between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, Kushner suggests a profound question: How is it that I am alive? Given the gift of life, what might we do with it? How might we be of service?

She encourages considering one's life through what she calls righteous coordinates: connection to those around us, connection to the generations, and connection to the One On High.

About Rabbi Noa Kushner

Kushner, 56, is the founding rabbi of The Kitchen, an independent Jewish congregation and institute in San Francisco launched in 2011. The congregation is known for embracing Jewish prayer and ritual while bringing Sephardi and Ashkenazi traditions together. Ordained at Hebrew Union College, she studied religion at Brown and served as a Hillel rabbi at Stanford.

Her book, Pretend You Believe: How to Enter Religion, is available now through Schocken Books.