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A Television Show That Tackles Religion with Subtlety

Now concluding its first season, The Path is focused on the fictitious “Myerists,” followers of a cultish religious movement that combines New-Age spirituality, traditional Christianity, and perhaps a dash of Kabbalah. The series, writes Armin Rosen, is atypical in the seriousness with which it treats religiosity:

What was missing . . . from nearly every . . . inquiry into religion on television was a sensitivity toward actual religious belief, and the ability to treat belief as something other than an object of winking anthropological curiosity. The Path doesn’t flatter its audience’s godlessness. Quite the opposite: despite its high production value, it’s hard to imagine viewers getting much out of the show if they’re convinced that religious belief is an automatic waste of time or emotion. The Path proceeds from the simple and quietly subversive premise that belief still matters—even in [today’s modern, Western, and secular] world. . . .

The Path is a direct confrontation with the question of what it actually means to believe—in this or any other time. It approaches the topic from nearly every conceivable angle, and with a remarkable degree of empathy. There are fundamentalist Myerists who are fleshed-out, complex characters, acting out of motives that are comprehensible and at times even noble. There are quietist Myerists and activist Myerists. There may even be schismatic Myerists, depending on how one intriguing subplot plays out. And the main character . . . is a Myerist harboring the secret burden of non-belief. His doubt isn’t automatically treated as heroic or particularly laudable. The show even raises the possibility that [his] doubt is selfish, self-destructive, and deeply irrational. The Path depicts a moral universe—one that’s alien to most of its viewers, I would guess—in which faithlessness is a worse sin than spousal infidelity.

Read more at Tablet

More about: Arts & Culture, Kabbalah, Religion, Television

The Summary: 10/7/20

Two extraordinary events demonstrate something important about Israel’s most fervent adversaries. One was a speech given at something called The People’s Forum (funded generously by Goldman Sachs), which stated, “When the state of Israel is finally destroyed and erased from history, that will be the single most important blow we can give to destroying capitalism and imperialism.”

The suggestion that this tiny state is the linchpin of a global, centuries-old phenomenon like capitalism goes well beyond anything resembling rational criticism. Even if Israel were guilty of genocide, apartheid, and oppression—which of course it is not—it would not follow that its destruction would help end capitalism or imperialism.

The other was an anti-Israel protest that took place in front of New York City’s Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, deemed “complicit” in Israel’s evils. At organizers’ urging, participants shouted their slogans at kids in the cancer ward, who were watching from the windows. Given Hamas’s indifference toward the lives of Gazan children, such callousness toward non-Palestinian children from Hamas’s Western allies shouldn’t be surprising. The protest—like the abovementioned speech—deliberately conveyed the message that Israel is the ultimate evil and its destruction the ultimate good, cancer patients be damned.

The fact that Israel’s adversaries are almost comically perverse does not mean that they can be dismissed. If its allies fail to understand the obsessive and irrational hatred that it faces, they cannot effectively help it defend itself.

Read more at Mosaic