"I did not think my way into praying. I prayed my way into thinking"

In a fascinating confessional column, David Goldman, onetime "Spengler" and now writing for First Things, explains his former association with a very unsavory political entity, and how he came back to Judaism. From "Confessions of a Coward":

.... My only sense of the sacred had come from classical music, the great avocation of my adolescence. The over-representation of Jews in classical music is no accident: Jews who cannot bring themselves to acknowledge God sometimes find music a safer means by which to evoke religious feelings without the fearful demands of encountering a personal God. To approach the sacred, Jewish tradition admonishes, is both exalting and dangerous, and it is less frightening to look for the sacred in Mozart’s sonatas than on Mt. Sinai. ....

Around 1985, the ugly awareness that I had spent almost a decade in a gnostic cult coincided with a dark time in my personal life. Deeply depressed, I sat at the piano one night, playing through the score of Bach’s St. Matthew Passion, and came to the chorale that reads: “Commend your ways and what ails your heart to the faithful care of Him who directs the heavens, who gives course and aim to the clouds, air and wind. He will also find a path that your foot can tread.” For the first time in my life, I prayed, and in that moment, I knew that my prayer was heard. That was a first step of teshuva—of return. ....

Studying the origins of Western classical music also helped me put religious things in perspective. Magnificent as it is, music remains a human construct, with a hint of divine inspiration in some cases, but not a substitute for God. The great works of Western classical music are not revelation, but they are perhaps the next best thing. Next best, however, no longer seemed good enough. ....

In reviewing my own missteps in life, I feel that temptation to represent myself as a monster in order to cover up something even more painful: I was a coward. I was afraid of being Jewish. Everything else is rationalization. My intellectual life really began only a quarter-century ago when I reconciled myself to being Jewish. The truth is that I did not think my way into praying. I prayed my way into thinking. [more]

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