Religion from A to Z

Jay Newman is a professor of philosophy at the University of Guelph. His
latest book is Pious Pro-Family Rhetoric: Postures and Paradoxes in
Philosophical Perspective.

Rabbi of an Ottawa congregation for 40 years, Reuven Bulka has also done
considerable work in the media. Along with other religious leaders, he
has been a regular contributor to the Ottawa Citizen’s Saturday
feature, “Ask the Religion Experts.” This volume is a collection of
Bulka’s contributions, with the approximately 250-word entries
arranged alphabetically by subject. Bulka is committed to a highly
traditionalist form of Rabbinic Judaism, but in his discussions he makes
surprisingly little direct reference to the wisdom of the Tanakh,
Talmud, Midrash, and Jewish philosophy. Although he sometimes pronounces
on what the Jewish view is on a particular subject, much of his
discussion consists of the expression of personal sentiments, opinions,
and prejudices. His responses in the Citizen, which have been slightly
edited here, suggest that he has a rather low opinion of the
intellectual capacity and cultural knowledge of most people reading his
column.

Besides addressing such subjects as afterlife, angels, conversion,
existence of God, love, sin, suffering, and women in the Bible, Bulka
occasionally tackles an offbeat question on something such as government
misspending, Harry Potter, or sports. He regularly gives attention to
controversial topics such as cloning, the death penalty, gender
equality, partial birth abortion, religion and politics, same-sex
marriage, the Schiavo case, and stem-cell research. Bulka’s
discussions of these subjects are largely pious, and philosophically and
theologically uninteresting. And despite having studied logotherapy, he
appears to lack the gift of being able to empathize with or understand
people who do not share certain of his fundamental presuppositions or
intuitions. For example, responding to a question about the display of
the Ten Commandments in government buildings, he impatiently blurts out:
“What, pray tell, is objectionable in having such a display? Is it
forcing anyone to behave in a different manner than heretofore? Is it
ramming religion down the throats of an unsuspecting public? Is it
undermining the essence of our country?” There are some touches of
humour—mostly laboured—but the writing, though clear, is rarely
inspirational or consoling.