Customer Reviews

For Those Who Can't Believe : Overcoming the Obstacles to Faith

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This book is incredible! Schulweis does a fantastic job of tackling head on those questions, concerns and issues that we all have about God, Religion and spirituality. I was very moved by this book. I am not Jewish , but feel these are questions and answers for all faiths.As he states in the book, many people turn away from the church and religion altogether because they can't get answers that satisfy their concerns. A quote: " The questions are not impious...They need to be answered." Pg. 70 I recommend this book for all those who are searching and even for those who are not. It's also a great book to help you explain spiritual ideas to children.

I found reading Rabbi Schulweis' book a remarkable experience, in that he answered so many of my questions about how to hold and be in-connection with G-d as conceived and reinterpreted by Jewish sages through the ages.

An essential element of Harold Schulweis' book is the inseparable nature of God and man. This book allows us to look at the idea of God and how that impacts our existence individually and as society. The cosmic questions of prayer, miracles, biblical revelation and the seeming contradictions of life and faith are examined and laid before us for consideration.

If you are looking for a daily devotional book - this is not for you. If, on the other hand, you are able to open yourself to honest contemplation you will find in these pages a serious study that is neither boring nor cumbersome.

Highly recommended.

Contrary to the reviewer's suggestion that you skip this book, I would encourage you to read it if you are looking for a way to understand God that doesn't involve relating to a supernatural being. To the criticism that Schulweis' way of looking at prayer flies in the face of Jewish tradition I say that Schulweis is less concerned with how the tradition was understood than how can understand it today.

I found this book quite helpful regarding both prayer and reading Torah.

This book does ask the right questions, on the power of prayer, the root of evil, the truth and historicity of the bible, etc., but its answers are essentially juvenile. For instance, Schulweis writes about the Holocaust and asserts that the evil committed was seperate from God, as the work of free-willed humans, but that God was present in the non-Jewish people we sheltered and saved Jews from persecution. This thinking brings up some serious questions. Why were the good people less free-willed than the bad? If God can intervene to save a few in cellars in Poland, why did He forsake the rest? Most importantly, how does Schulweis know where God was and God wasn't? Again and again throughout the book Schulweis tells us confidently and categorically that God is evident in good actions of people but absent in bad. This is illogical.

On the subject of prayer Schulweis tells us that God doesn't literally hear our prayers, nor can prayers ignite miracles, but that prayer can strengthen us. This idea directly contradicts the content of prayer in the Jewish liturgy which is primarily focused on adoration of the divine. If all prayer can do is help us 'gird up our loins,' why pray to God? Why invoke the supernatural, who Schulweis tells us will not listen to our prayers directly? Surely there are better ways of strengthening oneself.

Schulweis gives us similar schtick on miracles. He tells us not to expect actual miracles, like the regrowing of limbs, but to notice that everything is miraculous. This seems to follow Spinoza's view that God reveals himself in the laws of nature. Well, if that's all He can do, if he is completely impotent otherwise, than why even bring God into the picture? This is really just spiritual pantheism, or properly, dishonest atheism.

Unfortunately, I can't go on right now. Essentially, there are so many logical flaws in the worldview Schulweis presents that I don't think anyone can honestly believe what he writes. Skip this book.