My Spiritual Path
From [redacted]
[...]
I have deliberately never been tested for "Jewishness" despite being asked my entire life, "So, are you Jewish?" My surname is supposedly English, like William Golding, but I did find a "Goldsmith" on both sides of my family tree, with no parents listed in each case -- at one time my russian-ukrainian then-partner urged me never to be tested, for if I was a crypto-jew, a term we didn't know at the time, I was safer remaining encrypted... here is my story:
My Father's Father Robert Golding claimed descent from Hughes de Payens, Templar founder, though his Frisian wife Anna Ernst was not so sure... ancestry.com later told me the same thing, but this figure's historicity itself is doubted, although occasionally Jewish ancestry is attributed to the first Templars. I actually suppressed this idea out of sheer dubiousness but have recently begun to study the order's code, supposedly written by my possibly fictional ancestor...
My father Andre Robert Golding was an English teacher at Don Mills Collegiate who considered becoming a Minister before his untimely death from lung cancer when I was 1 year old -- we moved to Barrie where my mother grew up, to live down the street from her parents, so the man who raised me was my mother's father, Wilmot Lancelot Mitchell -- his father was raised in a foster home but retained his crypto-Scottish-Jewish surname "Mitchell" which you can find in the book "When Scotland Was Jewish" -- he was raised Protestant and wasn't sure if he had Jewish ancestry, something you didn't talk about much in those days, but my grandfathers both said I was in the safest place possible if I *was* Jewish:
His Wife Elsie Orr, my Mother's Mother, had a sister who converted to Judaism by marriage, and Verda Orr became Ruth Papernick -- the two sisters didn't speak for 50 years and I witnessed their reunion as a child (!!)
My Mother, Rosemary Mitchell, by contrast, was one of the original Hippies and a spiritual tourist and visual artist.
(She had two sisters and one married into Catholicism in Orillia, leading the family to a United church in Barrie for Weddings, but I never did like how the Catholics treated the Templars lol -- the other sister insisted I must be Jewish...)
Amid this backdrop, I first started attending a local church in Barrie of my own volition: I was a student in the first ever year of this kids' bible program, and still have my copy of the KJV from then: https://clubs.awana.org
However, my philosophical questions went unanswered, and I went on to become the first outward Atheist in my family as a teenager-with-the-internet, and pressed my Mother's Father until he revealed the truth: He had lost his faith over the Holocaust and WW2, specifically the problem of evil in light of Hitler's actions -- he had served as a civil servant at Base Borden after being a Toronto Police Officer, which is why I ultimately grew up in Barrie, a military town -- although my Hippie Pacifist mother forbade me from having military toys as a child.
I will note that now, as an adult, I have attempted an answer to the problem of evil that disturbed my grandfather, meaning that my atheism is now more of a technicality, since I define "Atheism" in my amateurish inter-faith framework as merely "No God is Literal" which is not that far from "Do not worship false idols":
https://adamgolding.substack.com/p/the-snake-is-why-the-tree-exists
https://adamgolding.substack.com/p/anarcho-christian-atheist-polytheism
I have learned from an orthodox Jewish friend that I am technically consistent with the Noahite laws under one translation which merely says "Do not worship false idols" as opposed to demanding strict monotheism...for instance, I think most do not really see God as genderless, but as Male, and that it would be easier to have both genders as deities, and to revive Asherah... but what do I know! ;-)
In between these two phases I developed a deep interest in Ancient Civilizations especially Sumeria, thanks to our teacher in the Barrie Gifted Program, Mr. Holmes, something which I have returned to studying in my 40s as an amateur -- I'm intending to develop a business selling only books older-than-christ modelled on my new favourite wiki page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancient_literature
Mr. Holmes also taught me that antisemitism was a threat to me regardless of how I chose to identify -- he used to joke to make the point: "Show us your papers, Mr. Golding!"
I then went to study Philosophy at UofT, among several other fields, and became an adherent, ultimately, of Socrates and Frege, not to mention Chomsky, and was influenced by countless Jewish Atheist public intellectuals during this time, especially Jewish Anarchists like Emma Goldman, former neighbourhood resident!
What was considered wrong in that sphere was to be a Meinongian, but it is actually one reason sufficient for me to identify, technically, as a polytheist now:
https://adamgolding.substack.com/p/im-polytheist-because-im-meinongian
Fast-forward to October 7th, and that week [redacted] assigns me to teach at [redacted], no doubt based on some assumptions about my identity, and it was my first time actually setting foot in a Synagogue, to teach coding [...]
It turned out that my great aunt is buried just north of [redacted], so it felt quite meaningful to be assigned to this location at that time, I can assure you.
Later, when I ran for the school board, Jewish News Syndicate ran a piece mentioning me, but they censored the part about polytheism ;-)
https://adamgolding.substack.com/p/what-i-told-the-jewish-news-syndicate
As a more philosophical than religious thinker, I am still learning ancient texts in a cross-cultural fashion -- I have been studying putatively earlier texts from the middle east, like Gilgamesh and The Ba'al Cycle, so... [...] I am literally behind :-) (My next blog post is actually about connecting The Ba'al Cycle to Computer Science!)
I will highlight what is already in the curriculum I drafted @ goldingcode.org that is not obvious when it concerns theology:
1. The intro to logic text and logic software were developed at a Jesuit college where they were tested for decades -- it is the longest-tested application in formal logic education
2. The text itself contains many theological arguments, but, being a logic text, takes no position on any conclusions -- this I can teach expertly: analytic theology or at least its foundations in formal logic through Gensler's text
3. Gensler's sequel Ethicola and companion intro to ethics text cover secular ethical philosophy with software tools, so edging onto formal ethics which is what we need for ethical AI -- I've been hoping to eventually delve into how this ethical curriculum intersects with a traditional Jewish ethical framework, something I am not educated in directly, but indirectly
4. Gensler passed in 2022 and people must continue his work -- I have actually recently arranged to start teaching remotely a student in Nigeria this part of the curriculum: he completed a bachelor of divinity and is having trouble finding a way to apply it. The irony is that in both cases the hook was learning to code and then the conversation immediately turned to moral codes -- the hottest subject of the 21st century.
That being said, my educational philosophy is similar to Plato's Academy in that I seek to teach math before ethics/politics/religion/philosophy.
Regards,
Adam
ps one big influence on my theology I left out is of course Descartes...long story!
—
adamgolding.ca
—
adamgolding.ca