Hi, i was wondering if you had any tips on how to maintain religion in a post-apocalyptic/otherwise desolate setting. I have a Hindu character and a Jewish character and I want them to keep their religion and remain devout but I also want it to be realistic given the lack of resources etc...
Maintaining religion in a post-apocalyptic setting - Jewish & Hindu Emphasis
A lot of the signs of Jewish devoutness are things you can totally do in a postapocalyptic setting. I mean first of all, you can break any rule to save a human life, so if you’re not supposed to kindle a flame on Shabbat but you have to light a fire to not die, then you’re fine.
But anyway. Shabbat is about rest and renewal, so your character can take one day in every seven, starting at sundown (Friday night if they have a way of knowing what the days of the week were in the Before Times!) to rest, say the special prayers – if they’re devout enough to be “devout” as you said in your question, they’ll know a lot of this stuff by heart – and refrain from the kind of work you do on weekdays. Like maybe if they’re a posthole-digger they don’t dig any post-holes on “Saturday” morning.
Not eating pork, shellfish, rabbit, the back end of beef, and bugs is another thing – but again, people did wind up eating all kinds of whatnot in the Warsaw Ghetto – these rules aren’t meant to be dying over. If they know when Passover is in this world they can leave off eating bread for a week and maybe even cobble together a makeshift seder from memory.
If you have a married woman and she’s Orthodox she can still cover her hair. If she’s not Orthodox this is probably not an issue.
If they have any way of knowing when Yom Kippur and Tisha b'Av are, and it’s safe to do so, they can fast.
Especially if they’re Orthodox, they can start the day with the morning prayers. If this person is Orthodox and menstruating, and there’s water in which to do so, they can say the mikveh prayer while taking the bath after their period is all finished. (I’m Reform but I find comfort in this kind of thing, too.)
If we’re talking about someone who wasn’t raised in the normal world – I was assuming the apocalypse in this was recent, but I mean if they’ve never known normal-Earth – then they might have learned all these things by rote from parents or community instead of from going to temple.
It really is that simple – prayer and moments and remembrance. Actually, in my very first book, my characters are stuck in the middle of the woods as the sun goes down for Shabbat. They say the prayers anyway, using the sunset itself as candles. Here’s some art: http://shiraglassman.tumblr.com/post/78112396680/its-shabbat-shulamit-suddenly-realized-out
This, plus living up to Jewish values like tikkun olam (healing the world) and tzedekah (justice) and all that – that’s all it takes to feel like good/satisfying rep to me.
–Shira
As I’ve probably mentioned before, the term “Hinduism” is kind of a misnomer, as it implies that there’s one such thing. If Christianity or Islam are families of sibling belief systems that share obvious commonalities, “Hinduism” is a huge family of distant cousins, groups of which often don’t seem to have much of anything in common and you just have to take their word that they’re related. If you look hard, there might be a family resemblance.
I often think about this when confronted with the question of how I’d live my life in a post-apocalyptic wasteland (and this is something I consider with alarming regularity these days). Which are the parts of my upbringing that are actually important? What of it have I already jettisoned by choice or changes in circumstance and what more would I? And what of it is silly garbage that’s going to get me killed by the next band of water bandidos marauding the blasted hellscape that is New New York City?
Anything that you might broadly categorize as a religion has aspects that range from the ritualistic to the philosophical so of course Hinduism is no exception. I’d posit that extreme ritualism and extreme navel-gazing are both things likely to get you shanked by bandidos so in the interests of survival your character is probably going to want to tread a middle path. Any rules against eating beef are probably out the window (unless it just makes them sick regardless). So is strict adherence to doing a morning prayer or yoga, or meditating so deeply you don’t notice the bandidos coming. On the other hand, there may be good reasons for maintaining dietary restrictions (e.g., you can’t trust that any food grown outside the Safe Zone isn’t deadly). Meditation can relieve stress and you could probably use some stress relief after the apocalypse. However, arguably these markers are matters of culture rather than belief (that is, not all Hindus eschew beef or practice meditation; those that do do because they were exposed to the concept somewhere).
This is a hard question to answer because it would really depend what kind of Hindu background this character comes from and how (if relevant) they related to their culture “before the fall” so to speak. They may identify with one particular deity due to their circumstances (for example, Vishnu, to preserve the world they do have; Shiva or Durga, as a reflection of the destruction that presumably brought about said apocalypse, and from which there will hopefully come renewal; or Ganesh, to remove the obstacles they surely encounter every day). I should note that were it me in that position, any identification with or invocation to a god would probably be extremely sarcastic: the gods didn’t prevent the apocalypse, why the hell would they help me now? Again, it depends on the character’s personal outlook.
You might also consider some of the relations elemental factors have to most Hindu rituals and how that might change in this environment. For example: water, light, fire, and food are all typically revered or at least valued greatly.
- Water is a life-giving resource and many Hindus revere rivers. In a wasteland, protecting clean and safe water might very well have sacred significance as a matter of literal life and death.
- The divine is often thought to dwell in food and sustenance and gods receive offerings of food at festivals. You may not be having very many festivals but the value of food may be thrown into stark new focus.
- Does this world lack for sunlight, warmth, or energy? Orthoprax Hindu priesthood often revolves around keeping a sacred fire. In a world where flame is the power source of a community, for example, the person who keeps the fire going could very well think of it as a sacred ritual, and maybe that’s a connection to the beliefs or practices they or their family held before. You can even abstract it a bit more. What if a postapocalyptic community runs off some relict solar panels? Some character might see that as very literally depending on the sun for their survival.
If there is one thing that unites most flavors of Hinduism, it’s the notion of dharma, which is hard to translate, but loosely means “order” or “duty,” or more generally “that which is established or held firm.” So, what about this character holds firm? I’d say in such an extreme circumstance, devotion or religious practice is more than just throwing out the names of some gods every now and then to remind people of your roots (especially if you keep praying for help and it never comes). It’s more about how you conduct yourself in relation to the world, and when you reach back into those old virtues ingrained in you by your family, how you exercise them relative to nature and the people around you when literally may not be sure that the sun will rise tomorrow. It’s not easy but the apocalypse rarely is.
-Mod Nikhil
