The Meaning of It All

The Meaning Of It All

Occasion:Yom Kippur-2003

This past July, I served as a faculty member of the Spirituality Institute’s rabbinic retreat program. The Spirituality Institute runs this program for rabbis who are willing to commit to two five-day retreats a year, to study weekly with a hevruta / a study partner from the group and to find ways to incorporate a spiritual practice such as meditation in their lives. The retreats included the teaching of silent meditation, the study of Jewish texts on spirituality and experiential experiences. The rabbis, who had to apply to the program, were fairly typical of the rabbinate. Some had large congregations, some small, some were just out of rabbinical school, others had more than 20 years experience. What made them untypical of course was a desire to make a serious two-year commitment to a program on spirituality. As part of this final retreat, each rabbi was given four minutes to speak about how this program had impacted on his or her rabbinate. Rather than talk about programmatic changes they had made in their institutions as a result of their experience in the program, each rabbi spoke personally. To my surprise, and I think to theirs as well, it was who they were as human beings that had changed. For some their teaching and preaching had become more spontaneous, more from the heart; for others it was how they interacted with spouse and family, for still others it was how they dealt with conflict at Board meetings. It was an amazing and moving experience to hear these rabbis reflect upon their spiritual lives.
Sitting there it occurred to me that what they were talking about as rabbis was potentially just as true for any Jew. What had happened to these rabbis did not have to do with having a strong Jewish background or being a professional Jew, it had to do with seeing Judaism in a new way—that Judaism was about working on our spiritual selves. And I wondered whether you needed to go on four retreats to get it.
I have spoken to you before about perceiving Judaism as a spiritual practice. What has become clearer to me is what that means. And rather than use the word spirituality, which evokes many different meanings and feelings for people, and has no traditional Hebrew expression, I want to use instead the word kedusha—holiness.
Since the enlightenment, Jews have been able to leave the world of the ghetto and enter modern life, and become citizens of the country in which they lived. With modernity came the possibility of an entirely new form of identity that hadn’t existed in the medieval world—a secular one. Yet, in this process of emancipation, Judaism (and all religions) was relegated to the side. Nowhere is this truer than in the land of the free (America) where religion has become a leisure time activity that largely takes place on the weekend in between tennis and shopping.
As I spoke on Rosh ha-Shanah, Jews have responded to modernity in a whole variety of ways. Religious answers range from the ultra-orthodox who reject modernity, to the centrist Orthodox who embrace parts of modernity and reject others, to the liberal movements who struggle to find a real place for Judaism within their embrace of modernity. For those of us that embrace modernity, the question of why be Jewish is critical. There have been a number of Jewish secular answers as well. For some it is a question of ethnicity. In the melting pot of America, however, ethnicity is fading in a world of increasing mobility and assimilation. We will remain Jewishly ethnic but that is hardly enough of a foundation to create a vibrant Jewish identity.
For a while, we heard that we owed it to the Jewish past to ensure there is a Jewish future. Emil Fackenheim, who just died, talked about the 614th commandment—not to give Hitler a posthumous victory over the Jewish people. While for some, this continues to remain central to their Jewish identity, the likelihood of it surviving another generation is slim. In the last century, Zionism provided a strong identity for some parts of the Jewish community. But with the founding of The State on the one hand, and the increasingly complex reality of that State, for Jews living outside of Israel, Zionism is not enough to create an identity. The various attempts to create a secular Jewish identity—ranging from Bundism to American political liberalism, to Jewish philanthropy—have also failed to provide a compelling reason for a deep commitment to Judaism. Anti-Semitism, the Holocaust, and Zionism are no longer serious competitors to the sole remaining version of Judaism that has vibrancy—Judaism as a religion.
Yet, as I mentioned religion has become relegated to a small place in most people’s lives. This has been true partly because of the pattern of America with its strong commitment to the separation of church and state. It was also true because religion was undercut by modernity—do we really believe in miracles, in an afterlife, in a God that acts in the world, in the literal truth of the Bible as the word of God, and if we don’t what then? In founding Reconstructionist Judaism, Kaplan grappled with the challenge that he and the Jews of his time felt in the face of modernity. Kaplan reconstructed many of those notions in order to create a religious Judaism that he could feel was intellectual compatible with a contemporary understanding of science and modernity’s stress on rationality. He rejected Ethical Culture because he wanted God and Judaism to still be a part of his life and the lives of those attracted to Reconstructionism. And he had no doubt that modernity and reconstructed Judaism could live in harmony with one another.
In some ways we are living in a similar world as Kaplan’s in that we embrace modernity. In other ways, after the Holocaust and nuclear devastation, we are less optimistic that the rationale and the scientific will overcome all the problems of this world in the end. We are more willing than those in the 1920’s to admit that perhaps some things are beyond the grasp of human minds. There are mysteries in life and in the universe that may never be “solved” by human beings. Yet, we remain skeptical of the unseen, embarrassed by such words as belief and faith. Perhaps we are admiring of the fervor and enthusiasm of some Orthodox Jews or deeply believing Christians, but we know that their religious life rests on principles and beliefs to which we know we cannot fully commit ourselves.
It is in reflecting about this in the light of those rabbis talking about their spiritual lives that has clarified for me what I think Judaism is all about for this time and place. What Judaism had become for these rabbis was an opportunity to help them to lead holy lives. Holy is more than an ethical life though I don’t think you can be holy and be unethical. Holy is more than just resolving your inner demons and neuroses. This is what makes Judaism different from just being a good, ethical person. This is what makes Judaism different from being involved in a successful therapeutic experience. It is also what makes Judaism different from the way it is narrowly practiced in today’s world.
What does in mean to live lives of holiness? It means to live with an awareness of God, which in turn leads one to strive to be the best person each of us can be. It means placing God to the center of Jewish life. Judaism without God feels to me to have a big black hole in its center. In the end I think Judaism has to be a religion, not an ethnic identity, not a people, not even a Jewish homeland and I don’t think you can have a religion without God. I could talk with you some about the God I believe in, but the truth is I spend little time thinking about who or what my God is and what God does or does not do. And I can see no reason that Judaism can’t have many different notions of God as it has had in the past. Your God and my God, as it were, do not have to be the same thing. Perhaps you believe in a supernatural God. Perhaps you believe in God as the power that makes for righteousness in the world. More important than what God is, is the belief that God is. That God exists. Without a belief in God, I can only believe that this universe is random. If there is no God, then life emerged by accident and my life and your life has no ultimate meaning. We are just snowflakes, each unique and each soon vanished. It would mean that Kohelet is correct at his most sarcastic—there is nothing new under heavens and all is vanity of vanities. Nothing really matters except in an incidental way at the moment.
I reject the notion that we live in a universe without meaning. For me, God is the word for that which gives meaning to the universe. God is the word that says everything is not random. Not because I believe God performs miracles. Not because I believe that God punished that person with illness and rewarded that person with wealth. I believe in a God that is the unity beneath the incredible diversity of this world. In the face of our existential aloneness, in our feeling separate from everything and everyone else, God is the word that says there is a Oneness and that oneness is God. Judaism gives us a prayer that says it—the Shema—the Lord is One; and a notion—be-tzelem elohim—that we are all created in the Divine Image, or in Hasidic terminology, that there is no place absent of God. What differentiates me from my ancestors is that I don’t explain the workings of this universe as God acting in the world. I don’t think God acts in the world, but rather that God is present in the world. The God I sense is described right at the beginning of Genesis—ruah elohim—the spirit hovering over the depths, that which offers meaning in the tohu u-vohu, the chaos of the world in which we live.
What else do we know about God? For me, I know nothing. Like Maimonides and like the mystics I think God is unknowable. All I can find is images from the tradition that give me some ways to articulate or put into metaphor statements about God. I believe because I have to believe, there is no proof, there is only that leap of faith.
God created the world and left it for humans to finish the work of creation. But we are not alone, for God is with us. What we do matters. Why did God create the world? Who knows? What are we supposed to do with that knowledge? We are to strive not to forget that we are the images of God; we are to live lives of holiness. In explaining what it means to imitate God, the rabbis say: we should be merciful as God is merciful; we should be holy as God is holy. We could all give examples of what it means to act in merciful ways, but what does it mean to act in holy ways? Holiness, like mercy and compassion is not a set of deeds; it is a way of being. Judaism always wanted the deeds to lead to a way of being in the world. Yet as long as there has been halakha, there are those who think that Judaism is like the Boy Scouts—just a matter of getting enough points to earn another merit badge.
Mesillat Yesharim, a great ethical work of the late Middle Ages (translated by the way by M. Kaplan) goes to great lengths to talk about those who observe every jot and tittle of the halakha but remain miserable human beings. What I am suggesting is a more holistic model that understands Judaism’s influence on the whole of each person—how we relate to other people, the universe and ourselves.
Traditionally, the mitzvot / commandments are divided into two categories: Those that are bein adam le-makom, “between people and God,” and those that are bein adam le-havero, “between people.” The second category is the easiest to understand. We all believe that we should behave ethically. We all strive to love your neighbor as yourself or not put a stumbling block before the blind, to contribute to those who are needy, and to fight for a more just society. And even if there are particular Jewish understandings on what it means to live an ethical life, there is a great deal of overlap with other ethical systems. What makes ethics different in Judaism is its larger context as part of a religious system. This leads us to the second traditional category of mitzvot / commandments those between people and God. Modern Jews struggle with those commandments that we usually refer to as ritual. While we all understand the value of not spreading malicious gossip (even if we have difficulty practicing it), it is hard to understand why if I turn on a light on Shabbat or drink a milkshake with my burger it makes any difference to me, to the world, and to any kind of God that we might want to believe in. At best, the details of the rituals seem fundamentally arbitrary or artificial.
I would suggest a re-thinking of the meaning of this category. These are not mitzvot that we do with or for God. This is different from the ethical commandments, which by their definition have an impact on the people around us. We give money to help the poor. We don’t celebrate Passover because it helps or pleases God—no more than sacrifices were so God could eat a meat meal. These mitzvot /rituals are for us. They are to remind us of important themes such as freedom at Passover, to rest from our week on Shabbat, to pay attention to the transition from our home to the outside as we see the mezuzah on our doorpost. They are all reminders to make us more aware of the deeper truths and challenges of lives. Beyond the specificity of each of these rituals, all of them are reminders that there is a God, that we are not alone in the universe, and that because there is a God we are called to act in holy and caring ways. These mitzvot remind us that holy moments are not just when we help a friend, but when we remember the beauty of the world by noticing a sunset, smelling the flowers, and eating of earth’s bounty. These rituals remind us that while time is inexorable, we should notice the seasons and celebrate the chance for renewal and change. These rituals encourage us to at least leave our imprint on time by setting aside one day a week where we slow down enough not to be time driven. The purpose of these rituals is to encourage us to pay attention to our lives, to be fully conscious and thus to make the most of the most important gift we have—our lives. Thus the ritual is not incidental but together with the ethical is essential for living a life of holiness.
There is one final piece missing from this practice because one could strive to be an ethical person, and strive for a consciousness of God and one’s place in the universe and still be a miserably unhappy person. There is a third category of mitzvot that needs to be added. Rabbi Joseph Soloveitchik, a leading rabbinic scholar of the twentieth century, following in the tradition of the Gaon of Vilna (eighteenth century), posited another category: mitzvot bein adam le-atzmo, “commandments between a person and his or her self.” One way to understand this third category is as it relates to the middot, our sense of “character.” Beyond how we interact with God and with other people, we spend a great deal of time interacting with our interior world. Middot is the tradition’s word for those good characteristics that we want to cultivate, that not only make us more compassionate to other people, but also make us emotionally happier and healthier. These middot are broad ways of being. They go beyond a specific mitzvah, commandment. After all the Torah does not say we should refrain from anger, nor does it specifically say that we manifest patience toward others. But this category of commandments concerning our inner selves suggests that the basic aspect of our personalities form a vital part of how the Torah wants us to behave.
Some of these qualities include: gratitude, generosity, patience, openness, trust, deliberation, and compassion. These qualities require great effort to achieve even in part. They need to be cultivated. They are essential for holiness because they inform the basic experience of our lives. We create our own spiritual environment. It can be an environment so polluted with negativity that it is hard to breathe or an environment redolent with the scent of the wonders of the Garden of Eden.
In this view of Judaism, there is no division between what we used to call religious and secular. We wouldn’t say that “shul” is religious and “work” is secular, because we know that a thousand times a day at work we are called upon to choose between holiness and hurtfulness. Judaism is all encompassing, which is why this vision of Judaism is not easier but harder than a Judaism isolated to ritual practice, however complicated that practice might be. All activity, all life is part of Torah. In each moment and in every activity we should strive to do that which is right and good.