Tag: God

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Books CCAR Press spirituality

CCAR Press Author Interview: Rabbis Goldberg and Zecher on ‘Because My Soul Longs for You’

Rabbi Edwin Goldberg and Rabbi Elaine Zecher are the coeditors of Because My Soul Longs for You: Integrating Theology into Our Lives, recently published by CCAR Press. In this interview, they discuss the development of the book and what readers can learn from it.

What inspired the creation of Because My Soul Longs for You?

Rabbi Zecher: In the 1990s, in preparation for the development of Mishkan T’filah: A Reform Siddur, the CCAR embarked on a study of what today’s liturgy should look like. One of the findings was the need to include a diversity of theological expression in the experience of prayer. As we considered what might be possible, our colleague, Rabbi Elyse Frishman—editor of the new prayer book—presented the idea of a two-page spread to the editorial committee, allowing for a multivocal presentation of each prayer. As a result, many images of the Divine could be offered. We called it an “integrated theology” because the experience of the Divine is expressed in many ways and yet they are interconnected. Several years later, Mishkan HaNefesh: A Machzor for the Days of Awe carried this concept forward. As we reflected on the idea, we wanted to offer pathways to understand what it could mean through the experiences of our lives. Instead of viewing it as a specific theology, we regard integrated theology as what Rabbi Abraham Heschel called a depth theology, the actual experience of the Divine. We are inspired by the way we can share the story of our lives and the way the sacred becomes foundational to how we understand who we are.

What was the most challenging part of editing this book? 

Rabbi Goldberg: The most challenging part was defining the nature of the project. Originally we planned to present more intellectual views of God, all part of the normative Jewish spectrum of theology. The notion was not working, however, since we are not classically educated theologians. Once the concept of integrated theology became the focus of the book, everything fell in place. After that, the challenge was finding writers who could evoke the Divine in their lives in a way that was not too reductionist. We did not want a report of someone finding God in music, for instance; we wanted a record of a spiritual experience that involved music. It sounds the same, but it is not. One is a report, the other an experience. We were fortunate to succeed in finding the right people who lived their experiences and could share them so well. 

What is something new you personally learned while working on Because My Soul Longs for You? Did any of your own perspectives change? 

Rabbi Goldberg: I was astonished to learn about experiences that my colleagues had undergone of which I had no idea. There is so much trauma in people’s lives, and it is easy to forget this because we hide it so well. I like to say that spirituality is a dedication to reality at all costs. When editing this book, I saw people’s struggles, as well as their blessings, in a new light. This insight also helped me put my relatively minor challenges into a better perspective. Especially in this pandemic, the book affirms that we need each other, and we need God in our lives. And we really need God with others in our lives. I have missed that group experience of shared spirituality so much.  

What do you want readers to take away from the book? 

Rabbi Zecher: This book is a jumping off point for each of us to contemplate where we might not have considered God’s role in our lives, or our understanding of the sacred as implicit or explicit to what we believe to be true. The beauty of the storytelling offered within these pages is that it helps us identify something similar—or even different—but that may have been there all along. We also hope that it will help the individuals we work with and pastor every day in their own journey of discovery. If reading, studying, and considering their lives awakens their understanding of the Divine in a new way, then putting together the book has been a holy endeavor. 

The editors and contributors to Because My Soul Longs for You are available to teach by video on topics in the book. Email bookevents@ccarpress.org for more information.

Rabbi Edwin C. Goldberg serves Congregation Beth Shalom of The Woodlands, outside of Houston, Texas. He was an editor of Mishkan HaNefesh and Divrei Mishkan HaNefesh, also published by CCAR Press.

Rabbi Elaine S. Zecher is Senior Rabbi at Temple Israel of Boston, Massachusetts. She was an editor of Mishkan HaNefesh, Machzor: Challenge and Change, Volume 2, and Mishkan T’filah for the House of Mourning, also published by CCAR Press.

Categories
Books CCAR Press spirituality

Why Is It So Difficult to Talk about God?

Rabbis Edwin Goldberg and Elaine Zecher are coeditors of the new CCAR Press book Because My Soul Longs for You: Integrating Theology into Our Lives, which delves into the many ways we can experience the Divine. In this excerpt from the introduction, they examine the challenges of discussing God.

“Can you speak to my child about God?” The concern showed on her face. She had no idea how to explain who, what, why, and how God is.

She is not alone. God is the other three-letter word that makes some parents cringe when they are asked about it. Actually, it sometimes feels like explaining sex is easier and more rehearsed in our minds than getting involved in a conversation about God. The truth is, many people feel uncomfortable having this conversation.

Why is it difficult to talk about God? Is God like a mathematical equation we could solve if only we could get the right definition? There are many ways to describe God. Judaism is a monotheistic religion founded on the principle that all the disparate gods are really One God. There is no god of the seas, or the sky, or even the underworld. Our biblical ancestors Abraham and Sarah found one God uniting the universe and united by the universe. Jewish tradition teaches that their tent was open on all four sides in order to receive wayfarers from any direction.1 The image of the tent serves another purpose as well: it signifies that there are countless paths to come closer to this One God. Within our own tradition, many passageways lead us to an experience of the Divine—an experience that so many of us are longing for.

The title of this book, Because My Soul Longs for You, comes from an old Sabbath hymn, formally called Shir HaKavod (“Song of Glory”) and also known by its first two words, Anim Z’mirot. It is ascribed to Judah HeChasid of Regensburg (d. 1217). The entire song features a number of original verses and some language from the Bible. Our title is taken from the first stanza, אַנְעִים זְמִירוֹת וְשִׁירִים אֶאֱרוֹג, כִּי אֵלֶיךָ נַפְשִׁי תַעֲרוֹג (Anim z’mirot v’shirim e-erog, ki eilecha nafshi ta-arog, I seek pleasing melodies and thirst for songs because my soul longs for You), itself a reference to Psalm 42:2. The tradition is to open the Torah ark before reciting this prayer, a way of suggesting that God’s spirit is summoned when it is sung.

It is human nature to long for God’s presence in our lives. However, many of us do not know what to do with this longing. The subtitle of this book is Integrating Theology into Our Lives. There are many and diverse Jewish paths to experience and think about God, and we as Reform Jews have the privilege of having more than one path open to us. With a little bit of study and a lot of living, our soul’s longing can be addressed. All we need is intention, some humility, and the honesty that open up before us a warm and redolent world.

Shir HaKavod includes these words:

And so I tell your glory, yet never have seen you;
Imagine you, find names for you, yet never have known you

By hand of those who prophesied and throngs who worshipped you,
You gave imagination to the glory beyond view.2

Within these pages, we hope you will discover the One in the different forms described and experienced in the many and diverse paths by talented writers, rabbis, cantors, scholars, and seekers who allow and welcome God into their lives. In their wisdom, we hope you are inspired to allow and welcome God into your own life, too, while also drawing God out—in the path that is yours.

Read the full introduction, download the free study guide, and order the book at theology.ccarpress.org

1. Rabbeinu Yonah on Pirkei Avot 1:5.
2. Translation by Joel Rosenberg, in Kol Haneshamah: Shabbat Vehagim  (Wyncote, PA: Reconstructionist Press, 1994), 452.

Rabbi Edwin C. Goldberg serves Congregation Beth Shalom of The Woodlands, outside of Houston, Texas.

Rabbi Elaine S. Zecher serves Temple Israel of Boston, Massachusetts.

Categories
Death

God and the Tragedy Test

Rabbi Richard Agler

So who, exactly, is the God we believe in? This is not only a question for rabbis, it is a question for every Jew. And it may well be an urgent one, one that our Movement needs to address seriously, and sooner rather than later.

It is a question that took on special meaning for me when I was well along in my rabbinate. After the sudden and tragic death of our 26-year-old daughter Talia in 2012, skilled though I may have been at answering God questions for congregants, (though I’m anything but sure that I was) I found myself unable to answer them to my own satisfaction. It was disconcerting, to say the least.

So I embarked upon a search and concluded that the God who people meet in our congregations—the God of many of our sacred texts, liturgies, and holidays—is a God that many, if not most of them, cannot and do not believe in. Moreover, the same can be said for many of us.

My journey led me to the God I refer to as the “God of Law and Spirit.” It is not complicated.

The God who intervenes in history, the God who answers the prayers and does the will of those who love and serve her, the God who executes righteous judgement, is simply not a God that coheres with most people’s life experience or understanding. Before my daughter’s death, I allowed myself to finesse these issues and, on occasion, to plead ignorance in the face of them. In the wake of it, I no longer could.

Like us, our people look at the world and see that moral and righteous conduct do not protect them, or for that matter anyone else, from the ravages of nature, the laws of physics, or the predations of our fellow human beings. Like us, they are acutely aware that much of the world’s suffering is morally incomprehensible. Like us, they see that the Bible’s promises to reward and protect the good and the upright have been mocked throughout the length and breadth of human history. This may help to explain why many of our rabbinates place greater emphasis on Torah and Israel than they do on God.

But God is the ultimate underpinning of Jewish life. Without a God who is genuinely alive in the hearts and minds of our people, it becomes difficult, if not impossible, to sustain an enduring faith.

We know that challenges to biblical notions of God go back at least as far as the Book of Job. The Rabbis, too, dealt with them extensively, and often creatively. As have philosophers and theologians from antiquity until today.

But such sophisticated understandings are typically not what our people encounter in our liturgy, sacred stories, or holidays. Certainly not in any clear or systematic form.

It is good that we are strong on tikkun olam. It is good that our communal life is strong. But Judaism and Jewish life will never be as strong as we need them to be without a true and living God in the hearts, minds, and lives of our people.

We need to offer God-language, God-teaching, and God-understanding that is coherent, comprehensible, and above all, believable.

———

In my search I looked for a God who could, as I came to call it, “pass the tragedy test.” I needed a God who could make at least some sense in the wake of life-upending loss.

Many people, whether they have directly experienced tragedy or not, are on the lookout for such a God as well. Few of us can live so much as a day without witnessing testimony to the world’s violence, chaos, and injustice. Where is the God who makes sense in such a world? Where is the God who cannot be dismissed as a relic of the ancient religious imagination?

My journey led me to the God I refer to as the “God of Law and Spirit.” It is not complicated.

The “Law” is derived, in varying degrees, from the understandings of Maimonides, Spinoza, Einstein, and others. In essence, the Laws of the universe rule us all. They are invariable, immutable, and all-inclusive. They control everything from the farthest cosmos to the subatomic particles within us and around us. We either live in accordance with these laws or we do not live at all. I understand God as being one with them.

In addition to Law, there is Spirit, the qualities we all recognize as essential for religious life, for spiritual life, and even for life itself: love, kindness, compassion; the pursuits of wisdom, justice, holiness, and sacred experience.

I believe the God of Law and Spirit to be worthy of our devotion, service, commitment, and aspiration. Because it is neither wrong nor foolish to believe that:

  1. The laws of physics and nature are all-encompassing, universal, and determinative.
  2. These laws, God’s Laws, if you will, can create tragic outcomes—for no higher purpose or reason.
  3. God does not intervene in our lives to prevent such tragedies—or to inflict them.
  4. God nevertheless lives in Spirit. Through the sacred values of goodness, love, wisdom, compassion, justice, and more.

The God of Law and Spirit offers honest and believable answers to more than a few of our timeless questions. Why did my daughter die? Because when a 100-pound human being is struck by a three-ton motor vehicle moving at speed, the Law determines what the outcome will be. No amount of righteous behavior, and Talia had much of it on her ledger, can change that.

Alas, this God is limited, but at least this God does not ask us to accept myths that often fail, and fail spectacularly, in the face of tragedy. I think of the God of Law and Spirit as a God for grownups.

Again, the God presented in our liturgy, Torah readings, sacred legends, and holidays does not always meet this standard. And when people are offered a God who is at variance where their life observations, they distance themselves from their faith.

They may remain “cultural Jews.” They may consider themselves “secular Jews.” They may call themselves “spiritual but not religious.” In no small measure because we have not given them an intellectually honest way to be both.

I don’t pretend to have anywhere near all of the answers. It is my hope that collectively, we can search, find, articulate, and ultimately instill them into our own lives, and the lives of our people.

It is time for us to ask as a Conference—because this is a place from which rabbis can lead—questions such as, To whom, exactly, are we addressing our prayers? Where is the God we can really believe in? Is there a better response to morally inexplicable tragedy than to plead ignorance and hug?

Beginning with the first Pittsburgh Platform in 1885, and on three formal occasions since, Reform Judaism has addressed these issues. I submit that it is time to put them on our agenda once again.

Rabbi Richard Agler is the Founding Rabbi and Rabbi Emeritus of Congregation B’nai Israel in Boca Raton, Florida. He is the author of The Tragedy Test: Making Sense of Life-Changing Loss (Wipf and Stock, 2018). He’s also the director of the Tali Fund, where he supports the work of the Talia Agler Girls Shelter for trafficked, abused, and exploited girls in Nairobi, Kenya, and promotes awareness and registration for organ donation.

Categories
Technology

Circular Rainbows, Fractals, and Spiritual Technology

“Renew the old and sanctify the new.”  – Rav Abraham Isaac Kook

The thoughtful use of technology can enhance Jewish spiritual practice and engagement. This summer, I was privileged to witness and facilitate a few exceptional examples of this while serving as faculty at the URJ 6 Points Sci-Tech Academy.  At this overnight summer camp, currently celebrating its 4th year, campers and staff utilize science and technology as tools to strengthen Jewish identities, develop Jewish community, and enrich Jewish practice.

One Shabbat afternoon during an all-camp picnic, electrified chatter began to spread through the community. Campers and staff excitedly pointed to the sky.  I ran out from under one of the large oak trees shading the main lawn to witness a sun halo, or circular rainbow surrounding the sun.  Many exclaimed they had never seen such a marvel, let alone known that something like this was possible.  After capturing a quick photo (which will be published in PopSci), I ran over to the mic.

Fortunately, I have the CCAR Daily Blessings app on my phone, which contains, among others, the blessing recited upon seeing a rainbow.  After giving a short explanation of the importance of rainbows in Jewish tradition, I was able to lead everyone in the blessing.  This unexpected experience was enhanced and transformed into a Jewish teachable moment by technology, which allows us to access innumerable resources at a moment’s notice.

Even the more traditionally routine moments of Jewish practice at camp are enhanced by the spiritual use of technology.  Each Friday night, we pray together using a Visual T’filah that contains videos of campers sharing their thoughts on the week’s scientifically-focused Jewish value. (This week was kesher, connection.)  Campers who might otherwise be too shy or nervous to get up on stage are able to share their thoughts, and to marvel at their larger-than-life participation in Shabbat services.  Because the camp utilizes a Visual T’filah Template, the director of Jewish life (a self-declared novice at PowerPoint) is able to easily refresh and expand the Visual T’filah each Shabbat, even when I’m not there.  Visual T’filah, like the other spiritual technologies I help develop at the CCAR, offers new opportunities for engagement and meaning in Jewish practice.

Perhaps my most impactful contribution to camp this summer, however, was the short teaching I gave during Boker Big Bang (the morning ceremony during which a blessing from Nissim b’chol yom is studied, and, using chemistry, something is blown up).  Our blessing for the day was “she-asahni b’tzelem Elohim,” who has made me in the image of God.  I explained to the campers that I especially enjoy using scientific metaphors to help myself and others understand God.  This is, in part, because when I was their age, as a scientifically-minded youth, I had trouble believing in a god for which there was no tangible proof.  It was my awareness that someday I might believe in God that kept me involved in Jewish life long enough to recognize that even the early rabbis needed metaphors to try to understand God.  God as a king or ruler, one of our most popular metaphors, may have worked for them back then, but did little to aid my understanding of God in modern times.

 

One of my favorite metaphors for God imagines God as wifi. It surrounds us and with the right tools we can connect to it, each other, and the rest of the world.  Another metaphor I love is God as computer programmer.  In the same way that computer code can be used to create entire universes through 1s and 0s, I imagine God creating the world with 1s, 0s, and -1s (i.e. protons, neutrons, and electrons).  Finding a scientific metaphor to understand the notion of b’tzelem Elohim (humans being created in the image of God), however, was always out of reach.  Last year, a rabbinic colleague, who is also my wife, gave me the metaphor for which I had been searching.  After waiting more than half the year, I was finally able to share this metaphor with the campers at the URJ 6 Points Sci-tech summer camp.

The metaphor, which perfectly expresses how we were made in the image of God, how we are a part of God but separate, and how we are all connected to each other through God, is: Fractals!  In these complex images, elements are repeated on such a scale, that zooming in reveals that each smaller section looks equivalent to its larger counterpart, and each part is unique but still connected to and a part of the whole. This metaphor clearly had an impact because later that day, a camper in a coding workshop decided to write his own program that would draw a fractal. Another camper expressed that during my talk she felt as though I was speaking directly to her.

While these campers and counselors might be more naturally drawn to scientific metaphors and technological tools, they represent an important path of the future of the Jewish people and the trajectory of contemporary society.  And while some of us may find technological tools only applicable in work settings, or to be a distraction from certain aspects of life, intentionally integrating these tools into our spiritual practice can breathe new life into Judaism and usher in a new age where religion and technology are not seen as at odds with one another but, rather, as mutually beneficial.

—

Rabbi Dan Medwin is the creator of Visual T’filah and the Daily Blessing app as the Manager of Digital Media for the Central Conference of American Rabbis. He also serves as a founding member of the URJ 6 Points Sci-Tech Academy Camp Council.

Categories
Books

The Second Day: A Pilot’s Perspective

In anticipation of the release of CCAR Press’s newest book, Seven Days, Many Voices: Insights into the Biblical Story of Creation, we’ve invited several of the book’s contributors to share excerpts from the book. The book is now officially available from CCAR Press. 

The second day of Creation supplies the world with a new device never seen before: an “expanse” that separates two domains, the heavens and the waters, from one another. The original Hebrew rakia, “something that is beaten or stamped out,” is like a sheet of metal an artisan has flattened into a thin layer to divide one area from another. Portrayed here as decidedly solid, later in Genesis (7:11 and 8:2), we learn that rain can descend from the heavens through windows or sluices, offering the fascinating possibility of trans-expanse communication: water could come down, and in certain very rare instances, people could go up.

In the early days of postbiblical literature, the idea of human beings ascending to heaven to access hidden secrets was all the rage. Enoch, Elijah, Moses, and just a few other characters were granted such supernal experiences, succeeding in their desire to gain divine knowledge in a way that even the subsequent mythical Prometheus would have envied. As a rabbi and student of ancient texts, and a pilot, I admit to feeling a deep connection to these ancient ascent stories.  We moderns, who leap routinely heavenward in complex tubes of beaten metal with sophisticated machinery unimaginable to the premodern mind, are often pretty blasé about what it takes to leave the earth’s surface, climb a mile into thin air, and land a thousand miles distant.

Focus, for a moment, on the intense harmony that must be achieved by the unstintingly complex mechanism that is an aircraft; the balance between going above and returning to below. In the complexity of flight lies another expanse we must cross: the expanse of reaching for expertise. Bringing oneself squarely up against a challenging task one learns to perform is a vital part of being fully human. Flying is but one of these sorts of tasks. The truth is we become fully human when we commit our entire selves to something that is hard and worth doing, when we know our limits, and when we take pride in what we achieve.

One lesser known form of aviation is soaring, also known as gliding. In soaring, a powered aircraft tows you up from a grass runway to a few thousand feet over the airport, whereupon the engineless glider and pilot sail free to employ the air around them to remain aloft as long as possible. The harmony that results from diverse parts that function together suggests a oneness to the universe that is both human and beyond humanity, existing both below the expanse and above it at the same time. As a glider pilot, I have personally circled in rising columns of air with families of hawks, climbed over ten thousand feet in just a few minutes in strong thermal lift, and remained aloft for hours traveling miles and miles powered only by the air. To be able to understand clouds and wind, lift and sink, terrain and airflow well enough to do this makes me feel as if I have access to secret knowledge; as if I have, like an ancient, gone on an ascent to the heavens and returned with secrets that surpass regular humanity. Once one has soared, one can never quite look at clouds and the sky in the same way again. Each glance at sky above fills me with a deep and abiding sense of gratitude that God has created a world in which this is possible for mortal human beings.

For the remarkable ability to fly, with all its beautiful complexity, and for entrée to the secret knowledge of an aviator in the heavens above, I am profoundly thankful. The Creation story in Genesis reminds us, at its core, that God’s handiwork is a gift God shared with us, which implies a duty of care and an invitation to investigate. Safe inside beaten metal thousands of feet above our normal dwelling place, we effortlessly cross expanses unimaginable to our ancestors, learning and growing as we go. This gift of ascent within God’s Creation, whether literal or figurative, is one we can never fully repay.

—

Rabbi Aaron Panken is a contributor to CCAR Press’s newest book, Seven Days, Many Voices: Insights into the Biblical Story of Creation.  Rabbi Panken is also President of Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute (HUC-JIR), North America’s first Jewish seminary, with campuses in Cincinnati, Jerusalem, Los Angeles, and New York.  

Categories
Reform Judaism spirituality

Rabbi, I Don’t Need Religion to Be a Good Person

Rabbi Mordecai Schreiber, Celebrating 50 Years in the Rabbinate.

I cannot recall how many times over the years I’ve heard the words: “Rabbi, I don’t need religion to be a good person.” I am sure we have all heard different versions of this statement, and it probably gave us pause. As a young rabbi, it sounded to me like a copout. After all, we all are expected to strive to be good people. Religion, as I understood it and still do, has as its main goal to make us good people. Certainly, religion can be easily misused or misapplied. But the founders of the great religions taught kindness and compassion and inveighed against evil. We Jews are taught, “Do not separate yourself from the community.” What binds the community together are our shared beliefs, customs, and traditions. Being part of the community teaches us we are all responsible for one another, and provides the opportunity to help others rather than look out only for ourselves.

Looking back, however, it has become clear to me I had been too judgmental in considered this statement a copout. Instead of dismissing it as a convenient way to “separate oneself from the community,” I should have focused on the words “a good person.” No one should be scorned for wishing to be a good person. Imagine, if everyone were a good person, there would be peace in the world. I should have said to the makers of that statement, “I applaud you for striving to be a good person. This is the worthiest cause of all.” I could have then gone on to say, “You need to find the best way for you to be such a person. I, personally, find religion to be helpful for me to achieve this goal, but everyone is different.” In other words, I shouldn’t have taken it as a rebuke or a criticism of me as someone who represents religion, and let the conversation end at that.

Life, one learns over time, is an ongoing search. We all search for something, and our search takes us in many different directions. For some, interacting with a spiritual leader may be a positive experience, and for others it may be the opposite. Most difficult of all is one’s experience of God. As children we are taught to believe in a good God who cares for you and who is interested in your well-being. But our faith is constantly being put to the test. Life, even under the best of circumstances, is the school of hard knocks. As Rabbi Harold Kushner reminds us, bad things do happen to good people, leaving that person with the unanswerable question, why is God doing this to me? Losing faith in not uncommon, and it is often painful. We Jews who have experienced the greatest tragedy of our long existence in our own lifetime, have every reason to lose faith in a good and caring God. But many of us have made a conscious decision not to give up faith. “In spite of everything I continue to believe.” I believe that in the end good will prevail, no matter how difficult it may be.

I will remember next time someone says to me, “Rabbi, I don’t need religion to be a good person,” I will look kindly at that person in the eyes and utter the words I should have uttered long ago. This will definitely make me a better person.

—

Rabbi Mordecai Schreiber is celebrating fifty years as a Reform Rabbi. 

Categories
spirituality

Sitting With the Unknown: Continual Revelation of the Not-Yet Revealed

I have a quote on my bathroom vanity that reads, “I have no idea what’s going to happen, and I love it!”  In the middle there is a stick person with his hands triumphantly in the air.  Care to guess how many times I have exclaimed back to this piece of paper, “I do not love it!  I do not love it??!”

I framed this quote and its invitation to sit with the unknown precisely because, it is so, so difficult! We want the comfort of believing that we determine our destiny, or if we do X, Y, and Z this way, we will get what we want.  And while many of our actions shape our fate in profound ways, more often than not, we cannot control what happens to us or our loved ones.

There are some whose faith holds that God has a plan for them, and this is the reassurance that they need in times of uncertainty.  And yet, there are also many of us who do not believe the Eternal directly intervenes in human affairs, or that the Divine is even capable of intervening.  In fact, the Torah goes to great lengths to reassure the searching Jew that skepticism is healthy, legitimate, and even cele­brated in Jewish life.[1]  Rabbi Daniel Gordis asks, “Why does Ju­daism validate doubt? Judaism takes doubt seriously because it takes people seriously.  It recognizes that if Jewish life is to touch us, then it has to meet us where we are. That “place,” Jewish tradition understands, is often a place of bewilderment, of hurt, of skepticism.[2]

And yet, this place of bewilderment or skepticism also invites us to unite with the Eternal.  Reaching out to the Transcendent in moments of uncertainty is deeply Jewish. Our relationship with the Divine Mystery is not supposed to be easy blind faith.

Judaism doesn’t ask us to deny our doubts or fears.  Instead, it invites us to feel God’s presence precisely in these challenging moments.  Bringing mindfulness to these moments offers a helpful path through the struggle.  When we feel powerless, the practice of gratitude can open our hearts connecting us to the simple and profound—our ability to see the light glinting off a tree’s verdant leaves or feel the cool sweetness of a breeze across our face, or to taste the sweetness of a summer peach.

Acceptance of the present moment is another mindfulness practice. It requires patience and strength to sit with discomfort because we do not always know when our thoughts or circumstances will change. Practicing acceptance while sitting with discomfort or the unknown invites us to move into the Divine Mystery even as the unknown scares us. We are afraid things will never change even though we know things always change!  To master our fear, we tell stories and make explanations. However, it can be more skillful to let go of knowing.  Freedom comes with surrender to the unknown.

Martin Buber teaches, “the world is not comprehensible but it is embraceable.”  We do not always need to know how things will turn out, instead we can focus on how we respond in the moment. We can only feel the Divine when we are truly present.  God does not appear when we are worrying about the future, God is manifest in moments when we inhabit the here and now.

Sometimes we cannot summon tools to sit with the unknown, move into the mystery, or connect with gratitude. Sometimes, we are lost in a downward spiral.  If we are able to reach out to our friends, teachers, colleagues, and fellow seekers in these moments, they remind us that this is only temporary.  We have had other challenging moments and will again. They remind us that while the darkness may feel stifling or terrifying, it will shift.  They reassure us that they have been there too; moments of unknown darkness are part of the experience of being human.

We may draw solace in the thought that the Divine weeps with us too sometimes.  God is present in our tears and fear.  With this consolation, we are no longer alone. Here we find peace in the unknown.

The Sefat Emet, a nineteenth century Hasidic rabbi, claimed that the destiny of the Jewish people lies precisely in our openness to the continual revelation of the not-yet-revealed.  The constant quest is openness to the Mystery.  Openness to the unknown.  And we can choose for it to be terrifying and miserable.  Or we can use it as an invitation to feel God’s presence—from gratitude, remaining present, and communal support.

There will probably be many more times when I will holler at the stick figure on my bathroom vanity.  In these times, my thoughts will be projecting all sorts of terrible possibilities in the future, or that a particular situation feels intolerable.  Instead, may these moments open us to the continual revelation of the not-yet-revealed– with patience, with acceptance, and with wonder.

—

Rabbi Jessica Kessler Marshall joyously serves Temple Beth Or in Everett, Washington.

 

[1] http://www.myjewishlearning.com/article/from-belief-to-faith/

[2] Ibid.

Categories
Books High Holy Days spirituality

What is God’s Relationship to Suffering and Evil?

As we ask big questions during the High Holy Days, Lights in the Forest: Rabbis Respond to Twelve Essential Jewish Questions, presents a range of Jewish responses to both theological and philosophical questions pertaining to God, humanity, and the Jewish people. In the spirit of the High Holy Days, we would like to share some of the inspirational responses included in the book, for a thoughtful and meaningful New Year.

I imagine that God weeps at the sufferings of the whole disharmonious natural world. If God does weep with us, it is with a heart that we wrote into the story. We invented God’s heart, our greatest contribution to God’s tale.

I cannot know why suffering and evil exist. No work of fiction is free of it. It is the stuff of timeless story. However, our greatest spiritual resistance to suffering is metaphor and interpretation. To interpret is divine. God breathed that ability into us.

LITFXXX_Page_1A traditional Jewish ritual response to nightmares is called “the Amelioration of a Dream” (Babylonian Talmud, B’rachot 55b). The ritual requires three friends to declare that the dream be interpreted for good. The text explains that all dreams have a hint of prophecy; however, all dreams can be interpreted positively. In fact, the prophecy of the dream lies partially in its interpretation. The dreamer says three times, Adonai shamati v’yareiti—God, I heard what You made me hear and I was frightened. Three friends respond with the prescribed words, “Choose life, for God has already approved your deeds. Repentance, prayer, and charity remove the evil of the decree.”

We dream, but we are also dreamt. We are written, and within that story, we write. It is said in Torah and our liturgy: U’vayom hash’vi-i shavat vayinafash, “On the seventh day God ‘rested.’” Translators struggle in translating vayinafash, suggesting, “On the seventh day God rested and was refreshed.” Vayinafash, however, literally means God “ensouled.” On the seventh day God rested and created spirits. Out of God’s dark, void chamber before Creation, God suddenly dreamed a dream/nightmare and based on that dream/nightmare, the world was sketched and animated in full color. We are the dream/ nightmare. We have little control over the outcome except to interpret it for the good.

A congregant had a double mastectomy and did not know how to love herself afterwards. She would stand before a mirror naked, seeing herself as grotesque. We sought a metaphor that would help her to see herself in a new light. We imagined her body as a sacred altar and that her breasts were the sacrifices that redeemed her life. Years later she told me that now when she stands before the mirror, she thinks “sacred altar” and has found a love for herself inside that she thought had disappeared. She reinterpreted her nightmare through metaphor.

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Rabbi Zoe Klein serves Temple Isaiah in Los Angeles, CA.

Excerpted from Lights in the Forest: Rabbis Respond to Twelve Essential Jewish Questions, edited by Rabbi Paul Citrin and published in 2015 by CCAR Press.

Categories
Death Healing spirituality

If I Should Meet God

A disciple came to his rabbi and lamented: “Rabbi, I have all these terrible thoughts. I am even afraid to say them. I feel absolutely terrible that I can even think these thoughts. Rabbi, I simply cannot believe. Sometimes I even think that God doesn’t exist.”

“Why not, my son?” the rabbi asked.

“Because I see in this world deceit and corruption.”

The rabbi answered: “So why do you care?

The disciple continued: “I see in this world hunger, poverty, and homelessness.”

And the rabbi once again responded: “So why do you care?”

The disciple protested: “if God is absent there is no purpose to the entire world. And if there is no purpose to the entire world, then there is no purpose to life – and that troubles my soul greatly.”

Then the rabbi said to his troubled follower: “Do not be disturbed. If you care so much, you are a believer!”

When the atheist Stephen Fry is questioned as to what he would say if he met God, he leaves the interviewer at a loss for words when he responds: “if I should meet God I’ll say: “Bone cancer in children? What’s that about? How dare you? How dare you create a world in which there is so much misery that is not our fault? It’s not right. It’s utterly, utterly evil!”

As a rabbi wrote: “it is time to raise the bar in the conversation about religion and faith, with the knowledge that most people, whether religious, agnostic, atheist, or whatever-ish, truly do want to do what is right, to find and express love, to live a life of purpose, and to be in a meaningful relationship with others.”

“It is good to question and challenge those with whom we disagree, but we deserve more than pithy catch phrases, caricatures of those who we have defined as our enemy, and the childish need to win. Human beings can be glorious creatures who, through conscious choice, can bring healing to the world, and we all need to do this together.”

In my many years as a rabbi, and especially since my illness, I have come to believe that more important than any theology or system of belief is caring, compassion and loving kindness. I have evolved spiritually to believe that no matter what we believe or don’t believe the true heart of our humanity is human goodness and decency.

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Rabbi Hirshel Jaffe serves as Rabbi Emeritus of Temple Beth Jacob in Newburgh, NY.  Rabbi Jaffe just celebrated his 80th Birthday in Israel after surviving cancer for the fourth time. 

This blog was originally posted on The Running Rabbi. 

Categories
spirituality

Spirituality in the Rabbinate

I was ordained in 2007, and accepted the position as the solo rabbi in a very small, extremely remote congregation in southeast Alabama.  My nearest colleague (Rabbi Elliot Stevens) is a two hour drive away.  Mine is the only synagogue in 100 mile radius, and we are located in the buckle of the Bible Belt where it is assumed if you walk and breathe, you must be a Christian.  My congregation is wonderful, and I have really enjoyed my 8 1/2 years here.

However, I should tell you that while I learned so much at HUC, I was not prepared spiritually at all.  We never talked about our relationships with God, we never prayed, except at services. Every meeting here in the south begins with a prayer, and I swear I was a deer in the headlights the first time I was asked to begin a meeting with a spontaneous prayer.

I think the lack of spiritual training hurts us and it hurts our congregations.  I have never once been asked to translate Talmud; in fact, most of my congregants only have a vague idea what Talmud is.  But when I do sermons or adult education on prayer or God, I am overwhelmed by the response. There is such a hunger among our congregants for a relationship with God, to learn about God and prayer.  And it is the area where I seem to have the least expertise.  Thank goodness for good books!

And I have so felt so empty spiritually myself so much of the time.  I cannot pray during services.  I have no cantor, so it is just me leading services and the music.  How can I do all that and focus on God?  It just doesn’t happen. I tried praying on my own using the prayer book.  That did not work at all.  And I am so busy because I am the only rabbi around.  It is truly a 24/7 job. Finding time to enhance my spirituality falls on the back burner.

I have been fortunate to be involved with a group of Christian clergy women, all seminary ordained. We meet once a month to study, or to let our hair down and complain about how the robes never fit right, or why dresses and slacks don’t have pockets to put your portable mike in, or most importantly to share serious problems we are having. There are many people down here who don’t think women should be leading a congregation, so we are a support group for each other.

I was surprised when I found out that all of the other clergy in my group are REQUIRED to have spiritual direction.  Required!!  The nun from the Catholic Church is REQUIRED to go to a spirituality retreat every year.  I wondered why we Reform Rabbis do not have anything like that.  I thought about it for a very long time, and finally approached one of the women ministers to ask about spiritual direction.  Of course, a Jewish spiritual director is out of the question here in Alabama, but I have a director who is Methodist. I have been seeing her once a month, driving two hours each way.  I’m slowly but surely getting my head straight and reestablishing the relationship I had with God before I started HUC.  I find it ironic that I lost the relationship I had with God which helped propel me into HUC while I was at HUC.  In any event, I look forward to seeing Lesley each month, and think I am becoming a better rabbi because of the explorations I am doing with her.

So I want to ask, why do we not have any training in this most important aspect of our rabbinate?  I took four required classes in Talmud, yet never talked to anyone about God, except theoretically as part of a Bible class or Philosophy.  I know now that the Institute for Jewish Spirituality does very good work in this field.  I am also aware that some inroads for spirituality training have been made on the LA and NY campuses of HUC, but I have not heard anything about Cincinnati.  And Rabbi Rex Perlmeter wrote a blog post around the High Holy Days about spirituality programs he is doing through the CCAR.  We are becoming more aware of the need to talk and teach about spirituality and our relationship with God.  I hope it continues and becomes an integral part of training for future rabbis.

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Rabbi Lynne Goldsmith serves Temple Emanu-El of Dothan, Alabama