Reviving Contemplative Jewish Life:
Practice Based Judaism as an Avenue
to Experience of God
The Role of Contemplative Spiritual Practice in Contemporary Jewish Life
The Institute for Jewish Spirituality seeks to contribute to the revitalization of Jewish religious life, enriching not only the Jewish people but American society and culture as well. We are reviving the riches of the Jewish spiritual tradition, bringing to light and promoting the awareness of and capacity to engage in contemplative spiritual practice. We are recovering this aspect of Jewish religious life in the texts and practices of previous generations, drawing our teachings primarily from within the mystical and Hasidic streams of Jewish. We believe that the survival and revival of Jewish religious and cultural life depends on a renewal of Jewish engagement with the experience of an immanent and accessible God, grounded in contemplative practice and expressed in Jewish terms through Hasidic language. The fundamental framework for all Jewish spiritual practices are Torah and Mitzvot, which we take as our starting point, applying and reinterpreting them for this generation of American Jewish seekers. To that end, we have created programs to train Jewish leaders in spiritual practices that have the power to renew the energy of Jewish tradition, to make it again a vibrant source of spiritual inspiration.
Why We Are Here At This Moment In History
The Institute for Jewish Spirituality emerged out of concern for the state of the contemporary Jewish community, of diminished identification with Jewish life and institutions, of decreasing involvement in Jewish religious and spiritual life. The response of the Institute is a vision for the renewal of Jewish contemplative spiritual practices as a source of inspiration and energy to connect Jews to Judaism and support them in engaged action in the world. The approach of the Institute builds on traditional Jewish practice – on Torah and mitzvot – while contextualizing and energizing them in terms accessible to Jews immersed in contemporary American society. The values that shaped the second half of the 20th century prepared the ground for this approach. The passing of the generation of the Holocaust makes possible as much as it demands renewed conversation regarding the possibility of a lively Jewish engagement with God. Contemplative Jewish practice presents options for those Jews seeking to deepen their experience of Jewish life as a spiritual path. Training Jewish leaders in these practices and in this approach will contribute to a transformation of Jewish religious and organizational life.
The end of the 20th century brought new challenges to Jewish life. The end of the Cold War did not bring about the end of all wars. Indeed, rather than greater distance from the horrors of the Second World War, the turn of the millennium brought violence and genocide again to European soil. Even though the victims were not Jews, this explosion of inter-communal strife heightened awareness of the persistence of anti-Semitism in the world. Further, the failure of the Oslo process to bring peace to Israel and the Palestinians and the eruption of violence in the second Intifada deepened the sense that Jews were still not fully safe, and that the world was still a long way from peace and security for all.
The last decade of the 20th century saw a great economic expansion in which Jews participated and from which they benefited. Yet, this was not without its problems. The expansion grew, in part, from the increasing globalization of capital and of markets. Increased competition in the marketplace generated global pressures on natural resources and the environment. Further, globalization further increased disparities between the wealthy and the poor, between the first world and the developing world, and greater job insecurity. Many worried that while the “end of welfare” seemed to succeed during an expansion it would not offer the protections and support necessary to help the many women and families who had lost benefits and would have no hope in a contracting economy. Today there is greater doubt of the capacity of work to bring real security, uncertainty in the power of free markets alone to bring peace.
The increase in the already frenetic pace of American life, the sense of economic insecurity and personal peril that reached its peak following the destruction of the World Trade Center left many people uncertain, ill-at-ease, looking for something to hold on to, to be rooted in. In many quarters, religion offered what they were looking for. But, in many instances the answer that was offered was one that also rejected much of what the 20th century had brought about, and that many people, Jews in particular, valued: civil rights, social integration and equality; feminism and the equality of men and women; care for the environment; multiculturalism and acceptance of diversity. Traditionalist, orthodox and fundamentalist responses provided a framework for holding a diverse and complex world in order, but they did not answer other pressing needs for many people, particularly Jews. A different spiritual response was called for.
The Response of the Institute: Enlivening Jewish Practice
Contemporary American Jews, in growing numbers, have expressed a yearning to cultivate the inner life as an essential component of their Judaism. They seek practices for living that will help them connect to their own inner depths, and that will also help them connect to their neighbors, communities and the world at large. As Jews across the United States have begun their search for spiritual insight and practices, they have often been frustrated by a lack of preparedness among the leadership of Jewish religious institutions to respond knowledgeably to their yearning. But, teachers cannot transmit this aspect of Jewish life until they learn it themselves. The Institute seeks to address this situation by inviting rabbis, cantors and other Jewish leaders to investigate their own personal spiritual life and path, while also studying the profound practices and exquisite texts of the Jewish spiritual tradition that help awaken and sustain spiritual awareness.
The central concepts shaping our approach to study are Torah and Mitzvot – experience and practice. The term Torah has many meanings; central to them is that of instruction or regulation. It is this sense that then pervades all understandings of Torah –instructions, laws, advice and exhortations directing its followers toward proper living. Further, the Torah presents itself as the record of the interaction between God and humankind, and particularly with the Jewish people with whom God enters into a covenantal relationship. Following the instructions and advice given in the Torah leads one to proper living and a relationship with God. In this sense, Torah is also the way to God, the manner by which a relationship is built and maintained.
Both following the way of Torah and in the study of Torah we meet God. That is, it is through the Torah that we not only meet God, but come into direct contact and communion with God. We experience the oneness of all creation, the interconnectedness of all existence. This experience opens up the possibility of bridging the distance between God and people, since it leads to the awareness of God’s presence in our own hearts and souls. The awareness of this possibility opens us to the experience of God in the study of Torah.
At the same time, we sense that since God is infinite and beyond conception, the Torah itself must also be infinite in its meanings and beyond full human comprehension. Our inner awareness of God leads us not to a sense of “possessing” God, of holding and containing God. Rather, it opens us up to a deep awareness of our finitude, inviting us as well to participate in God’s unlimited being. Thus, the Torah (particularly in its most general sense of Jewish learning) will always present to those who study it something new, something appropriate to the age, fitting for the student. It will never be insufficient, and no part of human life can stand outside of it. It may take creativity and imagination to make the connection, but it is that spiritual creativity that has sustained and enlivened Jews and Judaism throughout the ages.
The mitzvot – the commandments – are the specific instances and particular details of the steps we might take on the path toward relationship with God. They are practices that help us to enter, stay on and return over and over to the path. The tradition – and particularly its mystical aspect – posits an identity between the mitzvot of the Torah and the cosmos, replicating itself even in the microcosm of the human body. Thus, in the enactment of any particular mitzvah we might experience a connection to God. Finding that this is true in one instance may lead to two outcomes: repetition of that particular practice in the hope and expectation that the sense of connection will recur; investment in all of the other mitzvot with that hope and expectation. The consequence may be a lively, expanding and rich sense of spiritual experience, finding God in every moment, in each discrete act.
Yet, there is an equal danger that the repetition of the practice, and the expectation of a pre-determined outcome, may eventually lead to a sense of dullness in practice. The liveliness experienced at first becomes elusive, then dies away. Yet, since these practices are understood to be commandments, they may not be disobeyed, even if they no longer wake us up to the experience of God. That experience, however, is the purpose of the mitzvot and the yearning of the spiritually attuned heart. Thus, when previous practices no longer engender experience, the inclination is to find new practices, new behaviors or acts that will. Thus, throughout history Jews have constantly striven to renew and revive their practices, to keep the mitzvot alive as a spiritual path.
Yet, contemporary American Jews may not generally perceive mitzvot as steps on a spiritual path. They may see them as good deeds, acts that all people should undertake to be a good person. The mitzvot may be Jewish identifiers, those things that Jews do to help them identify with and be known as Jews. They may constitute the framework of a religious life, the way in which one engages in Jewish religious practice. They may even be how one obeys God. Yet, most American Jews resist heartily anyone impinging on their independence and autonomy, making the concept of “commandment” difficult to teach or accept. And, the term “commandment” implies a “commander,” a concept that many modern Jews, suspicious of the “supernatural” (and after the Holocaust), find difficult to accept. Thus, few American Jews, until recently, expected or understood that these specific actions were meant to awaken their hearts and bring them into relation with God.
The Value of Practice
The Institute is committed to Torah and mitzvot as the Jewish path of experience and practice. They are the source of the language for and the approach to Jewish spiritual life. Yet, to bring this message to the contemporary Jewish community we must do two things. We must show that it is possible to experience God’s presence in our life. Further, we need to offer means to that experience, enlivening the mitzvot as means to that end by expanding the number of practices that nurture this experience. The relationship of practice to experience is one of the core concepts of the Institute program. What we bring is a renewed attention to the dangers of routine, even in religious practice, and a commitment to offer practices that have the potential to self-renew. If they have this capacity, then these practices might be used in the service of Torah and mitzvot, to keep them alive as an avenue toward God.
Again, when we speak of the direct experience of God’s presence in our lives we are pointing to a sense of an expanded consciousness, beyond that bound by our particular needs or concerns, our ego-driven habits of mind and heart. This experience helps us to move beyond our sense of separate self – separate from God, separated from others, independent of external control – toward a deeper sense of connection and interconnection. We seek to strengthen and deepen this sense through our practices. We seek to incorporate in our lives and then grow in the divine attributes that contribute not only to our own happiness, but the wellbeing of all creation: gratitude, open-heartedness, equanimity, generosity, humility, and so on.
The Place of Hasidic Texts
We have given preference in our work to the study of Hasidic texts as an approach to studying Torah. This aspect of Jewish tradition and thought has not been widely accessible to the broader Jewish community. Indeed, it has largely been ignored by mainstream Jewish movements, made kitsch as an icon of a now vanished European Jewish life, or identified with particular Hasidic movements that are generally not in line with mainstream Jews. Yet, it is a rich source of Jewish spiritual teaching.
The Hasidic movement is the most recent movement seeking to revive Jewish life while also maintaining its practices within traditional Judaism. It was, at the same time, self-consciously a rejection of the prevailing forms and thought. Thus, it may appeal to contemporary Jews as a means to access traditional practice and enlivened spiritual experiences. Hasidic teachings regularly claim that the Torah is eternal, and therefore whatever it says must be meaningful and applicable to contemporary readers in their particular context and way of life. In this light, Torah does not (necessarily) demand that those who study its teachings return to some earlier, more “traditional” and therefore more “authentic” Jewish form. Rather, it empowers its readers and contemporary students to make Torah and mitzvot a dynamic source of connection to the Jewish community, to the world at large and to God.
Further, the Hasidic tradition embraces particular forms that speak to the contemporary Jewish seeker. It is forcefully and directly concerned with experience. The Baal Shem Tov sought to awaken his followers to the need and the possibility of recognizing in each moment that “God’s glory fills the whole of the earth.” This was not meant to be an intellectual awareness, but an experiential one. A corollary of this teaching is the fundamental unity and oneness of God and all existence, experienced as lying behind yet also in the physical world. In the experience of God’s oneness one is brought into relationship with all Creation – animate and inanimate, sentient and non-sentient, human and non-human. This awareness engenders an element of hope and joy. It is passionate in its optimism, in its expectation that human endeavor can contribute to and participate in the betterment of the world. Its focus is on the individual while always holding its awareness on the effect of the individual on the whole. Its view is universal. Finally, it is a movement that has a fine psychological awareness, and its insights can speak directly to a contemporary mindset. In this sense, the Hasidic model of study and practice offers a way of reading Torah that opens it to the needs of this moment and this generation.
The Appeal of Contemplative Spirituality to Contemporary Jews
The approach of the Institute, based in Torah and mitzvot, influenced by Hasidic tradition, yet open to other traditions and spiritual practices, offers the possibility of renewing a relationship with God based on personal experience. Rooted in the Torah, it suggests a means of bridging the separation between God and the world, and so a different way of understanding the relationship of God to the unfolding events of the world. Transcending the chasm between God and the world opens the possibility of a theology emphasizing compassion and connection over judgment and separation.
Furthermore, the experience of the unity of God and Creation, the interpenetration of the spiritual and the physical, offer powerful confirmation of the lessons this generation has learned through its engagement in civil rights, feminism and the environment. The deep awareness of the male and female aspects of the divine expressed in the mystical and Hasidic tradition speaks to the generation that spearheaded the feminization a male-dominated community into one that is more equal, one more attentive to male and female. The Hasidic tradition, despite its own insularity and xenophobia, offers a way of experiencing being human that may redeem a world demeaned by violence and injustice. It is an approach that helps one to remain steadfast and hopeful that people can change themselves and the world while also acknowledging that all ultimately lies in a dynamic beyond human control, that is, God.
The experience of God that the Hasidic texts present is one that responds to the core values and concerns made central by the baby boomer generation. That generation grew up in and energized powerful and transforming processes in American society. They came of age at the height of the civil rights movement, and participated in the women’s liberation movement, manifesting the benefits of feminism. Their connection to the physical world has been shaped by an awareness of the existence of an intimate interconnection with all of Creation, leading to a concern for their impact on its preservation. Through environmental awareness they have come to a more global consciousness. This, in turn, reflects back on their awareness of responsibility for contributing to a world of greater peace and security for all people.
Civil Rights
The Civil Rights movement had been underway from before they were born, but Brown v. Board of Education was decided just as the oldest boomer children were in grade school. The impact of this decision on the schools that these children would attend shaped their views of what a just community should look like. A later element of the civil rights movement was the emergence of Black identity as a defining element of communal identity. This, in turn, generated a larger “identity” movement among other minorities – Native Americans, Asian Americans and Jewish Americans. The challenge of the multicultural, multi-ethnic American society they have helped to create is how to achieve its ideal: e pluribus unum. While respecting and valuing divergent and differing ways of viewing and engaging with the world, how are we to attain a sense of unity as a society? What does it mean to promote a unique spiritual or ethnic expression, to maintain a separate cultural or religious community, within a multicultural society?
Feminism and Women’s Rights
The civil rights movement emerged alongside of and also energized the contemporary feminist movement. Women’s rights had been an issue on the American agenda almost as long as the abolitionist movement. In the middle of the 20th century, along with civil rights for African Americans, women sought greater enfranchisement in American social, business and political structures. The baby boomer generation grew into adulthood negotiating new territory in terms of the previously defined roles of husbands and wives in the sexual relationship, in child-rearing and in seeking professional advancement. Women were moving into realms previously identified as “male”, and men were being challenged to acknowledge and experience those aspects of their inner life that had been identified as “female.” This led to questions regarding all cultural power structures, ultimately extending to the nature of God. This, in turn, raise questions viz. the proper shape of a religious polity without a dominant, “male” God (and “his” male representatives: priests, rabbis and other leaders) as authority and head. For those Americans involved in Jewish (and Christian) religious life this challenge generated a fundamental problem. While responding to and valuing women’s experiences, concerns and insights, how are we to read the Torah, engage in religious practice and believe in God, when that same God (as previously depicted) is associated with male gender and those religious systems based on this image and these texts excludes or ignores women’s life and experience?
The Environment
As the oldest of the baby boomers were finishing college or developing their careers and forming families, the first Earth Day took place. Even as emerging adults they came to understand the contribution of communal and corporate behavior to water and air pollution, and the effect of this pollution on both the environment and public health. The impact of the nuclear arms race was first felt in the release of radiation into the atmosphere through nuclear testing, and the danger of nuclear power to the environment has been part of environmental awareness from their youth. The image of the earth as a blue marble in space sent back from Apollo 11 on the moon in 1969 made clear the interconnectedness of all the earth, and the implications of environmental inaction. Yet, that same world is so big. It is difficult to see immediately how one’s personal actions have an effect on the whole. Moreover, it is difficult to know how to bring about changes that will benefit all beings on earth when changes in one country – large or small – are limited to that country. How can the individual affect the totality?
Social Justice and Peace
The hope for peace is a central characteristic of the baby boomer generation. They were born in the years following the Second World War and during the Korean War. The shadow of nuclear annihilation hung over their childhood, and the Viet Nam War deformed their youth. The State of Israel came into being in the year the first baby boomers were born, an affirmation of life over and against the death and destruction of WW II and the Holocaust. The horror of the Holocaust both motivated many to oppose all war, while the fear of communism – and the commitment to preserve Israel in the face of constant rejection and aggression – led others to accept the necessity of self-defense despite their desire for peace. When Israel emerged victorious in the Six Day War, it seemed possible to claim that a Holocaust would “never again” be perpetrated against the Jews. Many thought that it was now also clear that genocide should never occur again.
Yet, soon after the world stood by as millions died in the Biafra war in Nigeria. Soon, the depravities of Pol Pot in Cambodia came to light. Genocide – even against those conceived of as “neighbors” and fellow citizens – was indeed possible again. Despite searing awareness of the horrors of the Holocaust, the West did not intervene to prevent the murder of millions. Misplaced respect for State sovereignty and Cold War politics conspired to silence protest and engender passivity. Even as they yearned for peace, baby boomers were left to wonder what they could do to prevent war, particularly when they recognized their own complicity, as citizens, in the global use of proxy wars and violence for political ends. What is it that one person might do to contribute to bringing peace, wellbeing and life to others living so far away, subject as they are to larger political forces opposed to peace?
These movements have shaped the concerns, ideas and values of the baby boomer generation, Jews included. There were other forces at work, of course, including awareness of Eastern spirituality (Buddhism, Hinduism; Transcendental and other meditation practices), a search for transcendence, mysticism, an openness to experimentation (drugs, alternative living styles, art), awareness of the importance of mind-body integration, and attention to personal healing through the use of psychology. Along with the movements addressed above, these factors underlie and shape the emerging spiritual quest of the late 20th century. For a spiritual system or discipline to appeal to these spiritual seekers, it must address this complex of concerns. For it to appeal to Jews, it must address another matter mentioned above: the possibility of a positive theology following the Holocaust.
God After the Holocaust
Even as Jews moved toward greater integration into western societies, Jewish theology – in theory and in practice, in the synagogue and in the minds of Jews – retained elements of the belief in Jews as “the chosen people.” A corollary to “chosenness” is blessing. The emerging security and ease of the American Jewish community suggested to many that they, as a people, were blessed by God. Perhaps the experience of ease and security validated the native Jewish religious expressions – American Reform, Conservatism and Reconstructionism – as acceptable, legitimate and “justified” before God. The horrors of the Holocaust called Jewish chosenness and election into question. For some, the re-appearance of anti-Semitism in such brutal form made continuing to live as a Jew unacceptably dangerous. For others, though, who were not prepared to stop being Jewish, it called Jewish chosenness and religious purpose into question. There were two mutually reinforcing aspects to this question. One half of the question asks: if this is what it means to be chosen, then who needs it? A response to this question might be a loosening of attachment to Jewish life, a lessening of involvement in Judaism. The other half of the question is more subtle. Chosenness had been experienced as an expression of God’s favored blessing, accepted without serious obligations and without any potential negative consequences. God blessed the Jews simply for remaining Jews. Yet, apparently it was possible that God might withhold or withdraw that blessing, or fail to act to maintain it. The question that flowed from this awareness was: if this God who has chosen us can permit – or even countenance – such horrors, then who needs this God?
Such anger at God led many to give up on Jewish religious life altogether. Many more, though, continued to participate in family and home based celebrations. Many continued to belong to synagogues, attending life-cycle events, High Holiday services and participating in and contributing to community activities. For many of these Jews, religious practice expressed ethnic identity and cultural continuity without a concomitant belief in God or engagement in spiritual quest or experience. For these Jews, Jewish survival, communal cohesion and support for Israel were of greater importance. In a sense, involvement in political support for Israel became a form of Jewish religious practice. Interest in Israeli culture, enthusiasm over Israel’s vitality and creativity served for many as a source of “spiritual” excitement and energy. This spirit pervaded mainstream synagogues, and characterized the spiritual context in which Jewish baby boomers grew up. As a consequence, many who sought a relationship with God, who sought a true spiritual experience, found their synagogues and Jewish communities empty and unresponsive. Yet, many more of this generation continued to belong to synagogues, to participate in Jewish communal activities and to identify as Jews without any language or practice to connect them to their own inner spiritual awareness, needs or capacity.
As the baby boomers have aged, spiritual urgings have made themselves known. This is partly a response to growing into middle-age. It is also a response to the evolution of the issues the baby boomer generation promoted: civil rights and social justice, feminism, the environment and peace. The world has become smaller, and it is ever more difficult to ignore injustice in the world, whether at home or on the other side of the world. Men and women equally struggle to find meaning in their lives, to work and enjoy the fruits of their labors, to bear children and experience an extension of their lives into the future. Technology has proven to contribute as much to the despoiling of the environment and endangering life as it has to human betterment and survival. Engagement in politics has not brought about solutions to the most important issues facing this generation. Israel’s role as a moral beacon and as a source of cultural creativity has been diminished by war, scandal and political complexity. Bereft, as well, of a connection to God, to a source of strength and wisdom from which energy and will to continue might flow, this generation finds itself turning to spirituality to experience wholeness and hope, to ground and frame their lives. It is in response to this quest that the Institute for Jewish Spirituality has emerged.
The Aims of the Institute and Its Core Practices
The Institute seeks to engage with the leaders of mainstream Judaism, its rabbis, cantors and lay leaders, to invite them to explore their own spiritual paths, and to offer them tools by which they might deepen their own spiritual lives and open doors for other spiritual seekers. We believe that working intensively with these leaders will contribute to the transformation of the American Jewish community, making it more open to contemplative forms of worship and service, contributing to the viability of synagogues and other Jewish organizations.
The Institute programs are retreat based, not only because we believe that the participants benefit from time away from work to develop their skills as leaders. Rather, we believe that it is in the effort to create a new community of seekers, of entering into new forms of relationship in the context of mutual trust and respect in the context of sacred community, that it will be possible for these leaders to experience their own transformation. In a sense, the absence of God from Jewish communal – and even synagogue – life meant that American values and practices became the mode of work and interaction. Institutional, instrumental relationships became the mode of interaction; creating sacred community was often in conflict with the business of the synagogue or institution. To help spiritual communities emerge in their institutions, Jewish leaders must first experience them in their lives. Toward this end we invite them to enter into a new form of relationship, to participate in creating a safe, supportive, non-judgmental and welcoming community. We, together, bring to life and model the Jewish community we wish to create in the future.
What follows are descriptions of the core practices of the Institute for Jewish Spirituality: Mindfulness meditation, Spiritual Community (Retreat), Text study, Prayer, Yoga and Spiritual Direction. In addressing each one we have sought connect it to the cultural and spiritual need that it addresses; to explain what it is, how we teach and practice it; to describe how we support our participants in incorporating it into their lives and into their work in community; why we believe that it is a core practice. Each one alone has the potential to wake up the heart and bring the practitioner into an experience of the divine. For some participants, access to an experience of expanded consciousness is more readily accessible through yoga or text study than through the practice of sitting meditation. The IJS is attuned to different spiritual types and different kinds of learners and therefore teaches a variety of practices. We expect that some participants will be more drawn to one or another practice but perhaps not all. Still, each practice echoes and buttresses the others, such that the program is experienced as a unified, mutually reinforcing whole.
We have identified these practices as core practices, as the foundation from which we might renew and revive Jewish life and practice through Torah and mitzvot. They are not meant to replace traditional practices, but are offered as techniques to open the heart, recognize and deepen particular spiritual qualities, and provide a ground for the traditional practices. They are all – these core practices and Torah and mitzvot – meant to be recommendations of ways to remain attentive to the goal of religious and spiritual life: to connect with our deepest selves so that we might connect with our neighbors, with our communities, with the world at large and with God.