Spirituality  

Rabbi David offers four brief teachings on spirituality:

Introduction to the Series

What Is Spirituality?

Awe and Mystery

Second Brief Teaching on Spirituality

Shekhinah: The Communal Mystical Experience

Third Brief Teaching on Spirituality

Redemption & the Discernment of Purpose

Fourth Brief Teaching on Spirituality

Introduction to the Series:

by Rabbi David J. Cooper

This series was written in response to a variety of questions that I have been asked over the years. People often express to me puzzlement about what spirituality is supposed to be about. Some who don’t think they are spiritual (but often actually are) wonder what they might be missing. Others who consciously are spiritual, often cannot frame what they mean by that in words. And in Kehilla, one question that repeatedly surfaces from both adults, teens and children is whether one must believe in God in order to be spiritual. My approach is that developing one’s spiritual dimension is a desirable goal regardless of one’s theology or atheology, and that it is so accessible that we are often experiencing our spirituality without being aware that we are doing that. 

Often we have heard the refrain “I am not religious, but I am spiritual.” The common sense understanding about this phrase is that it means something like “I do not ascribe to any specific doctrine of beliefs – or if I do have beliefs they may not necessarily correspond to any one religion’s doctrine – but I do have a sense of connectedness or transcendence that I cannot necessarily put into words or frame as a set of beliefs.”

The idea that spirituality and religion are possibly at odds is unfortunate, because one of the best ways to experience one’s spirituality is in the context of a religious community. In Kehilla, where we do not require that people ascribe to any specific theological doctrine, it is an especially user-friendly atmosphere for people to experience their spirituality in the context of a caring community.

That said, what then does “spirituality” mean? Is it necessary to believe in God to have a spiritual life?

To deal with the second question first: no, there are deep spiritualities that many people and cultures have experienced without a specific belief in a deity. But if you do believe in some concept of God, that belief is part of your spirituality.

What Is Spirituality?

by Rabbi David J. Cooper

A congregant challenged me once and wanted to know, “What would spirituality provide for me that my poetry and dancing don’t already provide for me?” I asked in response, “How do you define ‘spirituality’ that you exclude your dancing and poetry from it?”

Spirituality and Connectedness

One’s spirituality is the experience that one has of feeling connected beyond one’s own limited self. I call it an experience because spirituality is not cerebral and conceptual; it isn’t something one can accurately reproduce in words. While the reality of being connected can be described, the experience of connection is so subjective that it can only be experienced. For example, I can accurately convey to you the fact that I am connected to my mother and that I feel blessed to have been raised by her, and I can inform you that I love her. But I cannot reduce the experience of my relationship to my mother to a formula in words that would enable you to feel what I feel. Poetry and metaphor may help convey to you a sense of my subjective experience, but it cannot reproduce that experience in you unless you take the words and metaphors I employ and allow them to trigger your own feelings derived from your own experiences.

If spirituality is an experience in regard to one’s sense of connectedness to the whole of creation, or to God, or to awe of the overwhelmingly majesty or mystery of time and space, you cannot learn to feel this way from my saying so, but rather from your own similar experiences. Thus, the form and medium of your spirituality is shaped or influenced by your personal history and your own psychological makeup. As your life-experiences evolve, as you develop psychologically, so to does your spirituality change as well.

Spiritual Moments and Practices

The immediate sense of spiritual heightening is not usually a continuous experience. There are more and less intense moments of it. Sometimes it happens during events of deep significance such as the birth of a child; or it may happen during more commonplace events such as witnessing a sunset. It may even be triggered in more negative moments, as when one is exposed to a great injustice. Many moments in our lives pass without the spiritual experience.

A turn toward cultivating one’s spiritual life can come up in different ways. It can arise as an impelled desire for a rich experience; it can come from a need that one has come to feel; it can come from a sense of commitment or obligation derived from one’s religious outlook; it can be inspired by an experience of connectedness or moments when feeling a presence of God. It can arise in many different forms. People cultivate their spirituality in different ways: they meditate, they write poetry, they sing, they pray and do rituals, they dance, they engage in works of service to other people. Often people use both individual and communal forms of these practices. An individual practice can be strictly geared to one’s own unique spirituality and timing. A communal practice breaks down barriers of isolation and builds community.

Whether individual or communal, rituals and other practices can often be spiritual experiences, but even at those times when they don’t produce a feeling of connectedness or awe in the moment, they still can benefit us by training us or reminding us or to us to stay open to the spiritual experience.

Spirituality, Responsibility and the Political

Often, when one has a taste of the spiritual – of the sense of connectedness or awe of the mystery – it results in a feeling of responsibility or purposefulness. For example, if I feel my connectedness to all the species on the planet, then I may feel that I have a responsibility to protect them.

And if one’s spirituality results in a sense of responsibility or obligation (of mitzvah) then it can be framework for what one does to fulfill this sense of obligation. From this perspective, one’s spirituality is intertwined with one’s politics. For example, if I feel responsible for protecting the species, my politics and what I do to with my politics will be a reflection of my spirituality.

Many people report that they experience deep spiritual moments during their activity in fulfilling the responsibilities they feel: such as when they are feeding their children, when they are repairing homes for those in need, when they are working for a cause, or when they are attend to the sick or those who are dying. Thus our spirituality shapes our activities, and in turn our activities trigger our spiritual experiences and transform them in a mutually informing process that can continue throughout our lives.

In the Book of Kings 1, chapter 19, there is story of Elijah the prophet who runs away to the desert for an opportunity to commune with God. He doesn’t find the divine voice in the great storm, or grand quaking noises, or fire, but in a still small voice. This voice, perhaps an internal voice, leaves him with a summons to go back into the world and transform it. Our spirituality can be both a retreat to inspire us and also a summons to activate us. Perhaps it is best when it empowers us to do both and enables us to transcend our individual selves and to transform both our selves and our world for the better.

Awe and Mystery

Second Brief Teaching on Spirituality

by Rabbi David J. Cooper

Mishnah, Pirkey Avot 3:17
Rabbi Elazar ben Azaria says “…If there is no wisdom, there is no yir’ah; if there is no yir’ah, there is no wisdom.”

In Hebrew, there is a highly significant word, Yir’ah. In older English translations it is rendered as “fear” – as in the expression “fear of God.” In more recent translations it is often rendered as “awe.” In fact, the concept of yir’ah does contain both of these connotations. “Awe” is often used today because it can capture, in a small way, the ambiguousness of yir’ah since it serves as the root word for both “awesome” and “awful.” Using “the fear of God” to translate “Yir’at YHVH” has been disfavored in recent years because it limits the several connotations of the original Hebrew.

Yir’ah describes a feeling of intensity when encountering something that has a high degree of power. We may be confronting something terrific or something terrifying. If it is terrific, we call what we feel “awe,” and if it is terrifying, we call it “fear.” In Hebrew we call it by the same name: yir’ah. Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel coined the expression “radical amazement” to capture in English some sense of yir’ah.

Confronting the Awesome and Awful.

For many, yir’ah is a core experience in their spirituality. We confront the wonder of existence; we confront the awesome realities of birth and death; we perceive great beauty in this world; we see misery and ugliness. It is possible to go through life trying to escape or avoid the highs and lows of yir’ah. But there is a price to pay. Avoidance or denial of those things that are fearful to us is just the flip side of fully appreciating the vast beauty around us. When we fail to face our fears and or to embrace our amazement, we diminish the fullness of our lives during this short opportunity each of us has to be alive.

What is the power that we respond to with our yir’ah? Some call it “God.” Many find this to be a good description of what they mean by God: that ultimate or primary power which is the source of all that which is awesome and overwhelming. For others, God language can act as an obstacle in describing the ultimate in their sense of awe. I believe that it is inconsequential what we label this experience. What we do with this experience is far more important.

Mystics, scientists, poets and lovers all experience yir’ah regardless of what they call it. The objects of yir’ah, even if they are identifiable, still have a quality that may be difficult or impossible to put into words. Why does this person I love inspire that feeling? Can I reduce it to the way he or she looks or acts? What about the awe I feel about the reality of existence itself? What about that fear I have about the great uncertainties about me? What is behind it all? Neither the scientist nor the theologian can authoritatively say.

Mystery at the Core

So in a very real sense, the core of all yir’ah is mystery. And no matter how much we learn and discover, no matter how much we philosophize and theologize, we cannot ultimately resolve the mystery. Those who claim to have the authoritative answer to it all are only speculating. More spiritually significant than resolving the mystery (or Mystery) is to live with the questions and to allow ourselves to experience the feelings that arise from our confrontation with the Mystery. By doing so, we may open ourselves more fully to the experience of being summoned to act with whatever sense of purpose or meaning that results from this awe-filled confrontation.

In the biblical story of the burning bush (Exodus chapters 3-4), Moses confronts God and he demands to know a name for God. He doesn’t seem to want God to be a Mystery, but rather to be something handle-able, something less frightening and less awe-inspiring—something that you can pin a name on and feel that you have mastered it. But the God character completely finesses the question, “I become what I become,” “Ehyeh asher ehyeh.”

If we reduce our God-concepts or our understandings of reality to something that is easy to handle or to name, to something sure and secure, to something less than an awesome mystery, then we are engaging in idol-worship, even if we call that concept “God.” We are worshipping the product of our own imagination. This does not mean that our efforts to understand reality are fruitless or in vain, rather it means that we need to be a bit humble about our beliefs and leave room for the fact that ultimately the Mystery is mysterious. And if that is a little scary, then welcome to the world of yir’ah.

A Note on Secularist and Religious Fundamentalisms

Micah 6:8
…and walk humbly with your God.

In the past few years, there has been a much-publicized polarization between some who advocate religious fundamentalism and others who advocate a secularist fundamentalism. The religious fundamentalists assert that the only source for truth is the word of God as described in their holy texts. Secular fundamentalists assert that religion is the root of most of the world’s evils and is an obstacle on the path to finding truth through science. Religious fundamentalists assert that secularism leads to self-centeredness and—since a secularist does not have any “fear of God”—that it must lead to amorality.

Fundamentalist approaches, religious or otherwise, have problems with subtlety. They have difficulty dealing with mystery. They want all ambiguities to be resolved and the truth that they perceive to be regarded as the exclusive truth. Each of these approaches builds an idol that it worships.

The path pursued in non-fundamentalist spiritualities and post-triumphalist religious communities is more humble by necessity. It requires us to regard truth as that which is sought and pursued rather than that which is found and captured. It requires us to admit that we have not secured ultimate answers to the myriad of questions raised by our existence and our experiences. If we treat truth in this way, we engage in a long-standing Jewish tradition emphasizing the primacy of questions over answers.

As a spiritual community, it is incumbent upon us to treasure the unique path that each of us pursues and to openly confront the mystery of which we are a part and in which we participate.

Shekhinah: The Communal Mystical Experience

Third Brief Teaching on Spirituality
by Rabbi David J. Cooper

Bamidbar Rabbah: 13:2:
“At what time did the Shekhinah come to rest upon the earth?
On the day the mishkan was erected.”

Often when we talk about having mystical experiences, we think that we’re talking about something that only spiritually adept people can do and only if they are in seclusion. For example, hitbodedut, Hebrew for “solitude,” or “isolation,” is a term describing Jewish meditation.

But I want to propose that more of Jewish mystical experience happens in community than it does in seclusion. Moreover, I want to argue that it has never been limited to folks who are especially adept at spiritual endeavors. And it is experienced regularly by people who do not characterize what is happening to them as a mystical experience. I also believe that it is not the monopoly of people who define their belief as a belief in God.

SHaKhaN’ti, MiSH’Kan, SHeKhiNah

The inspiration for this teaching comes from a description in the book of Exodus of the mythical moment when the Israelites pool their resources to build their sanctuary in the desert as described in the Torah readings Terumah (Exodus 25:1 - 27:19) and Va-Yak’hel (Exodus 35:1 - 38:20).*

In Exodus 25:8, the God character says “They will build me a sanctuary and I will dwell among them (or within them). “V-asu li mikdash v-shakhanti b-tocham.” The sanctuary is sometimes called a mikdash, a holy place, and sometimes it is called a mishkan, meaning a place of dwelling.

Mishkan and the verb shakhanti come from the same Hebrew verb whose root letters are SHIN KAF NUN which means “to dwell.” This verb is also the root of Shekhinah, the name for God which means “In-dwelling Presence.”

Where the In-Dwelling Presence Dwells

In the tradition, Shekhinah (or Shechina) is that aspect of the Godhead which is imminent and immediate rather than distant or transcendent. Shekhinah is often referred to as a feminine name for God, but it refers to God in a very particular sense: the Shekhinah is that aspect of divinity that one can feel dwelling in one’s presence. The Shekhinah is not subject to belief. Shekhinah is experienced rather than believed in.

When the early translator Onkelos rendered the sentence above into Aramaic, he translated it as “They will build for me a sanctuary and I will set my Shekhinah among them.” The rabbis of the Talmud extended this idea when they stated that when a minyan assembles, the Shekhinah becomes part of their assembly. (Talmud tractate Brachot 6a).

So when a group of us gathers together to celebrate or to meditate or to sing or to dance – and we feel ourselves for a moment or for an hour as if we were on the same wavelength, that is a Shekhinah moment. When I was in a socialist chorus as a teenager I had Shekhinah moments while singing in a choir composed entirely of atheists.

The Communal Mystical Moment

And such moments are mystical moments: moments when we experience our reality as extending beyond ourselves and feeling the external reality permeating deep into us. It is a moment when the borders dissolve a little and we experience ourselves as part of something grander than our individual selves—what the Hindus call experiencing the Brahman of the universal from within the Atman of your particularity. You can have mystical moments in seclusion, but as I interpret it, the Shekhinah experience requires some contact with a community. But once I am within a community context, I find it easier to access Shekhinah mysticism than the secluded variety, so easy that when I am lost in song during a service I don’t even take notice that I am having the experience. And if I did notice, I might actually slip out of it.

Just to drive the point home, I have had Shekhinah experiences while alone, but even at those moments it was within the context of being within community. It may seem contradictory but I’ll explain with two examples. Once time I had to go to the hall where we would be holding Rosh Hashanah services in two days. As I stepped into the large empty auditorium, smelling its particular aroma, the space seemed to pulsate with holiness in anticipation of the coming assembly that would soon be filling those seats. I was having a sense of holy presence all by myself but that experience was directly connected to the reality of community. The other example is when I was in the hospital during the time of worship services at shul. Lying in bed by myself, I knew that I was being held in people’s consciousness a mile away at services and my sense of connectedness in that moment was almost palpable.

Shekhinah Energy for Good and Ill

As a word of caution, Shekhinah energies can be aroused for good, but they can also be used for evil purposes, for domination and exclusion. Becoming lost in an ecstatic group moment can also open the assembly to being manipulated to serve a leader’s selfish purposes, or to thoughtlessly promote a group-think. So our Shekhinah experiences in Kehilla must always honor the individuality of each participant and be motivated by love, empathy, inclusiveness, and a desire for peace and justice for all people: Ahava, v-Rachamim, Chesed v-Shalom.

Given the strong and lovely feelings that are associated with experiencing Shekhinah, it is not surprising that the Israelites in the Torah story are described as being eager to support and create the container sanctuary in which it could be experienced. Whether or not the story is factual, it is likely that it was recorded later during the time of the Temple in Jerusalem. So even if the story were mythical, the activity and feelings that the story reflects were real in their time and continue to be real for us in our synagogue space.

Together we are a mishkan, the place where holiness dwells and the mystical experience is available to all of us.

______________________________
* Kehilla’s capital campaign is called the “Terumah Project” after the free-will offerings described in these readings.

Redemption & the Discernment of Purpose

Fourth Brief Teaching on Spirituality

by Rabbi David J. Cooper

Mishnah, Pirkey Avot 2:15-16
Rabbi Tarfon would say… “It is not upon you to complete the work, but you are not free to avoid it."

Often the difference between science and religion is portrayed as the difference between that which is subject to proof—science—and that which must be taken on faith—religion. But this is not only superficial, it is actually not very accurate, and moreover it posits the two as mutually exclusive.

Many of us have found a different way to categorize the difference and it is not in regard to the answers that each approach arrives at, but rather at the questions that each focuses upon. In fact, neither science nor religion have yet arrived at ultimate answers, and any claims to having an ultimate answer or an exclusive claim on truth must be treated with the greatest skepticism.

Science & Religion

Science concerns itself far more with the questions of HOW and WHAT. Such as, how might an observable phenomenon have come to be; what might have caused it to be the way it is; what might this phenomenon cause in turn; and what is the structure of a phenomenon and its development?

Religion is more concerned with WHY? That is, for what purpose might we or the world exist? What is the meaning of our lives?

For example, in non-dogmatic religious approaches, biblical texts about creation are not looked to in order to learn the how of creation, or the facts of what came into being first or second. The issue is about why there is a universe; what role we as humans have; what are our responsibilities? And it is far more important to ask these questions—and to see that our ancestors have asked similar questions—than it is to decree what the answers might be. More than answering such questions with words or dogmas, the challenge is to answer such questions by living a meaningful or purposeful life.

Meaning, Purpose, Discernment

Some people believe that the purpose of their lives comes to them from an external source, from God. Their search is to find the purpose that God has put forward for them. For others, their purpose is not given from outside, but is something that comes out of the circumstances of their life. Despite the difference between these two approaches, the seeker in either approach will engage in a similar process of discernment: self-examination as to one’s values, assessment of one’s talents and opportunities, and a consideration of how one can use one’s gifts to further the values that one holds as sacred. This discernment can either be characterized as exploring what service God wants of you, or as determining what your personal history, abilities and values have provided for you to do in this world. Regardless of how we characterize this task, it is pursued in a similar manner. One aim of Spiritual Direction programs (like the program we have in Kehilla) is to help further this task of discernment.

Redemption, or the redeeming of your life, is the term we use to say that you are performing, or have performed pursuant to the purpose or purposes you have found (or are finding) for your life. In the Biblical story, Moses may not have reached the promised land, but the story describes a redeemed life in that he performed his purpose which was to lead toward the promised land.

Redemption as a Process Rather than as a Goal

We do not have to accomplish the ultimate goals that we determine to be our purpose, but we redeem the meaning of our lives by doing as much as we are able toward the goals we set before us. Contrast this with an unredeemed life, one that proceeded with no purpose beyond one’s own self-aggrandizement. To die having accomplished everything on your spiritual to-do list is probably not possible. But failing to pursue one’s larger purpose or purposes is regarded as a terrible waste in Jewish and other traditions.

The task of discerning meaning in our lives is not accomplished once and then finished, but rather it is on-going and never-ending. In the Jewish calendar we set aside the period around the High Holydays for such self-reflection and dedication. But any day can be a time for such discernment; you do not have to wait until Rosh Hashanah or Yom Kippur to enter the experience of discernment. That gate is always open.