“we Being JewishJonathan Glazer began his Oscar acceptance speech by saying, “Our Being Jewish“What does that mean?
Jewish practices seem to range from the deep and meaningful, like reading the Haggadah, to the astonishingly incomprehensible, like getting drunk on Purim. The question is, do you feel a spiritual connection while doing either?
We all enjoy lighting a glowing menorah, eating delicious matzah ball soup, and hearing the blaring sound of the shofar, but when you think of spirituality, do you think of yarmulkes and orange robes?
Have we become so involved with the external trees of Judaism that we miss the forest of God and spirituality?
Looking at Watkins’ Top 100 Spiritual Teachers in the World, you quickly notice a multitude of Jewish names but no Torah names. You’ll find New Age spirituality, Christian mysticism, Hinduism, Buddhism, and modern psychology, but no Torah representation. Is this because Torah is not a spiritual teaching, or is it because we are out of touch with its spiritual roots? To me, this feels like a “Houston, we’ve got a problem” moment. We are in desperate need of a spiritual renaissance of Torah living, or at least I have.
Nearly a decade ago, after years of Torah study and devotion, I found myself feeling somehow spiritually distant. I realized that even if I was “following all the rules,” I could still miss the mark, spiritually speaking. There can be a big difference between religion and spirituality.
The word religion itself comes from Latin, To trust It means to bind or drive away. On the other hand, spirituality Spiritus or spiritual It means to breathe. While religion involves adherence to certain rules and constraints, spirituality emphasizes the essence of freedom, openness, and breathing freely.
The only problem with this assessment is that religion is supposed to be spiritual – in other words, a path that keeps you tied to the breath and in harmony with this higher space and freedom.
I am not the first to sense this lack of harmony: the Hasidic movement began as a form of spiritual enlightenment with the explicit intention of putting the pieces back together.
The Kabbalistic idea is that the 613 mitzvot are actually 613 pieces of advice on how to connect with God. This God-consciousness and enlightened life is at the heart of the Torah.
So why doesn’t it feel that way?
Eckhart Tolle, one of the world’s leading spiritual teachers, makes three astute observations about the spiritual teachings of religions in his book A New Earth:
“The world was not ready to accept them, yet they were vital and essential to the awakening of humanity. Inevitably, they were largely misunderstood, not only by their contemporaries but also by subsequent generations…”
- Even if spiritual ideas are embedded in religion, if they are misunderstood they will not be reflected in our everyday experience.
“Throughout history, there have always been rare individuals who have undergone a shift in consciousness and realized within themselves what all religions point to…”
- However, individuals who have experienced spiritual enlightenment have always been able to understand the spiritual truths that exist within the conceptual frameworks and structures of religion.
“Over time, some of those schools have become too formalized or too conceptualized to be effective.”
- Over time, religious experiences move towards more orthodox forms of practice in which emphasis shifts from an inner spiritual quest to an external adherence to rituals, traditions, and community norms. In such systems, adherence to prescribed behaviors, rituals, and cultural practices takes precedence over a personal inner journey towards spiritual enlightenment or connection. This phenomenon can be described as ritualism or ceremonialism, where the symbolic aspects of religion or spirituality become an end in themselves, rather than a means to achieving deeper spiritual understanding or transformation.
If we place this in the context of 2000 years of a formally organized cultural approach to Judaism, wrapped in mystical and allegorical language, and 2000 years of exile during which the Jews were persecuted, tortured and murdered, we might come to the following conclusion:
We were so intent on staying alive that we collectively chose to preserve the infrastructure in the hope that one day we might be free enough to explore its profound depths.
Perhaps that day is today. Have we arrived at a time when we are free enough to reconnect with the spiritual foundations that the Torah calls us to reveal?
Below are just a few of the basic premises presented in the Torah.
- Each of us is light, an extension of God in the world, with a divine purpose to uplift humanity.
- Given the above, you have inherent worth and goodness that is unquestioned but has the opportunity to be revealed.
- Life is not random, it unfolds with purpose and intent, always working for the higher good.
- Your personal desires (your ego) for things to be different than they are causes mental and emotional suffering and cuts you off from feeling spiritual connection.
- God is always here, in the here and now, and that applies wherever you are as you read this.
“Being Jewish” may be worth exploring more deeply, for at the heart of the Torah lie these and countless other spiritual truths. It is time to awaken to its ultimate purpose. what Yes, spirituality is how You can do it, and when we all realize this, maybe we will be inspired to look deeper and discover who we really are and our deeper purpose in life.
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