Session 2: Jewish and Tibetan Buddhism Spirituality

February 20, 2010

We begin with a teaching from the Talmud. It is attributed to Shimon ha-Tzaddik – Simon the Righteous, a pivotal figure in the transition from priests to rabbis; he lived roughly 200 – 300 years Before the Common Era. His familiar words will provide the structure for my discussion of Jewish spirituality.

Simon the Righteous was one of the last of the Great Assembly. His motto was: “Al sh’loshah d’varim ha’olam omed: Al hatorah, al ha’avoda, v’al g’milut chassadim— Upon three things the world stands: upon Torah, upon worship, and upon deeds of loving-kindness.” (Pirke Avot1:2 ).

Part 1: Hear, O Israel (Worship)

In my earliest memory of performing a Jewish religious practice, a mitzvah, I am reciting the verse “Hear, O Israel” in bed before going to sleep—what’s called in Hebrew k’riat sh’ma al ha-mitah. My mother taught me to do this when I was about four years old; we did it together until I was nine or ten; and I have done it ever since. Saying the Sh’ma with her was the occasion, sometimes, for a conversation about her struggle with faith and what God meant to her. And so, my feelings about God are connected with gratitude to my mother for the gift of a spiritual life.

In the communal life of the Jewish people, as well, the Sh’ma has a unique place. It is an ancient custom to close your eyes, during worship, when you recite the words “Hear, O Israel, Adonai is our God, Adonai is one.” Traditionally, if you’re right-handed, you cover your eyes with the right hand; with the left, if you’re left-handed; and then you say the words with the solemn intention of accepting God’s sovereignty. Grammatically, the Sh’ma is a command; it says “Listen!” And, no doubt, the “still small voice” we seek is more audible when all the visual distractions around us are shut out. The moment of saying the Sh’ma is meant to be a time when we focus entirely on God instead of the material world; a moment of looking within ourselves, not around us; a moment of profound inwardness.

Well, it’s different for me. When I’m leading services at the Jewish Home for the Aged of San Francisco – as I did this morning – I sing the Sh’ma (and all of the prayers) with my eyes wide open. Let me tell you why.

One morning, during Shabbat services, I began to hear a hissing sound – gradually getting louder and more insistent – as I was leading the singing of Psalm 150, Halleluyah. As it happens, Psalm 150 is very much about sound: It instructs us to praise God with the crash of cymbals, the blast of the ram’s horn, the music of strings (lute and lyre), timbrel and flute. But, to the best of my knowledge, Psalm 150 says nothing about a hissing noise. So I looked up and down the rows, and, before we had finished the psalm, I had found the source of the problem: a large oxygen tank strapped to the back of Rose’s wheelchair in the front row. Hissing is the sound the tank makes when it’s running out of oxygen. Waving my prayer book in the air, I got the attention of a nurse’s assistant, who took Rose home to replenish her oxygen supply. Ten minutes later, Rose was back in the front row, breathing comfortably, in time to sing the Sh’ma.

In the Jewish Home synagogue, my focus is on Rose—and at least fifty other people—not just on God; in fact, there are many times when God has no choice but to wait His turn (and, believe me, God is a lot more patient and long-suffering than Rose). While leading my congregants in prayer – trying to create a feeling of spirituality for all of us – I am also engaged in their moment-to-moment needs: dashing across the room to pick up a dropped prayer book as a disabled person leans precariously toward the floor to pick it up herself; the next moment, looking for a box of tissues; then, I’m moving chairs to make room for an over-sized wheelchair; and quickly scooping a walker out of the aisle so a blind person won’t trip over it. You cannot do these things while covering your eyes — but, for me, this is all part of accepting God’s sovereignty!

In recent years my spirituality has been shaped by the hissing of oxygen tanks, by the language of dementia, and by many other aspects of everyday life at the Jewish Home. I have learned about the confluence of the physical and the spiritual, the medical and the emotional; I have learned that prayer and tumult can co-exist. Things can be a little messy in my congregation, but there’s a seamless quality to the experience: It is a community knit together by the immediacy of human need; by profound strength and utter weakness; by courage and fear; by a constant awareness of human frailty and the human condition. Dealing with all of this at once seems very Jewish to me.

A great (non-Jewish) philosopher once said: “Attentiveness is the natural prayer of the soul.” (Malebranche, 17th century). And so I pray with my soul by being attentive to everything and everyone around me. Sometimes, when I say “Hear, O Israel,” I tell myself that the ‘O’ stands for oxygen. And that reminds me to keep my eyes open.

Part 2: A Wind from God

What are the ingredients of a Jewish spiritual life? What is the nature of spirituality in Judaism?

Let’s begin where the Bible begins:

“When God began to create heaven and earth—the earth being unformed and void, with darkness over the surface of the deep and a wind from God sweeping over the water—God said, ‘Let there be light’… In language and thought, the Bible is very concrete. Genesis begins with basics—things that we know in our own lives: darkness and light; wind and water. There are no words in the Bible for abstract concepts like ‘spirituality.’ Terms like that found their way into the Hebrew language in the Middle Ages, when Jewish philosophers were in dialogue with their Muslim counterparts and studied the philosophies of ancient Greece. In the 11th and 12th centuries, they invented a Hebrew vocabulary in order to converse about Plato and Aristotle—a vocabulary that included words for ‘spirituality’ and ‘corporeality,’ ‘free will’ and ‘metaphysics.’ In the case of spirituality, they took the poetic phrase in Genesis, “wind from God—ruach elohim,” and created ruchaniyyut from the word ruach. Ruchaniyyut has meant ‘spirituality’ ever since the time of Maimonides. And this word found its way into Yiddish where it is pronounced ruchniyes. In the Eastern European world of Hasidism, ruchniyes came to include Torah study, prayer, and good deeds.

How else is spirituality defined in Judaism? Here is a list of short definitions by contemporary Jewish thinkers:

• “Life in the presence of God—or the cultivation of a life in the ordinary world bearing the holiness once associated with sacred space and time, with Temple and with holy days—is perhaps as close as one can come to a definition of ‘spirituality’ that is native to the Jewish tradition…Within this definition there is room for an array of varied types, each of which gives different weight to one aspect or another of the spiritual life.” (Rabbi Arthur Green, Brandeis University, Waltham, Mass.; Boston Hebrew College)
  
  
• “Spirituality may inclusively be regarded as the sum of the efforts of the human psyche, individually and collectively, to attune to the impulses and rhythms of the universe, whether internal to the individual or external in nature.” (Rabbi Martin A. Cohen, Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion, New York)
  
  
• “Man’s spiritual life can easily be thought of in three divisions: his pursuit of truth, of beauty, and of moral goodness.” (Rabbi Roland B. Gittelsohn [1910-1995], Temple Israel, Boston)
  
  
• “Spirituality, as I understand it, is noticing the wonder, noticing that what seems disparate and confusing to us is actually whole.” (Rabbi Nancy Fuchs-Kreimer, RRC, Philadelphia)
  
  
• •“The cognitive and/or behavioral activities designed to help individual and community to reconnect to God.” (Deanne H. Shapiro and Johanna Shapiro, psychologists at UC Irvine)
  
  
• “The immediacy of God’s presence.” (Rabbi Lawrence Kushner, Congregation Emanu-El, San Francisco)
  
  
• “Sensitivity to the mystery of living is the essence of human dignity. It is the soil in which our consciousness has its roots, and out of which a sense of meaning is derived. Man does not live by explanations alone, but the sense of wonder and mystery. Without it there is neither religion nor morality, neither sacrifice nor creativity.” (Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel)
  
  
• “A highly personal outlook about what is sacred about us; it is the expression of our most deeply held values, and it is that sense of higher purpose that guides our daily lives.” (Dr. David S. Ariel, Cleveland College of Jewish Studies)
  
  
• “The awareness of standing before God… My personal preference is to define spirituality as broadly as possible, seeing in it an overarching experience involving our search for meaning and purpose in life.” (Rabbi Rifat Sonsino, Temple Beth Shalom, Needham, Mass.)
  
  
• “Many practices known from other religions have their counterpart in the manifold ways Jews have pursued piety. Yet no means of personally encountering God has been more widely practiced and honored among us than studying text.” (Rabbi Eugene B. Borowitz, Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion, New York)
  
  
• “It’s about living in such a way that I make God more present, both to myself and to others. Every word and every action, no matter how ordinary, can be performed in a way that makes God more present in this world… The most important Midrash I know teaches this lesson. It begins by quoting a verse from Isaiah: ‘You are My witnesses, says Adonai, and I am God’ (43:12). Which means, our rabbis teach, ‘When you are My witnesses, I am God; and when you are not My witnesses, I am, as it were, not God’ (Midrash Tehilim 123:1). Two thousand years ago we were taught that it’s up to us. We have the power to make God manifest in this world—by opening our own eyes to order, beauty, mystery and the essential oneness of all things; and by bringing God’s justice, love, and compassionate care with us wherever we go.” (Rabbi Janet Marder, Congregation Beth Am, Los Altos Hills, Calif.)
  
  
• “If you were to ask what our response to the Holocaust should be, I would say this: Marry and have children, bring new Jewish life into the world, build schools, make communities, have faith in God who had faith in man and make sure that His voice is heard wherever evil threatens. Pursue justice, defend the defenseless, have the courage to be different and fight for the dignity of difference. Recognize the image of God in others, and defeat hate with love. Twice a year, on Yom ha-Shoah and the Ninth of Av, sit and mourn for those who died and remember them in your prayers. But most of all, continue to live as Jews.
  

When I stand today in Jerusalem, or in a Jewish school, or see a Jewish couple under the wedding canopy, or see parents at the Shabbat table blessing their children, there are times when I am overcome with tears, not in sadness nor in joy, but in awe at this people who came face to face with the angel of death and refused to give it a final victory. The Jewish people live, and still bear witness to the living God.” (Rabbi Jonathan Sachs, A Letter in the Scroll, p. 192).

To the definitions from the 20th and 21st centuries, I add a number of ancient texts that reflect Jewish spiritual values:

• Psalm 23: A Psalm of David. The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want. He maketh me to lie down in green pastures: he leadeth me beside the still waters. He restoreth my soul: he leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for his name’s sake. Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me. Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies: thou anointest my head with oil; my cup runneth over. Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life: and I will dwell in the house of the Lord for ever.
  
  
• “These are the things which have no fixed measure: the corners of the field, the first fruits, the Three Pilgrimage Festival offerings brought on appearing before God, acts of loving-kindness, and the study of the Torah. These are the things the fruits of which a person enjoys in this world, and the stock of which remains for him in the world to come: honoring one’s father and mother, acts of loving-kindness, making peace between one person and another. And the study of Torah is equal to them all— Talmud torah k’neged kulam” (Mishnah, Peah 1:1)
  
  
• Simon the Righteous was one of the last of the Great Assembly. His motto was: “Al sh’loshah d’varim ha’olam omed: Al hatorah, al ha’avoda, v’al g’milut chassadim— Upon three things the world stands: upon Torah, upon worship, and upon deeds of loving-kindness.” (Talmud, Pirke Avot 1:2)
  
  
• What is meant by “The world stands on three things”? Rashi: The world would not have come into being were it not for these three things. Maimonides: Proper human existence could not be maintained if it were not for these three things.
  
  
• “U-t’shuvah, u-t’filah, u-tz’dakah ma’avirin et ro’a hag’zerah—Repentance, prayer and charity temper judgment’s severe decree.” (from the liturgy for Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur)
  
  

Part 3: God Is in the Text (Torah)

Ever since God gave Moses two stone tablets at Sinai, Jews have been preoccupied with the written word. As one writer has put it, “The Jewish people appeared on the stage of world history with a book in its hand.” (Yisrael Yuval). The study of sacred text – Torah study – is at the heart of Jewish spirituality.

That’s why every Tuesday morning I set up tables and chairs in a special way in the Jewish Home synagogue. Taking extra time to arrange the furniture, spreading white table cloths and placing flowers nearby, I try to create the most conducive setting for a class we call “Torah Talk.” It’s a gathering of 10 or 12 or sometimes even 15 elders who have Alzheimer’s disease or other illnesses that cause dementia. A few people without dementia often join the group, too.

One might assume that Torah study is primarily an activity of the intellect; that it would hold little meaning or pleasure for people who have lost the capacity to process information and also a great deal of memory. However, my experience teaches me that engagement with Torah is an act of profound emotional depth. And one of the things we know about dementia is that people who have it continue to experience emotions throughout their illness. From the strength and persistence of feelings we know that a spiritual life can be cultivated and nurtured. So every Tuesday morning I try to foster that spiritual life in the elders who come to “Torah Talk.”

How did this class come into being? Two years ago, I was told about a woman with dementia, and severely impaired hearing, who said she’d like to study Torah with the rabbi. Sylvia still attends the class; and during last week’s session we celebrated her 105th birthday.

We begin every class with singing and a traditional blessing: “Blessed are You, Adonai our God, ruler of the universe, who has made us holy with commandments and has commanded us to immerse ourselves in the words of Torah.” If we were to adopt a motto, it could be the words of Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel: “Sensitivity to the mystery of living is the essence of human dignity.”

In the early days of “Torah Talk,” I thought a lot about ideas concerning sacred text in the writings of Israeli philosopher Moshe Halbertal. Halbertal has written that “the text itself becomes a locus of religious experience”— in other words, Halbertal sees the text as a “place”: the place where Jews encounter God. “God is present in the sacred text,” Halbertal says, “and studying it is thus tantamount to meeting God; it is a moment of great religious intimacy.” (People of the Book)

In the Torah Talk experience, intimacy is a key concept: Whether we are reading about Jacob wrestling with an angel, Joseph and his brothers, the birth of Moses, or the laws of sacrifice, ours is always a close reading—close in the sense of personal and familiar; close in the sense of “in the moment” and immediate.

I think Professor Halbertal would be astounded to find that his argument for the text-centeredness of Jewish spirituality is a guiding principle for a program serving people with dementia. But should he ever attend our class on a Tuesday morning, he would have living proof for his theory: God is in the text; and God is present when we talk about Torah.

The “Torah Talk” program reminds me of a practice developed by the Yiddish-speaking Jews of Eastern Europe—a form of Torah study called lernen. Lernen is a Yiddish word that has come to mean a spiritual meditation on Jewish books. It’s not an intellectual activity; it’s more like a prayerful reading of the texts; and it’s a lifelong pursuit in which familiar texts are reviewed many times over. Lernen still takes place in fellowship groups called khavruse, which comes from the word khaver— ‘friend.’

In her history of the Holocaust, War against the Jews, Lucy Dawidowicz has described the meaning of lernen and khavruse for 20th century Jews in Eastern Europe. She writes: “In the khavruse… one can escape feelings of isolation and share instead familiarity, fellowship, and community… In the face of persecution and derision, in the midst of pogrom and holocaust, the khavruse offered the Jew ‘shelter from the storm outside, warmth and love instead of rejection and hostility, simultaneously strengthening self-esteem.’”

Dawidowicz’s description of lernen “in the face of persecution” also fits my experience of “Torah Talk.” Shared in a circle of fellowship, sacred text can offer shelter from the storm, warmth and love, self-esteem. In the Talmud, the rabbis likened Torah study to medicine; they claimed it could cure any ailment. I know that’s not true. But I have discovered that, in the face of enemies—even Alzheimer’s disease—Torah study offers a safe harbor and spiritual sustenance.

Part 4: A Vow of Charity (Deeds of Loving-Kindness)

Let’s read a text together. This text is a family heirloom from a resident of the Jewish Home, who happens to be Dr. Clark’s mother. Her name is Sara Fingerman, and she is a friend of mine. The document is a receipt for charity given to a yeshivah – an academy for Jewish study – in Poland. My translation of the poetic Hebrew is awkward, but I think it reveals the essence of the original…

Family Heirloom: Yeshivah document # 2258

Here in our community of LOMZA [Poland] May God build our city

In the name of God, for the honor of the holy Torah

“Great peace to those who love Your Torah”
“It is a tree of life to those who hold it fast”

[handwritten cursive text with names]…

The money [silver coins] raised to enhance the Holy Torah Fund, through the strengthening of the Yeshivah here in our community, as a neder litz’dakah—vow of righteous giving / charity—in the year……………. [handwritten text, including the number ‘50’] comes rightly into our possession for the required purpose of the finances of the holy Yeshivah to strengthen those who are engaged night and day in the study of the Torah and integrity of leadership with pure reverence. Abundant thanks and a three-fold blessing for the greatness of your beneficence in the past. And we offer prayer and petition concerning future advancement toward the sublime mitzvah, with generous spirit for the sake of honoring His Name, may He be blessed, and His Torah, to beautify and exalt the flag of the holy Torah to reestablish and to repair, with His holy words, those who are destroyed, degraded and humbled and whose need is profound.

Please feel our pain and please come to our help, to magnify the honor of the Torah, to increase courage and to glorify her, and for the merit of the awe-inspiring mitzvah – Let it shield and protect the doers and the deeds. And may the favor of God be upon them, blessing all the deeds of their hands and fulfilling, for their well-being, all of their wishes. Selah.
Seal (left side):
Eliezer Szulewicz [Shulevits; also known as Reb Lazer Lomzer]
Yeshivah Director, here in the holy community of Lomza

Seal (right side):
Seal of the holy yeshivah / here in the holy community of Lomza / May God build our city

—Russian print: Examined by the Censor in Odessa, January 31, 1906—

This document, which Robert (Clark) shared with me last summer, is a receipt and thank-you letter for a donation to the Lomza Yeshivah. Lomza is situated about eighty miles from Warsaw. Before World War I it was one of the northeastern-most provinces of the Kingdom of Poland (also known as “Russian Poland”). History tells us that the school’s director, Rabbi Eliezer Szulewicz, moved part of the yeshivah to Petach Tikvah, Israel in 1923; thus, it survived the Holocaust.

There is much about this letter that I find compelling: First of all, the entire document overflows with information about what spirituality meant in the life of Polish Jewry—words and phrases like: ‘magnify and glorify the holy Torah’; ‘holy yeshivah’; ‘sublime mitzvah’; ‘generous spirit’; ‘honoring God’s Name’… Every word resonates with the language of Jewish tradition and values.

Second, there is the phrase “vow of charity—neder litz’dakah.” It’s interesting that it appears here, because that phrase is usually avoided due to the solemnity of taking a vow in Jewish tradition. This leads us to believe that the commitment to tzedakah (which literally means ‘justice’) is especially strong and carries great weight in this community.

Third, there is the poignant hope “to reestablish and repair those who are destroyed, degraded and humbled and whose need is profound.” This reminds us that the document comes to us from a time of violent anti-Semitism, persecution, and pogroms. The infamous Kishinev Pogrom had taken place in April 1903, not quite three years earlier. The Russian words (at the bottom of the page), referring to censorship of the document, bear witness to a society of repression and fear. In that kind of environment, the study of Torah is an act of resistance to the hatred and violence. This letter is a coded document, a subversive text, whose spiritual message got through the censors of the Czar’s empire. But we know how to decode it; we know how to read it. We know that these words contain the secret of Jewish survival, transmitted for centuries, and here appearing in a thank-you letter, a receipt for a donation.

And last, we are deeply moved by the words, “Please feel our pain and please come to our help.” No single value is more deeply embedded in the Bible and in Judaism than empathy. We read in the book of Exodus: “And you shall not oppress a stranger—since you know the soul [the feelings] of the stranger, because you were strangers in the land of Egypt” (23:9). The letter from Lomza reminds us that there is no Jewish spirituality without empathy, without feeling the pain of others—for we are all responsible for one another. The suffering of others calls us to act. And in that sacred deed we make God present in the world.

Listen to these words of Jonathan Sacks, Chief Rabbi of Great Britain:

“Every good act, every healing gesture, lights a candle of hope in a dark world. What would humanity be after the Holocaust were it not for the memory of those courageous few who saved lives, hid children, rescued those they could? There were times when the gift of a crust of bread—even a smile—gave a prisoner the will to live. A single message of support can tell threatened populations that they are not alone. One act of hospitality can redeem a lonely life on the brink of despair. A word of praise can give strength to someone losing the will the carry on. We never know, at the time, the ripple of consequences set in motion by the slightest act of kindness.” (To Heal a Fractured World, 2005)

In the end, what strikes me the most about the letter from Lomza is the astonishing fact that this document has survived for about a century. Through war and immigration, moving from place to place across two continents, a family has preserved this fragile sheet of paper. Why? Perhaps, the connection to relatives and friends in Lomza was deeply felt. Perhaps, the vow to give tzedakah was taken seriously. And perhaps they loved the seal at the bottom right side of the page. Look at it: It’s a quaint picture of the yeshivah-building itself. To me that picture suggests something about the enduring nature of the Jewish values this document contains. That little wooden building is an emblem of the towering spiritual structure whose foundation is Torah, worship and deeds of loving-kindness—a structure that stands as a beacon of meaning and hope.