Reconstructionism and Spiritual Life II“A Conversation About Spirituality”

Rabbi Shawn Zevit, Rabbi Richard Hirsh, and Rabbi Rachel GartnerMay 4, 2011-8:00 p.m.-9:15 p.m.

PEARL: Providing Education and Resources for Leadership

For Part One see: http://jrf.org/node/3112

Jewish Reconstructionist Federation Transformative Judaism for the 21st Century 101 Greenwood Avenue Beit Devora, Suite 430 Jenkintown, PA 19046 215.885.5601 / fax: 215.885.5603www.jrf.org

An Opening Prayer c- Rabbi Shawn Zevit, May 2011

We begin our holy workIn space and time

This moment, this Eternality.

Open our hearts, Dear G~dOpen our eyes, our mind

To be present to this processOf building sacred communityBe the strength and resilienceEnergy, creativity, and wisdom

Compassion, love, and confidenceIn being and becoming

In leadership and serviceFor all of us who share

This wonder-filled exploration Called Life.

Jewish Tradition and Spiritual SeekingRabbi Richard Hirsh

Reconstructionist Judaism is respectful of traditional Jewish observances but also open to new interpretations and forms of religious expression. As Rabbi Mordecai M. Kaplan (1881-1983), the founder of Reconstructionism, taught, tradition has "a vote, but not a veto.” Reconstructionists share a commitment to making Judaism their own by finding in it joy, meaning, and ideas they can believe. We continue to turn to Jewish law and tradition for guidance, if not always for governance. We recognize that in the contemporary world, individuals and communities make their own choices with regard to religious practice and ritual observance.

We live in an age of spiritual seeking, a time in which the search for transcendent values and deeper meanings invites many of us back to our own religious traditions, to rediscover the rich insights of those who came before us on the spiritual journey. Reconstructionist Judaism has always been open to new approaches to thinking about God, to alternative ways of experiencing the Divine in our lives, and to honest wrestling with the inherited insights of our ancestors.

Exploring Judaism - Staub and Alpert Living as a Reconstructionist, p. 79

Recent studies suggest that there are different “spiritual types”…Some people find holiness in analysis and study. Some experience God most readily in social justice or interpersonal relationships. Others find transcendence in observing the natural world or experiencing the creative process. There is even a spiritual type who best connects to God and religious life- remaining true to God by smashing the idols of religious hypocrisy… No individual is purely one of these “types,” but each of us has greater propensities in some directions than others. Viewing Judaism as a religious civilization that encompasses all these paths, Reconstructionists affirm the validity of each of them and seek to encourage one another as we each find our own way.

Belonging to a Democratic Jewish Community in a Post-Halakhic Age http://jrf.org/showres&rid=140

If halakha is defined as the Jewish process of celebrating, creating and transmitting tradition, Reconstructionist Jewish communities would certainly fit within the framework of halakha.

But if halakha has the meaning of a rigid body of law, changeable only under very rarefied circumstances, most Jewish people, including Reconstructionists, no longer accept its binding authority. While Reconstructionists are lovers of tradition and support community celebration of the Jewish sacred year and life-cycle events, we also believe that the face of the Jewish community is changing and that individuals have the right to adapt Jewish tradition to new circumstances.

Reconstructionist communities challenge Jews to participate fully in our shared Jewish civilization. From building a sukkah to appreciating Jewish music, from caring for the Jewish young and old to leading Torah study - community members should experience Jewish civilization in our day as fully as they experience secular civilization.

Judaism will continue to be a dynamic civilization only if we choose to participate, create and transmit vitality to future generations. Reconstructionist rabbis work in partnership with committed lay people to formulate guidelines that serve as Jewish touchstones for our times. These guidelines are presented and democratically considered in Reconstructionist communities as standards for enhancing the Jewish life of the individual and the community rather than as binding laws.

I. From Conception to Perception(Commentary R. Richard Hirsh)

A. Rabbi Larry Kushner: “Spirituality is a dimension of living where we are aware of God’s presence.” (Eyes Remade for Wonder, p. 153) “Reverence is the only option.”

• B. Rabbi Art Green: “The proper question is, ‘Do you consider yourself a religious person? How do you express that religiosity? What is the relationship between your own spiritual life and the symbols of Judaism? In what sense do you use the word God or its Hebrew equivalent in your religious life?” (Art Green, symposium in Commentary August 1996, p. 42)

• COMMENTARY, Richard Hirsh: What I want to introduce here is “the place from which we look”– i.e., religion as a human project, not a divine revelation; not a “different way of being” but a “different way of looking.” So, much of theology presumes to tell us something about God; and much of “spirituality” often foregoes even asking any questions about God [and simply assumes “God” too easily]. “A Reconstructionist approach to spirituality” could start from an interior assessment of what may be just below the surface, and a naming of that through Jewish symbols and language. Ultimately, “reverence” is a posture, an attitude, an assumption – encompassing a sense of wonder, appreciation, newness, and challenge.

II. Spiritual Practice as a Means of Cultivating a Perceptual Framework

• A. Rabbi Mordecai Kaplan: The pragmatic method is concerned with the effect the words of the writer had on the inner life of the people or the way what he said worked…The pragmatic method…, seeks to identify the direction which the thought first formulated by the writer has taken. It tries to get not at the static truth but at the dynamic truth. It is this method alone which is of actual aid in the religious life of a people or a group.

• B. Abraham Joshua Heschel: “The Biblical words about the genesis of heaven and

earth are not words of information but words of appreciation. The story of creation is not a description of how the world came into being, but a song about the glory of the world’s having come into being. ‘And God saw that it was good.’ This is the challenge: to reconcile God’s view with our experience. The demand, as understood in Biblical religion, is to be alert and open to what is happening. What is, what comes about. Every moment a new arrival, a new bestowal. How to welcome the moment? How to respond to the marvel? The cardinal sin is our failure to sense the grandeur of the moment, the marvel and mystery of being, the possibility of quiet exultation.” (What Is Man?)

II. Spiritual Practice as a Means of Cultivating a Perceptual Framework (R. Rachel Gartner commentary)

COMMENTARY, on Kaplan, R. Rachel Gartner:

“effect the words of the writer had on the inner life of the people”

Pragmatic approach to spirituality: Spiritual practice is about cultivating an ever- evolving perceptual framework (or perspective) for experiencing and interpreting what happens in our individual lives as part of what happens in Life as such. A framework which, over time, allows us to weave a given experience into it, see how a given experience fits into it or sometimes even re- shapes the framework or experience and our understanding of Life. The question of whether or not that framework reflects an objective reality about Life is interesting to me on some level, but is not really in the realm of perception, rather it returns us to the realm of conception. This realm and its questions are not primarily what I am compelled to investigate as a religious practitioner and as a rabbi. However, whether or not that perceptual framework is empowering, comforting, ennobling is a pragmatic concern, and one that interests me profoundly both in my life and in my rabbinate.

II. Spiritual Practice as a Means of Cultivating a Perceptual Framework (R. Rachel Gartner commentary- cont’d)

• “the direction which the thought first formulated has taken,” “ the dynamic truth” • To my mind, truths of the human/trans-human, natural/trans-natural experience are not

exactly dynamic but the way we experience these truths is. Truths like: things come and go; there is pain; there is resilience; and so forth are in my mind in some essential way not dynamic, but the way we experience and interpret them is dynamic and the way they show up in our lives and communities is dynamic.

• “religious life of a people or group”• This cultivation can be a communal seeking and cultivation of an empowering, comforting,

ennobling perceptual framework, or an individual one. In my work, I am most interested in the intersection of the two. The two intersect in my work primarily through in-depth deeply personal engagement with liturgy/text either in Spiritual Direction or in group meditation and sharing sessions. The way I practice Spiritual Direction is not at all about teaching concepts, rather it’s about helping people develop perceptual frameworks, informed, when appropriate, by Jewish teachings and texts. I engage texts when they feel to me like they connect with the emerging perceptual framework of the directee and might help deepen or take that perceptual framework to a new place.

• One way I do this is by creating contexts in which life and Jewish text can intimately mix, mingle and ultimately (hopefully) morph; so that one’s life illuminates the meaning of the text, and the text can come to illuminate the meaning(s) of one’s life/Life.

• Religious life of the group is enhanced through the cherubim model: it comes out in chevurta and other larger groups – in the conversations and what passes in between participants.

II. Spiritual Practice as a Means of Cultivating a Perceptual Framework (Commentary on Heschel, R. Rachel Gartner)

Here, Heschel interprets the biblical account of genesis of heaven and earth not as a factual account that fits into a neat conceptual framework of how the world was made. Rather, he interprets the biblical account of heaven and earth as (a) being reflective of “the thought first formulated in the writer” and,(b) meant to induce in the listener “the effect on the inner life of the listener” a specific perceptual framework; in this case a perceptual framework of appreciation, newness, welcoming, sensing of grandeur, marveling at mystery, quiet exultation.

III. From Conception to Perception: Ways of Knowing(Commentary Rabbi Richard Hirsh)

• Rabbi Mordecai Kaplan: “God must not merely be held as an idea; He (sic) must be felt as a presence if we want not only to know about God but to know God...There is a difference between knowing God philosophically in His manifestations and experiencing Him religiously in worship.” (Mordecai Kaplan, The Meaning of God in Modern Jewish Religion, chapter “God Felt as a Presence,” p. 244, 249)

• COMMENTARY, RH: 1) Kaplan & Reconstructionism do not only know “the god idea” or talk about God only in an academic, analytical or intellectual manner. The religious quest is to experience something that places our personal-temporal lifespan into a larger context.

III. From Conception to Perception: Ways of Knowing(Commentary Rabbi Richard Hirsh, cont’d)

• B. Rita Nakashima Brock: “Heart knowledge, the deepest and fullest knowing… involves a union of body, spirit, reason, and passion. [What we get from our hearts is true, valid information.] For we know best by heart.” (Journeys by Heart)

• COMMENTARY, RG: Perceptual frameworks are not

constructed through information, argumentation, scientific facts, or even religious dogmas. Rather, they are built on intuition, unitive experiences, feelings, and ultimately what, borrowing from theologian Rita Nakashima Brock, I call “heart knowledge.”

IV. Cultivating Perception: The Meeting Place between Personal Experience & Jewish Expression

• Kaplan: When we worship in public we know our life is part of a larger life, a wave of an ocean of being – the first-hand experience of that larger life which is God.

(KOL HANESHAMAH: Shabbat Vehagim p. 57)

http://stores.jrfbookstore.org/-strse-Prayer-Books-cln-Kol-Haneshamah-Series/Categories.bok

V. Separation & Connection(Commentary Rabbi Richard Hirsh)

• A. Marcia Falk: “I would describe my own experience of the divine as an awareness, or a sensing, of the dynamic, alive, and unifying wholeness within creation—a wholeness that subsumes and contains and embraces me, a wholeness greater than the sum of its parts”

(Marcia Falk The Book of Blessings, p. 419)

V. Separation & Connection(Commentary Rabbi Richard Hirsh, cont’d)

• B. “Danny Matt: once explained [the relationship of the World of Separation and the World of Unity] this way: we have a word for leaf, twig, branch, trunk, roots. The words make it easier for us to categorize and comprehend reality. But we must not think that just because we have words for all the parts of a tree that a tree really has all those parts. The leaf does not know, for instance, when it stops being a leaf and becomes a twig. And the trunk is not aware that it has stopped being a trunk and has become the roots. Indeed, the roots do not know when they stop being roots and become soil, nor the soil moisture, nor the moisture the atmosphere, nor the atmosphere the sunlight. All our names are arbitrarily superimposed on what is, in truth, the seamless unity of all being. And that is when the World of Separation gives way to the World of Unity. It lasts for only a moment, the twinkling of an eye. Then it's gone and we're bounced back into this World of Separation." (Rabbi Lawrence Kushner, Kabbalah: A Love Story)

V. Separation & Connection(Commentary Rabbi Richard Hirsh, cont’d)

• COMMENTARY, RH: What I want to stress here is the fundamental decision we are challenged to make -- whether life is primarily defined by polarities, opposites, distance, dissonance – or whether it is primarily defined by unity, contact, the “one” versus the “two.” Are we “apart from” or “a part of”? This too is primarily an act of perception and position and decision – but one that conveys an investment/faith in the ultimate nature of things.

Personal Spiritual Connection“Throughout my life, I had searched for a spirituality that felt right for me. I had belonged to a number of synagogues and read many books, but never found a community or a philosophy with which I could identify. But during my first Shabbat service at Kehillath Israel, I had a sense that I had finally found a 'home.' A class called 'God and Spiritually - a Reconstructionist Approach' helped me affirm intellectually all the positive feelings I experienced on my first visit to the synagogue. During the class I realized that the entire community was helping me validate my own intuitive, spiritual perceptions. I am very grateful that Kehillath Israel has turned out be a place that nurtures my spirituality through experience and education.” - Member, Kehillath Israel, Pacific Palisades, California

"For me there is no separation between spirituality and living. Spirituality is at the core of Life .“ -Debbie Freidman, z”l, Lilith Magazine 1988

Further Resources• Reconstructionism: http://jrf.org/reconstructionism• Reconstructionism Today Articles:

http://jrf.org/resources-library&tid=5:12&show=#Religious Values• Who Is A Reconstructionist Jew?: http://jrf.org/showres&rid=140• Reconstructionism and Prayer: http://www2.jrf.org/rt/article.php?id=159 • Audio Programs: http://jrf.org/heart-mind-spirit • FAQ's on Reconstructionist Approaches to Jewish ideas and Practices http://jrf.org/showres&rid=487• How To Successfully Integrate and Use Reconstructionism in Synagogue

Processeshttp://jrf.org/pearl/2008/how-to-successfully-integrate-and-use-reconstructionism-in-synagogue-processes

• ”What Is Reconstructionism, Anyway?”http://jrf.org/resources/files/What%20is%20Reconstructionism.pdf

Further Resourceshttp://jrf.org/resources-library&tid=3:5&show=#Spiritualityhttp://www.rrc.edu/ethics-center/publications/publications http://stores.jrfbookstore.org/-strse-Prayer-Books/Categories.bok

(Omer Series available at http://jrf.org/pearl) http://jrf.org/pearl/2009/growing-the-soul-of-your-community Omer Project: "A House of Prayer for All Peoples": Diversity in Growing Sacred CommunityOmer Project: Spiritual direction : "Growing God-ward" Omer Project: Varieties of Spiritual practice Omer Project: Liturgy and Prayer Omer Project: Growing Self and Community through Creativity and the Arts Omer Project: Tikkun L'eyl Shavuot: The Many Paths to Revelation of TorahOmer Project: Growing Spirituality in Education: Learning Across the Lifecycle Spirituality and Social Justice http://jrf.org/showrt&rid=673Re-inventing Synagogue Life and Prayer http://jrf.org/showrt&rid=508