The New Spirituality in Jewish Life

The Psalmist's question, the cry of the ancient Israelite, is echoed by Jews today. Most of them, however, do not know how Judaism can help them develop a sense of God's presence, or shape their spiritual lives. This situation is all the more poignant because so many young Jews, like their fellow Americans, are more interested in spirituality than their parents or grandparents were. With growing insistence, their voices have become stronger and more articulate over the past few years. No longer satisfied by an ethnic or cultural identity, they want to know what guidance Judaism can give them on the deeper issues of life's meaning. They are looking for the genuine experience of a caring community, for a connection with history, for rituals and liturgies to mark the passage of time and the sacred moments of life. They want a system of deeply rooted values to pass on to their children. They want a Jewish philosophy that gives them hope, courage, and compassion as they deal with loss, illness, and the enormous pressures of their daily lives. They want to feel their lives woven into the rich fabric of Jewish history and tradition, and they also want to weave into it new strands of thought and practice.

Until recently, most communal leaders did not recognize the importance of strengthening Judaism's spiritual dimension in assuring its future. Relegating the spiritual to the domain of the synagogue, they concentrated on more secular or cultural agendas. With the memory of the Holocaust so integral to their identity, American Jews focused on what has been called "sacred survival." They defined their major task as assuring the safety and security of Israel, rescuing Jews from the Soviet Union and Ethiopia, and protecting American Jewry from anti-Semitism and the mingling of church and state. They believed deeply in this mission, and successfully enlisted the majority of Jews in carrying it out.

They hoped to guarantee the future of Jewish life in America by providing their children a supplementary religious school experience and a bar or bat mitzvah. They built large education wings on their synagogues. Parents religiously dropped their children off in front of these doors, but saw Judaism as an activity for their children, not for themselves. What emerged was a pediatric Judaism. Now we are realizing that the Jewish future cannot be built solely on the education of children, important as that task is. Children cannot be Jewish for their parents-their religious school experience must be nurtured in a family context of care and practice which reinforces its values. Adults must be Jewish-must act Jewishly-for themselves. Only then can they hope to inspire the next generation to carry on these traditions in their own lives.

The Paradox of Survival

Paradoxically the achievement of survival created a whole new set of challenges for American Judaism. As they successfully knocked down barriers of prejudice and discrimination, Jews came to feel safer in America. And they were! America embraced them, finding them desirable as partners in work and in marriage. Free to leave the Jewish community, many chose to do so. They moved out of Jewish neighborhoods, they married non-Jews in ever greater numbers, and they began to invest their philanthropic dollars in non-Jewish causes. But the community's religious and cultural organizations kept rallying Jews to the familiar banners of ethnicity and survival, ignoring the shift in the underlying reality. The issue today is no longer physical survival, but spiritual survival. The paradigm today is no longer one of being, but of meaning; the question no longer how, but why: Why be a Jew?

The new need to give attention to the spiritual dimension of Jewish life opens myriad opportunities for creativity, for building community, for linking tikkun ha-nefesh, repair of the soul, with tikkun olam, repair of the world. American Judaism, just as every other venture in America today, is challenged to appeal to diverse markets, to open new gates to its city. Like America, we are becoming a community of communities, yet many Jews are not involved in any of them. The challenge is both to create more and better communities and to build links between the parts to form a rich, variegated whole. Instead of conceiving the American Jewish community as a series of concentric circles with a small core of real Jews at the center and surrounding rings of increasingly marginalized people, we must begin to see our community as a woven tapestry with many contemporary colors threaded across the long strands of tradition and history, creating vivid patches of activity.

Developing the Spiritual Dimension of Judaism

Obviously there are many approaches to promoting spirituality. One method, for instance, is to find people who are at a point in their lives when the need for spirituality is most obvious. Another is to identify groups of people who have found the Jewish community inhospitable to their spiritual searches, and to show them that there is not only room for them, but benefit in continuing their quest on a Jewish path. And a third approach is to work with core institutions, like synagogues and religious schools, to help them become stronger communities and sources of religious inspiration.

Illness often challenges the patient to seek a connection with religion. Those who are seriously ill and their families and those who are grieving are often deeply comforted when they are connected with traditions and rituals and when they are nurtured by caring people. The Jewish community should mobilize resources to reach out to them in a much more comprehensive fashion than they currently do.

The Jewish Healing Center, working locally in San Francisco and nationally in New York, provides both direct services to ill Jews and their families and training for the Jewish professionals who need guidance in providing them with deeper, more effective counseling and teaching. The San Francisco center, Ruach Ami, has created bi-weekly services of healing that bring together Jews who are facing serious illness and their caretakers for an hour of prayer, singing, study, and fellowship. They have conducted spiritual support groups for women with breast cancer and HIV positive men.

The Jewish Healing Center's national office in New York is in charge of training and resource development, as well as guiding the formation of local centers across the country. Refainu, its first conference on Healing and the Rabbinate, brought together 150 rabbis to learn more effective ways to comfort their congregants facing illness, and to refresh their own spirits. The center develops classic texts for modern reflection, creates liturgies and rituals, trains rabbis, and advocates in the national Jewish arena for emphasizing the importance of the spiritual dimension in working with ill Jews and their families.

Welcoming Back People Who Intermarry

Many interfaith couples, at the time of their marriage or after the birth of a child, are exploring the meaning of religion and spirituality, and want to know what enrichment to their own and their families' lives they can find in Judaism. Many are afraid to enter Jewish doors, as they have experienced such painful rejection on their route to marriage. Nonetheless, when encouraged by a welcoming attitude and serious, sophisticated instruction in Judaism, such people often choose to become active members of the Jewish community.

Derekh Torah, a comprehensive study program for interfaith couples and for Jews who seek the Jewish education they never got as children, was successfully pioneered at the 92nd Street YM/YWHA in Manhattan. Now it is being replicated in more than 20 Jewish community centers around the country. The Jewish Outreach Institute, based at the Graduate Center at City College in New York, works with communities to develop effective programs to include the intermarried in the Jewish community, and brings lay and professional leaders together to stimulate the development of an outreach profession oriented to the intermarried.

Reaching Out to Religious Seekers

The energy and commitment of Jewish women, if stimulated by creative learning experiences, can enrich Jewish life enormously. Extraordinary women have already begun to open the door to contemporary Jewish life by challenging traditions that assigned limited roles to women in the past. They have asked profound questions about the nature of God, the language and imagery of liturgy, the structure of the worship experience. They have written new midrashim (interpretive stories) and researched new sources of historical record to claim their place in Jewish tradition. In challenging conventional wisdom and practice and in creating new rituals and liturgies, they have renewed contemporary Judaism and created space for men to come back as well.

Another pool of Jews with deep spiritual energy and commitment are those who have found meaning in meditation and Eastern religions. The number of Jews-both leaders and students-in communities that practice contemplative traditions is enormously disproportionate to the percentage of Jews in the population. These people are serious, disciplined, thoughtful, and compassionate. Their spirituality is a wellspring that could bring new depth to the Jewish world. Yet few know that Judaism contains rich traditions of meditation and mystical wisdom that shape contemplative practices.

Metivta: A Jewish Wisdom School, located in Los Angeles, has introduced more than a thousand Jews to the practice of Jewish meditation. Students are delighted that they can maintain a spiritual practice which has acquired deep significance for them, yet be part of a Jewish community which connects them with the past and supports them in the present. Metivta has built a community which meditates, studies Judaism, and celebrates holidays. It has also trained rabbis and lay leaders to bring these traditions into the life of their congregations.

Strengthening Synagogues

Another approach to strengthening the spiritual dimension of Jewish life is to work with synagogues. The synagogue remains the central address of the Jewish community, yet it is a place in dire need of renewal. If synagogues can become more caring communities, if their liturgy can begin to open the hearts of Jews, if their education programs are stimulating to adults as well as children, then many more people will join, and those who belong will participate more fully.

Rabbinical schools and rabbis are beginning to face this challenge directly. Training rabbis to become spiritual leaders requires explicit attention. The Hebrew Union College in New York, the University of Judaism in Los Angeles, and the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College in Philadelphia have all initiated special approaches to developing the capacity of their students to serve as spiritual leaders. The students study traditional texts, work with mentors, meet regularly in small groups, keep journals, and speak consciously of their own spiritual lives. They are learning how to be more aware and more cultivating of their congregants' spiritual journeys.

The Reform movement's rabbinical association, the Central Conference of American Rabbis, conducted a two-year study of the worship experience of Reform Jews. They have created an innovative method for congregations concerned about improving the quality of their worship services to make significant changes. They are working with seven congregations to test this approach to enhancing the worship experience for their communities. The Conservative Movement runs a week-long Rabbinic Institute for rabbis who study, worship, and reflect together. Many rabbis report that the experience recharges their spiritual batteries and gives them the energy they need for the exhausting work of ministering to the needs of their congregants.

The task of weaving new strands of spirituality into the rich Jewish tapestry requires love, patience, imagination, and persistence. Looking at the Jewish world today, there is much to celebrate, much to cultivate. The high rates of assimilation and intermarriage frighten many people. But, as they have in generations past, the Jewish people are rallying to turn crisis into creation. And, with God's help, we will succeed.