Thanks, Jamie. "Hollowed out" is a good way to describe what many of us received of Jewish thought and practice from the previous generation. And I say that without blame. In their shoes, I am likely to have done the same. The unprecedented opportunity to become full members of a society, to assimilate, to pursue affluence with no restrictions on profession, or where you lived, or which club you belonged to, must have been intoxicating. Finally, a solution to the Jewish question! And it didn't work. It didn't put an end to antisemitism and the American dream proved to be a chimera. There is no doubt we have to blend the old with the new because there is no wisdom and not even a possibility of just going back to the old. But blending has its own dangers and I am drawing attention to the casualness with which some people Judaize thought and practices that are in essence not Jewish. That might well turn out to be a variation on what the last generation did -- short term gain, long term pain. All good wishes. Moadim l'simcha.
Thanks Alan. Yes, borrowing is a longstanding Jewish tradition - food, music, philosophy and praxis. The Passover Seder !
And yes. There is something lost when the attempts to adopt principles and practices from other cultures and civilizations without translating them and integrating them into Jewish idioms.
For those seeking such an integration, I recommend rabbi Michael strassfeld’s A Book of Life - which reviews the basics of Jewish practices through a mindfulness lens. It’s an updated version of the popular Jewish catalogues from the 70s.
We are spiritual orphans, I believe, because the traditions got passed on to many of us hollowed out of their core whys - when faced with modernity.
I do think musar has the potential to provide that way - also because of a contemporary trend outside of Jewish tradition , namely character development and social and emotional development.
Given the rich traditional of meditation in psalms and Kabbalah - hitbodedut, etc. I also think mindfulness and Jewish meditation can help fill that space with its emphasis on growing consciousness / awareness, rather than knowledge or even intelligence, since we’ve invented AI to do those for us.
Blending these sciences (mindfulness as well as character development) with the pragmatic system of Mussar, integrating the old and the new, seems the task before us.
I was reading something today that made me realize that Shemini Atzeret may be the ultimate Jewish mindfulness holiday. We just get "to be" with God one more day as God wants to "just be" with us.
Hi Alan, Your Substack makes a very compelling case for accessing minefulness Jewishly. But for those of us who are spiritually orphaned, or at least for me, I find that I don't hear the Jewish ideas unless I can connect them to concepts outside of Judaism. I have trust issues, but I'm working through them. I also find that spiritual traditions that are more body-based, like yoga, help me break through to the Jewish ideas.
Interesting, Jayne. As spiritual orphans, we are unfamiliar with our mother tongue, literally and figuratively, so it is understandable that it is easier to approach through another conceptual doorway. Again here, there is a long Jewish history of doing so, starting with the translation of the Torah into Aramaic so the ordinary people could understand it. But that approach should be seen as a stepping stone. The beauty, the power and the health come from seeking out the inherent integrity that exists in its own right.
I remember this post from when it was a comment to me specifically :) I did not know about the Sufi or Franklin influences though.
Jews are very lucky to have as much access to the unbroken mesorah as we do even if many of us cannot access it due to a language barrier. It is important to go diving into the tradition and to say that we didn't know that theme or concept was even there but that is different from riffing off a Jewish text (or proudly marginal Jewish thinker like Spinoza) to support something we have a preexisting commitment to.
It's that "diving into the tradition" that you mention, James, that seems so important to me. The value is not only in what we find; the very act of committing to dive in is a tikkun on all the rupture that we live with as if it is normal. If we are content to find our spirituality from sources that have no roots in Judaism, like mindfulness meditation, then we are reinforcing the rupture, not healing it. It is important to find the light, but the precursor is to turn ourselves to face it.
Yes, the Torah is the key central pole of our tent. It's interesting that in all the years of Jewish life, and despite even the split into denominations, we all still have the identical Torah. It informs us and it unites us.
Thanks, Jamie. "Hollowed out" is a good way to describe what many of us received of Jewish thought and practice from the previous generation. And I say that without blame. In their shoes, I am likely to have done the same. The unprecedented opportunity to become full members of a society, to assimilate, to pursue affluence with no restrictions on profession, or where you lived, or which club you belonged to, must have been intoxicating. Finally, a solution to the Jewish question! And it didn't work. It didn't put an end to antisemitism and the American dream proved to be a chimera. There is no doubt we have to blend the old with the new because there is no wisdom and not even a possibility of just going back to the old. But blending has its own dangers and I am drawing attention to the casualness with which some people Judaize thought and practices that are in essence not Jewish. That might well turn out to be a variation on what the last generation did -- short term gain, long term pain. All good wishes. Moadim l'simcha.
Thanks Alan. Yes, borrowing is a longstanding Jewish tradition - food, music, philosophy and praxis. The Passover Seder !
And yes. There is something lost when the attempts to adopt principles and practices from other cultures and civilizations without translating them and integrating them into Jewish idioms.
For those seeking such an integration, I recommend rabbi Michael strassfeld’s A Book of Life - which reviews the basics of Jewish practices through a mindfulness lens. It’s an updated version of the popular Jewish catalogues from the 70s.
We are spiritual orphans, I believe, because the traditions got passed on to many of us hollowed out of their core whys - when faced with modernity.
I do think musar has the potential to provide that way - also because of a contemporary trend outside of Jewish tradition , namely character development and social and emotional development.
Given the rich traditional of meditation in psalms and Kabbalah - hitbodedut, etc. I also think mindfulness and Jewish meditation can help fill that space with its emphasis on growing consciousness / awareness, rather than knowledge or even intelligence, since we’ve invented AI to do those for us.
Blending these sciences (mindfulness as well as character development) with the pragmatic system of Mussar, integrating the old and the new, seems the task before us.
Kol hakavod.
Moadim l’simchah
I was reading something today that made me realize that Shemini Atzeret may be the ultimate Jewish mindfulness holiday. We just get "to be" with God one more day as God wants to "just be" with us.
Great point, Jeff. Moadim l'simcha!
Hi Alan, Your Substack makes a very compelling case for accessing minefulness Jewishly. But for those of us who are spiritually orphaned, or at least for me, I find that I don't hear the Jewish ideas unless I can connect them to concepts outside of Judaism. I have trust issues, but I'm working through them. I also find that spiritual traditions that are more body-based, like yoga, help me break through to the Jewish ideas.
Interesting, Jayne. As spiritual orphans, we are unfamiliar with our mother tongue, literally and figuratively, so it is understandable that it is easier to approach through another conceptual doorway. Again here, there is a long Jewish history of doing so, starting with the translation of the Torah into Aramaic so the ordinary people could understand it. But that approach should be seen as a stepping stone. The beauty, the power and the health come from seeking out the inherent integrity that exists in its own right.
I remember this post from when it was a comment to me specifically :) I did not know about the Sufi or Franklin influences though.
Jews are very lucky to have as much access to the unbroken mesorah as we do even if many of us cannot access it due to a language barrier. It is important to go diving into the tradition and to say that we didn't know that theme or concept was even there but that is different from riffing off a Jewish text (or proudly marginal Jewish thinker like Spinoza) to support something we have a preexisting commitment to.
It's that "diving into the tradition" that you mention, James, that seems so important to me. The value is not only in what we find; the very act of committing to dive in is a tikkun on all the rupture that we live with as if it is normal. If we are content to find our spirituality from sources that have no roots in Judaism, like mindfulness meditation, then we are reinforcing the rupture, not healing it. It is important to find the light, but the precursor is to turn ourselves to face it.
Thank G-d we Jews have the Torah from which to appreciate our roots and identities without confusion.
B Kaplan
Yes, the Torah is the key central pole of our tent. It's interesting that in all the years of Jewish life, and despite even the split into denominations, we all still have the identical Torah. It informs us and it unites us.