I’ve been exploring the notion that Jews born after 1945 have been raised in an environment that made a high priority of assimilation and social and economic advancement and that turned its back on Jewish spiritual traditions, rendering us spiritual orphans.
It is fun to explore the myriad Yiddish vocab for negative traits. I want to get back to the “spiritual orphan” concept you are going to build. I totally agree that post Holocaust Jewish life and education suffered so severely and there was no room or time to explore and instill the spiritual traditions. We had to find our spirit stirred by other religions and philosophies. Those ventures beyond Judaism made it possible for us to rejoice in what we later uncovered in the Hasidic Masters, Kabbalah, and Mussar.
We were able to take what we learned and absorbed and lived by spiritually beyond Judaism and revel in and resonate with the Judaic texts when we were introduced as adults. Were we spiritual orphans or were we simply spiritually hungry and ready to feast, as adults, on that which would not have been accessible in the original writings. The transcendentalists, Suzuki, Watts, the Maharishi, the Dalai Lama and others decoded eastern religious texts for the west.
Then it was our turn to have the decoders study the Hebrew texts at the appropriate age and share them with us. So we did not come as orphans, but as hungry for what Judaism could offer when there were interpreters ready to study and create a stream for the public understanding of our own tradition. Thank you, Alan, for being in that position to take what you learned elsewhere and then turn inward to mine our texts and offer them up to us.
Nancy, I appreciate what you wrote that “ventures beyond Judaism made it possible for us to rejoice in what we later uncovered” within our own tradition. That is true for me as well and one result is that I feel no regret for having made those ventures. It taught me and it motivated me to seek in the Jewish world, and that made it worthwhile. Still, I’m more fulfilled in my Jewish practice than I ever was elsewhere. Just how it is.
I’m not sure about that Jewish DNA. Maybe it’s just my training as an anthropologist that makes me look to family, community and upbringing as the source of values. And I have to point out that there are plenty of instances of people whose DNA may be 100% Jewish but whose behaviour is not in line with Jewish values. In the Talmud, “Rav said: Anyone who shows mercy to people is certainly of the seed of Abraham our father; and anyone who does not show mercy to people is certainly not of the seed of Abraham our father”(Beitzah 32b). We tend to attribute descent to DNA; the Talmud put our behaviour as the determining factor!!
Your points well taken. In addition to your anthropologist view i would add energetic and not necessarily evidence based influences. Maybe, that's just the mystic in me.I still think there is a possible inherent " Jewishness " in some people.Maybe not in literal DNA. I've experienced a very young person and an elderly person and a few in between, whom at significant points in their lives claim their Jewish identity. Where does that come from? Why then? Maybe there are shades of grey. I'm grappling with the idea that our behavior is not always consistent and at the same time action is paramount. How is it decided what is the right amount of action to qualify?
P.S. I made a donation to the Museum of Anthropology. Did you and Bev ever receive an acknowledgment?
And to your second question, I will have to ask Bev. If you did, then I am very grateful to be associated with your generosity to that amazing institution. Thank you so much!
The question of how much action is the right amount is something the Mussar teachers have long debated. In the end, it’s one of those things that will only be perceived clearly in hindsight. My own Mussar teacher, Rabbi Perr, would answer questions like this by saying, “In time, and with experience, you will know.” That doesn’t seem to be very helpful but it really is, because it tells us to keep trying and trying and learning and learning and, in time, we will distinguish among the various inner impulses to know with some certainty that the point has been reached.
Thanks for checking with Bev. And, it was my way of expressing my thanks to the time we spent together with you sharing Vancouver thru your eyes. We did pass by the museum which you commented on positively on our tour!
Interesting answer. Maybe, it's like in retrospect when the building is complete you can only see the significance of your creative and intellectual choices along the way in building the edifice. One might call that the evaluation period which you can carry forth into the next chapter of this life or the life to come in another dimension.
Fun and meaningful exercise - words and (Yiddish) cultural attunement to character. Thanks to musar, I’ve found the language of morality more compelling than spirituality - and found moral foundations theory (Barry Schwartz and jonathan Haidt) to be particularly helpful , reclaiming not just a Jewish but human inheritance of layered moral foundations. And I think that the emphasis on words and storytelling in particular is what may be giving the moral / spiritual values such staying power even without the gift of disciplined practices like musar.
Interested if you’ve come across moral foundation theory,
The question for me, Jamie, is whether morality is an end or a means. If approached from an ethical or philosophical perspective, one should do good to be good, whether for instrumental or idealistic reasons. My exposure to Jewish spirituality agrees wholeheartedly that we should be ethical, not as an end in itself but as the means to a higher goal, which the Mussar teachers expressed as shlemut [wholeness] or kedusha [holiness]. I think it is very, very hard to be ethical without a larger framework within which being ethical has a higher purpose.
Interesting - part of what I’ve found compelling about musar is that it seems to offer a “yes, and” rather than an “either, or” to questions like that. A means to an end or an end in itself? Either way, just practice learning to love and be loved (thru the midot). Motivated by yetzer harah (self interested) or altruism? Doesn’t matter as much as whether you practice that generosity or patience, etc.
are kedusha and shleymah spiritual concepts or moral? Uh, yes, both! Means or ends? Uh, yes both.
Is the goal, to be kinder to one another or closer to god? Uh , yes. If humility and pride are flip sides of the same coin, are
It is fun to explore the myriad Yiddish vocab for negative traits. I want to get back to the “spiritual orphan” concept you are going to build. I totally agree that post Holocaust Jewish life and education suffered so severely and there was no room or time to explore and instill the spiritual traditions. We had to find our spirit stirred by other religions and philosophies. Those ventures beyond Judaism made it possible for us to rejoice in what we later uncovered in the Hasidic Masters, Kabbalah, and Mussar.
We were able to take what we learned and absorbed and lived by spiritually beyond Judaism and revel in and resonate with the Judaic texts when we were introduced as adults. Were we spiritual orphans or were we simply spiritually hungry and ready to feast, as adults, on that which would not have been accessible in the original writings. The transcendentalists, Suzuki, Watts, the Maharishi, the Dalai Lama and others decoded eastern religious texts for the west.
Then it was our turn to have the decoders study the Hebrew texts at the appropriate age and share them with us. So we did not come as orphans, but as hungry for what Judaism could offer when there were interpreters ready to study and create a stream for the public understanding of our own tradition. Thank you, Alan, for being in that position to take what you learned elsewhere and then turn inward to mine our texts and offer them up to us.
Nancy, I appreciate what you wrote that “ventures beyond Judaism made it possible for us to rejoice in what we later uncovered” within our own tradition. That is true for me as well and one result is that I feel no regret for having made those ventures. It taught me and it motivated me to seek in the Jewish world, and that made it worthwhile. Still, I’m more fulfilled in my Jewish practice than I ever was elsewhere. Just how it is.
Maybe orphan or not there is something in the Jewish DNA that leads us in the direction of Jewish values.
I’m not sure about that Jewish DNA. Maybe it’s just my training as an anthropologist that makes me look to family, community and upbringing as the source of values. And I have to point out that there are plenty of instances of people whose DNA may be 100% Jewish but whose behaviour is not in line with Jewish values. In the Talmud, “Rav said: Anyone who shows mercy to people is certainly of the seed of Abraham our father; and anyone who does not show mercy to people is certainly not of the seed of Abraham our father”(Beitzah 32b). We tend to attribute descent to DNA; the Talmud put our behaviour as the determining factor!!
Your points well taken. In addition to your anthropologist view i would add energetic and not necessarily evidence based influences. Maybe, that's just the mystic in me.I still think there is a possible inherent " Jewishness " in some people.Maybe not in literal DNA. I've experienced a very young person and an elderly person and a few in between, whom at significant points in their lives claim their Jewish identity. Where does that come from? Why then? Maybe there are shades of grey. I'm grappling with the idea that our behavior is not always consistent and at the same time action is paramount. How is it decided what is the right amount of action to qualify?
P.S. I made a donation to the Museum of Anthropology. Did you and Bev ever receive an acknowledgment?
And to your second question, I will have to ask Bev. If you did, then I am very grateful to be associated with your generosity to that amazing institution. Thank you so much!
The question of how much action is the right amount is something the Mussar teachers have long debated. In the end, it’s one of those things that will only be perceived clearly in hindsight. My own Mussar teacher, Rabbi Perr, would answer questions like this by saying, “In time, and with experience, you will know.” That doesn’t seem to be very helpful but it really is, because it tells us to keep trying and trying and learning and learning and, in time, we will distinguish among the various inner impulses to know with some certainty that the point has been reached.
Thanks for checking with Bev. And, it was my way of expressing my thanks to the time we spent together with you sharing Vancouver thru your eyes. We did pass by the museum which you commented on positively on our tour!
Interesting answer. Maybe, it's like in retrospect when the building is complete you can only see the significance of your creative and intellectual choices along the way in building the edifice. One might call that the evaluation period which you can carry forth into the next chapter of this life or the life to come in another dimension.
Fun and meaningful exercise - words and (Yiddish) cultural attunement to character. Thanks to musar, I’ve found the language of morality more compelling than spirituality - and found moral foundations theory (Barry Schwartz and jonathan Haidt) to be particularly helpful , reclaiming not just a Jewish but human inheritance of layered moral foundations. And I think that the emphasis on words and storytelling in particular is what may be giving the moral / spiritual values such staying power even without the gift of disciplined practices like musar.
Interested if you’ve come across moral foundation theory,
The question for me, Jamie, is whether morality is an end or a means. If approached from an ethical or philosophical perspective, one should do good to be good, whether for instrumental or idealistic reasons. My exposure to Jewish spirituality agrees wholeheartedly that we should be ethical, not as an end in itself but as the means to a higher goal, which the Mussar teachers expressed as shlemut [wholeness] or kedusha [holiness]. I think it is very, very hard to be ethical without a larger framework within which being ethical has a higher purpose.
Interesting - part of what I’ve found compelling about musar is that it seems to offer a “yes, and” rather than an “either, or” to questions like that. A means to an end or an end in itself? Either way, just practice learning to love and be loved (thru the midot). Motivated by yetzer harah (self interested) or altruism? Doesn’t matter as much as whether you practice that generosity or patience, etc.
are kedusha and shleymah spiritual concepts or moral? Uh, yes, both! Means or ends? Uh, yes both.
Is the goal, to be kinder to one another or closer to god? Uh , yes. If humility and pride are flip sides of the same coin, are
Means and ends as well?
Enjoying the dialogue. Thanks for playing.
Cheers
Could not agree more! Thanks for the clarifying comment, R’ Jamie.