Finding God In Unusual Places

or some, spirituality is not defined
by traditional belief in God or
worship.
Miriam Jerris, for one, believes that
faith in God can be entirely divorced
from spirituality. Her spirituality is
rooted in the world around her, as well
as the one she feels.
"Can a humanist, an atheist, have a
spiritual experience? Absolutely!" said
Ms. Jerris, executive director of the
2,000-member Society for Humanistic
Judaism based in Farmington Hills,
Mich., outside Detroit. "It can be elic-
ited by nature or poetry. By emotion! I
define spirituality as feeling or ex-
periencing something greater than
myself. It's a transcendent experi-
ence."
"One doesn't have to believe in a su-
pernatural authority to have a reli-
gious or spiritual experience," she
said. "I can feel my inter-
connectedness to all living entities and
the wider universe without having to
explain it in supernatural terms."
Rabbi David R. Blumenthal would
add that Jewish communal activities
that appear largely divorced from Jew-
ish religious practice may also fall
within the realm of the spiritual.
"Our very relationship to the Jewish
people is spiritual. It is more than just
political, historical, cultural or even
psychological," said Rabbi Blumen-
thal, a Conservative rabbi who teaches
Judaic studies at Emory University in
Atlanta. "This is misconstrued, partly

F

ignorant of the full range of Jewish theo-
logical thought about the subject. They
think that if they don't believe in the Bib-
lical or rabbinic notions they are outside
the pale of Jewish spirituality, and so
they look elsewhere.
"The only way I know to get Jews to
talk about God is to get them to talk
about God," he said. "Saying the name of
God during worship is not enough. We
have to talk seriously about beliefs in
adult education courses and in syna-
gogue."

Free will

Then there is the question of individual
responsibility. Judaism teaches that each
man or woman has direct access to God.
One does not need an ordained inter-
mediary. We possess free will.
Rabbi Omer-Man suggests experimen-
ting with form and modes of study.

because we live in a Christian culture
that equates piety with church atten-
dance, partly because rabbis like to
think they have a lock on spirituality."
For some, he continued, working or
volunteering within the organized Jew-
ish community constitutes ahav at
Yisrael, or love for other Jews, and is
done out of a deep spiritual connection.

Rabbi David Blumenthal:
Communal activities can also be spiritual.

"Judaism is always creating new forms,"
he said, "It's always been pluralistic."
Pray, said Rabbi Tolwin. "That's the
hardest responsibility we have as Jews,"
he said. Keep the Sabbath to "sanctify
time," he said. Keep kosher to "sanctify
animal life."
Meditation, a method largely restricted
to some Orthodox Jews and a few others
in the faith's liberal wing, who often first
learn about the practice from non-Jewish
sources, is another option. Rabbi Omer-
Man defined meditation as focusing one's
attention on something internal —
reciting the Sh 'ma or the letters that con-
stitute the name of God, for example — or
something external — a candle, perhaps
— to quiet the mind so that it may
refocus on the eternal.
The point, explained Rabbi Zimmer-
man, is to do something; to move from be-
ing what he calls "a cardiac Jew"— "one
who feels Jewish in their heart but

"Why else would anybody in their
right mind spend Sunday after - Sunday
trying to raise funds?" he said. "It's
not for power, because there's not
much real power to be gained. It's the
spiritual connection. For these people,
Jewish existence itself is a very spiri-
tual thing." ❑ — I.R.

Miriam Jerris: Separating the super-
natural from spirituality.

doesn't act upon it"— to a "spiritually
sensitive Jew," which he and others in-
terviewed stressed can only come from
spiritual practice.
"Jewish spirituality must be acted out.
It is not just a feeling," said Rabbi
Zaiman. "Spiritual forms should be ob-
served even when they are not felt," he
said, because the doing leads to the feel-
ing.
One attribute of the spiritual life is
courage, concluded Rabbi Omer-Man.
Courage to persevere. Courage to main-
tain faith when all meaning has evapor-
ated.
"There are many discouragements
connected with the spiritual life," he said.
"It isn't just seeing the light and being
transformed. It's hard work and very dif-
ficult.
"The doors to spiritual life are never
really inviting. You have to push your
way in." 0

•
The point
is to do
something:
Judaism
requires
effort.

THE DETROIT JEWISH NEWS 33

