Li • Li
Whispering
In God's Ear
In Jewish spirituality, man lets
God in wherever he can: through
the intellect, the heart, and
deeds. During these Days of Awe,
we climb our personal Sinai and
search for who we are and
who we can be.
ARTHUR J. MAGIDA
Special to The Jewish News
hese, the Days of Awe, are a
time of turning toward God
and toward one's self. We
ponder who we are in relation
to ourself, to our community,
to our God. We consider the fullest scheme
of the universe and weigh our place in it. We
climb our personal Sinai and gaze upon the
terrain below, searching for that which we
are — and that which we can be.
These days, perhaps more than any
other in the Jewish calendar, we whisper
in God's ear. We, in turn, hear a sound
that is not a sound, a rustling that is not
a rustling. We sense a Presence that we
cannot name; we intuit a Name that we
cannot speak.
This is the mystery of our lives that
pulls us onward, the elusive place where
God encounters man and man encounters
himself.
In the vernacular, this is called
"spirituality" — an apprehension of the
intersection between man and God.
English-speaking Jews, having borrowed
that word from the broader culture, now
use that word, too. In Hebrew, several
words approximate "spiritual." One is
ruchaniyyut, loosely translated as "of the
spirit." Related to this is kavvanah.
Translated as "intention" or
"awareness," kavvanah rescues ritual
and prayer from becoming empty and
mechanical, dulling and legalistic.
Attempting a definition of spirituality
that would apply to all of Judaism, Rabbi
T
Arthur Green, dean of the Reconstruc-
tionist Rabbinical College, Wyncote, Pa.,
settled on "life in the presence of God."
This definition, Rabbi Green wrote,
leaves "room for an array of varied types,
each of which gives different • weight to
one aspect or another of the spiritual
life."
For some Jews, he said, this could
mean "ascending" to a higher realm. For
others, it could mean a life lived attemp-
ting to fulfill God's will. Common to all
forms of Jewish spirituality, he said, are
"a struggle against idolatry," "a vague
commitment to the rule of [divine] law',"
and belief in Torah "as revealed at Mount
Sinai."
Varieties of Spirituality
Throughout Jewish history, being spir-
itual has had different colorings. For Mo-
ses at Sinai, Elijah in the desert, the high
priest in the Jerusalem Temple's Holy of
Holies, it meant solitude. For certain
12th and 13th century kabbalists, it
meant a mystical union with God. For
some 19th century Eastern European
Jews, it even meant marrying one's
daughter to a scholar of Jewish texts.
For the 20th century Conservative
rabbi, Abraham Joshua Heschel, with his
emphasis on social action, spirituality
meant marching for civil rights in Selma,
Alabama, with Martin Luther King, Jr.
Upon rejoining his family in New York,
THE DETROIT JEWISH NEWS
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