Dear Rabbi Gold,

Having heard you speak last year at the "Rediscovering Jewish Meditation" conference in Los Angeles, I thought you might be able to offer some advice regarding a spiritual dilemma. For the last three years I've found myself increasingly drawn to Buddhist practices, especially Vipassana meditation but also other aspects of dharma.

I find it so easy to enter the Buddhist doors to spiritual discovery... and the theology fits well with my agnostic skepticism. The more I read about Buddhism, the more I am enthused. At the same time, I have explored Jewish meditation, prayer, and Torah study. (I was raised in a conserva-dox household but these days belong to a reform temple.) Try as I do, I am unable to find doors that will let me in. The meditation is fine, but the more god-centered it is, the less it works for me. And the Torah study and prayer don't work. They seem saturated with a god who seems, to me, excessively judgmental; implausible; ethnocentric, etc. In short, our Adonai leaves me unstirred. I don't buy it. And without God, there doesn't seem much spirituality left in Judaism.

I love my people and identify with its history. But as a theology and spiritual practice, Judaism isn't resonating with my soul. So, I wonder: am I missing something? Am I looking in the wrong places? Or should I just keep on the Buddhist path while maintaining a sentimental attachment to Judaism?

If you have any advice or insights, they would be appreciated.

Thanks very much.

--------

Dear --------

First I apologize for the delay in my response. Your letter touched me and challenged me and I have kept your questions in my heart through this whole month of Elul, the preparation time before the High Holy Days. Questions are holy for me because they are just the outer layer, covering complex structures of beliefs, assumptions, yearnings, and despairs.

The advice or insights that I give you come out from my own journey, story, questions and longings and I give them to you as the joyous overflow of the riches I have received. I certainly have no intention of convincing you of anything or changing your mind about anything or judging you in any way.

If you are serious about "finding the doors that will let you in", you will have to examine your assumptions about:

What Judaism is...
What God is....
What is required by being on a spiritual path...

These unexamined assumptions are what close the doors. Also, a sentimental attachment to Judaism can sometimes take the place of, or obscure the kind of relationship to the tradition that can profoundly transform you.

The first common misunderstanding is that Judaism is a package. Take it or leave it. That it is monolithic, passed down through Moses, preserved by generations and offered to you. With a certain theology, a certain liturgy, a certain set of defined practices. Not true. And the truth of the "living Tradition" is much more exciting. When I was trying to unwrap the package that I thought Judaism was, it was frustrating at times to encounter the multiplicity of interpretation, and the change in theology and practice from one time or place to another. I couldn't hold it. Couldn't define it. Couldn't pin it down.

And then the package began to become a river. And as Hericlitus had discovered, "I Couldn't step in to the same river twice." The banks of the river are the structures and forms that carry the flow of living waters. Those banks are in turn shaped by that flow. And the river has a call - an invitation to participate in its flow. You get to know the river by immersing in it.

You wisely say that "without God, there doesn't seem much spirituality left in Judaism." But which God? The rationalistic God of Maimonides? the Mystical God of Luria? The existential God of Judah HaLevi? The pantheistic God of Spinoza? The naturalistic God of Kaplan? The God that you met in the siddur and in the Torah is wearing the clothes of the world. The Zohar warns, "The Torah has clothed itself in the outer garments of the world and woe to the person who looks at the garment as being the Torah." That "excessively judgmental; implausible; ethnocentric" God that you met is wearing the garments of the world. If you are to take off those disguises you must also unmask yourself. That is the price for knowing God. Transformation.

Ironically the one who taught me about the necessity of being God-centered as a Jew was Thich Nat Han. I sent him a dozen books about Judaism when I had the honor of leading High Holy Day Services for the Jews that were attending his retreats. I wanted him to understand what we were doing. At his dharma talk he acknowledged our presence and said, "it is my understanding that the purpose of all Jewish practice is to live every moment in the presence of God..........and that is Mindfulness."

In that simple reflection he pointed me towards the experience of God rather than an image or idea or theology. Rather than witnessing God as a "noun", the experience of God is a willing surrender, a "being swept up by" the "verb" of God. So when you merely look at the content of Judaism or the God-idea, you will miss it. The function of all that content (and there plenty - prayer, Torah, Law, life-cycle and holiday cycle rituals, philosophy, music...) is to awaken you to the Living God. They are tools for the transformation of consciousness. And the whole tradition carries a transmission of the ethos and mythos of a people that has been touched by that spirit, that Living God, the flow of that river.

The transmission comes, not necessarily in a flash of understanding, but rather through the complex rhythms of a Jewish life. The rhythm of Shabbat and the week show us how to move between the being and doing of our lives. The rhythms of mourning and rejoicing through the cycle of the year allow us to experience and give meaning to every aspect of what it means to be human. We learn through ritual and obligation what it means to be inextricably bound to each other and to the Unity of All. And the way to know it is to live it, with a heightened awareness and with a full-hearted intention.

Your Buddhist practice can help you to attain that heightened awareness. And your full-hearted intention, which is the crucial hidden aspect of all Jewish practice, is developed, purified and refined day by day, moment by moment. Know that a Jewish Spiritual path demands everything from you. And it takes a faith in the big picture of your life unfolding, (receiving over a lifetime, the gift of your Jewish incarnation), as well as a willingness to attend to the minute details.

I thank you for your questions, for the longing behind your questions and for your journey. I send you blessings for the New Year.

B'Ahavah,

Rabbi Shefa Gold 1999