Looking for Spirituality

Rabbi Melanie Aron

Selichot
September 11, 2004

Often, if I ask the Confirmation class or a group of B’nai Mitzvah families to make a list of the Jewish things that they do, they put together a list focused exclusively on ritual. Their lists consist of things like attending High Holiday services, going to a Bar Mitzvah, lighting Shabbat candles, and eating matzah. Now I’ll take some responsibility for the content of these lists. I believe that each of these rituals are important, and I spend a lot of time encouraging people to incorporate them into their lives, but I worry that in trying to encourage greater ritual observance we’ve gone overboard and convinced people that ritual is all Judaism is about.

One of my rabbinic colleagues, Gary Bretton-Granatoor, wrote an article recently called: Looking for Spirituality in all the wrong places. In it he challenges the assumptions people make about where they might or might not find spirituality or religious meaning in their lives. Many of us, he writes assume that religious meaning is found in the sanctuary or at the Jewish holidays and spirituality comes from meditating and going on retreat. Neither, we assume, has much to do with our everyday lives, whether at work nor at home.

Earlier this evening we heard from two members of the congregation who had been asked to reflect on the religious meaning of their work and the connection between their careers and their spirituality. My hope was to break down the wall that often exists between our work lives and our sense of our own values and spirituality. Currently work consumes such a large part of many of our lives that to declare it a value free zone reduces religion to a very peripheral role in our lives. It reminds me of a joke one of my older relatives would tell about the division of responsibility in her home. We have a great system, she would say. I make all the small decisions and he makes all the large ones. What are the small decisions- where we should live, what we should buy, which school the children should attend and so on. And the big decisions, our family’s foreign policy on North Korea. I think sometimes Judaism, becomes like the husband in this story; in charge of really important things, like God and the immortality of the soul, but having no impact where the rubber meets the road. Seeing a dichotomy between our Monday through Friday selves, and our synagogue selves, not only emasculates religion, it also enables us to excuse behavior in the workplace and even in our homes, that we condemn in our prayers at Temple.

The integration of our religious values into our everyday lives, at work and at home, is an essential part of Judaism. It is concretely expressed through the mezuzah which we place on our doorways. Why are we instructed to pay attention to the mezuzah, to touch it or kiss it, both as we leave our home for work in the morning and as we re-enter our homes to be with our family in the evening? In that way we are reminded that the values of the Torah, represented by the small scroll inside the mezuzah, are not meant to stay at Temple. They are to come with us into our homes and workplaces. As Rabbi Gedaliah of Lintz taught: “It is ordained that the mezuzah be nailed to every Jewish door. When we enter our home, it reminds us to avoid anger and quarrelsomeness. When we leave our home, the mezuzah again reminds us to curb our egotism in dealing with our fellow creatures.”

Tonight as we enter into the period of serious reflection that Selichot introduces we ask forgiveness not only for rituals we have neglected and observances we have ignored, but also for those ways in which we have failed to bring Jewish values and teachings into our everyday lives.

David Hartman, one of the outstanding Jewish thinkers of our time, was speaking to a group of Christian theologians, who had asked him whether the three Biblically based religions could together repudiate idolatry in our society.

“How will I know,” he asked them,” if I have encountered idolatry? You think I will find it in the Bible, or in the church, or in the mosque or in the synagogue? No I won’t. I will know if I have discovered idolatry by looking into your homes, into your workplaces, into your community. Show me your home, your children, your community. Show me the way you treat your spouse, your employee, your neighbor. Then I will know whether you are truly a believer Then I will know if you are a follower of Abraham.”