Jul 26, 2024 | Blog, Rabbi Josh Feigelson, PhD, President & CEO, Institute for Jewish Spirituality
I will admit that I wasn’t prepared for the emotional response I experienced upon reading President Biden’s letter announcing his decision to turn down renomination this week. I was really moved. Upon reflection, what touched me most was the rarity of witnessing the most politically powerful person in the world acknowledge his limitations and, after some reluctance, ultimately volunteer an act of profound sacrifice for what he perceived to be the greater good. While I’m used to stories of sacrifice from soldiers, first responders, and even everyday people, this kind of story isn’t one most of us encounter frequently.
“Of all the rituals relevant to democracy, sacrifice is preeminent,” writes the contemporary political theorist Danielle Allen. “No democratic citizen, adult or child, escapes the necessity of losing out at some point in a public decision.” (Talking to Strangers: Anxieties of Citizenship since Brown v. Board of Education, 28) Allen notes that while it is essential that sacrifice be distributed equitably—that is, that one or a few groups not bear a disproportionate share of the burden of sacrifice—at bedrock, democratic life depends upon the willingness and capacity of every citizen, from the most humble to the most powerful, to be able to sacrifice their desires for the greater good. It happens every time the losing minority concedes a vote in a legislature or an election (something we have learned cannot be taken for granted). That, it seems to me, is one of the things Alexis de Tocqueville meant when he wrote about the habits of the heart necessary for democracy.
Such habits are fundamentally spiritual things. As the list of communal sacrifices in Parshat Pinchas reminds us (Numbers 28), sacrifice is central to the spiritual life described in the Torah. And while we do not bring animal sacrifices anymore, the gesture of sacrifice itself—the willingness to give up something we own, want, or even love for the sake of a greater good—remains central to our spiritual life today. It is what we practice through mindfully surrendering our workday lives over Shabbat, our wealth through tzedakah, our dietary desires through kashrut. The point of so many of the mitzvot is to condition us to the awareness that we are indeed part of something much larger than ourselves—and, by practicing them, to nurture within our hearts the ability to sacrifice for a greater good.
Just before the list of sacrifices, the Torah tells the story of the Jewish people’s first transition of power. “YHVH said to Moses, ‘Ascend these heights of Avarim and view the land the at I have given to the Israelite people. When you have seen it, you too shall be gathered to your kin, just as your brother Aaron.” Moses pleads with God to appoint a new leader, someone who “will go out before them and come in before them, who will take them out and bring them in.” God tells Moses to take Joshua and place his hands on him in front of all the people, and in doing so, to invest him with authority. And that’s what they do.
Commenting on Moses’s description of the leader as one who goes out before the people, Rashi, quoting the Midrash, elaborates: “Not as is the way of kings who sit at home and send their armies to battle, but as I, Moses, have done,” leading the people personally, with my own body on the line. At this profound moment of transition, Moses grounds the function and authority of leadership in the willingness of a leader to sacrifice through personal example—and, in so doing, to inspire meaningful, life-affirming sacrifice among their flock.
President Biden would probably be the first to say, “Don’t compare me to Moses.” I don’t mean to make him a saint (in any case, that’s the business of the Catholic Church). And I don’t mean to offer a political endorsement (in any case, he has taken himself out of the race). But in my lifetime, this is one of the more remarkable moments of leadership and sacrifice I have witnessed. No matter our political persuasions, I hope it can inspire in all of us an appreciation of the importance of the spiritual habits of the heart, and help renew within us the capacity and willingness to sacrifice for the greater good.
Jul 18, 2024 | Blog, Rabbi Josh Feigelson, PhD, President & CEO, Institute for Jewish Spirituality
A couple of friends sent me David Brooks’s column in the New York Times last Friday. While the headline made it seem that the column was about “Trump’s enduring appeal,” the column itself might more accurately be summarized as a reflection on, as Brooks put it, “the deeper roots of our current dysfunction.” As one of my friends said, they thought I might resonate with Brooks’s analysis, and especially his conclusion, that the “work of cultural repair will be done by religious progressives, by a new generation of leaders who will build a modern social gospel around love of neighbor and hospitality for the marginalized.”
They were right. I do like a lot about Brooks’s analysis, and I do resonate with his conclusion. I think that in many ways the work we do here at IJS is about laying the spiritual foundations, in both thought and practice, for “a Judaism we can believe in” (with apologies to Barack Obama), one that helps us to hold and navigate the tensions of self and other, neighbor and stranger, such that, as Parker Palmer puts it, our hearts break open rather than apart.
Last week I wrote about some of the anxieties I have been experiencing this summer in the current political climate, and about how I’ve been trying to both be aware of their roots within me and respond to them mindfully. The response to that reflection was unusually voluminous. It seemed to have struck a chord. And that was before the former president escaped assassination by a hair’s breadth. The anxiety has only increased.
What I find myself coming back to, what I think Brooks helpfully named, is that the challenge and the crisis is not something that will be solved quickly. It is generational. It is structural. Regardless of who the President is on January 20, the deeper challenges will remain. Brooks identifies two: 1) developing and agreeing on systems of government to provide meaningful representation in a postmodern era of technology and communication; and 2) filling the “void of meaning… a shared sense of right and wrong, a sense of purpose,” as he puts it. He leaves out some other biggies: Developing approaches to economic livelihood that do not depend on extracting and depleting natural resources; adapting to a less-hospitable climate; coming to some shared understanding about race and whether and how we want to continue to redress America’s original sin of slavery; continuing big questions about gender and sexuality; there are more.
These are not short-term projects, of course, and Brooks, it should go without saying, is not the first to talk about them. In the short-term, it seems a good bet that we will experience more collective turbulence, more emphasis on identity politics on both right and left, and more verbal and physical violence–especially at those who are perceived by a large group as “other” and therefore seem to impede calls for “unity.” (Jews know from this.) These tensions will continue to animate American political life, and American Jewish life too.
One of the reasons I believe our Torah at IJS is so potentially helpful for this moment is that it draws much of its inspiration from Hasidism. As I like to point out–and it still blows my own mind–Hasidism is an Enlightenment-era project. The Ba’al Shem Tov (1698-1760) and Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790) were contemporaries. Yes, Hasidism happened in Eastern Europe, and thus wasn’t directly in the conversation about democracy happening in the West. But Hasidism responds to some similar questions as Enlightenment thinkers. The Enlightenment asked: How do we understand and organize our political lives when sovereignty is not exclusively concentrated in a king or emperor, but is instead shared among all citizens? Hasidism asked: How do we understand and organize our religious and spiritual lives when divinity is not exclusively concentrated in a Maimonidean unknowable unmoved mover, but is instead shared among all images of God and all of Creation?
Those questions led the Hasidic masters to articulate a theology that emphasizes the inherent dignity, uniqueness, and interconnection between all created beings. And they led Hasidism to develop both ecstatic and contemplative forms of spiritual practice, so that these ideas weren’t only intellectual assertions but actual ways of being in the world. (Unlike some Protestant traditions, however, they did not lead to democratic forms of deliberation and decision-making.) Our founders here at IJS were, thankfully, wise enough to recognize how much good such an approach can do in the world today.
This coming Tuesday on the Jewish calendar marks the Seventeenth of Tammuz, the beginning of the three week period leading to Tisha b’Av, known as bein hameitzarim, or the time of constriction. Over that span we become increasingly pulled into the orbit of despair that characterizes the saddest day of the year, the day when the Temple was destroyed and the Divine went into exile along with the Jewish people. Yet Jewish history is nothing if not the story, told again and again, of resilience and renewal in the face of hardship. As we enter into that orbit this year, I find myself breathing deeply–not only in an effort to stay calm and open, but also to tap into the deep spiritual roots of our people and our tradition. It is the sorcerer Balaam who, in this week’s Torah portion, reminds us that we have everything we need: “How good are your tents, O Jacob, your divine dwelling places, O Israel.” (Num. 24:5)
It is a long journey. It always has been. And we are still on it together.
Jul 11, 2024 | Blog, Rabbi Josh Feigelson, PhD, President & CEO, Institute for Jewish Spirituality
This isn’t a political space and I don’t intend to make it one here. But I also feel a need to talk about politics this week. Wish me luck.
For the last couple of weeks I’ve been experiencing a deep feeling of unease. I have found it hard to focus. I’m more easily distracted than usual. My sleep hasn’t been as good. And it’s not about anything in my personal life–everyone is more or less okay, thank God–or even, at this point, having to do with the situation in the Middle East, which we’ve been living with for too many months.
No, the source of my anxiety is pretty clearly the combined effect of some enormously significant Supreme Court rulings at the end of June and the national conversation that has erupted in the last two weeks around President Biden’s aging and his fitness as both a candidate and holder of his office.
When I sit with it, I find that my anxiety seems to be primarily rooted in both the instability of this moment itself, the prospect of instability in the future, and the powerlessness I experience of living with that instability. It feels like the earth is quaking beneath my feet and there is precious little I can do about it.
The thing is, of course, that that’s not really news–certainly not for many people in the world. While I happen to have been born into a set of conditions that has allowed me to presume a lot of stability (privileges both earned and, probably more often, unearned), so many other people have had a different, more precarious, experience. But this is happening to me now. So here I am, living with my experience.
Again, when I sit with it, I find that what I first really seem to want is just that basic stability. It was so much easier when I felt like I could rely on the idea that some things were settled, that there were big rocks to stand on. In the absence of those big rocks, I sense an impulse–a perfectly natural impulse–to find some other terra firma on which to rest. My mind starts spinning stories about what will happen. Even if they’re unhappy, negative stories, at least they’re rocks.
Chukat is a Torah portion about death and transition. In this Torah portion we read of the deaths of Miriam and Aaron and the transition of the High Priesthood to Aaron’s son, Elazar. Moses, likewise, learns that he will not enter the Promised Land, even as the Israelites make their way to its borders. The times, they are a-changin’: big rocks crumble, uncertainty abounds.
A counterpoint to that uncertainty is the opening section of Chukat, the law of the red heifer, which responds to the destabilizing reality of death through purification. “This is the ritual law that YHVH has commanded,” the Torah says: “Instruct the Israelite people to bring you a red cow without blemish, in which there is no defect and on which no yoke has been laid.”
Why a counterpoint to instability? On one level, because of its simple assertion: As the midrash notes, this is a “chok,” a law without reason (unlike, for instance, the commandment not to steal). Performing it is thus an expression of faith, an affirmation that we do some things because of our commitment.
But I think it’s deeper than that. Rashi, based on the Midrash, suggests that the entire ritual is tikkun, a repair, for the sin of the Golden Calf: “Since they became impure by a calf, let its mother (a cow) come and atone for the calf.” And the impulse to erect the Golden Calf was itself rooted in the dis-ease of living with the unknown: “Come, make us a god who shall go before us,” the people said, “for that fellow Moses—the man who brought us from the land of Egypt—we do not know what has happened to him” (Exodus 32:1). The people’s discomfort at not knowing, their fear of living with uncertainty, prompts them to yearn for something solid: an idol.
We do not perform the ritual of the Red Heifer today, we only read about it. Yet I find that it speaks to me at moments of profound uncertainty, like this one. For me, it’s a reminder to be mindful of how I respond to the very human impulse for stability, to be careful in where I invest that yearning, to be wary of seductive solutions. Because in truth, instability is ever-present. The sands are always shifting beneath our feet–sometimes quicker and more visibly, sometimes slower and less obviously. The Red Heifer is an invitation to live with awareness of that instability, and to respond to it with wisdom, expansiveness, and compassion.
Jun 27, 2024 | Blog, Rabbi Josh Feigelson, PhD, President & CEO, Institute for Jewish Spirituality
In the weeks before he left for camp, my youngest son, Toby, and I started watching the sitcom “Modern Family” together. It has been a delight to rediscover this show that I remember being stupendously funny the first time around and to share it with my kid now. (It’s also really interesting to see which parts of the show hold up 15 years later and which ones could use a rewrite.)
Like any good family-oriented sitcom, one of the things that makes “Modern Family” work is the way it reflects the real-life dynamics of so many families. And indeed that’s kind of the main point of the show: Parent-child relationships–of both little kids and grown children–seem to have some predictable characteristics across families no matter how they’re configured. So many people from so many different backgrounds could watch “Modern Family” and find themselves laughing because they could see themselves reflected in what they saw on the screen.
There’s a particular episode from one of the early seasons in which one of the sets of parents, Phil and Claire, find a burn mark on the couch just before Christmas. Because it’s about the width of a cigarette, they immediately conclude that one of their children must have been smoking. They sit the kids down and Phil rushes into an ultimatum: Confess, or we’re not having Christmas this year. None the kids owns up, and Phil, in a way that skirts the bounds between firmness and violence, starts dismantling the Christmas tree.
The episode continues from there, with the parents ratcheting up the pressure and the kids trying to figure out whether to confess to a crime that it increasingly becomes clear they didn’t commit. For me as a parent, what was so painfully recognizable was the conversation between Phil and Claire in which they acknowledge they (well, really Phil) moved too quickly to DEFCON 1–but then wonder about whether to back down. Their basic calculus is this: “If we back down now, the kids will never believe any threat of consequences again in the future.” So they stick to their guns despite their better judgment. (If you want the spoiler to the mystery: It turns out, of course, that it wasn’t a cigarette burn at all but rather a burn caused by the sun refracted through the star on top of the Christmas tree.)
I hear echoes of this all-too-familiar dynamic in Moses’s dialogue with God after the incident of the spies. In this case, of course, the kids really did mess up: after the spies return their worrisome report about the Promised Land, the people’s deflation turns to rebelliousness, despite the encouragement of Joshua and Caleb. God’s instinct is to start over: “I will strike them with pestilence and disown them, and I will make of you a nation far more numerous than they!” (Num. 14:12) But Moses, as he did previously after the sin of the Golden Calf, reminds God that there’s a political dimension to this conversation: The Egyptians will hear that, despite all of God’s great power, God still couldn’t manage to get the Israelites safely to Canaan. So wiping them out would be a bad move.
But Moses, acting here, as it were, as God’s rabbi, also recognizes the bind that God is in–and points God to an off-ramp. He reminds God of God’s own words: God’s attributes of mercy, patience, and forgiveness that the Holy One originally proclaimed during the Golden Calf episode. And he invites the Holy One to live up to that greatness: “And now, let your power be great… pardon the iniquity of this people, according to the greatness of your loving kindness, just as you have been bearing it for this people from Egypt until now.” (Num. 14:17-19)
God, of course, relents and comes up with a different solution–perhaps the solution that needed to be invoked all along: more time. This generation simply wasn’t ready to manage the transition from Egypt to Canaan. God’s expectations were simply too high. So, change plans: the people will need to wander in the desert for 40 years until a new generation can arise, one that is in better condition to enter the Promised Land.
There are, of course, potential lessons to be inferred about wars and politics from this episode. (Several years ago I published an article, drawn from my dissertation research, about Rabbi Yitz Greenberg’s testimony to the Senate Foreign Relations committee regarding the war in Vietnam. The lessons he draws are evocative of this story.)
But we encounter the truth of this story on a day to day and even moment to moment level: certainly for those of us who are parents, but truly for all of us who are in any kind of relationship that experiences hope and expectation, the subversion of those hopes or expectations, and the choice we confront of what to do about it. One of the things the Torah seems to be saying here is that all of us, even the Holy Blessed One, experience frustration, anger, resentment. And all of us can make rash decisions and proclamations on the basis of those strong emotions. Those decisions are rarely the best ones, but we can wind up in what feels like a cul-de-sac looking for a way out.
The good news, the Torah teaches us, is that, like the Divine, we images of the divine also have the power of hesed within us. We, too, can activate that power. Likely that activation will be aided by the help of a friend, a coach, a clergyperson. But we have the power within us to act in ways that are more loving, generous, and forgiving. From prayer to Torah study to Shabbat to Yom Kippur–which re-enacts the forgiveness after the Golden Calf and this forgiveness after the spies–our spiritual practices are regular opportunities to develop and strengthen these muscles of hesed.
Jun 20, 2024 | Blog, Rabbi Josh Feigelson, PhD, President & CEO, Institute for Jewish Spirituality
A memory came up on Facebook the other day: a picture of a note from our youngest child three years ago after he arrived on the bus for his first experience as a camper at Camp Ramah in Wisconsin. It was brief, but it made my heart melt: “I’m having so much fun! Toby.”
Summer camp is a multigenerational through line in my family history. My grandfather went to Camp Tonkawa with the Boy Scouts in Minnesota a century ago. My parents met while working on staff at Camp Tamarack in southeastern Michigan. I went to Camp Ramah in Canada, Interlochen Arts Camp, and Wright’s Lake Scout Camp as a kid. And beginning when our first-born was old enough to attend as a camper, Natalie and/or I have sung for our supper by working on the staff at Camp Ramah in Wisconsin–and our older kids have gone on to be counselors there too. Camp is a basic fact of life for us.
So this week marked something of our annual celebration, as the kids went off to camp again.
The report from our middle child, serving his first full summer on staff, is that the initial couple of days were hard–storming, norming, forming, as the old saying goes–but that his cabin is coming together. Because, of course, there is so much that goes into creating this community every year. Every camper and every staff member arrives at camp with a world of expectations, hopes, fears, joys, and anxieties, and they ultimately have to find a way to live together.
And what we witness year after year is that eventually, most of the time, they do. With patience, openness, honesty, care, love–and with shared projects to work on, shared songs to sing, shared dances to dance together, shared natural beauty to bask in–a disparate group of hundreds of young people becomes a community. For so many people, camp is a place where, as much as anywhere on earth, they experience not just community, but an awareness of the shechina, the divine presence.
There’s a short passage in Parashat Behaalotcha that has always fascinated me, Numbers 9:15-23. In poetic and, for the Torah, repetitious language, it describes how the attunement between the Israelites and the divine presence. It could be summarized simply by verse 18: “At YHVH’s command the Israelites broke camp, and at YHVH’s command they made camp: they remained encamped as long as the cloud dwelled over the mishkan.”
Among the many meaningful elements of this short passage is the repeated use of the words yachanu, “they camped,” and yishkon, “God dwelled.” By my count, camping is referenced six times (and mirrored by linsoa, journeying–the opposite of camping) while dwelling is mentioned ten times, including the mentions of the mishkan itself, the place of divine indwelling. Given that the Torah is normally quite economical in its prose, an efflorescence like this is an invitation to interpret.
Perhaps an interpretation can be found in another phrase that recurs in this passage over and over: “al pi YHVH,” by the word of the Ineffable One. During their time in the wilderness, the Israelites would break camp and make camp repeatedly. And according to this passage, each time they made camp, the divine presence would come to rest in their midst–until the divine gestured to them that it was time to move again. What the passage describes is a profound attunement–between the collective, its constituent individuals, and the divine presence.
It is, perhaps, an ideal (notably, the first time the root SH-K-N is used in the Torah comes in Genesis 3:24: “the Divine stationed [vayashken] two cherubs east of Eden” after human beings were sent out from the Garden of Eden). And it may feel particularly far away these days, this vision of sacred attunement on not only a personal, but a collective level.
Yet I think there’s a reason why so many Jews keep coming back to camp year after year. It isn’t only because, as my young son wrote, camp is so much fun. As anyone who has been to camp knows, camp isn’t always fun. But the process of making a community, of living in greater harmony with the rhythms of nature and the rhythms of Jewish life, of singing and praying and studying and dancing together, of negotiating relationships and learning how to live peacefully in community with one another–in all of that messy and beautiful work of making camp, we make a space to recognize the divine presence. For many people, camp is a place where we experience the attunement that is always possible–but that is uniquely available under the trees, by the lake, and around the campfire.
Jun 11, 2024 | Blog, by Rabbi Miriam Margles, Senior Core Faculty, Institute for Jewish Spirituality
Each time we take the Torah out of the ark in synagogue, chanting its verses in community, we are reenacting revelation at Mount Sinai. Though not nearly as dramatic as the Torah’s description of fire and smoke, thunder and lightning, a quaking mountain and a shofar blast growing louder and louder, our rituals of standing up on our feet as the ark is opened, witnessing as the scrolls are revealed, and bringing the Torah from the “mountain” of the raised bimah into the midst of all those gathered, enable us to evoke Sinai in the present moment.
On Shavuot (the festival celebrating the giving of the Torah, which begins this year in the evening of June 11th), we seek to inhabit the experience of Sinai even more fully as the very scene of revelation is read from the Torah, surrounding us with the images of flashing fire and the voice of God rumbling through the chanted Ten Commandments. On Shavuot, we seek to be present not only as witnesses to the powerful experience of the giving of the Torah, but to join our ancient Israelite kin in actively receiving Torah and opening ourselves to receive Divine Presence.
But in the biblical description of Matan Torah (the giving of the Torah) there is a disruption in the Israelites’ receptivity. Although they collectively call out “All that YHVH has spoken we shall do!”, actively taking hold of the commitment to live their lives in alignment with Divine will and sacred practice, at the very moment of direct Divine encounter, the Israelites sever connection. They become so gripped by fear, afraid that they will die if they remain present to the unfolding revelation, that they ‘stand at a distance.’ They plead with Moses to interrupt this intimate intensity and ask him to be their flesh and blood, familiar, human-scale intermediary.
I feel the loss that this reaction created. In the face of such potent, available closeness, the Israelites created distance. With Shavuot’s invitation to embody revelation, an approach of mindful spiritual practice invites us to both inhabit the deepest wisdom of our ancestors’ experience, as well as learning from and bringing tikkun/repair to our ancestors’ limitations. We can turn our attention to explore the question for ourselves – when does fear cause you to distance yourself from that which is intimate, sacred, powerful and true?
Revelation in its varied forms can be unsettling and stir fear. As Rabbi Gordon Tucker writes the embodiment of revelation “should cause us to tremble.” It “should penetrate one’s entire person, one’s entire body.” Whether in the close, revealing presence of another person, in a breathless, awe-opening moment in nature, in an unmasking and emptying experience of solitude or in prayerful surrender, the ego-gripped self can’t help but loosen. In such experiences, we get a glimpse of Divine reality – more vast and far more intimate in its awareness than the small self that we know, tethered to the comfort, stability and safety of its self-enclosure. It can be frightening to release the protective grasp on our sense of self. It can be frightening to feel all that this demands of us – holding us in the commitment to show up again and again – enlivened, open and connected – not retreating back into a contracted way of being, not going back to sleep.
In the liturgy of the Torah service, there is guidance to practice meeting the fears that revelation’s intimacy stirs. And while these words are part of every Torah service, I want to engage with them as a practice particularly for Shavuot:
Just before Torah reading begins, as the first person is called up to the Torah for an aliyah, the gabbai recites, “May Divine Presence help, protect and save all who trust in You…” And the community responds – “Ve’atem ha’dvekim b’YHVH Eloheykhem chayyim kulkhem hayom/You who cling to YHVH your God, are all alive today.”
First we are invited to consciously root ourselves in the qualities of Divine protection and support, present in our bodies, souls and breath, present in community, present in the ancestral strength and love that reverberate through us and through prayer, ritual and Torah. When we take these few words as instructions, we practice leaning into trust and the power that saves us and holds us. Then the community responds together by consciously, deliberately, drawing close. In our voices and our presence with one another, we mirror to each other that which is true – “You who are dvekim” – you who keep moving closer, who attach yourselves to Limitless Presence, who cling to intimate connection even when you are afraid – you are alive today! As we stand together at the foot of Sinai, ready to receive living, breathing, ever-unfolding revelation, we have the opportunity to repair the distance that fear can engender. We practice becoming dvekim, those who choose to consciously, lovingly, bravely draw close.
Chag same’ach!
Jun 11, 2024 | Blog, by Rabbi Sam Feinsmith, Senior Core Faculty, Institute for Jewish Spirituality
According to the Torah (Exodus 19), the Jewish people perceive the Divine Voice amidst a loud cacophony of thunder, lighting, and quaking ground. But I Kings (chapter 19) offers a different model of receiving revelation: the prophet Elijah experiences the Voice not in the tumult of wind, fire, or earthquake, but rather in a kol demamah dakah, the “still, small voice” – a practice each of us can emulate as we move towards the holiday of Shavuot, the holiday commemorating the revelation of the Ten Commandments at Sinai
Join IJS Senior Core Faculty member Rabbi Sam Feinsmith for a short meditation on listening for the kol demamah dakah, the “still, small voice” of the Divine, which we can perceive when we are able to cultivate a state of external and internal stillness.
Click Here to Practice with Rabbi Sam Feinsmith
This short meditation is excerpted from a longer teaching Rabbi Feinsmith offered in the days leading up to Shavuot in 2021 – one of a series of five consecutive sessions he led on “Standing (or Sitting!) at Sinai, Here and Now” on the IJS Daily Sit. Click here for the source sheet Rabbi Feinsmith created for the session.
For the complete teaching and practice, click here; for the full YouTube playlist for this five session series, click here.
Jun 6, 2024 | Blog, Rabbi Josh Feigelson, PhD, President & CEO, Institute for Jewish Spirituality
Peter Salovey, who is stepping down this month as president of my alma mater, Yale University, was my freshman psychology teacher thirty years ago. The course was popular. Hundreds of students took it.
Salovey was always quick with a joke. Before the final, I remember him telling us the story of a huge lecture hall full of students writing their exams, much like the one we were about to take. As time is winding down, a handful of students are finishing up. “Ten minutes left,” the professor calls out. A few finish and hand in their exam books. “Five minutes.” More finish. “One minute.” At this point, a single student is the last one writing–and he’s still going at a feverish pace.
“Time’s up, pencils down,” the professor calls. The student is still writing.
The professor shrugs, picks up the pile of exam books, and starts heading to the door. As she passes the student she says, “Last chance.” Still writing. The professor walks to the door of the lecture hall and the student races up to her. “Sorry,” she says, “you missed your chance.”
“Do you know who I am?” the student asks.
“What do you mean, do you know who I am?” the professor responds. “You went beyond time.”
“Do you know who I am?” the student asks again, more stridently.
“Look kid, I don’t care who your parents are or how important you think you are–the same rules apply to everyone.”
“Do you know who I am?” the student asks one more time.
“No,” she says.
At that, the student lifts up the pile of exam books in the professor’s arms, stuffs his in the middle of it, and races out of the room before she can figure out which exam book was his.
Professor Salovey told this story to ease some tension in the room before our final exam, but of course it reflects a deeper truth: We can often find ourselves in big, bureaucratic systems that render us nameless and faceless. And while those systems can sometimes provide advantages, they can also come at a cost. The advantages can include economies of scale, providing many more people access to valuable knowledge and experiences at an affordable rate. The disadvantages can include a lack of intimacy, a thinning of communal bonds, and ultimately both the capacity for and willingness to engage in abuse of the system.
The Book of Numbers, which we begin reading this week, marks an inflection point in the Torah. It is a book of generational transition, as the generation of the exodus dies out and the next generations come of age. And, with its multiple countings of the Israelites, the feeling tone of the more intimate stories of Genesis and at least early Exodus finally and fully gives way to a much larger, more corporate sense of a nation ready to assume the responsibilities of self-governance in the promised land.
Instructing Moses to take a census, the Holy One uses a fascinating phrase: Moses is not to count the people simply according to their number, but instead b’mispar shemot, the “number of their names” (Num. 1:2). The 16th century Italian commentator Rabbi Ovadiah Sforno observes that this unusual formulation suggests “the names of the individuals reflected their specific individuality, in recognition of their individual virtues.” This census simultaneously took cognizance of both the numerical scope of the people and each person’s uniqueness–an unusual kind of counting.
There would seem to be a connection between this kind of counting and the counting we do in mindfulness practice: Not simply logging minutes of practice, but aiming to be aware and attentive in each moment as it arises, present to the uniqueness of this particular time, place, and experience. That kind of practice can help us see our lives and those of other beings more fully. It can help us to humanize other people, avoid instrumentalizing them or relating to them as numbers without names–but instead to live with the awareness that every person has a name and a story. As so many forces in our world push us toward namelessness, facelessness, and dehumanization, this is a teaching we need to learn and practice again and again.
May 30, 2024 | Blog, Rabbi Josh Feigelson, PhD, President & CEO, Institute for Jewish Spirituality
On my podcast this week, I shared a bit about my recent struggle to walk our dog, Phoebe, in the midst of all the cicadas that now line the sidewalks of our neighborhood. (Folks, the cicada invasion is real, and it’s here, at least in Illinois.) While it’s okay for her to eat a number of them, too many could cause her to have stomach issues.
We’ve tried a muzzle (she hated it and got it off). We’ve tried the cone of shame (she outsmarted it). So where we’re at now is that I just have to hold the leash pretty tight when we’re walking, and I kind of yank her every time we approach a cicada. It seems to be working alright, but it makes for an unpleasant walk for her and a tired arm for me. But so far, so good: No major digestive issues to speak of, just a dog who is very eager to go in the backyard as much as possible (where there are many more cicadas).
I’m finding that, in its own way, the whole episode reflects a lot about the relationship my family and I have with Torah and Jewish mindfulness. First and foremost, we take the health of this creature of ours seriously. “V’chai bahem–v’lo yamutu,” as the Talmud comments on Leviticus 18:5: The Torah is meant to be lived by and not died by. (The interpretation is offered as a proof that we violate almost every prohibition in the Torah to save a human life.) So we approach the question of what to do about Phoebe and the cicadas with the value that her life matters. (The cicadas’ lives matter too, but… priorities. And common sense.)
Further, we’ve approached this question in a way that also asks about what is doable and practical. Can we completely shield Phoebe from the cicadas, just leaving her inside? No, that would harm other parts of her health and wellbeing–and ours! Could we create or buy some kind of robotic device that would walk ahead of us and vacuum up the sidewalk in advance? (Note to the Roomba people: This idea has potential. You heard it here first.) Again: impractical, cost prohibitive. As my teacher Rabbi Yitz Greenberg observes, God’s covenants with the world and the Jewish people are intended to operate on a human scale and pace–in ways that are achievable. So we’re looking for solutions that have some chance of implementation.
The basic motivating impulse here is to find a solution, to literally walk our talk. We espouse and hold dear some extraordinary values–honoring and sanctifying life, enabling the divine presence to be made manifest in the world in every action, every step. So, like our tradition, we take the ethical and practical questions seriously. That, in a nutshell, is halakha–often translated as “Jewish law,” but perhaps more fully and even literally rendered as “the way Jews walk in the world” (halakha which comes from the same root as the verb lalekhet, to walk).
A couple weeks ago I read a poem in The New Yorker by Ocean Vuong called “Theology.” It contained this line:
I thought gravity was a law, which meant it could be broken.
But it’s more like a language. Once you’re in it
you never get out.
Vuong’s words have been ringing in my ears since because I think they capture this challenge of understanding halakha so well: While at one point in my life I related to it as law–imposed by some external force, operating under the threat of punishment–as I’ve gotten older it has become much more like a language, operating in a more fluid zone of culture, explicitly and implicitly negotiated meanings, intertextualities and connections. It still has to make sense–languages have to make sense–but as language, halakha has a great deal more expressiveness and suppleness than when it’s understood only as law.
Concluding the halakha-rich book of Leviticus, Parashat Bechukotai begins with the words “If you walk in my ways.” Commenting a little later on the verse, “I will walk in your midst: I will be your God, and you shall be My people” (Lev. 26:12), Rashi picks up on the linguistic connection to the primordial image of the Divine walking in the Garden of Eden (Genesis 3:8) and interprets: “I will, as it were, walk with you in the Garden of Eden as though I were one of you, and you will not be frightened of Me.”
That’s the goal and the promise of our halakha: If we can act in the world in ways that are mindful, aligned with the covenantal values of the Torah, compassionate, present, loving, and attentive, then we reveal the Divine presence that is here walking with us. We discover that this world can indeed–even now–be a redeemed Eden. That’s what it’s really all about, even and perhaps especially when the obstacles to sensing that possibility are greatest.
Every Friday morning, IJS President & CEO Rabbi Josh Feigelson shares a short reflection on the week in preparation for Shabbat. Josh weaves together personal experience, mindfulness practice, and teachings from the weekly Torah portion in a uniquely accessible and powerful way. Sign up to receive Josh’s weekly reflections here.
May 24, 2024 | Blog, Rabbi Josh Feigelson, PhD, President & CEO, Institute for Jewish Spirituality
The last couple of weeks have been one of those moments when I pinch myself and ask, “Really, I get paid to do this?!” Because over the last two weeks, I have spent a total of eight days on IJS retreats–first for our Sustainers Circle and, this week, for our staff, both of which are extraordinary groups of people. My days have been filled with reflection, thoughtful conversation, study, and a lot of laughter–all things that I dreamed 25 years ago would describe the work I would do as a rabbi. It’s an extraordinary blessing and privilege.
We held both of these retreats at Trinity Retreat Center, a beautiful place on the Housatonic River in northwest Connecticut. IJS has a long history with Trinity–it’s among the retreat centers we regularly go to. The staff is extraordinarily welcoming. They eagerly accommodate our requests about kashrut and Shabbat. On a retreat last October for our Kol Dodi program, the Episcopal priest at the center, Rev. Dr. Mark Bozzuti-Jones, welcomed our group and spoke movingly about how important it was for him to welcome us because of the pain he knew our people were in after the massacre of October 7. There were tears.
During our staff retreat this week, my colleague Rabbi Myriam Klotz led a session on sacred listening, an area we’re really developing at IJS. The essence of sacred listening is practicing a form of mindfulness that’s relational: sitting with another person with presence and intention, giving them your full attention, being aware of what arises within you as you listen and making the mindful choice to continue listening non-judgmentally. In the session Myriam led, we each sat with a partner for three minutes and listened to them speak. At the end of those three minutes, we summarized–without editorializing–what they said. For the listener, it’s hard work to listen in that way without forming judgments or thinking about what to say. For the speaker, it’s usually a gift to feel heard and acknowledged. (Important side note: I’ll actually be teaching an online course on sacred listening with Myriam and Rebecca Schisler beginning June 23. You can register here.)
The speaking prompt in this exercise was Ayeka, Where are you?, in a spiritual sense. When it was my turn, what I found arising for me were questions about at-homeness. I noticed the feeling I experienced of being at Trinity: an exceptionally welcome guest–but also not at home in quite the same way I do on retreats at Jewish retreat centers. I perceived sensations having to do with translating our language and practices–acts which I find both exciting and also, in some cases, a little tiring. I observed how subtle these sensations could be: not categorical statements, but little movements in my mind, heart, and body. And I found those sensations pinging deeper registers of at-homeness and guestness in my life, most significantly in relation to Israel and America, the tonic and dominant chords of this key in my life.
“When you enter the land,” God tells the Israelites at the beginning of parashat Behar, “the land shall observe a Shabbat to YHVH.” From there the Torah elaborates the practice of the Sabbatical year, the paradigmatic case of a mitzvah that is observed only in the land of Israel. While the agricultural and economic practices associated with the Sabbatical year have deep spiritual meaning, and have even been adopted voluntarily by some Diaspora Jewish farmers in recent years, in halakhic or Jewish legal terms, they do not apply outside the Holy Land.
It’s one of the phenomenal features of Jewish life: We have significant practices that, for the centuries and millennia of our Diaspora experience, a majority of Jews experienced only in their imaginations, not their bodies. And it’s one of the amazing features of the Jewish people’s mass return to the land of Israel in recent centuries: the widespread reclamation and renewal of these ancient practices, not only in our imaginations, but in our bodies and on the earth.
Teaching in the eastern Europe of the 18th century, the Ba’al Shem Tov interpreted this opening line of Behar as referring not (only) to the Land of Israel, but to the body: “‘The land shall keep a Sabbath to YHVH:’ This means to bring rest and relaxation to the land, which is the body, and to rejoice over physical pleasures. Through this, the soul can rejoice spiritually. This is ‘a Sabbath to YHVH,’ for you need both these aspects on the Shabbat.” (Toldot Yaakov Yosef Behar) As happens frequently in Hasidut, the Besh”t here excavates the spiritual dimensions of the mitzvah alongside its physical ones. The Shabbat of the land becomes not only a legal or physical requirement for the land, but an invitation to a spiritual consciousness we can cultivate all the time.
Which brings us back to the question of at-homeness and guestness. Our spirituality is our capacity to experience being deeply, profoundly at home in the world. That is tied up with large, tectonic questions of place and culture: the ability not to have to translate; the sense that we are really in our place and with our people. But/and, that at-homeness takes place on a very intimate level at the same time, in the space of our minds, hearts, and bodies. Shabbat and the Sabbatical Year–our built-in Jewish retreats–are our regular invitations to sense that we and the Holy One are not guests in the world, but are, together, deeply and profoundly at home with one another.
Every Friday morning, IJS President & CEO Rabbi Josh Feigelson shares a short reflection on the week in preparation for Shabbat. Josh weaves together personal experience, mindfulness practice, and teachings from the weekly Torah portion in a uniquely accessible and powerful way. Sign up to receive Josh’s weekly reflections here.
May 16, 2024 | Blog
We are grateful to Rabbi Sharon Brous for speaking with IJS President & CEO, Rabbi Josh Feigelson! Please enjoy the conversation recording below.
Rabbi Sharon Brous is the senior and founding rabbi of IKAR, a Jewish community that launched in 2004 to reinvigorate Jewish practice and inspire people of faith to reclaim a soulful, justice-driven voice. Her 2016 TED talk, “Reclaiming Religion,” has been viewed by more than 1.5 million people. In 2013, Brous blessed President Obama and Vice President Biden at the Inaugural National Prayer Service, and in 2021 returned to bless President Biden and Vice President Harris, and then led the White House Passover Seder with Second Gentleman Doug Emhoff. She was named #1 on the Newsweek/The Daily Beast list of most influential Rabbis in America, and has been recognized by The Forward and Jerusalem Post as one of the fifty most influential Jews. Brous is in the inaugural cohort of Auburn Seminary‘s Senior Fellows program, sits on the faculty of REBOOT, and serves on the International Council of the New Israel Fund and national steering committee for the Poor People’s Campaign.
Her new book, The Amen Effect: Ancient Wisdom to Heal Our Hearts and Mend Our Broken World, is out now from Penguin Random House. A graduate of Columbia University, she was ordained by the Jewish Theological Seminary and lives in Los Angeles with her husband and three children.
May 16, 2024 | Blog, Rabbi Josh Feigelson, PhD, President & CEO, Institute for Jewish Spirituality
I want to tell you about my amazing Shabbat last week.
It came on the third day of a five-day retreat we held for about 25 members of our IJS Sustainers Circle, a group composed of former board members, alumni of our Kivvun program, and major donors. The retreat was full of meditation sessions, rich and musical prayer tefilah (prayer), mindful movement, mindful eating, and a lot of love.
But Shabbos took it to a whole different level.
And there was one moment that stood out in particular. It came as we were starting Shabbat dinner on Friday night. My dear friend and colleague, Rabbi Miriam Margles, reminded us all that this time is traditionally one of bracha, blessing. In my own home, as in many others, it’s a moment when parents offer blessings to their children. So Miriam invited us into this opportunity for blessing, but–this was an IJS retreat, so, of course–to do it perhaps a little differently than we usually do. We were to turn to a neighbor and look into their face. Each of us would share, honestly and from the heart, the blessing we needed just then. Our partner would listen attentively and then offer that blessing to us.
My partner was another member of the retreat faculty, the wonderful Rabbi Jonathan Kligler. And in this moment, I was able to look at Jonathan, be held by the embrace of his face, and share with him very openly the bracha I felt like I needed in that moment. Jonathan took my hand and offered exactly that blessing. And then I did the same for him. I know we weren’t the only pair in which tears were shed. It was a deeply moving experience.
It is always a profound thing to be seen and heard deeply like this. Being fully present with someone else, offering and receiving blessing–it felt as if, for that moment, we were like the two keruvim, the two cherubs that faced one another atop the holy ark. The Divine presence was revealed within us and between us. And that was happening all around the room.
But what also enabled that moment to be so meaningful was its ritual element: It took place at Shabbos dinner. It drew power from our mutual submission to and upholding of the rhythms of Jewish time. While in theory this showing up for one another, this “presencing,” could have taken place anywhere and anytime, in practice our ritual made it both more accessible and richer than it would have been otherwise.
Parashat Emor (Leviticus 21-24) details the holiday calendar: “These are My fixed times, the fixed times of YHVH, that you shall proclaim as sacred occasions” (Lev. 23:2). Beginning with Shabbat, the parasha goes on to enumerate the pilgrimage festivals of Passover, Shavuot, and Sukkot, the counting of the Omer, and the holidays of Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur.
Opening his commentary on this passage, the 13th century Spanish commentator Ramban (Nachmanides) observes that, while much of Leviticus is directed specifically to the priests, this passage is meant to be shared with the entire people. Why? “The priests have no greater duties with regard to the festivals than the Israelites, therefore the Holy One did not admonish Aaron and his sons in this section, but the children of Israel, a term which includes all of them together.” All of us, Ramban suggests, regardless of background or station, have a share in these times; all of us can access them; all of us uphold them. These are not special rites of professional ritualists; they are the inheritance and responsibility of the entire Jewish people.
There’s no rocket science in that, of course, just a rearticulation of a basic truth. The challenge–for me, anyway, and perhaps for you too–is that they can become ritualized and, in the process, lose some of what the ritual is supposed to help us do. Our moadim, our sacred times, are invitations to deeper awareness, a richer encounter with the Divine within ourselves and one another. Every week on Shabbat, and then throughout the other special moments of our holiday calendar, we can step into an opportunity for blessing, pause and rest through which we recognize the presence of the Shechina within, between, and among us. What an incredible gift, what an astonishing inheritance.
Every Friday morning, IJS President & CEO Rabbi Josh Feigelson shares a short reflection on the week in preparation for Shabbat. Josh weaves together personal experience, mindfulness practice, and teachings from the weekly Torah portion in a uniquely accessible and powerful way. Sign up to receive Josh’s weekly reflections here.
May 13, 2024 | Blog, by Rebecca Schisler, Core Faculty, Institute for Jewish Spirituality
How can we maintain our faith, emunah, in the face of struggle and strife? In this video, Rebecca Schisler shares a teaching from Exodus that can help us understand what it takes to keep faith alive even when facing profound doubt.
May 13, 2024 | Blog, by Rabbi Lisa Goldstein, Former Executive Director, Institute for Jewish Spirituality
Written by Rabbi Lisa Goldstein, from the IJS Awareness in Action Program
When we look for an example of emunah (the soul trait of trustworthiness or steadfastness) in Jewish tradition, we return to Moses, the trustworthy leader of the Israelites, during their 40 years of wandering in the wilderness.
In fact, God comments on Moses’ trustworthiness, comparing Moses to other prophets. God communicates with other prophets through dreams or visions. But according to Numbers 12, verse 7, “Not so with My servant Moses; he is trusted (ne’eman) throughout my household.”
The 11th-century French Rabbi, Shlomo ben Meir (Rashbam, the grandson of Rashi), looked at this verse and provided us with a beautiful image we might hold in mind about what it might look like for us to practice emunah, to be trustworthy, and what the results may be for the confidence we engender in our relationships. He said, “Trusted, ne’eman, in the verse, means steadfast and rooted every moment of the day. As the prophet Isaiah says (Isaiah 22:23), ‘I will affix him as a peg in a secure place – b’makom ne’eman.’ The peg stuck in strong ground will not easily fall.”
Our practice of emunah, meeting our commitments, showing up for others even when it is hard, unpleasant, or inconvenient, really being there for the people who need us, helps us be like a tent peg planted in firm ground, rooted, solid, unflagging, steadfast.
This image of a tent peg is instructive, for the peg moves with the soil even as it keeps the tent from toppling over. Far from conveying stubborn inflexibility, emunah entails being responsive to the terrain of our lives and relationships, in a way that holds us and others up. We may not be able to show up in this way every moment of the day, as Moses did. Day after day, providing the people with water and food, a new structure for their society through the Torah, a sense of safety, and an ongoing sense of God’s presence.
In our mindfulness practice, we can apply hitlamdut, non-judgmental curiosity, and grow more aware of the habits of heart and mind that hinder our ability to show up for others and for ourselves. We can notice our bechirah, our capacity and opportunity to choose a wise response informed by our innate emunah, trustworthiness. And we can allow the godly faithfulness to flow more easily through us, so that we show up more consistently, day by day.
May 9, 2024 | Blog, Rabbi Josh Feigelson, PhD, President & CEO, Institute for Jewish Spirituality
My sons never knew their maternal grandfather. I never knew him either. He died of a brain tumor while my wife Natalie was in college, which was before we met.
By all accounts Peter was a wonderful person. He loved chess and theater and active life outdoors. He loved his daughters and, no doubt, would have doted on his grandchildren. He was beloved by his extended family.
While all of that is good in and of itself, what makes it more remarkable is that my father-in-law was born in the Ukrainian forest in 1942 while his parents fought the Nazis in a brigade of Partisans. At one point, as an infant, he was hidden, found by the Germans, and left to die—only to survive miraculously when the soldiers either had compassion or didn’t want to waste a bullet on him. His father took the baby to a non-Jewish farmer and, at gunpoint, made him pledge to care for the child until after the war, which he did.
The family eventually made its way to Canada, where Peter grew up and made a life and met Natalie’s mother, whose parents found refuge in Israel following their own stories of imprisonment by the Russians during the war before eventually moving to Canada as well. Today Natalie, among other things, helps run a graduate degree program in Israel education. (Not to be outdone, her younger sister is currently the Canadian ambassador to Croatia, which during World War II was a puppet state of Nazi Germany and a collaborator in the Holocaust. Take that, Hitler.)
My own ancestors immigrated to the United States before the Shoah, and thus it was not the presence in my life growing up that it was for Natalie (and for many Canadian Jews of her generation). Israel, however, was and has remained a major part of my family’s story: my parents lived for a year in Israel with my older brothers before I was born; my eldest brother made aliyah after college and has been blessed with five children and two grandchildren; and I lived there for two years as a student, the latter of which was with Natalie when our eldest son was an infant.
This week, which began with Yom HaShoah (Holocaust Remembrance Day) and concludes with Yom HaZikaron (Israeli Memorial Day) and Yom HaAtzmaut (Israel Independence Day), is thus an important and meaningful one in my own life and that of my family, if for no other reason than that our own personal stories are so wrapped up in their larger narratives. A hair’s breadth, a single bullet, separates the existence of my wife and my three children from non-existence. For us, that miracle is on a level of the action of Pharaoh’s daughter to save the baby Moses from the Nile. One who saves one life saves, creates, sustains an entire world, entire worlds: a miracle.
I thus frequently wonder about that moment, when the Nazi soldiers stood over my father-in-law’s infant body: What was going through their minds? Was there an argument? Did some tiny modicum of compassion swim its way from their hearts to their heads to their hands? Did a still, small voice of the Divine speak into their ears and lead them to lower their weapons? I want to believe that some element of rachamim, some kind of mercy, was present in that instant—rachamim which is rechem, the womb in which life in all its manifold possibilities gestates and grows, even in a speck of an instant in the Ukrainian forest.
I do not have a political point with this message. If this story needs a point (does it?), perhaps it’s no more and no less than a call to compassion. As my wonderful French-Israeli colleague Rabba Mira Weil shared on our Daily Sit on Yom HaShoah this week (see especially her comments after the sit), compassion has been hard for many to feel in the wake of October 7 and the painful, devastating months that have followed. And it feels like so many hearts are only getting harder, the polarities growing stronger, the shouting getting louder, the space for rachamim—between Jews and other Jews, between Jews and Palestinians, between Jews and the rest of the world—shrinking and shrinking.
Parashat Kedoshim (Leviticus 19:1-20:27) that we read this week is the Torah’s clarion call to holiness, and so much of it is centered on awareness of and compassion for those who lack power and agency: not putting a stumbling block before the blind; not oppressing the stranger; leaving the gleanings of the harvest on the ground for the poor to take. These are all, in their way, expressions of rachamim, gestures of compassion that are the wellspring of holiness. In the words of a contemporary commentary on the Torah portion’s most famous line: “Love your neighbor as yourself—even when your neighbor isn’t like yourself” (which of course invites the question: who is really like or unlike any of us, and how do we make that judgment?).
This is the essence of a life of holiness, a life of Torah, and I would suggest it applies even when it’s hard—even, that is, when we need to have compassion on ourselves for not mustering as much compassion as we feel like we should. That’s where the Torah asks us to dig deeper, to try a little more, to yes treat ourselves with compassion—but also to not let ourselves off the hook from seeking to be compassionate. As Moses’s story illustrates, as my own family’s story illustrates, the entire world depends on it.
Every Friday morning, IJS President & CEO Rabbi Josh Feigelson shares a short reflection on the week in preparation for Shabbat. Josh weaves together personal experience, mindfulness practice, and teachings from the weekly Torah portion in a uniquely accessible and powerful way. Sign up to receive Josh’s weekly reflections here.
May 2, 2024 | Blog, Rabbi Josh Feigelson, PhD, President & CEO, Institute for Jewish Spirituality
In recent days I feel like I’ve been living in a world suffused with the word camp. The encampments on college campuses, which are themselves reflective of ideological and political camps, have occupied our collective attention. As the parent of one student in college and another about to graduate high school, I have been following events with concern. As a scholar of the history of Jews and universities, I have been following them with keen interest. As an American Jew, I have been following them with a not inconsiderable dose of anxiety and worry.
Yet, in what I’m choosing to believe is a not coincidental twist, the drama on so many campuses played out while my family and I were at a different kind of camp, namely the annual Passover experience at Camp Ramah in Ojai, California. For ten days, from the day before the holiday to the morning after it concluded, we ate and talked, prayed and sang, celebrated and studied with a wonderful group of nearly 200 Jews young and old in the sunny, warm, and breathtakingly beautiful setting of the mountains north of Ventura. In the spirit of Passover, I felt like I was liberating myself from email, social media, and news feeds as I reconnected with family, friends, the Jewish people, the natural world, and the Creator. It was an incredible blessing. (Picture is of my two younger sons overlooking Lake Casitas.)
Still, many of the sessions that I and other faculty members taught inevitably focused on the questions of the day: In Israel and Gaza, of course, but also the college campuses which have become so central to American Jewish life, and the more familiar terrain of our communities and our own minds and hearts. In particular, a question that seemed to pervade the whole week was some version of, How can we stay sane in this world that is enduring so much suffering? And how can we be mindful in the face of this constant firehose of information–some of which is true, much of which is false, and the totality of which is overwhelming?
Those questions offered me an opportunity to talk about the Jewish mindfulness practices I use in my own life to try to help, which include meditation, intentional consumption of media, Tikkun Middot practice when it comes to social media posting, setting app limits, and meeting sensations of judgment with curiosity rather than conviction (“Be curious, not furious,” as one participant put it). Our practices are designed for moments like these. They can help us sustain the habits of the heart we need to live and participate wisely and mindfully as members of a diverse democracy.
Because this year is a leap year on the Jewish calendar, we encounter the somewhat unusual situation in which the Torah portion for this week that immediately follows Passover is Acharei Mot, which is about Yom Kippur. We have barely put away the matzah and our attention is turned toward the opposite end of the year and our people’s other most important holiday.
The Torah describes Yom Kippur as a “Shabbat Shabbaton,” a day of complete rest (Lev. 16:31). Commenting on this verse, Rabbi Mordechai Yosef Leiner observes that the aim of the restrictions of Yom Kippur is to help us cultivate a profound sense of yishuv hada’at, a settled and clear mind, which is the essence of Shabbat. When we can do so, he writes, the flow (shefa) of the Holy One can fill us completely, without any limitation. We can be fully present–and can be vessels for the Divine Presence.
Of course, Yom Kippur represents this dynamic at its peak–a day on which we can be particularly and especially suffused with the presence of the Holy One. Yet the kind of presence and awareness–the yishuv hada’at, the settled and clear mind at its core–is available to us every week on Shabbat, and in every moment in the form of “Shabbat Mind.” It is reflected and embodied in speech and action that is full and mindful, not empty and reactive.
These qualities, of mindful presence and expansiveness, are also related to the central theme of Passover, the exodus from Egypt–the place of narrowness and constriction. Which suggests that, though these holidays are on opposite ends of our calendar, they are profoundly connected. Political freedom is not complete without spiritual freedom, and spiritual freedom is not whole without political freedom. As we continue to witness and engage in discussion, debate, and activism centered on political camps and encampments, my humble observation is that such work, wherever we stand in relation to it, will only benefit from greater yishuv hada’at–the spiritual practices of mind and heart that weave together our larger camp that exists within, between, and among us.
Every Friday morning, IJS President & CEO Rabbi Josh Feigelson shares a short reflection on the week in preparation for Shabbat. Josh weaves together personal experience, mindfulness practice, and teachings from the weekly Torah portion in a uniquely accessible and powerful way. Sign up to receive Josh’s weekly reflections here.
Apr 18, 2024 | Blog, Rabbi Josh Feigelson, PhD, President & CEO, Institute for Jewish Spirituality
“All revolutionaries are patricides, one way or another.” That’s a line from Yuri Slezkine’s classic of modern Jewish history, The Jewish Century. The book was published in 2006. A few years later, when I was working on my doctoral dissertation, that line became a powerful lens as I reflected on the intergenerational conflict in American Jewish life in the late 1960s and early 70s.
My thesis was that a significant strain in American Judaism in those days involved conflict between generations of parents, grandparents, and children as they shaped their identities and relationships with Jewish life. Some of this was bound up with general patterns of rupture and reconstruction that have repeated in many immigrant communities–not just Jews–in the United States. “Old world” customs give way to new forms of life (‘patricide’ means killing one’s father), often accompanied by pain and strain. A younger generation looks upon its elders and breaks from their “outmoded” ways; the older generation looks upon its progeny and laments what they have become.
Obviously that’s a very rough heuristic. It works well for the movies (think of The Jazz Singer–both the Al Jolson and Neil Diamond versions) and it does reflect some truths in real life. But individual families and larger histories are, of course, more complex than that. As my doctoral adviser, Robert Orsi, put it in a memorable note on a draft of one chapter: “No one speaks for a generation, not even Dylan.” In the case of American Jewish life in the 60s and 70s, that was reflected in the move to recover and re-embrace attachment to and expression of Judaism: in the Havura movement, the ba’al teshuva phenomenon, the rise of Chabad, an embrace of Zionism in the wake of the Six Day War in 1967, and a general reclamation of Jewish history and thicker Jewish identity among a younger generation that gained strength in those years.
This is already much more academic than most of my Friday reflections, and I don’t intend to rehash my doctoral work here. (If you’re really that motivated, you’re welcome to buy a copy. Here’s the link.) Usually I start these reflections with a personal story, not with a quote from an historian. So why all this today?
As I shared in my podcast this week, like many folks I’m freaking out a bit about the Seder this year. I’m worried about what feels like a moment of profound strain, even rupture–not exclusively a generational one (remember that line about Dylan), but along multiple lines that ultimately trace their way through our views on and relationships with Israel. I’m worried about how that’s going to be reflected at our Seder tables this year. There is so much pain, so much anger, so many profoundly conflicting views of morality, of what Torah asks and demands of us right now. I’m worried about our ability to stay together as a family, both in the immediate sense and, more collectively, as a Jewish people.
I have long been drawn to the last lines of the haftarah for Shabbat HaGadol, this Shabbat that comes immediately before Passover: “Lo, I will send the prophet Elijah to you before the coming of the awesome, fearful day of YHVH. He shall reconcile parents with children and children with their parents, so that, when I come, I do not strike the whole land with utter destruction” (Malachi 3:23-24). The image of parents and children turning towards each other–the word in Hebrew is heishiv, from the same root as teshuva, the returning we do during the High Holidays–has always struck a deep chord for me, as Passover is, more than anything, a time that my own heart turns towards my parents and my children.
I write about this line virtually every year. Yet quite honestly I usually dodge the challenge presented by that very last clause, the one about striking the whole land with utter destruction. Too hard, not relevant, I tell myself. In this year, however, that simply isn’t and cannot be the case. There is literal destruction in the land and, with it, enormous destruction that has occurred in our language, our relationships, our people, our families, our hearts. And it’s the fear of seeing that destruction reflected at the Seder table that is freaking me out.
And so (say it with me): This is why we practice. To acknowledge those very deep and potent fears, to let them have their space–and then to make mindful, wise, compassionate, and loving choices. That is the very freedom from Egypt–Mitzrayim, the place of constriction–that the Seder is about, the spiritual journey we undertake every day and in every moment. As the prophet says, we can and must turn toward one another. It is in that turning, that opening of our hearts that enables us to live together peacefully, that we manifest our freedom as images of the Divine. May it be so for us this year.
Every Friday morning, IJS President & CEO Rabbi Josh Feigelson shares a short reflection on the week in preparation for Shabbat. Josh weaves together personal experience, mindfulness practice, and teachings from the weekly Torah portion in a uniquely accessible and powerful way. Sign up to receive Josh’s weekly reflections here.
Apr 16, 2024 | Blog
We are grateful to Rabbi Shai Held for speaking with IJS President & CEO, Rabbi Josh Feigelson! Please enjoy the conversation recording below.
Rabbi Shai Held—philosopher, theologian, and Bible scholar—is President, Dean, and Chair in Jewish Thought at the Hadar Institute. He received the prestigious Covenant Award for Excellence in Jewish Education, and has been named multiple times by Newsweek as one of the fifty most influential rabbis in America and by the Jewish Daily Forward as one of the fifty most prominent Jews in the world. Rabbi Held is the author of Abraham Joshua Heschel: The Call of Transcendence (2013) and The Heart of Torah (2017). His newest book is Judaism is About Love, published by Farrar, Straus, & Giroux.
Apr 11, 2024 | Blog, Rabbi Josh Feigelson, PhD, President & CEO, Institute for Jewish Spirituality
One of my favorite parts of Shabbat is reading the New Yorker. It’s the only time during the week I can sit for an hour or two and just read, uninterrupted by demands of work or family. And as I told my eldest son recently, while college certainly helped with my own writing, it was in reading the New Yorker that I really learned how to write. So I find those Shabbat mornings when I’m sitting at the kitchen table, sipping my coffee, reading Adam Gopnik or Jill Lapore or David Remnick, to be both immensely pleasurable and, still, highly instructive.
There was an article in last week’s issue by Leslie Jamison about gaslighting, the psychological phenomenon in which one person (usually a parent or a spouse) profoundly undermines not only the reality of another, but, crucially, a person’s belief in what their own senses tell them is true. As Jamison notes, the term comes from a 1944 film, “Gaslight,” in which a husband goes up to the attic every night to search for a set of lost jewels that belongs to his wife–in an attempt to steal them. As he does so, he turns on the gas light, which causes the other gas lights in the house to flicker. When Paula, the wife, asks him about it, he convinces her she didn’t see anything. That firm denial steadily causes Paula’s entire reality to wobble: If she can’t trust her own eyes, what can she trust?
Jamison’s piece explores how the term has exploded in usage over the last decade or so. (In 2022 it was Merriam-Webster’s Word of the Year.) For many people, discovering the term is a revelation, as it enables them to recognize the ways that authority figures have manipulated, abused, or injured them. Yet Jamison also notes that the phenomenon is not necessarily such a rare thing, but might, in fact, be a more common part of all of our lives. As she talks to an expert, she realizes that every time she tells her young daughter that she is ‘just fine’ when she obviously is not, or when she blames her daughter for making them late getting out the door in the morning when, in fact, it’s her own fault for not getting them moving sooner, she might be committing her own, milder but still real, acts of gaslighting. To which the expert responds, “Yes! Within a two-block range of any elementary school, just before the bell rings, you can find countless parents gaslighting their children, off-loading their anxiety.”
One way to read Parashat Tazria (Leviticus 12-13) is as a reflection on epistemology, or how we apprehend reality. The bulk of the Torah portion is devoted to a kind of medical manual for the ancient priests, who were charged with looking at skin infections to determine what they were and what kind of treatment they required. Within chapter 13 alone, the word “see” (r-a-h in Hebrew) is present in almost every verse, nearly 40 times. The priest is charged with looking, investigating, forming a judgment, and ultimately pronouncing reality based on the color of the lesion, the presence or absence of hair, the spread, etc. And what the priest says becomes the shared truth of the patient and the community.
This is not a narrative portion of the Torah (in fact it’s about as Levitical as Leviticus gets), and we don’t hear anything about the experience of the patient, their loved ones, or the priest. But we can try to imagine what it might have been like to wake up one day and discover something off or strange in our body–on one level or another, I expect every human being has experienced that–and what happens next in our minds and hearts. “Huh, what is this? Is it something terrible, or is it benign? Should I go to the doctor right away, or maybe I can wait a week and see what happens?”
I certainly have had such moments, and I expect you have too. Within them, we can feel anxiety as not only our reality shifts, but our confidence in our apprehension of reality is also challenged: “Did I really see what I think I saw? Did I gaslight myself? Maybe I didn’t. Maybe it’s even worse? Maybe I should have known this thing was coming weeks ago. Maybe I’m a bad person!” Commence downward spiral.
This isn’t limited to bodily maladies; it applies to virtually everything in life–which I believe is part of the larger point of this Torah portion. The character of the priest here reminds me of no one so much as Adam, the image of God, in the opening chapter of Genesis (another chapter in which seeing is a motif): looking, investigating, forming judgments, giving names and labels. That process is one we do all the time; it’s foundational to how we interact with the world. And precisely because it’s so fundamental, gaslighting–and the larger destabilization of our reality that feels like a growing phenomenon in our political and media life–is particularly resonant.
In my view, Judaism properly understood is a mindfulness practice. The priest’s responsibility is, in fact, the charge and invitation to each and every one of us: to look, to investigate, and to make wise and mindful judgments. As the priest in Tazria reminds us, that process involves study and acquiring knowledge–and it involves giving ourselves the time and space to see clearly and honestly. So often today I find myself pressed to make a snap judgment. Yet through our practice we can access that other great gift of the opening chapter of Genesis, the expansiveness of Shabbat. Through that, we can create the time we need and deserve to examine reality more closely, perceive more clearly, and judge more wisely.
Every Friday morning, IJS President & CEO Rabbi Josh Feigelson shares a short reflection on the week in preparation for Shabbat. Josh weaves together personal experience, mindfulness practice, and teachings from the weekly Torah portion in a uniquely accessible and powerful way. Sign up to receive Josh’s weekly reflections here.
Apr 4, 2024 | Blog, Rabbi Josh Feigelson, PhD, President & CEO, Institute for Jewish Spirituality
Nearly twenty years ago my family and I moved to Evanston, Illinois. I had just been ordained a month earlier, our son Micah had just been born two weeks prior, and we moved into an empty condo apartment two blocks from the Northwestern University Hillel, where I had taken a job as the campus rabbi. Natalie and I had rented apartments in New York up until then, and this was the first place we owned.
I remember that the confluence of all these changes made it feel different, like we had arrived at this new, officially more grown up stage of life. That was especially true on our first Shabbat. Up until then, we had always eaten on a small Ikea table and sat on folding chairs. But here was a big new walnut dining room table and eight chairs, one we had paid good money for and that would be with us for a long time (it still is). I remember feeling overwhelmed as I sat there and took it in. For the first time, I really felt like we were truly, deeply at home.
In our preparations for Passover (and, perhaps, our aversion to the less narrative-driven nature of Leviticus), we can miss the fact that Parashat Shemini marks the moment when the Divine and the Israelites are, for the first time, sitting at their dining room table together–truly, deeply at home. After weeks and weeks of reading about the construction of the Mishkan in the latter half of Exodus, and then more Torah portions devoted to instructions about the sacrifices at the beginning of Leviticus, the opening chapter of Shemini marks the moment when it all finally comes together. The Mishkan is set up, the priests are consecrated and purified, they perform the required offerings, Moses and Aaron bless the people, and finally the presence of God appears, “and all the people saw, and shouted joyously, and fell on their faces” (Lev. 9:24) God is at home in the world.
But, of course, that moment is fleeting. In the very next verse it all goes terribly, horribly wrong. Aaron’s older sons, Nadav and Avihu, offer a “strange fire” and are killed by a fire that flares forth from the Ineffable. What was a moment of deep, profound presence and at-homeness becomes a moment of absence and death.
The midrash offers many explanations as to what Nadav and Avihu did that brought about this moment of profound rupture. Many of them imagine that, unlike their father and uncle, they became arrogant: they thought themselves too good for any of the available spouses among the people; or, perhaps, they looked forward to the day when Moses and Aaron would die and they would be the leaders of the people; or, maybe, they tried to directly perceive the Divine presence in a way that even Moses did not (Vayikra Rabba 20:10).
On a more intimate level, what all of these attempted explanations share, perhaps, is a fundamental discomfort with, or inability to inhabit, the reality of the present moment–an inability to be at home driven by a desire for, perhaps, even more at-homeness. Where Moses and Aaron were humble, Nadav and Avihu were arrogant. Where Moses and Aaron recognized the limitations inherent in human life–even in a human life that’s at a stage of advanced spiritual development–Nadav and Avihu were unable to do so. They couldn’t accept that being truly, deeply at home is not about having it all, but about living within the realities and limitations of human existence. That’s one reading, anyway.
I think it’s an important reading, one which reflects a profound tension at the heart of Torah: How do we experience being truly, deeply at home? From the Garden of Eden to the exile of the Children of Israel in Egypt to the fact that Moses dies, and the Torah ends, before the people make it into the promised land, the Torah conveys a deep ambivalence about the idea of being at home. Even as he imagines the people finally making it across the Jordan River, Moses reminds them not to get too comfortable and forget how they got there (Deut. 6:10-12). We are meant, it seems, to hold our at-homeness lightly.
Or, perhaps, to recognize that deep at-homeness–what I believe is our human spiritual capacity–lies as much in our ability to inhabit whatever moment and reality we are in fully and mindfully as it does in the particular places we might think of as home. That kind of balance, a holding or apprehending of reality that is neither too firm nor too weak but just right, is what we seek to cultivate through our practices. While our innate emotional drives seek to preserve home as we know it at all costs, our practices can help us create some reflective distance from those drives so that we can respond mindfully, wisely, and ethically–and so that the Divine can be made manifest, at home in the world.
Every Friday morning, IJS President & CEO Rabbi Josh Feigelson shares a short reflection on the week in preparation for Shabbat. Josh weaves together personal experience, mindfulness practice, and teachings from the weekly Torah portion in a uniquely accessible and powerful way. Sign up to receive Josh’s weekly reflections here.
Apr 1, 2024 | Blog, by Rabbi Myriam Klotz, Senior Core Faculty, Institute for Jewish Spirituality
For those who observe the practice of kashering our kitchens for Passover, this process can induce a lot of excitement, but it can also engender a small or great deal of anxiety for many. Changing over the dishes; removing every scrap or loaf of chametz/ leavened goods from the fridge, the freezer, the pantry; from the floor (tiny crumbs count!); from the oven and the stove; from the seat cushions and at the backs of cabinets and drawers, and more–these physical tasks are not easy nor simple. There are a multitude of rules regarding the physical aspect of cleaning the kitchen for Passover.
There are also the mental, emotional and spiritual dimensions of these intensive preparations of turning your kitchen space upside down each spring. How do you mentally and emotionally relate to this work of cleaning, clearing, re-organizing, releasing and throwing away, buying and bringing in kosher for Passover items related to food storage and preparation, and eating?
For me, and perhaps for you, the kitchen in general is a multi-use space in which many multivalent activities take place. Whether you live alone or with a partner, friends, family members, or pets, you might spend more time in the kitchen doing things rather than being quiet and simply resting and sitting still. And those things might be charged with emotions of excitement, anxiety, pleasure, fear, shame, grief, stress, and more.
You might feel obligation: sweep the floor; empty the dishrack or dishwasher; cut the vegetables; clean the drain; put the groceries away….You might feel happiness: the smells, tastes, colors and textures of food and drink you enjoy fill that space. You might feel nothing: rushing to get the thing prepared, eating on the run, throwing the dish towel on the counter and closing the door behind you as you hold the go-mug of coffee in one hand, your work bag and keys in the other. If you experience any food-related allergies or struggle with food and body image issues, addictions, or other emotional stresses centered around food and eating, being in the kitchen may cause mild or serious discomfort.
Whatever they are, there are likely many emotions and activities that we center in the kitchen space. Think of the recent Republican response to the President’s State of the Union address that took place from the speaker’s kitchen, in which she referenced its sacred centrality in the life of her family as a central gathering place for having serious discussions. In the midst of so many ways in which the Passover holiday is filled with emotions, and its preparations too, charged in so many loud and busy ways of doing, it can be hard to slow down, relax, and bring mindful attention and meaning to all of this emotional and physical work. One small act of liberation can be to find freedom from the habituated doing in this space, and practice being, kindly and differently, right there in the presence of the fridge, freezer and stove, as you prepare for Passover.
The following practice can help you slow down and create some space between yourself and the usual business and habituated ways of being in the kitchen in which you need to get or do something. You can prepare yourself to begin your chametz clearing and cleaning from a place of mental and emotional quiet and stillness akin to a Shabbat state of mind:
Before you begin your Passover cleaning, find a comfortable place to sit in your kitchen. After several breaths to feel the floor under your feet and the seat under your bottom, bring awareness to the sense of physical sight. If you are not able to see physically, bring awareness to the senses you recruit to locate yourself in this space.
Let your eyes (or your hearing or hands through touch) begin to just receive the space you are in, just as it is. Let your eyes rest on some object in the room. Just be with this mixer or frying pan. No need to do anything to it or with it. Let the cabinet just be in the present with you as “cabinet”. Just this. Let your eyes scan slowly, taking in and finding your attention focused on, dropping into, as it were, relating to the object in a passive or simply gazing kind of way. You don’t need to do anything to or with it.
Notice physically if you feel the urge to get up and throw something away, or put something back, or if you suddenly feel the impulse to eat the apple or banana or cookie you see on the counter. Try to just notice all the impulses to move and do in this room. Let yourself be a witness to this space as a quiet, still environment where you can just rest in being, right here, right in this kitchen.
Notice your emotions as they arise and pass. Can you be with the energy that a feeling might hold? Pay attention to the thoughts that come and go. You may have a thought: I need to put aluminum foil on those stove burners–aak!–I need to go back to the store to get more foil first. And that thought might immediately be followed by an emotion such as anxiety, or fear or worry, or impatience (forget this contemplation practice, I’ve got to DO stuff now!). Allow yourself to practice staying with the sensations, feelings and thoughts as they come and go, and bring awareness back to simply looking. Simply being with this moment, in this kitchen space.
You can practice bringing kind attention to these waves of internal stimulation, and just allowing yourself to rest quietly, in relative stillness, in this kitchen, with nothing that you need to clean, produce, fix, throw away, clear out, wipe down, tape up, or otherwise change. Just bring your awareness to the colors, shadows and light, the “thingness” of the things around you and of yourself in this space.
After seven to ten minutes of awareness practice in your kitchen, notice if you sense any shift in your being. When I practice this each year before beginning Passover cleaning, I usually note some greater ease, sometimes even peacefulness, and a rush of compassion for our humanity as Jews who undertake in our various ways this aspiration-for-liberation-inspired-kitchen-makeover each spring. See what you notice.
And if, after beginning or at any point during the intensive doing that you immerse in as you prepare your kitchen for Passover, you can notice if the heart rate is increasing and your mind is wandering or if your anxiety is rising; know you can pause. Take that seat again, and simply stop the doing. Return your eyes or hands or ears to awareness of yourself in this space that is inherently ok just as it is, and so are you.
Perhaps this kind of pausing practice is a taste of liberatory consciousness that you can bring to this moment, and every moment, taking a seat in whatever “kitchen” you find yourself in. Simply be in it, just as it is; letting your breathing, and sitting, and the space itself be enough without more potchkying (technical word meaning fussing or messing with something more than necessary, trying to improve it). And perhaps, into this kind of spacious awareness, you can taste awareness of the sacredness of this moment, this activity, this season, just as you are. So may it be!
Apr 1, 2024 | Blog, by Rabbi Marc Margolius, Vice President of Faculty and Program, Institute for Jewish Spirituality
Especially in this deeply fraught and challenging year, Pesach – and the seven week period leading to Shavuot – offers all a precious opportunity for a “spiritual reset.”
This part of the Jewish yearly cycle resonates powerfully with our mindfulness practice, which invites us to explore our inner life with curiosity, growing in awareness of our reactive, fear-based habits. Attending with curious, nonjudgmental attention to the truth of each moment (hitlamdut), we witness more clearly the energy of this “shadow” in our mind, emotions, and body.
And approaching this inner Mitzrayim (constriction) or frightened ego with compassion rather than harsh judgment, we experience greater spaciousness—greater freedom to shift that energy in a more wholesome or holy direction. We move with greater ease through the mouth of the Sea, into the midbar, the open wilderness. We are free.
In particular, Pesach invites us to cultivate greater awareness of the truthfulness in our thoughts and speech, to expand our freedom to direct the sacred gift of language to promoting Emet/Truth in the world.
The Hebrew word Pesach can be parsed into two distinct words—peh sach, or “speaking mouth.” According to a Hasidic understanding, Passover represents the liberation of speech. As slaves, the Israelites could only utter a raw, anguished cry (Exodus 2:23); in freedom, they could sing exultantly the “Song of the Sea” (Exodus 15:1-19).
In the swirling, powerful emotions of our times, even those of us who profess outrage at daily distortions of language and disregard for facts may discover ourselves “bending the truth” to suit our own preconceptions and biases. Mindfulness can help us catch ourselves more often when fear generates rationalizing thoughts or tendencies to fudge the truth. We may notice constrictions leading us to avoid “inconvenient” truths that challenge our preferred version of reality. Instead of harshly criticizing such inclinations, we can honor our fear, practice self-compassion, and notice options to promote truthfulness.
As a specific practice leading up to Pesach, consider the teaching of the prophet Zechariah, who urges us to “speak the truth with your neighbor; judge with truth, justice, and peace in your gates” (Zechariah 8:16). Think of the “gates” as the place within us from which thoughts, emotions, and sensations arise to consciousness. Notice reactions arising, and the speech these reactions might generate. Pause and practice sh’tikah, silence. Consider these questions: Do I really need to say these words? Are they true? Are they just? Do they lead to shalom, to wholeness or wholesomeness?
As we approach Pesach, the liberation of speech, may we be freed from inner constrictions distorting our view of reality. May we pause before speaking, texting, writing or posting, and discern whether to remain silent or to express ourselves through words reflecting our highest and truest selves May Emet, the Divine quality of truth, flow freely through us, and fill the cracks of this fractured world.
Apr 1, 2024 | Blog, by Rabbi Marc Margolius, Vice President of Faculty and Program, Institute for Jewish Spirituality
Originally published on Times of Israel on March 27, 2024
These are fearful times that try our souls. Our nervous systems are overwhelmed by the ongoing trauma of October 7, the devastation of the Israel-Gaza war, surging antisemitism, political turmoil, and more. Threatened on so many fronts, our default inclination as human beings is to speak and act reactively, or remain frozen in silence.
Our fear-based reactivity may feel good in the short term. Anger may temporarily dull our pain, grief, and anxiety, and create a short-term sense of safety. But over time our habitual reactions inevitably are revealed as clumsy and unwise, often destructive of others and ourselves. In such heated times, we often behave as our own worst enemy – even while feeling powerless to stop and change course.
It’s hard to act wisely when we are pummeled by waves of strong emotion. We struggle to hit the pause button – to stop, collect ourselves, notice other options, and choose the wise course. The eye of the hurricane, a place of calm and clarity in the midst of turbulence–a place we all need so much right now–eludes us.
Where can we find that place of calm and clarity? Jewish tradition teaches us that that calm place begins in our own minds and hearts–that it is always available to us, if we can access it.
“Between stimulus and response, there is a space,” wrote the Holocaust survivor and psychotherapist Viktor Frankl. “In that space is our power to choose. In our response lies our growth and freedom.” Whenever we act or speak immediately in reaction to external stimuli, without that much-needed space, we act from habit, a form of enslavement. There is no freedom, no choice, and no growth.
Jewish tradition and practice provides an antidote to reactivity
Shabbat provides us with an experience of stillness and quiet that is always available to us. Shabbat allows us to be rather than act. The fog of our mind can clear; our emotions can be fully felt, honored, and allowed to move through us. We can see more clearly and discern more wisely.
But Shabbat doesn’t only happen every seven days. We can bring Shabbat consciousness into our lives all the time, in every moment. Regardless of our level of traditional observance, we each can “keep Shabbat” by expanding the space between stimulus and response, pausing to breathe and suspend judgment – even for a moment. Some might describe this very Jewish practice in contemporary terms as mindfulness practice.
Judaism has a spiritual practice ideal for times like these: tikkun middot, a Jewish practice for developing character traits and aligning actions with our values. Tikkun middot practice integrates basic principles of Jewish mindfulness or “Shabbat awareness” with close attention to essential soul/ethical traits like loving connection, setting wise boundaries, humility, courage, and gratitude. Based on Judaism’s core principle that every human being is created in the Divine image, we come “factory-equipped” with these soul/ethical qualities.
Tikkun middot practice helps us insert and expand the space between stimulus and response. From within that space, we can more easily access our sacred traits so that rather than reacting instinctively from fear, we can freely choose a wise, sacred response representing our authentic selves, more aligned with our sacred values.
An ongoing Jewish spiritual practice can help us keep our balance – and tikkun middot is the ideal practice for trying times such as these. It can help us avoid falling prey to our baser instincts. It can help us maintain connection to sacred values and be true to who we are even when we are under duress.
The Omer: A Time for Tikkun Middot
The seven-week period linking Passover and Shavuot is known in Jewish tradition as the Omer, a time devoted to spiritual growth and ethical maturation. On Passover, we leave the enslavements of reactive habits. Over seven weeks, we shed these manifestations of slavery, growing daily in our capacity to make free choices more aligned with our essential self. On Shavuot, we arrive at Mount Sinai prepared to act freely from the moral wisdom with which we are imbued.
This spring, the Institute for Jewish Spirituality will offer a wonderful opportunity for engaging in just this process of spiritual and ethical growth – Awareness in Action: Cultivating Character through Mindfulness and Middot, a synchronous, online program in tikkun middot practice. Participants will join a supportive community of practice which helps them more consistently align their inner values with how they show up in the world.
Awareness in Action participants learn how to “practice Shabbat” in their daily lives by developing the capacity to hit the pause button before speaking or acting reactively and unwisely. Each week, they immerse in supported practice of a middah drawn from the theme of the respective week of the Omer: (1) Chesed, loving connection; (2) Gevurah, setting wise boundaries; (3) Anavah, balancing self and others; (4) Zerizut, acting promptly and persistently; (5) Hodayah, gratitude for life as it is; (6) Tzedek, seeking out and manifest what is fair, just, and right; and (7) Sh’mirat HaDibbur, wise communication. The program includes an additional post-Shavuot week of practice for fostering the middah of Emunah, faithfulness or steadfastness.
All materials are provided on a convenient online platform and supported by weekly live practice sessions I will host, and which will be led by guest faculty Rabbi Tamara Cohen, Kohenet Keshira haLev Fife, and Rabbi Aaron Weininger.
As Jews have throughout our history, we need now to draw upon the wisdom of our tradition and practices to buoy us and help us steer wisely through the storms of our individual and collective lives, to bring us and future generations to a better time and place. The approaching Passover, fraught with emotion, affords us all a precious opportunity to free ourselves from the enslavement of reactivity, to remember and return to who we truly are, and to choose wise pathways aligned with the divinity within us.
Mar 28, 2024 | Blog, Rabbi Josh Feigelson, PhD, President & CEO, Institute for Jewish Spirituality
The other day I listened to a talk by one of my favorite teachers of mindfulness, Gil Fronsdal, about the war in Israel and Gaza. I listen to Gil’s meditations and short talks several times a week. I’m drawn to the clarity, simplicity, and depth of his teaching. I find that practicing with him early in the morning, or while I’m walking the dog, is helpful.
Like his previous talk on the war last fall, in this talk I was impressed and gratified to hear Gil acknowledge and embrace the humanity of everyone who has suffered, is suffering, and continues to suffer because of it: Israelis, Palestinians, and all of us who care about and are connected to them. There were, predictably, some things I might have phrased differently, or some places I found myself disagreeing. But on the whole, I found it good and helpful.
Towards the end of the talk, Gil said something that has stuck with me. I’ll paraphrase: A lot of people approach me with demands–to sign this or that, to condemn this group or that group, to “stand with” these people and “stand against” those. And Gil said (quoting now): “I don’t operate that way.” He didn’t say this with an edge, but just matter of fact. Instead, he said, he responds to requests, invitations. Demands just won’t work.
I’ve been lingering on that line for a couple of weeks. On one level, it reflects a commonplace among meditation teachers (imagine me speaking in meditation teacher voice now): “And now, if it’s comfortable for you, the invitation is to… gently close your eyes” or “allow your awareness to settle on the breath” or whatever the next part of the practice is.
This is actually such a common expression that we joke about it sometimes at work. It’s foundational to mindfulness practice, the notion that we are all free to enter and leave the practice as we like. We are here not because anyone is forcing us, but because we have decided to be here and do this in this moment–and we can decide in the next moment not to. We have free will, and no one can take that away from us. Thus we shouldn’t presuppose that we or anyone else is bound to do anything. And so, no demands–only invitations and requests.
This is one of the places where Judaism as a mindfulness practice can get complicated. Why? Because at the heart of a life of Torah is the concept and experience of mitzvot, traditionally translated as commandments. Biblical and Rabbinic teaching is suffused with the idea that the Divine commands or demands of us to obey these rules–and will reward us for doing so and punish us for acting otherwise.
This approach works for some people, but it doesn’t work for others. For me, this orientation was particularly useful as a young person, as my fear of being judged–by others, by what I understood God to be, by my own conscience–helped push me into study and behaviors that created a groove in my heart and mind: Shabbat, kashrut, praying, hours and hours learning Hebrew, Aramaic, and our people’s extraordinary textual tradition. I felt good about how I was spending my time because I felt I was living in alignment with what I understood that God commanded me to do.
But at a certain point, that stopped working so well for me. I found something missing in my inner life, as though I were performing a set of roles rather than genuinely living in a way that integrated my outer actions with inner sensations. And that led me, over many years, to studying Hasidut, experimenting with new forms of prayer, and eventually to IJS’s Clergy Leadership Program (applications are open for our next cohort–please share with rabbis and cantors you love!) and into the practice I engage in, teach, and help develop today.
I bring all this up because the name of this week’s Torah portion, Tzav, invites us to reflect on this question of the meaning of mitzvah (tzav is a verb form of the noun, mitzvah). Rashi, citing the midrash, observes that tzav connotes zerizut, alacrity, as if God is saying, “Perform this commandment right away–bring energy to it, don’t dilly dally.” That fits well within a framework of externalized motivation: Get this done quickly so that you can earn the reward (and avoid the punishment). A mitzvah, in this context, continues to be (or at least seems to be) a behavior that a Higher Power commands us to do, backed up by overwhelming force.
But there are other ways to understand mitzvah. The Hasidic masters, drawing on the Zohar, routinely play up the aspect of mitzvah as connection, e.g. mitzvot are the means by which “The Ineffable [expresses] desire that we connect, embrace the Divine, through holiness” (Sefat Emet Bo 1874–there are many more examples). This framework does not necessitate jettisoning the notion of mitzvah as duty or obligation. But, for me anyway, it has the effect of wrapping that heavy notion of commandedness in a softer envelope of love (or, perhaps, the harsher approach is the package, and the love is the soft center; or, really truly, neither is inside or outside–they’re both deeply intertwined). As I’ve continued on my own spiritual and religious journey, that has been profoundly important and helpful.
This approach can get tricky for me, though, if it leads me to experience mitzvot as entirely voluntary. I’m not willing to say that everything is an invitation, because I believe that I, and we, have moral, ethical, and spiritual duties and responsibilities. I can’t, with a straight face, understand Torah, halakha, and Judaism as simply a response to a series of invitations; it is also a response to a set of demands.
Yet I think Gil Fronsdal is right: Demands are not always, or perhaps even often, effective. Why? Because so many of us experience our lives as a set of choices we make, grounded in freedom of thought and action. So the notion that God or a politician or an activist on social media demands of me that I espouse this position or take that action–can be experienced as a categorical error: Who gives you the right to tell me what to think or do? It would be far more effective to engage in a good faith conversation and enable both of us to speak, listen, and make up our minds.
This is an experience I think a lot of folks have run into vis a vis mitzvot and Judaism. Yet if we can ground simultaneously in an understanding of mitzvah as both commandment and connection (imagine popularizing the phrase, “Mitzvah means connection!”), I think we can open up a rich and deep relationship with Torah, Jewish life, and the Holy Blessed One. That is what I’m trying to do in my own life, and it’s what we try to do at IJS all the time. If you’re not already on that journey, I hope you’ll consider joining us (no, actually–I’m demanding that you join us; just kidding.)
Every Friday morning, IJS President & CEO Rabbi Josh Feigelson shares a short reflection on the week in preparation for Shabbat. Josh weaves together personal experience, mindfulness practice, and teachings from the weekly Torah portion in a uniquely accessible and powerful way. Sign up to receive Josh’s weekly reflections here.
Mar 20, 2024 | Blog, Rabbi Josh Feigelson, PhD, President & CEO, Institute for Jewish Spirituality
When my son Toby was seven or eight years old, we watched the Revenge of the Sith, the third of the Star Wars “prequel” movies—the one that tells the story of how Anakin Skywalker became Darth Vader (spoiler alert, I guess—but, really?). In the climactic scene, as Anakin is about to battle his master Obi-Wan Kenobi, his eyes are yellow with rage. He has been overtaken by anger. He shouts at Obi-Wan, “I hate you!” At this, Toby turned to me and said—in the way that only a sweet 8-year old who goes to a school with a strong social-emotional curriculum can—”Ooh, hate is such a strong word!”
It may sound trite to say, but I think it’s actually remarkable that, in my 47 years, I have been blessed not to experience hateful rage very much. The vast, vast majority of my experiences have been characterized by emotions and states that are peaceful, nonviolent, and even loving. But perhaps because of that, I can vividly remember the moments when rage has been present—both the rage of others that I’ve witnessed and rage that has arisen in me and caused me to lose control. In the former case, they are generally moments that have caused pain in me even through the mere fact of observing them; in the latter, they are, uniformly, the moments in my life I most regret.
We think of Purim as a happy holiday, filled with costumes and yummy things to eat. But the truth is, at the beating heart of this holiday is a story of rage, hatred, fear, generally poor emotional regulation, and the consequences those strong negative emotions can have when channeled into violent, state-sanctioned power.
The word heima, rage, forms a throughline of the Purim story. It appears six times in Esther: When the king becomes angry that Vashti won’t come (1:12) and when that rage finally subsides (2:1); when Haman sees that Mordechai won’t bow to him (3:5 and again at 5:9); when Esther reveals Haman is out to destroy her and her people (7:7) and when his rage subsides after Haman is hanged (7:10). In each of these cases, a powerful man experiences something that upsets him—something that seems to undermine his sense of control and self-worth, perhaps—and he is unable to control his anger. There is something childlike and petulant about these incidents, something reminiscent of that young Anakin Skywalker who can’t manage the strong sensations of pride, feeling wronged and unloved (and, in Anakin’s case, probably abandoned as well).
And like Anakin Skywalker, in each case in Esther, the powerful man, whether Achashverosh or Haman, flies off the handle into a literally murderous rage and then codifies that rage into state-sanctioned violence: killing the queen (and then, grotesquely, effectively kidnapping and imprisoning the young women of the empire until he found the one who most pleased him—all under cover of law); ordering a massive, state-authorized pogrom on the Jews and constructing a state-authorized gallows for Mordechai; killing Haman by the lawful order of the king. In case my point isn’t already clear: this is not a children’s story.
Instead, I think it is at least in part a story that comes to help us reflect on questions about rage and power (and gender: see Rabbi Jericho Vincent’s incredible new rendering of the Megillah for more). Such questions are, of course, always present, whether we are aware of them or not, whether we like to acknowledge them or not. One of our key developmental tasks in childhood and adolescence is learning how to modulate the strong negative feelings we can experience that might impel us toward anger, rage, and violence, and instead make calmer, wiser, more peaceful choices. And the Megillah is even astute enough to layer in the ways in which the experience or threat of violence can itself have traumatic impacts on a collective group, which can then lead to their own imagined or enacted revenge fantasies (this is the story of chapter 8).
Jewish mindfulness practice is all about disrupting this escalator of reactivity and instead increasing the space between stimulus and response. It is about cultivating da’at, attentive awareness, as evidenced in the pivotal line Mordechai writes to Esther: mi yodeah im la’et kazot higaat lamalchut, who knows—who has da’at, is mindfully aware—but perhaps it was precisely for this moment that you attained the throne!
Esther, of course, is the character who has the most to fear—”if I perish, I perish.” Through what I take to be a practice of mindfulness—what is she doing for those three days of fasting and praying if not creating more space between stimulus and response?—she overcomes that fear to make an enormously courageous, history-altering choice. Unlike her husband the king, she does not seek to dull her pain through drinking, partying, and carousing. Unlike Haman, she is not so conceited that she can only think of herself. As her name implies, she is, perhaps, concealed even from herself, but she ultimately emerges as an exemplar of mindful self-awareness that grounds her courageous speech and action.
This Purim, when so many of us are living with fear and trauma; when our media ecosystem thrives on prompting our most reactive behaviors; when too many are acting in ways that seem anything but mindful, wise, or courageous—may we renew our commitment to our spiritual practice for the sake of reducing suffering, healing pain, and fostering peace.
Every Friday morning, IJS President & CEO Rabbi Josh Feigelson shares a short reflection on the week in preparation for Shabbat. Josh weaves together personal experience, mindfulness practice, and teachings from the weekly Torah portion in a uniquely accessible and powerful way. Sign up to receive Josh’s weekly reflections here.
Mar 14, 2024 | Blog, Rabbi Josh Feigelson, PhD, President & CEO, Institute for Jewish Spirituality
One of the main reasons Natalie and I moved to Skokie eleven years ago was so that our children would have other kids to play with on Shabbat afternoon. We had previously lived in Evanston, which had a wonderful but very small shomer Shabbat community. There were basically the same few kids, and no one else at our children’s grade levels. When Toby came along, we realized we wanted a different experience and moved three miles west.
At this point, Toby is old enough that most Shabbat mornings he finds me at shul to tell me that he’s hanging out with his friends and classmates all afternoon and he’ll be back in time for havdallah. Which is exactly what we wanted. Like his older brothers, he has a group of friends his age who can spend time and play with one another. Normal, healthy developmental stuff–and a good validation of our decision back in the day.
Yet as you no doubt know, friendships and childhoods that look like this are becoming rarer. Teens are spending less time hanging out with their friends–a trend facilitated by social media and accelerated by the pandemic. The same is happening with adults, as the Surgeon General discussed in a recent report on the epidemic of disconnection and loneliness affecting the country–an epidemic that has profound consequences for our physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual health.
We’re wrapping up the Torah portions that recount the building of the Mishkan. One of the sometimes overlooked features of this story is the role of friendship, specifically that between Bezalel and Ohaliav, the two master builders. Now, you may actually be scratching your head: “Betzalel–him I’ve heard of. Who is the Ohaliav character?” He was Bezalel’s chief helper–or, as my own friend and rabbi, Ari Hart, pointed out recently, his buddy. These were two friends–really, two of the only friends (not blood relations) that we see in the Torah. They shared in the work together, inspired one another, dreamed, thought, created, and labored with each other. They were friends.
It makes sense to me that the Torah would choose to highlight two friends at the center of the creation of the Mishkan, as the word for friend, chaver, is related to a word the Torah itself uses to describe putting together the Mishkan, l’chaber. Like the Mishkan or the clothing of the high priest, a healthy friendship reflects the interconnection between distinct individual parts within a larger whole. Each part is unique and important, and each also contributes to the total project, the greater communion of the friendship.
Rava, one of the great rabbis of the Talmud, quoted a folk saying: O havruta o mituta. Literally translated, the phrase means, “friendship or death.” I think a perhaps more accurate rendering might be, “Friendship is the essence of life.” Why? Perhaps because, unlike familial ties or contractual responsibilities, a friendship is a relationship characterized by freedom. We choose our friends. And because of that, a friendship is its own, particularly special, kind of love–freely chosen, much like the freely-given offerings that provided the raw materials for the Mishkan.
Jewish spiritual practice can often be thought of as something we do on our own–meditating or journaling or praying. And yes, much of our work is internal, taking place in zones to which only we have access and that cannot really be shared with others. But/And: so much of our spiritual labor can only, frankly should, be done in the company of friends–spiritual friends, friends with whom we can practice, friends to whom we can open our hearts, friends who are, in the truest sense of the word, a havruta. May we all merit to develop, maintain, and grow such friendships.
Every Friday morning, IJS President & CEO Rabbi Josh Feigelson shares a short reflection on the week in preparation for Shabbat. Josh weaves together personal experience, mindfulness practice, and teachings from the weekly Torah portion in a uniquely accessible and powerful way. Sign up to receive Josh’s weekly reflections here.
Mar 7, 2024 | Blog, Rabbi Josh Feigelson, PhD, President & CEO, Institute for Jewish Spirituality
I travel frequently for work. My checklist of things to do before I leave home includes not only packing undershirts and a toothbrush, but also emptying the compost bin that sits next to our sink. I seem to be the member of my family who can stand the smell the easiest. So before I get in the taxi to the airport, I dump the compost into the larger bin outside.
I therefore think about the compost with some regularity. On the one hand, I feel good about it: We’re diverting waste from the landfill; we get soil back in the spring; we’re contributing to a larger movement. On the other hand, there’s a little perversion that creeps in when I clean out the fridge: “Ooh, that lettuce I bought last week that didn’t get eaten–awesome, it can go in the compost!” But, of course, it would have been better to either eat the lettuce or not buy it in the first place.
The existence of the compost bin can thus provide a subconscious crutch for overconsumption. While it mitigates some problems, it doesn’t address the basic questions of desire and sufficiency operating in my mind and heart when I’m at the grocery store or standing in front of the fridge thinking about what I want to eat. Those questions are still mine to work through.
These issues are on my mind this week because at the heart of Parashat Vayakhel is a story about sufficiency and saying, “Enough.” Making good on the Holy One’s invitation for everyone whose heart is moved to contribute to the construction of the Mishkan, Moses invites the Israelites to do just that. But not only do they bring–they keep on bringing, to the point that the craftsmen come to Moses to tell him they’re being overwhelmed.
“Moses thereupon had this proclamation made throughout the camp:
‘Not a single man or woman should make further effort toward gifts for the sanctuary!’ So the people stopped bringing: their efforts had been more than enough for all the tasks to be done.” (Ex. 36:6-7)
In his Mei Hashiloach, Rabbi Mordechai Yosef Leiner interprets this passage spiritually: “In truth, one does not know the root of their heart—if they are truly giving. The test of this is, if one is asked one time to donate for a new mitzvah, then they can give abundantly, but after they have grown accustomed to this mitzvah they then close their hand from giving. From this it is understood that they are not giving from their roots, for if it came out of their roots they would not refrain from giving.” In the case of the Mishkan, the rebbe says, the Israelites kept giving again and again, manifesting that they were truly giving from the roots of their hearts. Hence these verses should be read as praising them.
Now, this would be a good place for me to make a fundraising pitch. (Sure: If your heart is moved, please do donate to IJS!) But/And: I think the larger point is one about the spiritual practice of discerning and knowing our hearts–in our giving, our consuming, our making, our selling. The Torah invites us to consider that, just as there is an economy that exists between the grocery store and the compost bin (or the trash can), there is likewise an economy within our hearts–impulses, either genuine or manufactured through advertising, of need, desire, and craving; stirrings of generosity, openness, and sufficiency.
In an age characterized by consumerism, impulse purchasing, and life-threatening levels of waste, mindfulness practices are more important than ever. They enable us to walk through the grocery store–or Amazon–with stronger, wiser hearts that are less susceptible to the manipulation of desire. And in an age characterized by isolation, division, and epidemic levels of loneliness, our practices likewise help us to cultivate connection, compassion, and resilience. These are two sides of the same coin, two parts of the economy of the heart that, with practice and dedication, can become the economy of the world too.
Every Friday morning, IJS President & CEO Rabbi Josh Feigelson shares a short reflection on the week in preparation for Shabbat. Josh weaves together personal experience, mindfulness practice, and teachings from the weekly Torah portion in a uniquely accessible and powerful way. Sign up to receive Josh’s weekly reflections here.
Feb 29, 2024 | Blog, Rabbi Josh Feigelson, PhD, President & CEO, Institute for Jewish Spirituality
On Monday night, for the first time since before I had children (meaning at least 21 years ago), I went to the opera. Not just any opera, but the premiere of a new production of Verdi’s La Forza del Destino at the Met–a production that lasts four hours and involves a huge cast and elaborate sets. And, because it was opening night, there were a lot of people decked out in their finery. It was a scene.
Yet what made this night so memorable was the singing–and especially that of the soprano, Lise Davidsen, who was making her Met debut in an Italian opera. This was a big deal, as Davidsen, a Norwegian-born star in the opera world, is known for her work in German pieces (Wagner, Strauss). But Italian opera is a different animal, and there was a lot of anticipation about how she would do.
Suffice it to say, she brought down the house–both with her aria before the first intermission and then, most memorably, with her rendition of Pace, pace, mio Dio in the final act. And that was when the moment I’ll never forget unfolded. You see, unlike in virtually any other Western performance art form, opera not only invites the audience to applaud mid-performance, after every solo (jazz does this), but, because it’s a theatrical performance, there’s a pause in the action when that happens (something that doesn’t happen in jazz). While most of the time the applause runs its course and the show goes on, occasionally something magical can happen.
That’s what happened on Monday: Davidsen’s performance was so immediately appreciated and beloved that the audience clapped and clapped, hooped and hollered, yelled “brava!” and “bravissima!” for what seemed like an eternity. Even the conductor and the orchestra started applauding. And Davidsen, trying to remain in character, simply couldn’t ignore it–she ultimately had to break character and acknowledge the reality of the moment with a smile and a hand to the heart. Only then could the performance go on.
It was that breaking character–breaking through the “fourth wall” of the performance–that made the moment indelible in my memory, and probably in that of the several thousand other members of the audience, because it is such a rare thing to witness. Performers and audience alike are so committed to maintaining that imaginary wall; it is a fundamental part of the experience of theater and music, ceremony and ritual. We invest spaces like theaters and symphony halls–and synagogues–with an artifice that allows another world to come into being. When we break that wall, the experience can be jarring, just as it can also be magical.
The story of the Golden Calf is a counterpoint to the story of the construction of the Mishkan that it interrupts. And while its most fundamental lesson, of course, is to be ever mindful of the possibility of idolatry, some of our tradition’s most insightful, even radical, interpretations see significance not only in the people’s construction of the calf, but of Moses’s smashing of the tablets of the law in response. As Rashi, quoting the Talmud, famously says in his very final comment on the Torah at the end of Deuteronomy: “The Holy Blessed One agreed with Moses’s action, as it says, asher shibarta (Ex. 34:1), which implies that God said, ‘Yishar koach,’ Good work breaking the tablets.”
I wonder if we might think of these two breakings–the breaking of the tablets and breaking character/breaking the fourth wall–as partaking of or expressing a related impulse. In the case of Lise Davidsen, the moment demanded that she break the fourth wall in order to acknowledge her own humanity and that of the audience, which wanted to express their love and appreciation for her singing. In the case of Moses as interpreted by the Talmud, the Holy One recognizes that the moment called not for standing on ceremony, but instead for the expression of emotion–disappointment, anger, rage–of Moses’s gesture; or, perhaps, on an even deeper level, the moment called for a lesson that nothing, not even words of Torah written by the finger of God, should become an idol, immune to the realities of the world, and thus the tablets had to be broken.
How do we discern what the moment calls for? That’s one of the reasons we practice. Through our mindfulness, we hopefully become aware of the overt and subtle ways idolatry operates in our hearts and minds: in the things we cling to, in our inability to live with uncertainty, in our stubborn desire to maintain an impermeable, unbreakable fourth wall between the lives we live and the stories we tell ourselves about them.
We don’t seek to break the fourth wall all the time, of course, or even most of the time. In both opera and in Torah, those moments of breaking are meaningful only because they are rare. But I would suggest that one of the reasons we practice is so that we might know when those moments have arrived–and that we might have the courage to break those idols when they do.
Every Friday morning, IJS President & CEO Rabbi Josh Feigelson shares a short reflection on the week in preparation for Shabbat. Josh weaves together personal experience, mindfulness practice, and teachings from the weekly Torah portion in a uniquely accessible and powerful way. Sign up to receive Josh’s weekly reflections here.
Feb 26, 2024 | Blog, by Rabbi Sam Feinsmith, Senior Core Faculty, Institute for Jewish Spirituality
משנכנס אדר מרבין בשמחה
When Adar arrives we abound in joy
–Babylonian Talmud Ta’anit 29
An enormous wave of renewed fear and reawakened trauma has been washing over us since October 7. As we follow the news while the war rages on, our joy may be eclipsed by deep-seeded patterns of self-protection, our nervous systems may be highly aroused, landing us in fight or flight mode as we brace ourselves, tense up, and/or withdraw into ourselves and hide in fear. As we enter the month of Adar I this year, we may be wondering if we’re even permitted to cultivate joy in the face of so much hurt.
Our response at IJS is clear. The war between Israel and Hamas is likely to continue for the long haul, and the ongoing rise in antisemitism will probably intensify as well. And so, it’s incumbent upon us to cultivate more joy so we can meet the challenges ahead with a buoyant, hopeful, and resilient heart, and find some inner spaciousness, self-compassion, and freedom in the midst of our individual and collective suffering.
“Yes, but how?” we may ask. Rabbi Israel ben Eliezer, the Ba’al Shem Tov¹ offers a path:
“The Israelite people shall keep the sabbath” (Ex. 31:16).²
Melancholy and the physical husks³ inhibit the soul’s joy… Therefore, the Torah provides a piece of good counsel: “The land shall observe a sabbath of the Lord” (Lev. 25:2).⁴ Meaning, we must bring the land—that is, our physical body—some relief and cessation (shevitah)⁵ so that it might experience physical joy. Through this, the soul can rejoice in Spirit (Sefer Ba’al Shem Tov, Ki Tissa #5).
Our teacher reinterprets the injunction to keep the Sabbatical year (Shemitah) and allow the land to rest as an instruction point for self-care. A sad heart and a tense body, he suggests, tend to block the innate joy of the soul. Providing the physical body (the earthy part of our being) with rest and restoration can release emotional and physical blockages that keep the soul’s innate joy from shining brightly through our whole being.
At IJS we’ve long taught that we can build an inner Shabbat sanctuary–a refuge from the suffering and tumult of our lives–by dedicating periods of mindful practice to cessation, rest, and restoration. Such practice periods afford us the opportunity to care for our bodies by slowing down, releasing tension, relaxing deeply, and coming into a nourishing quality of embodied presence. The more embodied we become, the more we can process and release embodied emotional knots that keep us contracted, fearful, narrow, and reactive. In time and with repeated practice, the simple but powerful act of observing these inner phenomena with loving, non-judgmental attention allows these knots to unfurl, revealing the innate luminosity, freedom, and joy of the soul and allowing its radiant glow to saturate every part of our being.
True, the fear, tension, and trauma of this time may be propelling us to harden; clench up; withdraw; fall into hopelessness; or move into quick, frantic action. Such patterns may be indicators that it’s time to dedicate time for mindful practice. Here are some instructions to support you.
Practice Instructions: Practicing Self-Care, Cultivating Joy
Silence your phone and put the to-do list on hold, even if only for a few minutes. Give yourself the gift of presence, softness, and restoration.
Find a comfortable posture, sitting on a comfy chair, cushion, or mat, with your feet firmly planted on the ground or some blocks or thick books. Alternatively, you may choose a supine posture, lying on your back on a soft, comfortable surface (e.g. a yoga mat, rug, or blanket), and laying a support under the back of your head if you feel any strain in the neck. If you sense any pain in the small of your back, consider bending your knees while keeping your feet planted on the mat.
Your eyes can be closed or open and downcast with a soft gaze. Rest your hands where they land comfortably, palms up or down.
Take some deep, relaxing breaths, drawing the breath all the way down into your abdomen, and noticing the rise and fall of your belly as you breathe in and out. With each inbreath draw your attention into the present moment. With each outbreath, release any tension, tightness, clenching, or bracing, wherever you may sense it in the body.
Continue to do this and notice if any emotional pain arises or makes itself known of its own accord (don’t go looking for it). See if you can sense where you feel it in the body with an allowing, non-judgmental stance. See if you can welcome it on the inbreath and release it on the outbreath. Don’t try to push it away. Instead just notice if breathing out deeply might open some space around the painful emotion or support it to unfurl of its own accord. If this exercise becomes too intense and you find yourself recoiling or becoming numb, stop attending to the breath and shift your attention to the sensations of your feet on the ground or those of contact between your hands (you can even give yourself a hand massage!) for the duration of your practice period. Or you can ground yourself by opening your eyes if they’ve been closed, looking around the room, and naming items you can see.
As you conduct this practice, simply notice if your awareness becomes brighter, more spacious. Notice if any contentment, happiness, or well-being shine forth from within your innermost being–naturally, spontaneously. There’s no need to try to make anything special happen. Simply rest in awareness, notice what you notice, and feel what you feel.
Conclude your practice by stretching in any manner that feels comfortable, revitalizing, and grounding. Offer yourself some words or a gesture of gratitude for practicing, and make a note of anything you may have learned.
- The Ba’al Shem Tov (d. 1760) was the charismatic founder of Hasidism. His teachings continue to serve as a source of inspiration and guidance on the spiritual path for countless Jews, and have been fundamental to the Neo-Hasidic theology of IJS since its inception.
- Referring to the seventh day of the week, Shabbat.
- Though the word “kelipah” (husk) carries a variety of associations in the kabbalistic tradition, in this context it seems to connote something like a stiffening of the tissues in the body.
- Referring to the seventh year, Shemitah.
- The Hebrew “שביתה” (shevitah) shares the same root as שבת, Shabbat.
Feb 15, 2024 | Blog, Rabbi Josh Feigelson, PhD, President & CEO, Institute for Jewish Spirituality
The other night I pulled off our bookshelf a thick volume from my childhood, “The Complete Book of U.S. Presidents.” I was into politics and government as a kid, and at some point (before the presidency of Bill Clinton, to judge by the men profiled in the book) I had acquired this one. I’m still something of a government nerd–my kids sometimes get out the almanac on Shabbat afternoons and quiz me–though as I’ve aged into the life stage in which I can recognize and relate to U.S. presidents as my own contemporaries, I see them with less mystique and, perhaps, more sobriety.
In her exceptional 2004 book, Talking to Strangers: Anxieties of Citizenship Since Brown vs. Board of Education, Harvard political theorist Danielle Allen offers a reflection on the model that–we hope, at any rate–presidents of the United States hold out to the rest of us, particularly as it relates to one of the most basic elements of living in a democracy, namely the need to talk to strangers. I quote the full passage here, because I have long loved and taught it and I think it deserves to be read and studied in its entirety:
‘Don’t talk to strangers!’ That is a lesson for four-year-olds. Eyes that drop to the ground when they bump up against a stranger’s gaze belong to those still in their political minority. If the experience of the most powerful citizen in the United States is any guide, talking to strangers is empowering; the president is among the few citizens for whom the polity holds no intimidating strangers. Presidents greet everyone and look all citizens in the eye. This is not merely because they are always campaigning, but because they have achieved the fullest possible political maturity. Their ease with strangers expresses a sense of freedom and empowerment. At one end of the spectrum of styles of democratic citizenship cowers the four-year-old in insecure isolation; at the other, stands the president, strong and self-confident. The more fearful we citizens are of speaking to strangers, the more we are docile children and not prospective presidents; the greater the distance between the president and us, the more we are subjects, not citizens. Talking to strangers is a way of claiming one’s political majority and, with it, a presidential ease and sense of freedom.
Allen is, I believe, pointing us toward what Alexis de Tocqueville wrote about two centuries ago, namely the habits of the heart that are foundational to sustaining a diverse democracy. How we encounter strangers in our neighborhoods and our communities–whether we approach them with an open-hearted faith or a closed-hearted fear–is one of the constitutive elements of the character of our larger polities. As Judge Learned Hand said in an Independence Day speech in 1944, “Liberty lies in the hearts of men and women; when it dies there, no constitution, no law, no court can even do much to help it. While it lies there it needs no constitution, no law, no court to save it.” The condition of our hearts and the condition of our democracy are, in a profound way, intertwined.
The heart plays a foundational role in the construction of the Mishkan, the portable dwelling place for the Divine: “Tell the Israelite people to bring Me gifts; you shall accept gifts for Me from every person whose heart is so moved” (Exodus 25:2). The Mishkan was required to be constructed of voluntary donations, not taxes or seized property. Everything within it–all its curtains and rods, the ark and the menorah and the altar, all the clothing of the priests–all of it had to be imbued with an opening of the heart, an opening which was then reciprocated by the Divine: “They shall make me a dwelling place, that I may dwell among them.” As Rabbi Meir Leibush Wisser (Malbim, 1809-1879) puts it: “A holy sanctuary like this exists in the heart of every person, and it is possible to create it in every time and era.” When we open our hearts, we create a space for the Divine to dwell within us.
It’s Presidents Day weekend in the United States, and I don’t need to remind you that it’s a presidential election year. As we move further into this season, the pressures to harden and close our hearts will no doubt increase. So I find myself thinking about the ways in which our spiritual practices can not only help us cope through the inevitable travails of a year like this, but can help us even see in them opportunity–to open our hearts, to have the courage to talk and listen to strangers, to discover anew where and how the Divine might reside within us and the world.
