Tag Archives: prayer

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Spilled Out

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The rabbinic approach to prayer, rather than pointing to the collectivization of Jewish religious consciousness, encourages individuals within the community to discover the personal dimension of Judaic spirituality within the communal life of the halakhah. In prayer and the Shema, the rabbis sought to allow the personal to be present in the framework of halakhic practice by joining individual initiative to structure, discipline, and order. They insisted that habit not triumph in the life of prayer, and they constantly admonished the community that prayer must not be a gesture that one repeats unthinkingly. They insist that one must not pray today just because one prayed yesterday. Personal supplication must be brought within the fixed framework of the petitional benedictions of the Amidah. One must even strive to bring novel elements into daily petitional prayer.

-Rabbi David Hartman
A Living Covenant: The Innovative Spirit in Traditional Judaism
Chapter 7: “Individual and Community Prayer”

Actually, there are days when I’d do almost anything if I could just flip my brain, heart, and soul into automatic pilot and be able to belong to the “collectivization of…religious consciousness” and turn what some religious Jews refer to as tefillat nedavah (voluntary prayer) into “structure, discipline, and order.” Sometimes my relationship with God, or at least the thoughts and feelings associated with that relationship, is too chaotic and scrambled to be of much use to either me or Him.

But as Rabbi Hartman describes it, there is a greater responsibility and intention (kavvanah) in Jewish prayer than most Christians tend to understand. There are exceptions, such as Pastor Jacob Fronczak’s love of liturgy, but I think you have to be wired a certain way as a non-Jew in order to love liturgical prayer. For me though, on those days (or weeks) when it is just too much for me to summon up the necessary energy and passion to take aim at God through my “prayer antenna” so what I want to say to God will reach Him, a structured set of benedictions would do quite nicely.

I don’t know where we learn to pray. I guess it’s different for everyone. For Rabbi Hartman, it came from listening to his mother pray during the synagogue service when he was a child.

I could hear her asking God to ensure that her adult sons would find good brides and that her husband would be able to support his family with dignity. Her prayers gave expression to her personal yearnings as a wife and mother. Her language was in no way inhibited or stunted. As I listened to her prayers, I did not sense that she felt unworthy to approach God with “petty” personal needs. She would have been astonished if someone had told her that the significance of prayer is to manifest an Akedah consciousness and asked how she dared feel so relaxed and easy before God. My mother, a deeply traditional Jew, prayed in the manner of generations of Jewish mothers. She continued a tradition that she received from her own family.

I’m compelled to think of the prayer of Hannah when reading about how Rabbi Hartman heard his mother’s prayers:

As she continued praying before the Lord, Eli observed her mouth. Hannah was speaking in her heart; only her lips moved, and her voice was not heard. Therefore Eli took her to be a drunken woman. And Eli said to her, “How long will you go on being drunk? Put your wine away from you.” But Hannah answered, “No, my lord, I am a woman troubled in spirit. I have drunk neither wine nor strong drink, but I have been pouring out my soul before the Lord. Do not regard your servant as a worthless woman, for all along I have been speaking out of my great anxiety and vexation.” Then Eli answered, “Go in peace, and the God of Israel grant your petition that you have made to him.” And she said, “Let your servant find favor in your eyes.” Then the woman went her way and ate, and her face was no longer sad. –1 Samuel 1:12-18 (ESV)

It’s funny. In the moments when I was typing the previous quote from Rabbi Hartman’s book, I also couldn’t help but think of my wife. As a child, she would never have heard her mother pray as a Jew because her mother had long since abandoned any vestige of cultural, let alone religious Judaism. I can only feel compassion for my wife as I picture her first entering into the Jewish community in middle age, determined to reclaim what God intended for her from the first breath she took after birth, but could never live out until decades later.

The only prayer I can remember from my childhood is the one that begins, Now I lay me down to sleep, I pray the Lord my soul to keep…” While I don’t doubt that it’s comfortable for most Christians to keep formalized and liturgical prayer down to a bare minimum, I think they rob themselves and their children of something special when they dismiss it altogether. There’s a fabric of tradition, history, community, and belonging in those prayers. I’ve never been part of a purely Christian congregation that has employed a traditional prayer structure (although it could be argued that the small, “One Law” group with whom I once “fellowshipped” and continue to remember with affection, were more Christian than anything else), but in relation to Jewish prayer, the attraction for me to be part of that dynamic is substantial.

But more often than not, I find that serious time in prayer eludes me. I don’t know if it’s because I previously declared I would forego worship practices that even appear to be Jewish (with some rare and recent exceptions) or it it’s something more endemic to my soul, but lately, God seems to be rather “standoffish,” or perhaps it’s me. I used to think that a “crisis of faith” would be singular and rather brief since, by definition, a crisis is a dramatic event or set of events that occur very quickly and result in non-trivial change, but now I’m not so sure. I’m beginning to believe, maybe just in my case, that this “crisis of faith” is an evolutionary process that is leading me to some newer (and hopefully higher) realization of who I am in God.

In commenting on Maimonides, Hartman states:

I believe, however, that Maimonides’ understanding of prayer as avodah she-be-lev is an invitation to individuals to discover their own personal and individual mode of worship within a system in which common practice and community are so heavily emphasized.

She-be-lev or service of the heart is the individual operating of personal worship and devotion to God within the larger community of Judaism. It’s the unique part of space and time where a man davening during morning prayers with a minyan can still be an individual Jew with an individual heart and soul given up like an incense offering to God.

Traditional Jewish prayer is like a container holding a liquid. The container defines the shape of the liquid but not its characteristics, substance, and behavior. The liquid can freeze, boil, or steam within the container and still be held and kept “safe.” Without the container though, all it can do is spill into a puddle on the counter top and dribble onto the floor, becoming fodder for the mop and destined for the drain and sewer.

When I try to pray or even think about how to get back to, let alone closer to God, I’m poured all over the ground. It would be nice if I could consider myself Paul’s proverbial “drink offering” (Philippians 2:17; 2 Timothy 4:6), but I know in fact, that I’m just making a mess.

But we have this treasure in jars of clay, to show that the surpassing power belongs to God and not to us. We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not driven to despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed; always carrying in the body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be manifested in our bodies. –2 Corinthians 4:7-10 (ESV)

Does anyone out there have a sponge to soak me up with and a handy jar to squeeze me into?

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Who is Worthy of God’s Word?

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To some, G-d is great because He makes the wind blow.

For others, because He projects space and time out of the void.

The men of thought laugh and say He is far beyond any of this, for His Oneness remains unaltered even by the event of Creation.

We Jews, this is what we have always said:

G-d is so great, He stoops to listen to the prayer of a small child;

He paints the petals of each wildflower and awaits us there to catch Him doing so;

He plays with the rules of the world He has made to comfort the oppressed and support those who champion justice.

He transcends the bounds of higher and lower.

He transcends all bounds.

-Rabbi Tzvi Freeman
“Greatness Unlimited”
Based on letters and talks of the Rebbe
Rabbi M. M. Schneerson
Chabad.org

Indeed, the prayer of the community was born the very instant the prophetic community expired and, when it did come into the spiritual world of the Jew of old, it did not supersede the prophetic community but rather perpetuated it. Prayer is the continuation of prophecy, and the fellowship of prayerful men is ipso facto the fellowship of prophets.

-Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik
from Chapter VII of his book
The Lonely Man of Faith

Rabbi Soloveitchik says a very interesting thing. He links the age of the prophets to the post-Second Temple world of Rabbinic Judaism. This may seem strange to most Christians, since we are taught a good many things passed away with the ascendency of Christ and the demise of the Holy Temple in Jerusalem. In fact, Christianity tends to discount the early Rabbinic period forward in the history of Judaism and “replace” it with the grace of Jesus Christ.

Of course Rabbi Soloveitchik as an Orthodox Jew, would not offer any sort of acknowledgement of Christ, but I think we can take his words, and those of Rabbi Freeman’s and try to apply them to the world of prayer among all men. While the prophets of old were unique and (as far as I can tell) no man has the “gift of prophesy” today as did Jewish men such as Isaiah, Jeremiah, or Ezekiel, we all have the capacity to engage God in the realm of prayer. This makes no man a prophet in the manner of those I have just mentioned, but the ability of humanity to connect, through faith, with God was not ended when the Second Temple was destroyed. Nor did it end with the life, death, life, and ascendency of Jesus. As Rabbi Freeman tells us, God is so great that “He stoops to listen to the prayer of a small child.”

And yet, from a Jewish point of view, prayer is not the exclusive property of the individual as Rabbi Soloveitchik notes:

No man, however great and noble, is worthy of God’s word if he fancies that the word is his private property not to be shared by others.

Judaism sees its relationship with God as largely corporate as indeed, is the Sinai covenant between God and the Israelites. Yet each Jew living today is also to consider himself as having stood personally at the foot of Mount Sinai as God gave the Torah through Moses. By comparison, Christianity, though the “body of Christ,” exists conceptually as a large collection of individuals, and each believer interacts as a unique personality, almost exclusively independent of the community of the church.

We see this most often in how we, as Christians, pray. It’s an almost irresistible temptation to pray about me, myself, and I, and Jesus did not prohibit this. And yet, he also told us to pray for others, even our enemies, and to petition God for the welfare of our leaders, our neighbors, and our oppressors. Rabbi Soloveitchik echos this when he writes “Man should avoid praying for himself alone…When disaster strikes, one must not be immersed completely in his own passional destiny, thinking exclusively for himself, being concerned only with himself, and petitioning God merely for himself.” To do so would be to imagine that God is little more than Aladdin’s genie and we alone are the one holding onto the lamp.

PrayingBut what is prayer and how is it somehow connected to perpetuating the continuation of prophecy?

Who is qualified to engage God in the prayer colloquy? Clearly, the person who is ready to cleanse himself of imperfection and evil. Any kind of injustice, corruption, cruelty, or the like desecrates the very essence of the prayer adventure, since it encases man in an ugly little world into which God is unwilling to enter. If man craves to meet God in prayer, then he must purge himself of all that separates him from God.

God hearkens to prayer if it rises from a contrite heart over a muddled and faulty life and from a resolute mind ready to redeem this life, In short, only the committed person is qualified to pray and to meet God. Prayer is always the harbinger of moral reformation.

So who can pray? On the one hand, it seems as if prayer is reserved for the person who is passionately dedicated to removing all sin and evil from his being and who longs to engage God in a realm of purity. On the other hand, what man, no matter what his condition, is completely clean and pure except that God has made him so?

Even an unbeliever can pray and be heard by God, otherwise no one could ever come to faith and be accepted by God. No one would ever be able to come to faith in God through Jesus Christ and be cleansed, healed, and reconciled with his Creator unless God was willing to hear the prayers of people covered in filth. It’s the desire to have the mantle of sin be removed from our shoulders, not the success of that removal whereby God is willing to hear us. In that sense, we do possess a “specialness” that was experienced by the prophets of old in that they too were willing, though still mortal and imperfect men.

And the foundations of the thresholds shook at the voice of him who called, and the house was filled with smoke. And I said: “Woe is me! For I am lost; for I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips; for my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts!” –Isaiah 6:4-5 (ESV)

As I mentioned before, the prophets didn’t consider God’s revelations to them to be their exclusive property but rather, they shared God’s word with all, even as they were commanded to do. Should we, in our own human need, keep prayer just for us and not share it with all of God’s creations?

But since we are all imperfect and perhaps never, even for a moment, attain a purity that allows a true connection to God, how does God hear? What of the person so damaged and injured in his spirit, that he only knows to cry out but is unable to shed his “skin of evil?”

Likewise, we encourage the sinner to pray even though he is not ready yet for repentance and moral regeneration, because any mitzvah performance, be it prayer, be it another moral act, has a cleansing effect upon the doer and may influence his life and bring about a complete change in his personality.

It seems as if I’m wandering further and further away from the prophets or rather, Rabbi Soloveitchik did when he penned these words. On the other hand, the Rav seems to be saying what he did before; that prayer isn’t the exclusive property of the pious and the holy and the righteous. Even sinners can and absolutely need to connect to God. Jesus was criticized for eating with sinners, prostitutes, and tax collectors, yet he said this:

“Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. I have not come to call the righteous but sinners to repentance.” –Luke 5:31-32 (ESV)

Thus access to the heart of God is available to all, not just to the perfect and those who sit in clean suits and dresses in pews on Sunday morning.

But going back to the very beginning of today’s “meditation,” we as Christians see that God is accessible not just to us and not just to “sinners,” but to all Jews everywhere, whether they are in the Messiah or not (and I am not lumping the Jewish people in with “sinners”).

I know it’s strange. Do I speak blasphemy? Do I ignore John 14:6? I suppose it looks that way. But I’m not willing to throw post-Jesus Jews under a bus because Christianity (and many in the Hebrew Roots movement) think “Rabbinic Judaism” is a dirty word.

I’ve sat in synagogues on Shabbat and during the Shema, have felt God enter as a tangible presence. I’ve sat in churches during prayer and singing and felt as if the room were completely empty. This is not to say that all synagogues possess God’s presence and all churches contain only God’s absence. Far from it. I am only saying that the 21st century church is not the only receptacle for the spirit of God. God is present where all men who desire Him are gathered, and resides in the heart of each individual, no matter who he is, who longs for the lover of his soul.

Who is qualified to engage God in the prayer colloquy? The person who is ready to cleanse himself certainly, but more than that, even the person who is at present unable or unwilling to be clean may still cry out. The very act of calling God’s Name may not “command” God to listen, but it may require the person praying to change his heart in acknowledgement of Him.

Thousands of years before the coming of Christ, while most of our non-Jewish ancestors (I’m speaking to Christians right now) were dancing around the pagan fires and worshiping “gods” of stone and wood, the Jewish people were turning their hearts to the One God. True, they also turned away many times, but God called them back and they returned. Otherwise, there would be no Christians today, for there would have been no Judaism by which the Messiah entered the world (and will enter it again).

Whoever you are reading this, know that God is not your exclusive property. God is a God to all or He is a God to none. While He has a special and unique relationship with the Jewish people which is perpetual and unable to be broken, He sent His only begotten Son for the rest of us, too. The rest of us just need to make sure that we don’t try to “take over” and restrict God to only ourselves.

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Being Crushed

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This scan report is heartbreaking.

Heidi’s cancer has progressed everywhere: lungs, bones and most dangerously, in the liver. This afternoon they start Heidi on Taxotere. She is so brave.

Thanks for helping us get through this. This week’s going to be really tough, getting used to the bad news and also Heidi’s new side effects with Taxotere. — at SCCA.

-Joe
Scenes from Our Cancer Battle

I wrote about Joe and Heidi’s cancer battle about a week ago and extended the conversation in a “morning meditation” called Unavoidable a few days later. Today, Joe posted the latest “scene” on Facebook. It was devastating.

I suppose I could do a Google search on inspirational Bible quotes, but that’s not really “me” and I doubt it would really help. Throwing religious platitudes and the same standard Bible verses at people who are in agony is a lot like throwing a pail of water onto the Sun in a vain attempt to quench nuclear fusion.

It was almost four years ago when my friend Dale Stucker said good-bye for the last time to his beloved wife Cyndy. She had fought cancer for so very long, but in the end, it consumed virtually every system in her body. But by God’s grace it never consumed her spirit.

No I’m not anticipating the worst but it’s hard not to think about it right now.

It’s like my thoughts are a little gerbil in a cage running around and around and around trying to get somewhere and getting nowhere. I keep thinking “pray, pray, pray” but people “pray, pray, pray” all the time and other people still “die, die, die” all the time.

This is the part about God that’s really hard for me to understand. I know, I know. For the glory of God, right? Swell. Say that when you have a wife like Cyndy or Heidi who has been fighting a years-long, exhaustive battle and you absolutely, positively can’t do anything about it. Say that if you’re watching it all happen from the outside and you desperately want to help and you absolutely, positively can’t do anything about it.

So what can I do about it. Absolutely, positively nothing.

So what am I doing? I’m writing because that’s what I do when I’m helpless and ineffectual. For me, writing is like praying. Maybe when I’m writing, I’m closer to God than when I’m not. I don’t know how it works.

There’s only one other place to go and it’s been a place I don’t like to go. It’s not that I don’t like going to God, but this is a place where He’s big and scary and He might not give me the answers I want. So I suck up my courage and I walk down that long spiral staircase into the bottom of a big, dark hole in the ground where I can be alone, just me and Him.

Part of me wants to scream at God, “Just what the heck do you think you’re doing? Haven’t you been paying attention? She needs you! She’s dying! DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT!”

OK, so maybe I’m going to hell for that one, I don’t know.

Another part of me wants to curl up into a fetal position and make myself as small as I can make all six-foot, three inches of me, and softly sob into the dirt underneath me, “Please, please, please, if you’ve got an ounce of compassion and caring for this woman, please, please don’t do this to her.”

Maybe I’m going to hell for that one, too.

If there’s one thing I learned from the book of Job, it’s that He who makes the Universe, makes the rules. You don’t talk back to God. But then, I never understood the book of Job, either. In the end, God gives Job back everything he lost, including new kids. Except it never explains that kids aren’t these interchangeable little spark plugs where one will do just as well as another. If one child, one unique and precious son or daughter dies, having another one does not replace the first and it doesn’t make the hurt go away.

So I don’t understand you, God.

I lift up my eyes to the hills.
From where does my help come?
My help comes from the Lord,
who made heaven and earth. –Psalm 121:1-2

I’m not offering that to Joe and Heidi as some sort of comfort, I’m offering it as a plea to God. I know You don’t have to care, and even if You care, You don’t have to answer our prayers. And even if You answer our prayers, the answer doesn’t have to be what we want it to be.

There is an immeasurable, unending, limitless, infinite, gargantuan supply of human pain and suffering out there in the world and in here in all of our hearts. Just turn on the evening news and you’ll be flooded with it. And yes, I want it all to stop. And yes, I realize it won’t stop until the Messiah returns. And yes, I understand that bad things happen to good people and we just have to deal with it.

But You can’t stop me from lifting my eyes to the hills and looking for Your help.

The most poignant line uttered by Job through his long agony was, Though he slay me, I will hope in him…” (Job 13:15) In the end, when all of our enthusiasm and optimism and strength and even when our prayers are exhausted and we can’t send another syllable into the ear of God, we only have our hope in God’s presence.

In tomorrow’s morning meditation, I’m going to say something about God finally lifting His thumb off my skull and relieving the pressure, but although that is true in terms of one circumstance, the weight of God’s presence in a world where Heidi has cancer is pressing me to the floor, as the Shekinah did to Moses when it entered the newly constructed Tabernacle.

And like Moses and like the Priests in Solomon’s Temple, I am at once grateful for the presence of God and completely helpless before Him, unable to rise or even move.

And like the Children of Israel, gathered pensively with trembling at the foot of Mount Sinai, I wait for God to speak.

Please God, let it be good news. Joe and Heidi are buried under the weight of their sorrow.

Let the weight of Your glory cover us
Let the life of Your river flow
Let the truth of Your kingdom reign in us
Let the weight of Your glory
Let the weight of Your glory fall

-Paul Wilbur
Let the Weight of Your Glory Fall (YouTube)

Please.

 

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Pausing Before Engaging God

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So we’ve determined that meditation is not just a nice thing, but crucial for every human being with functional grey matter. It’s something that was always considered core to the tefillah experience, at least by those who were into that experience. For some, it meant the mind’s contemplation of the vast beauty of G-d’s creation that their eyes beheld, gazing upon the stars and the wonders of nature. For others, it was the reverie of the worlds of the angels, who stand in constant praise and song. Still others focused upon G-d’s compassion and love for His creatures, and all His kindnesses to us.

So was the practice of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob as they sat in perfect awe beneath the star-speckled sky of the still desert night; so too, the ancient prophets in the Judean hills, strumming musical instruments as they gazed upon the mysteries of heaven and earth, awaiting the vision of prophecy as the morning’s horizon awaits the rising sun; so did the sages of the Talmud, the Bahir and the Zohar lift their souls on mystic journeys through orchards and palaces, chambers and pathways of the spiritual realms, never sure that they could return to their earthly bounds; so too the chassidim were lost in contemplation and the ecstasy of their prayer from early morning until the hours of night.

So now you’re asking: If meditation is so vital to Jewish observance, and if it is such an embedded tradition, why don’t I see it happening anywhere?

-Rabbi Tzvi Freeman
“Meditation’s Hallway”
from the Multimedia Guide to Jewish Prayer series
Chabad.org

Good question, and one that can probably be applied to Christians as well. The answer is that some do meditate before prayer but most don’t. I think I know why.

When I got up this morning at around 4 a.m., I was pretty tired, but I knew I needed to get out of bed if I intended to make it to the gym when it opened at 5. My brain is never really “on” when I first wake up, so I had a cup of coffee, a glass of water, and read the “funny papers” online as a slow and casual method of getting my thoughts to engage. I was still telling myself to “wake up” as I drove to the gym.

Forty-five minutes of sweating later, my mind and body were definitely awake. I was conscious enough to “engage” God in prayer, but time is limited. I also had to publish the day’s “morning meditation”, post it on twitter, Facebook, and Google+, eat breakfast, say “hello” to my wife who was also in a state of not really being awake as she got ready for work, shower, get dressed, make lunch, and various other routine morning tasks. Somewhere before 7 a.m., I have time to read from the Bible and to pray, but meditation, as you can see from Rabbi Freeman’s description, is time consuming.

More accurately, it’s time consuming because you have to take your recently reawakened brain and put it in a calm and contemplative place. That’s a little dangerous for me, since I’m libel to start feeling sleepy again.

Don’t worry. I get Rabbi Freeman’s point.

If you ever hire an architect to design a synagogue, you will need to inform him of the two-door rule: The worshipper must first enter into a vestibule that precedes the sanctuary before walking through the doors of the sanctuary itself, as verse in Proverbs goes, “Fortunate is the man who listens to me to watch by my doors day by day, to watch the doorposts of my entrances.” (Talmud Berachot 8a. Tur, Shulchan Aruch Orach Chaim, Levush 90:2. Magen Avraham ibid. Shulchan Aruch Harav 90:19.)

The first door, explains Rabbi Sholom Ber of Lubavitch in his “Booklet on Tefillah,” (Kuntres Hatefillah, siman 11) is the door in from the street. You first need to leave the confusion of the world outside and empty your mind of all worldly concerns, power down your cellphone, spend a few moments to gain calm and focus. As Rabbi Shimon ben Gamliel would say (Avot 1:17), “All my life, I grew up among the sages and I did not find anything better for a person than quietness.”

Not, however, to get stuck in the hallway. Despite the common misconception, that’s not the goal of meditation. It’s not a path to placid bliss, transcendentally oblivious to the temporal world. Serenity is not a goal in itself. Calmness and stillness provide a healthy frame of mind from which to begin meditating, praying, struggling to grow and change—to enter door #2. But not to simply bathe and soak in. As Adin Steinsaltz once put it bluntly: serenity is death, life is struggle.

You prepare yourself in the hallway, then you enter the Sanctuary of God. Life is struggle. Apparently, so is prayer. Maybe that means, that prayer is also life. It makes sense, since I struggle with both.

But life is busy. I’ve mentioned before that all of the details Rabbi Freeman presents as relevant to preparing to enter your day are numerous, and most folks who have a regular job and who live with a family might not be able to incorporate everything he suggests.

Getting back to my original metaphor, here I sit at the bottom of the abyss, attempting to practice being still, (I’m not doing a very good job) and contemplating that ladder God has put down in the hole with me. The problem is, getting my mind to be still enough to do a good job at contemplation. Whenever I try to shut out the bedlam of life around me, the bedlam of life inside me takes over. Where do I go from here?

When the soul awakens, it descends like a fire from heaven.

In a moment of surprise, we discover something so powerful, so beyond our persona, we cannot believe it is a part of us.

In truth, we are a part of it.

-Rabbi Tzvi Freeman
“Fire From Heaven”
Based on letters and talks of the Rebbe
Rabbi M. M. Schneerson
Chabad.org

There’s only one more part of Rabbi Freeman’s series on Jewish prayer, which I’ll present tomorrow. But what then…what then?

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Considering Meditation

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The cruel facts are that to do what a Jew has got to do, you must think. Not just think as in “If apples are $2/lb., then two pounds are gonna cost me $4.” I mean think as in contemplate, cogitate, ponder, fire up your cerebral cortex into high gear.

That was Rabbi Bachya ibn Pakuda’s point. Rabbi Bachya was a Jewish sage of 11th century Spain. He noted that many authors write about what a Jew is supposed to do and speak—what he calls “duties of the external limbs”—but none write about the “duties of the heart.” He penned a classic work by that name that is still studied to this day. In his introduction, he provides his list of some of the Torah obligations that involve mind and heart. Among them, those that are relevant to deep, contemplation—which he recommends throughout the book…

-Rabbi Tzvi Freeman
“Is Meditation Kosher?”
from the Multimedia Guide to Jewish Prayer series
Chabad.org

With my lips I declare
all the rules of your mouth.
In the way of your testimonies I delight
as much as in all riches.
I will meditate on your precepts
and fix my eyes on your ways.
I will delight in your statutes;
I will not forget your word. –Psalm 119:13-16

Meditation can seem like it’s some sort of far out contemplative state associated with a far eastern religious practice, but both Judaism and Christianity have a history of associating meditation and prayer. I Googled “should a Christian meditate” and got a ton of search results, too numerous for me to review, especially within the context of a single “morning meditation” (Gee, there’s that word, again). I picked the first one available which is from BibleStudyGuide.org:

At first thought, meditation is something that we may believe is reserved for strange, far-out cult members. But, Christians are to spend time in meditation. The meditation of Christians is much different than cult meditation which may use a mantra. Webster defines meditate as “1: to focus ones thoughts on: reflection or ponder over 2: to plan or project in the mind … : to engage in contemplation or reflection.” The greek word logizomai is translated various ways, but is translated meditate (NKJ) and think (KJ) in Phil. 4:8. Vines says of logizomai in Phil. 4:8 “it signifies ‘make those things the subject of your thoughtful consideration,’ or ‘carefully reflect on them.'”

Paul exhorts brethren to carefully consider, reflect, ponder, meditate on those things which are true, noble, just, pure, lovely, of good report, virtuous, and praiseworthy. He says: “Finally, brethren, whatever things are true, whatever things are noble, whatever things are just, whatever things are pure, what ever things are lovely, what ever things are of good report, if there is any virtue and if there is anything praiseworthy – meditate on these things” (Phil. 4:8). In other words, Christians are to immerse their thoughts in everything that is good and spiritual in the Lord.

I have no idea how accurate all that is relative to mainstream Christian thought, but it seems to be enough, on the surface, to justify Christian meditation, even as Rabbi Freeman supports Jewish meditation associated with prayer. We also see, from my quote of David in Psalm 119, that meditation upon the acts of God pre-dates the first Temple in Jerusalem, so it enjoys a very long tradition among the chosen people of God.

But what exactly is meditation, how do we employ it in terms of prayer, and how are we to consider God and ourselves through this process? In Jewish thought, it has to do with the concept of “knowing.”

Note, both in Maimonides’ language and in Bachya, the knowing. Not “to know,” but actively, perpetually going about knowing. There’s a difference between knowledge and knowing. You can stop knowing and still have knowledge. Knowledge is something you have. Knowing is something you do.

But what does that mean? How do we actively participate in the process of “knowing” God versus having “knowledge” of God. For a Jew, it has to do with meditation and obedience to the first five positive and the first five negative commandments of the Rambam’s 613 mitzvot.

Here’s an example from Rabbi Freeman’s article:

# Mitzvah Source Text Source
+1 Knowing that there is G‑d. I am G-d your G-d who took you out of the land of Egypt to be your G-d. Exodus 20:2; Deut. 5:6
-1 Knowing that there is no power other than G-d. You shall have no other gods besides me. Exodus 20:3; Deut. 20:4
+2 Affirming G-d’s oneness. Hear O Israel, the G-d is our G-d, the G-d is one. Deut. 6:4
+3 Loving G-d. You shall love G-d your G-d with all your heart… Deut. 6:5
+4 Revering G-d. You shall revere G-d Deut. 6:13
+5 Serving G-d with your heart (i.e. prayer) You shall serve G-d your G-d.…and to serve Him with all your heart” Exodus 23:25; Deut. 11:13

According to Rabbi Freeman, the process of “knowing” as well as “affirming,” “loving,” and “revering” God requires that we meditate upon Him. But that still doesn’t tell us what it means, only why a Jew must meditate; in order to obey the Torah of God. There’s also the problem of loving and revering. How can a person be commanded to love? You either love or you don’t. You can’t turn the process of loving on and off like a light switch. You can decide to meditate upon God, but can you decide upon command to also love Him?

What is the path to love and reverence of G-d? Meditate on His actions and on His wonderful and vast creations and you will become aware of His endless and unlimited wisdom. Immediately you will come to love, praise and glorify G‑d with great desire to know His great name.

—Rambam (Maimonides), Foundations of Torah 2:2

According to Rambam, you can learn to love God “on command” … by meditating. Think of it the way you think about someone you love romantically. Usually, in the early days of a relationship, you can’t keep your mind of the other person. If you are apart for any reason, you think about them, remember your last conversation, imagine the way the person looked the last time you saw them, and try to conjure up the sound of their voice. In a way, you “meditate” upon them and “all their works” (things that they did). Does this not contribute to our active “knowing” of the person and our progression of “loving” them? Is that so different than David meditating on all the works and wonders of God?

But the last positive commandment is to “serve” God. What does meditating upon God have to do with serving Him? In Judaism, “serving” God is traced back to the duties of the Priests in the Tabernacle and later in the Temple, when performing various services, including the sacrifices. After the destruction of Herod’s Temple by the Romans, much of the concept of the Temple service was translated into prayer. To serve God is to pray to God.

But prayer, in Judaism, isn’t just the act of “talking to God.” Especially in liturgical prayer, a Jew is to contemplate on, concentrate on, and meditate upon, the process of prayer, right down to the individual words involved in the act of praying. This sounds a lot like a sort of meditation during prayer, but meditation is also involved in the Jewish person preparing themselves for prayer, prior the act of Tefillah.

Don’t begin tefillah until you have achieved koved rosh. The fervent ones of old [“chassidim harishonim”] would pause for an hour before tefillah, so that they could focus their hearts on their Father in heaven.

—Talmud Berachot, 30b

Before tefillah, ponder matters of the majesty of the exalted G‑d and of the smallness of humankind. Remove all human pleasures from your heart.

—R’ Moshe Isserles, ibid.

Meditation then, is a state of preparation, wherein you make yourself ready to enter into the presence of God in His realm. You don’t just “drop in” on God (although there are times when we need Him in a very immediate sense). You treat God with awe, dignity, and respect. You prepare yourself as if you are preparing for an extremely important encounter, by making your mind and your emotions ready for the experience. All this is fine for Rabbi Freeman’s Jewish audience, but is anything he’s talking about applicable to the Christian?

I haven’t cited anything wild and kabbalistic, esoteric or arcane (don’t worry, we’ll get to that soon). Just plain Judaism, the stuff that’s meant for every Jew—and wouldn’t hurt for all the rest of humanity as well.

That seems to be a pretty straightforward answer, though if any readers found some of the Jewish concepts in this blogpost challenging, it may be a bit daunting to discover that nothing “wild and kabbalistic, esoteric or arcane” was involved. Not only is a period of contemplation and preparation required for the Jew, but it’s recommended for anyone who is about to enter the Throne room of the King of the Universe.

But how do you do that? I’ll save the answer for next time.

It has to come from the core, but we are not masters over that place.

We can barely master our wardrobe—our conscious thought, our words to others, what our hands and feet are doing. Never mind the hidden things within.

But we can do this: We can wash our clothes and bathe our skin in pure waters. Meaning: we can focus our thoughts, guide our words and clean up our act.

Once scrubbed enough that light can pass through, we await the moment when the core awakens.

This is what Moses told his people on their last day together: “The hidden things belong to G‑d. But the obvious is for us and our children forever, to do what needs to be done.”

-Rabbi Tzvi Freeman
“The Core”
Based on letters and talks of the Rebbe
Rabbi M. M. Schneerson
Chabad.org

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Seeking Wonder in the Hole of a Bagel

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Consider the common association between Jews and bagels for breakfast.

Myself, I’m a quinoa-and-avocado man. Nevertheless, mentally constructing a scene in which I invite my Catholic, Protestant, Muslim or Daoist friends to drop by for breakfast, my paranoid Jewish soul hears them translating, “That means bagels and cream cheese.” What does chewy bread with a hole in the middle have to do with being Jewish? And with Jewish breakfast in particular?

It took me years, but I think I have the answer:

A Jew is meant to start the day with a hole in the middle.

-Rabbi Tzvi Freeman
“Gratefulness and the Holey Bagel”
from the Multimedia Guide to Jewish Prayer series
Chabad.org

What does a hole in the middle of the bagel teach us about starting out our day? Actually, quite a bit when you examine the metaphor. Recall that when we wake up each morning (at least according to Rabbi Freeman), we first bless God for our very existence. But then what? What do we have once we know we’re alive.

At first, nothing.

…Now, the channel for receiving joy from above is a sense of nothingness [original: bitul—trans.] before your Creator. Wherever there is that nothingness, joy shines from above. And wherever there is a keen feeling of self, there is no joy.

As the verse says, “The humble will increase joy in G-d.” (Avot 4:1) So it seems that humility and joy are related. It’s the humble in particular that can bring joy to G-d.

Superficially, this is difficult to understand. Humility is a sense of lowliness and lack of self worth, while joy implies an uplifted spirit and a sense of self-esteem. If so, how could humility be a receiving channel for joy?

The answer is that humility is not the kind of lowliness that comes out of low self worth, in which a person finds nothing good about himself or that he is, G-d forbid, on a path that isn’t good. Rather the lowliness of humility is simply because he doesn’t feel himself so much. He doesn’t consider himself to be such a “somebody,” despite all the good that he has. Even though he is good and upright in Torah and mitzvahs and in his service of G-d with self-sacrifice, he is not so important in his eyes that he should be considered to have attained some certain spiritual level because of all this.

-Translation by Rabbi Tzvi Freeman
“Humility and Happiness”
From the teachings of Rabbi Sholom DovBer of Lubavitch
Chabad.org

In his bagel article, Rabbi Freeman says, “when you start with nothing, anything is fantastic.” It’s pretty difficult to be disappointed with how your day has started if it started out with nothing. After nothing, whatever God provides is something fantastic, even if it’s just the hole in the middle of your bagel.

But since you can’t have the hole without the bagel, and (at least in my opinion) you can’t have the bagel without some cream cheese (lox would be nice, too), not only do you wake up and discover you are alive, but you find that God has provided breakfast, too!

The Lord upholds all who are falling
and raises up all who are bowed down.
The eyes of all look to you,
and you give them their food in due season.
You open your hand;
you satisfy the desire of every living thing. Psalm 145:14-16 (ESV)

I know someone reading this will say that there are so many who are alive and who wake up, but they have no food. Their children cry themselves to sleep at night because their bellies are empty. Am I being insensitive to the hungry and the starving? What should they be grateful for?

I’m not going to deliver some hollow religious platitude for a suffering people while I have just finished my own breakfast, but I will say that there’s a reason we have been commanded to feed the hungry. (Proverbs 28:27, Isaiah 58:10, Matthew 25:35, Romans 12:20, James 2:14-18) A man to blesses God for his “daily bread” but who does not obey the same God’s command to feed others has a full stomach, but an empty soul.

But even in blessing God for turning our “nothing” into “something,” and even in feeding the hungry and visiting the sick, we should be mindful of who we are…and who we aren’t.

You see, someone who has that essential sense of nothingness doesn’t make a big deal out of any of his accomplishments. He simply doesn’t notice himself so much, so therefore he doesn’t think about his importance in any matter.

Especially when he contemplates that everything good he has—his faith, his love for G-d—none of it is his own achievement, through his own cognizance. Rather it is an inheritance from Abraham our father who was the first believer and the head of all those who believe.

-from Humility and Happiness

Praying with tefillinIt is said that King David was divinely inspired to institute the saying of 100 blessings (at a minimum) to God each day by every Jew. To a Christian, this may seem excessive or even kind of crazy. Who has time to drop everything they’re doing in the middle of each busy day to say a blessing to God? How can you stop what you’re doing 100 times or more each day to bless God for what He has done for you and the world? Was King David crazy to even suggest it? Am I crazy to suggest it to you…or to me?

Christians tend to think of these sorts of “suggestions” as “being under the Law,” as a burden, as opposing the grace of Jesus Christ who gives us boundless freedom from religious obligation and servitude. Why should a believer have to bless God for each and every thing He has done? Isn’t that slavery?

But what am I saying?

Does being a Christian mean we shouldn’t be thankful to God for all He has given us? Does it mean we shouldn’t take notice in the middle of our busy day, that God has given us food to eat, gainful employment, a loving family, solid ground to walk upon, clothes to wear, strength when we’re weary, a soul placed within us, freedom from captivity…?

In fact, those are just some of the blessings that Jews typically recite from their prayer books each morning. There are many commandments a Jew has to say a short blessing, when witnessing a miracle, when seeing a rainbow, when receiving new clothes, many, many things. In this, a Jew is always aware that in every single event and detail of every single hour of every single day, God is there. There is nothing in the life of a Jew where God is not present and active.

So why would it be so bad if a Christian were to acknowledge God in the same way? Is He not also actively present in our lives as well?

“Therefore I tell you, do not be anxious about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, nor about your body, what you will put on. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing? Look at the birds of the air: they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? And which of you by being anxious can add a single hour to his span of life? And why are you anxious about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow: they neither toil nor spin, yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which today is alive and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will he not much more clothe you, O you of little faith? Therefore do not be anxious, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ For the Gentiles seek after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them all. But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you. –Matthew 6:25-33 (ESV)

According to Jesus, God is indeed present in the life of the Christian as well as the Jew, at least if we can apply his teaching to his Jewish disciples to the rest of us (and I think we can).

If we can look at each event in our day and capture it with a sense of wonder, how much easier it would be to appreciate each day we are given, rather than seeing only the burdens it may contain.

WonderEver watch an infant play with his toes? A toddler delighting in his newfound ability to walk? A youngster who has just discovered the butterfly? That’s the sense of perpetual wonder we’re trying to achieve every morning.

“We have found the elixir of eternal youth,” a wise man once said, “and it is immaturity.”

All day long, strive to be an adult. At the time of prayer, return to that essential child within. Start with the empty hole of the bagel and work outwards.

-from Gratefulness and the Holey Bagel

Does God peek at us through the hole in the middle of our breakfast bagel, considering us with as much wonder as we consider Him?

Once in a while, He seems to be peeking through the latticework of our world, filling the day with light.

But then there are times He hides His face behind a thick wall, and we are confused.

We cry out to Him, loudly, for He must be far away.

He is not far away. For the latticework is His holy hand, and the walls themselves are sustained by His word.

-Rabbi Tzvi Freeman
“Hiding Behind His Hand”
Based on letters and talks of the Rebbe
Rabbi M. M. Schneerson
Chabad.org

Once we awake and realize we have our life but nothing else, we start being aware of what God has also provided; our breakfast, our clothes, and whatever else we discover in our day. Then we begin finding the wonder of God everywhere.