When you agree to become Temple president, you start to ask a different set of questions: What’s the meaning of all this? Why do we have a synagogue, and what should it be doing? How do we serve the members? Starting this month and over the coming months, I’d like to share with you some thoughts that have arisen in response to asking these kinds of questions.

Religion seems to be a universal impulse. For years I have been interested in how cultures hold themselves together, which generally means how they address the larger questions of existence. All the civilizations I’ve looked at, in both more developed and less developed places, have a cosmology and set of rituals that can be called a religion. Most recognize a power or powers of a higher order that gave rise to life on earth. In most systems, people are obligated to give back to that higher power in order for all to be well and life to continue.

This notion of exchange with God is especially intriguing. Judaism is full of such obligations: it’s part of the covenant at Judaism’s core. Yet, how many Jews in our community feel compelled to participate in exchange, in the religious sense, at more than a token level? How many of us think that spiritual devotion in the practice of ritual or the intensity of worship matters? Do you feel complete in fulfilling your commitment to Judaism if you attend High Holyday services, light Chanukah candles, and have a Seder at Pesach? Do you even think there is any such commitment?

Part of the difficulty here arises from living in a world aligned with values and assumptions of the majority religion. The Christian image of God is of a benevolent, non-demanding deity who forgives easily and asks little. Belief is the fundamental act: all you have to do is believe to merit salvation. Surrounded by this norm, many contemporary Jews—who of course don’t believe as Christians do—find little motivation to engage in religious exchange by participating actively in Jewish practice and ritual.

Is it any wonder that those who give little get so little meaning in return? Meaningful reward, in a Jewish sense, escapes them because their investment is so small. Our covenant requires engagement to work, just as a marriage requires effort to grow strong. If you don’t keep Pesach, the small sacrifice of not eating bread for a week, or acknowledge the weekly cycle of Shabbat, how can you expect the flame of Judaism to burn brightly in your heart and spirit? And how can you expect your children—even if you make them attend Sunday school through Bar/t Mitzvah—to care?

More and more I hear, especially from younger members, that they seek “spiritual” rather than specifically “religious” meaning. Well, they are one and the same. Through deliberately choosing to put ourselves into Judaism we make Judaism come alive in us, with all the wisdom, color and richness of thousands of years of shared history.

Engagement with Jewish practice is a great opportunity as well as the fulfillment of an historic obligation. The opportunity is to find more meaning and satisfaction through a pathway that has served humanity for millennia. It takes study and effort and offers rewards unmatched by more mundane pursuits.

The principle of exchange with God or the gods used to be simple: either we give back, through worship, rituals and sacrifices, or our existence will be taken from us by greater powers. Today, we don’t feel threatened in that way. The downside is much less. The upside, however, is still great. The meaning and spiritual satisfaction people have yearned for over the centuries is still available. Each of us has the choice whether or not to pursue it.

Stuart Cohen
November 2009

We are our stories.

While each of us has a unique identity that feels like it comes from inside us individually, we are not separate from our family, our community, our heritage. The stories about what our fathers and mothers did and what was done to them, how they lived and died, where they went and how they lived form the foundation of Jewish identity.

Jewish stories present archetypes and role models. They weave together thousands of years of history. We understand our place from what happened in ancient Egypt, in the kingdom of Judea, through Spain, perhaps Poland and Ellis Island, Israel and our own north shore community. That’s why it is so important to teach our stories to our children and grandchildren, so that they will know who they are too.

We all have stories about our parents when they were young and the pivotal life events that shaped them and brought them together. The small stories are as important as the big ones: the boyfriend or girlfriend who would never have become the spouse but for some incident or friend or lucky bit of timing. We don’t need to hear them often, but we do need to hear them.

We learn morality from stories, not from being told to be moral. We saw what happened when other people behaved in certain ways. The books we read and movies we watch immerse us in other people’s stories, where we pick up grains of truth or wisdom that we can apply in our own lives.

Elie Wiesel wrote: “Jewish history unfolds in the present… it affects our life and our role in society… Were it not for his memory, which encompasses us all, the Jew would not be Jewish, or more precisely, he would have ceased to exist.”

That’s why it matters that we stay in touch with specifically Jewish stories. When we study the same parashah from the Torah year after year, we find new insights and new connections. There are plenty of excellent non-Jewish writers and secular stories. But consider as you pick up that next book or choose that next movie that Jewish stories are often richer and offer greater rewards because we have an innate understanding of where they came from.

Jewish stories not only teach us. They reinforce our identity. They form a foundation for us to create our own stories, which become our own contribution to the endless Jewish narrative.

Stuart Cohen
February 2010

Kavannah refers to mindfulness, intentionality, full engagement. Used to describe religious participation, praying with kavannah means immersing one’s self in the practice and devoting one’s heart, soul and mind fully.

It sounds like a good idea. If we are going to make the effort to pray at all—in the Temple, at home, or elsewhere—it shouldn’t be an empty gesture. Why just mouth the words or go through the motions in a half-baked fashion? Put ourselves into it and we’ll get more out of it: it makes perfect sense. But it turns out to be not that simple.

As a Reform Jew, I don’t feel the need or obligation to immerse myself in prayer on a daily schedule as more observant Jews do. Since becoming involved with Temple Emanu-El’s board a few years ago, I started to enjoy attending Shabbat services once or twice a month. But ritual prayers remained more ritual and less prayer. I found the often-repeated language of our written prayers a challenge to take literally (though the new weekly prayer book, Mishkan Tefilah, is a big improvement). The language of traditional prayer also leads many Jews to prefer to pray in Hebrew: because we don’t have to negotiate the meaning of all the specific words.

I tried it to pray with kavannah, at least when I remembered to. I would focus on saying a prayer with full concentration to boost my level of spiritual engagement, at least for a few moments. It didn’t work very well. The problem was that in sharpening my focus, I ended up putting all the attention on focusing instead of on praying. In other words, the harder I tried to pray, the more I was caught up in the trying, leaving less energy for whatever praying was supposed to be about. It gave me a bad attitude about kavannah.

What caused it to change, I really don’t know. But at some point the whole idea of intentional prayer flipped completely on its head. My understanding of kavannah turned itself upside down.

Kavannah works not as focus and effort but as surrender: giving yourself over rather than pushing harder. It may be counterintuitive but it has worked to abandon the effort entirely.

Now, when I enter into prayer I no longer try to do it right. Instead, I open myself to the process. By surrendering myself spiritually in this way—which means temporarily giving up thought, judgment about content, and uncertainty about the whole idea of prayer—prayer feels much better. It brings me closer to the ineffable spirit that is at the heart of religion. It draws me in, in a fashion impossible to fully describe.

The words provide the structure, but the spirit of prayer is what yields the meaning. Whether praying the Shema, reciting Kaddish for my parents, or in silent meditation, the act of turning my consciousness over to that which is beyond my understanding and control makes all the difference.

It still doesn’t happen all the time. My mind is as busy as anyone else’s. Perhaps I lack the experience, or discipline, or desire to lose myself in prayer all that often. When it does occur, prayer becomes more meaningful and rewarding than I had ever thought it would be.

The key is giving up thought and judgment that are so highly prized in other areas of life. Prayer through willful immersion, even occasionally, provides a spiritual richness that is as rewarding as it was, for me, unexpected.

Stuart Cohen
January 2010

Though the two words are sometimes used interchangeably, belief and faith are not identical. For those who may be uncomfortable with believing, in a religious sense, the distinction is crucial.

Belief refers to holding an idea to be true, without consideration of evidence. Faith is different. Faith has more to do with trust, the willingness to commit to a principle or idea in advance and act as if it were valid without demanding proof. Jewish religious faith, at least here in the Reform movement, involves dedication to the ideals and tenets of Judaism. It circumvents the need to believe in the historic accuracy of Bible characters and events or consider the veracity of other stories in texts of the Jewish canon.

Judaism demands thinking as we interpret and reinterpret what we have been given. Through faith we agree to take the interpretation process seriously enough to find value and meaning, whether in the original writings, the commentaries, or the commentaries on the commentaries.

Reform Judaism gives us the latitude to look freshly and creatively at what has come down to us. It is entirely in keeping with who we are today to have strong faith that enriches our lives and binds us to our People without ever having to come down on one side or the other of belief. Faith also allows us to transcend the language of prayer when the words in the book seem anachronistic and unsatisfying.

Abraham Joshua Heschel, the great philosopher and theologian, said, “Faith always includes striving for faith.” It is an active process of reaching beyond what we know in the service of learning and spiritual depth. We use the term “leap of faith” because we never know for sure where we will land. In making the commitment to faith we open ourselves to discovery. But, of course, we won’t land anywhere—the promise will remain unrealized—if we do not first take some kind of step or leap.

Judaism encourages us to take that chance, to have faith that our efforts will be rewarded. The alternative is to stay put: we have the choice not to ask questions and pursue answers. Without a leap of faith we cannot be proven wrong. But we won’t get very far either.
Faith is the opportunity to engage in study and thought, to penetrate the limits of our knowledge. Temple Emanu-El offers a number of ways to engage Jewish learning and grow in spirituality and wisdom.

The benefits come to those who leap, or at least take the first step.

Stuart Cohen
December 2009

And yet, as quirky and particularistic as the Passover Seder is, it also presents the most universalistic themes of our tradition—

free the captive;
feed the hungry;
distinguish between what is essential
and what is inessential in life—

which might explain why interfaith Seders are so popular, and why so many of us welcome friends and family from outside the Jewish community around our own Seder
tables.

I am honored and excited to be officiating this year’s ADL/JCC North Shore Interfaith Seder on Thursday, March 18th, assisted by Hazzan Idan Irelander and his music. Each year, hundreds of people of all faiths gather for this event to celebrate the ideals of liberation, justice, and truth in a uniquely Jewish forum. It is an opportunity for us, the North Shore Jewish community, to simultaneously celebrate our story, our tradition, while also hearing others’ tales of their journeys from degradation to redemption.

I hope, if you are able, you will join me and many others on the 18th. In any case, as we turn our thoughts toward the end of winter, toward the beginning of new life in the natural and the spiritual worlds, as we make plans for our own Seders, I hope each one of us will consider how our Passover celebration this year might be an opportunity to transform our understanding of ourselves, our role in the world, and our relationship and responsibility to all people.

Let all who are hungry come and eat.
Let all who are in need come and
share our Passover meal.
This year we are still here.
Next year, in the land of Israel.
This year we are still slaves.
Next year, free people.