Serving as Temple president these past three years reminds me why people are grateful for the opportunity to devote a lot of time and energy to a basically thankless task. The reason is because it’s meaningful. The satisfaction of serving comes from knowing that what we do through our participation sustains our precious Jewish heritage and has a positive impact on others. This is especially significant at a time when the practice of Judaism nationally is evolving from the fulfillment of traditional obligation to the pursuit of personal meaning.

I am grateful to those without whose dedication and effort my tenure would have been much more difficult. These include Judith, David, Liz, Stephanie and Sharen, Phil, Brian, Judy, Darren and many more. I thank those Temple members who have responded positively to what I have put into the common space we share, through writing, speaking and personal interaction. I appreciate those who have been kind enough to laugh at my jokes.

I have especially warm feelings for all of you who hold Temple Emanu-El as our shared community, as opposed to just the Temple out there that you pay money to and expect services from. Jewish survival across the centuries has been due to our collective action based on the bond we share with one another. We can choose to ignore this bond or the synagogue that is its prime expression, but as Jews we are never alone.

Finally, along with my brother who is a trustee at a synagogue in Lexington and my brother who is a trustee at a synagogue in Framingham, I am supremely grateful to my parents who made everything I am possible through their devotion, their character and their love.

Shalom.

What if God could be understood as existence itself? What if God were the vital force of being inside everyone and everything, rather than as any kind of an entity that’s “out there” somewhere?

This view might seem to make it harder to engage in prayer. If God is existence itself and the vital force of creation, who or what is prayer about? Where should it be directed?

Fortunately, Judaism already has answers to this concern. Jewish prayer is generally not petitionary. If you look at the wording of our Shabbat and Festival prayers, you find that prayer does not ask God for specific rewards and does not bargain with God (i.e. I’ll do this for You and You will do this for me.) Petitionary prayer is a widespread model that comes from other religions. When Jewish prayer asks for something, it is generally abstract, as in “Grant us peace.” Most Jewish prayer is simply a glorification of God.

Understanding God as the vital force of existence, from the inside, doesn’t change Jewish prayer very much at all. Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts, the whole earth is full of God’s glory needs no reinterpretation at all. Kaddish, traditionally said in memory of the dead, glorifies God and God’s name. The Aleinu, translated as “Let us praise the ever-living God,” might become “Let’s live in awe of the wonder of creation and existence.” Even the shema, the six word core prayer of Judaism would translate as, “Listen, people, all existence is unified.” Would that be meaningful to you?

Most of us don’t really think about the words of our prayers, if we say them at all. When we do, it’s the ritual and repetition that makes them meaningful rather than the words themselves. But many Jews in contemporary America, including some in our congregation, feel more distant from their own vital force of Jewish existence, in part because prayer has been reduced to mumbling the words in the prayer book.

What if prayer were purely an expression of appreciation for all the wonders you know and everything you don’t know? Would you be able to immerse yourself in the act of praying, even occasionally, without reservation?

I ask these questions of you while I search for answers to them myself.

The ancient model of God as an external entity, generally portrayed as being above us, as in “heaven”, doesn’t work very well for so many of us. Yet, Judaism is undeniably a God-centered religion as concerns prayer, ethics, even the fundamental covenant that defines who we are.

Reading on Jewish themes offers suggestions on how to respond to this conundrum. I have found especially valuable insight in the writings of Abraham Joshua Heschel, a theologian and prolific writer on Judaism in the mid 20^th century. Heschel proposed that God is the name we use for the force that is at the center of all creation. Life itself is an expression of God. Our sense of wonder at everything all around us is at the heart of all prayer.

Heschel asserted the centrality of God in human life again and again. “God is of no importance unless He is of supreme importance,” he said. But Heschel never spoke of God as being out there somewhere. If you find it challenging to grasp the vision of God that Heschel describes, perhaps it is because we are so used to imagining God as an external entity, as we learned to do when we were children.

Rabbi Arthur Green’s more recent book, Radical Judaism, proposes that we think of God as an internal force that precedes us and contains us, what instills aliveness in all existence. This view completely undermines what he calls the “God of childhood dreams.” It says that there is no God out there to either believe or not believe in. Rabbi Green’s view, once you wrap your mind around it, allows Jews to have a relationship with the God of prayer in a different and ultimately less conflicted way.

I am finding, as I get older, that it matters to come to grips with these questions, questions that defy ordinary answers. So I read. If a voice inside you yearns to expand your understanding of complex religious ideas, Jewish thinkers including Heschel, Green, Martin Buber and others have much to say to you.