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Fisrt in a series

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



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