5765 Erev Rosh HaShanah

Adon Olam asher malach bterem kol ytsir nivra, l’et nasah, b’heftso kol, azay melech shmo nikra
Master of the world, who ruled before everything was created, at the time it was made it was all in his will, that’s why his name is called “king”

Rabbis sometimes kid that these are called the “hi” holy days because it’s the one chance you have to say “hi” to everyone. “Hi there! Hi—nice to see you again!” It’s a lovely feeling to see everyone again after another year; how the children have grown, to remember all the experiences we’ve shared when we see the faces of those who have been in our lives more closely at different times. It’s a reunion. And its taking place not only here but all over the Jewish world as wandering Jews find their way back to synagogues everywhere to celebrate the new year. And its good to feel connected to all of that.

At the same time, it means many of us let a lot of time go by in between visits to the synagogue. I am not interested in blame or making anyone feel guilty. I believe most of us here have busy lives but hearts full of longing for spiritual fulfillment, religious community, celebration in times of joy and support in times of loss. We love our traditions and cry when we see our children taking them forward into the future, hopeful it means they will find comfort, wisdom, and help when they need it. We love being Jews and we love our Judaism. We still don’t show up that much. Why?

Yes, we’re busy. There is a gorgeous heated pool and excellent jacuzzi where I live. Taking a dip is healthy, refreshing, relaxing. It’s steps from my door. Whenever I go over there, I marvel that its often empty. Its so great. So where is everyone? I’m sure they mean to make it over there more, but for some reason, they don’t.

They’re busy. All of us are constantly doing triage on the needs calling for our attention. What absolutely has to be handled now? What can wait? What can be avoided indefinitely? Frequently, things that are very important but not particularly urgent are last on our list. Unfortunately, those include things like our health and wellbeing, our key relationships, our plans for the future. In crises, in emergencies, we prioritize our health. But if nothing hurts, its hard to find time to do the simple things that are good for us.

So part of the answer is the same as the answer to the swimming pool mystery. It’s a matter of spiritual growth. We have to learn to let the important things be important, even if they aren’t urgent. We have to become willing to do the preventive maintenance not just on our cars, but on ourselves. We have to maintain our emotional, intellectual, material and physical wellbeing by nurturing our relationships, interests, and activities. We also have to make time for spiritual nourishment through spiritual practices, whatever that might mean for us.

For me, spiritual nourishment has a private and a public component. I have always felt spirituality to be very intimate, very private. I like to write, pray, and meditate in privacy, making a lot of interior space for me to hear and feel my own process unfolding without worrying about other people’s responses. This is a marvelous and rich source of well-being in my life, and I have spent a lot of time trying to persuade you to make more room for it in your lives, too. I understand the emphasis on Shabbat in Jewish tradition to be about insisting that we set apart a regular time for this kind of endeavor as a solemn sacred obligation to ourselves.

There is also a public component of spiritual nourishment. We want to affirm our identity, strengthen our bonds with other people, and feel connected to the past and the future through spiritual activities we do together on a regular basis. These are less personal and serve a different purpose. These are the traditions and rituals of religion that we share with other Jews. I know we want this. We wouldn’t be here today if we didn’t.

On the other hand, a lot of us aren’t here. The demographic studies are depressing and seem to show that only a quarter of American Jews belong to anything Jewish at any given time. I bet all of you know Jews who don’t go to High Holy Days services. Many Jews describe themselves as only “culturally” Jewish and aren’t educated or involved, even though they have the same spiritual needs and the same spiritual depth as everyone else.
I conclude from this that synagogue is not that compelling for a lot of Jews. At least the way the institution has evolved to this point, it is not something the great majority feels it really needs, unless they happen to be coping with a death in the family or an impending bar mitzvah. Nothing is forcing them into the seats. Many find it expensive, demanding, and frustrating to be part of a synagogue. The Judaism that has come down to us is difficult and confusing, hard to use and daunting to beginners. It makes me wonder if the synagogue as we know it is the right instrument to convey Judaism, and even if Judaism is the right instrument to convey faith, heritage, and values.

I agree with Rabbi Sid Schwartz, who wrote a book a few years ago about several truly thriving synagogues in all branches of Judaism, called Finding a Spiritual Home. He says, “If Jewish continuity simply means continuing what exists, I am not sure there are enough takers to make the enterprise worthwhile. On the other hand, if we hold out a more ambitious goal for Jewish continuity -- the ability to attract a large category of Jews whose needs currently go unmet in the organized Jewish community, then the Jewish future might look a lot more exciting…”

As our synagogue goes through the process of selecting new professionals, this is a time to look honestly at what does and doesn’t work, and to dream big dreams about what it could be. We are in the business of reconstructing Judaism, and that is an ongoing process. We are not finished. What was innovative a hundred years ago, or twenty years ago, does not solve our problems today. We have to commit our energy, creativity, and spiritual fire to this ongoing project of making Judaism live and thrive in our lives and in the future.

What is it that we have inherited in our Judaism, in our synagogues? It used to seem to me to be like a locked treasure chest. I had some clues that there were priceless jewels in it, but I couldn’t break in. Our parents and grandparents carried this treasure here from other places. They survived the trauma of immigration and learning to be Americans and figured out how to help their children succeed in a different and better culture, a society of more freedom, equality, and prosperity than we had ever experienced before. They built us a lot of institutions and organizations -- schools, buildings, Federations. So we inherited a Jewish world that was institutionally strong but content weak.

Who knows how to pray? Who can relate with clarity to God ? Who is moved by the religious vision of the Torah with God as Creator, Law giver, and Redeemer? Who knows how to use Jewish tradition to express their honest innermost longings, receive comfort, develop faith? This is what I mean by the content being weak. We have the forms of religion, but not the deep, clear, wise spiritual content to fill them. Coming to synagogue is nice usually, but does it bring us to an awe-inspiring encounter with the Presence of God, however we understand that, that leaves us with a sense of purpose and deeper understanding? Wouldn’t people show up for that? Shouldn’t we be aiming for something more like that?

As Rabbi Sid Schwartz puts it,

"With all the talk about God and spirituality in the Jewish community, the real truth is that most Jews can’t pray. Nor does the contemporary American synagogue offer much in this regard…Some…Jewish seekers find their way to a local synagogue. Most leave, convinced that the religion of their childhood is incapable of meeting their longing for spirituality…[even though] Our communities represent precious portals into Judaism for the contemporary Jewish seeker.

There are tens of thousands of Jews who have been searching for a more compelling mode of Jewish life and practice and who have gained glimpses of what that could look like at selected retreats, conventions, institutes, and workshops. They want to find places where they can bring their particular kavanah, [spiritual feeling] reflecting their own life experience, and have that connect to the words of our tradition. Most don’t have the learning to do that. And most rabbis don’t even have these Jews on their radar screens. This is a generation that is ready to dance in the aisles in joyful worship; most synagogues are still offering responsive readings!

Ask…about their spiritual needs. You will hear about a desire for connectedness, belonging, purpose, and meaning. ..Judaism provides a magnificent framework for these longings.

The spiritual seekers in our midst are looking for an experience of joy, a sense of awe, a moment of quiet contemplation, a flash of intellectual insight, a feeling of communal support, a hand of friendship, a connection to history. The siddur provides gateways to every one of these experiences, but the liturgy must be decoded to make these intentions understandable…”

In other words, we need teachers who can light it up for us. We need help to understand and translate what it is we have inherited, so our Judaism can be restored to full working condition in our lives. And teachers need students who insist on answers; who fill up the classroom and ask hard questions and then go out and build something new with the answers they develop.

I am not going to attempt to solve this problem over the holidays. I don’t have the answer. But what I will try to do is to teach you one prayer. There is a little jewel you already own, most of you, and have probably never held up to the light. And that is one of the most sung, most beautiful, least discussed prayers: the Adon Olam.

Why don’t we discuss it? Because its at the end of the service and we’re tired by then. And because it's all about God, and we approach that subject with great difficulty. But I believe this lovely prayer can be a window to a number of contemporary spiritual questions. It can help us in our quest to make ancient tradition speak to contemporary issues. It has a lot to say about relating to God, relating religion to our felt spirituality, and dealing with the conflicts between our values today and received tradition. It encapsulates many of the key teachings of Judaism about how to organize our interior reality so that we both have great faith and peace, and also can be effective engines for transforming the world around us toward the good.

How can a 1000-year old prayer open these questions for us in a relevant way? Is this even Reconstructionist, to ask Judaism for clear spiritual guidance? Plus, it talks about God in very traditional language, and that is anathema to many Reconstructionists. Rabbi Ira Eisenstein, Kaplan’s son-in-law and a major architect of our movement, spoke for many when he decried the whole enterprise of trying to understand God. He said, “Theology is like a blind man searching in the dark for a black cat.”

Rabbi Jacob Staub, who wrote the book that introduced most of us to Reconstructionism, explains that, “as religious humanists, we have been wary of the narcissism that we sometimes associate with people who care only about the peace of their souls and not about the hunger of the poor.” So in recent generations, we have emphasized action over belief. We would rather have less inspiration and more concrete action on behalf of the poor. Holy acts, performing mitzvot, are a practical way to be spiritual without it all resting on complicated inaccessible ancient beliefs that we can’t really believe.

We have grown away from supernaturalism and have expressed much distaste for the imagery our grandparents were taught. Staub speaks for many Recontructionists when he writes,

"Our God is not an autocratic tyrant demanding submission. Our piety does not entail self abasement. We are not ruled by age old edicts that appear cruel and immoral. We each have choices. We can use our minds and trust our intuition to determine how best to make God manifest in our relationships, families, and communities.

But this kind of approach to God as an idea, as an impersonal force, is not the whole truth either. While it may not offend the scientifically minded person, it also does little to address that person’s soul. Staub writes about the limitations of this Reconstructionist approach when he mentions poignantly,

“… the God who doesn’t reward and punish me ALSO does not forgive me…So where is God when I am most in need? When I am insecure. Terrified about the future of people I love. Depressed. Feeling hypocritical and inauthentic -- facing the distance between the person I want to be and the person I still am?”

So this matter of not knowing how to relate to God is a key part of what has made our treasure chest feel empty. We don’t have to accept anything without rationality. We don’t have to go back to a supernatural belief. But we do have to allow an exploration of our relationship with the divine to be part of our religious life, and have the courage to be open minded. Kaplan understood Judaism to be an evolving religious civilization, not just a culture. God is at the center. God is the batteries that make it all work and make sense. Again, you don’t have to believe anything you can’t accept; go ahead and be an agnostic. You won’t hurt my feelings. Perhaps that is the only really honest stance for any of us, to be agnostic and not sure we know. I don’t talk about belief in God; I talk about relationship. I agree it is impossible to define God; we can’t even define ourselves.

The author of the Adon Olam appears to know all about God. The poem is a series of statements about the nature of God. But before we delve into the stanzas, I want to tell you about the writer.

Ok, we don’t actually know who the writer was.

But because of the style, language, and content, it has been attributed to a medieval poet and philosopher called Solomon Ibn Gabirol; that’s Arabic for Solomon ben Gavriel, Solomon the son of Gabriel. Why is his name in Arabic? Because he lived in Spain when it was Islamic, just after the turn of the first milennium, about the year 1020.

He only lived to be about 30; he was plagued by a skin disease of some kind for his whole life. He lived on the patronage of various nobles who supported his poetic genius, but had a way of falling from political power and leaving him poor and at the mercy of the enemies of his former patron. But he had a wonderful sense of faith and a magnificent ability to express it, and this apparently meant his life had many moments of transcendant joy and peace.

Oh sure, people who lived a long time ago had no trouble believing in God, right? That was everyone’s paradigm and people were more primitive and gullible back then, right?

But ibn Gabirol is also the person known through Christian scholarship as Avicebron, the philosopher who brought the understanding of Plato preserved in Arab learning to Europe and medieval Christian philosophy. The Christian church preserved neo-Platonism largely due to Avicebron, who they didn’t even realize was Jewish. Ibn Gabirol authored several philosophical works that convey his neo-Platonic ideas about the nature of reality.

So here was a man who certainly lived in two civilizations: early medieval Jewish and Arabic culture. His poetry is both secular and religious, influenced by Arabic meter, but using an elegant Biblical style Hebrew. He wrote lofty religious poetry, and elegies to great men of his day. But in his philosophy, he wrote Arabic treatises of great originality, explaining an ancient Greek theory of matter and form. He tried to harmonize his philosophical and religious views in very complex ways.

So although the language of Adon Olam may sound very archaic and traditional, it actually presents possibilities for interpretation that are very subtle and philosophical, rather than supernatural. Ibn Gabirol was a rationalist, not a mystic. In his main philosophical treatise, he taught Plato’s idea that all of mundane reality is composed of form and matter. He relates to God as the First Substance; from whom all matter proceeds, shaped according to divine forms. He considers the religious idea of the the “will of God” identical with the Platonic idea of “forms” in an unchanging spiritual realm that are reflected in matter in the world we live in. He sees God as impossible to understand or divide into attributes like the mystics do; an unfathomable unity, and yet a being whose existence has profound personal meaning for us. All this will become clearer as I take you through the verses over these holidays.

Just have a glance at the fist line: Adon Olam asher malach beterem kol yetzir nivrah. Adon Olam means Master of the World. The poem is addressed to the Adon Olam, asher malach, who ruled, beterem kol yetzir nivrah -- before all the making was created. In other words, the will of God was present even before matter came about.

L’et naasah -- at the time it was made, b’heftso kol, it was all his will. In other words, our reality is a physical expression of the will of God. The author is not describing a creation of an artist that is separate from the artist. He’s saying reality is what happened when the divine takes physical form. Godliness is therefore stamped on everything at all levels; it is the substance of reality, as well as its organizing principle. It’s as much in love and wisdom and truth as in cells and atoms. It’s in ideas, objects, and systems. Its perceptible at all levels, like a shadow that shows the form of the thing making the shadow.

The interesting part is that here are human beings, also with will to bring into being what we imagine. Each of us makes a life, distinctly stamped by our identity. The way we move and speak, work and play, make a difference in the world, create art, keep our homes, drive our cars, laugh—it’s all an expression of who we are. And this is a microcosm of how God relates to our world. We relate best to God when we bring our will, our imagination, in harmony with God’s will, run our lives according to divine principles, or in Platonic terms, let divine forms find expression in our mundane reality. When we actually want for ourselves what the divine expresses, that is when we find our place and know ourselves and are lifted up by holiness. Because keeping ourselves in accord with the higher spiritual will is the source of holiness.

In traditional Jewish practice we talk about mitzvot; the commandments of the Torah. Our covenant as a people with God is that we agree to abide by the mitzvot. We derive our integrity and dignity from living in accordance with mitzvot, because they are what God requires of us. But its not simply a matter of playing by the rules or obeying laws because an authority says so. What the mitzvot actually are is a matter of ongoing exploration for each generation. Its about seeking a connection with spiritual values that are true, just, and compassionate. For Reconstructionists, there is no human being authorized to dictate what the will of God is. Each of us is called upon to study and explore, and work with others in our communities to constantly develop and refine for ourselves what it means to respond to mitzvot.

I want to continue exploring this matter of will as a contact point with God that all of us can make all the time. On Rosh HaShanah, we spend a lot of time regretting the ways in which our will is run by selfishness, fear, and other negatives. As we move through this poem tomorrow and on Yom Kippur, I will touch on many aspects of how we can grow toward a richer and more meaningful sense of God, a more nurturing sense of being in loving and trustworthy hands, without ever giving over our rational capabilities or independence or power.

If our Judaism is to continue to be a treasure worth preserving and passing on, it has to offer us ways to relate to spiritual reality that really mean something to us, and accord with what we perceive to be true.

Rabbi Alexis Roberts
© September 2004