A New, Old Theology
The official adjective of the pandemic could be “unprecedented.” So much about how we are living, working, and relating with others feels brand new—and mostly not in a good way.
But there is one fundamental of our lives that we do not need to rethink, refresh, or revisit: our theology. Everything has changed—but nothing has. We are still living in the same universe. The same rules that have always applied still apply. How and where do we find them? An attentive, open Jewish orientation to living can help us find meaning and comfort, even in challenging—unprecedented—times like these.
When extreme circumstances befall us, itis tempting to think, “This shouldn’t be. This is not how the universe works.” It seems that a radical shift requires a radical response. But in these cases it is not reality that has shifted. It is our own perspective. In thinking about the horror and repercussions of the Holocaust, Eugene Borowitz suggested that what was lost in the time after was not our faith in God, but in humanity.[1] Borowitz’s powerful lesson teaches us that if a sense of the reality of the divine can endure even that extreme experience, so too it can endure our current moment, no matter how disruptive. And perhaps that is a comfort.
It is a classical Jewish imperative to honor the fullness of our lived experience, good and bad, dark and light, pleasant and unpleasant. Mishna (Brachot 9:5) in fact requires that we say a blessing on the bad that befalls us just as we do on the good. And in our daily liturgy, we name God as the One who both makes peace and creates misfortune. And that is the point of a mindful Jewish orientation. By experiencing the fullness of life, including the pain of loss, we not only give ourselves the best chance of coming through this time in the healthiest way possible, but we also open ourselves to the fullest experience of God.
In fact, we might look at the entire structure of Jewish life as guiding us toward paying more full attention to that whole range of human experience. In his work Mindful Jewish Living, Rabbi Jonathan Slater reminds us that “Judaism demands that we pay attention to what we are doing, and it is also a path that helps to wake us up to our lives, to remain attentive to what we are doing. The mitzvot (and not only the ritual commandments) are not generally acts that we would do naturally. The commandments direct us to do things that refocus our attention away from our ‘natural’ inclinations and toward those values that lie behind the commandments. They also point us to God.”[2]
The search for deeper awareness as the fundamental orientation to life is the essence of Chasidic Judaism. Rabbi Arthur Green sums up this Jewish mystical approach by asserting “that God is to be sought and found everywhere and in each moment, that our response to this deeper truth is both a daily practice and a lifelong adventure, and that our ongoing discovery of God can uplift and transform both soul and world....”[3]
Paying attention to more in our lives, to more of our world, and then acting in response is what the religious enterprise is about. Abraham Joshua Heschel suggests that the way we relate to the world is ultimately the means by which we relate with God, which he maintains requires holding all of life with awe. Awe is how we understand, make sense, of the world.[4] We can perhaps, with effort, find awe for every part of reality, both that which is immediately beautiful and pleasing, and that which is hard, because it still points to the larger reality in which it is situated. The awe with which I hold the terrible pain of losing a loved one can honor the reality of that love in the first place.
Therefore, God is as accessible in a pandemic as in calmer times. It is just that in hard times, the material we work with—the daily experience amid which we seek for sparks of the divine—is less pleasant. For most of us, it is easier to sense that we are a part of something larger when we are full of gratitude for bounty in our lives than it is when we are feeling pain. We may incline toward identifying all that we still have now, even amid loss, whether that includes a job, a home, or the people in our lives.
But focusing only on gratitude and denying pain and loss as part of our theology cuts us off from half of the experience of life. The sparks are just as available to be uncovered now as at any other moment. God, or deeper connection, is to be found as readily in death as in birth, in the subway as on the mountaintop, in washing the dishes as in the sumptuous meal that dirtied them. We can cultivate the habit of looking below the surface at all times. We never know when that search will result in a moment of awareness or connection. We cannot guarantee the type or frequency of those moments. They are accidents. But, as Rabbi Jordan Bendat-Appell says, through regular attention we can make ourselves more accident prone. It is natural to distract ourselves from pain. None of us could live without that protection to some degree. Right now, we have not only obsessive doomscrolling and legitimately excellent television to distract us, but we had been well prepared by our culture to turn away from deepest reality long before we had COVID-19 to contend with. Our consumer culture functions to fulfill emotional need with marketed products, both goods and experiences. Contemporary capitalism can create a false god of the acquisition of things, experience, and even accomplishment. We pursue all goods and services so that we can have tangible evidence of having been alive. And there is nothing inherently wrong with asuch behavior, but acquisition as an end in itself obfuscates deeper connection. Not only has this year made experiencing life and achieving connection harder than we are accustomed to, the constant pursuit to do so can also, under any circumstances, serve as a distraction from deeper awareness. Rabbi Sheila Weinberg reminds us very specifically, “The spiritual life is a path away from materialism. First we become aware of the truth of dissatisfaction. We see its roots in our own greed and desire, which are never sated. We seek to fill up on things because we are empty inside, disconnected, lonely, lacking in a sense of blessing and goodness. We are in exile.... When we calm down a little bit, we begin to see how wondrous everything is when we pay attention to just this moment.”[5]
Nor should we think that we can create a life that includes more pleasant experiences and eliminates suffering. Life just doesn’t work that way. If this year has taught us anything, it is that despite our best efforts, much of what befalls us is out of our control. But that is also okay. Margaret Guenther, Episcopal priest, scholar, and writer on the field of spiritual direction, describes that affirmation this way: “All too often we miss the point, assuming that... adjustment of the external environment will somehow fix everything. And yet what we really hunger for is God.”[6] It is not by making our lives full of ease, but rather, we find more peace and fulfill our obligation to God by embracing the totality of this life, and living in response to it. Our Yom Kippur liturgy reminds us through the Unetane Tokef: Repentence, prayer, and justice through charity avert the severity of God’s judgment.
In a way, COVID’s exposure of social inequality parallels theological reality. Recognizing and acknowledging disproportionate experiences has required difficult actions and conversations. Those living and below the poverty line and people of color have suffered more from the intertwined health and economic effects of COVID because unequal access to health care and economic stability are intractably woven into our national life. Therefore, just as we retain access to awareness of God in hard times so, too, do we retain the capacity to address inequality. Mindful awareness of economic reality can lead us to prioritize the needs of those who suffer most. Doing so requires quieting political chatter and seeing what is deeper and true, just as we attempt to see the deeper truth of our connectedness to all things larger. We must be willing to remain present for something unpleasant and employ our curiosity about what is there. Justice, just like a broader sense of meaning, remains available.
No matter how we may understand in theory that God is accessible even in hard times, really feeling that truism in our bones is never simple. This has been a hard year for me personally, to be sure. My wife lost her mother to COVID. My own mother is declining with Alzheimer’s and requires more active care as her life approaches its end, all made more complicated in quarantine. One of my children has seen her normal challenges become overwhelming in this remote life and requires more professional and family intervention. All of life’s challenges become exacerbated in such stressful times, and we are bereft of many of the pleasures and joys which can serve to balance the normal, and acute, struggles of life.
And so, to be sure, much of the time I feel overwhelmed by the emotional and logistical tasks. But my greatest moments of peace have come when I remember that what I really want for myself, for my family, and all of us, is not ease. It is not simply a return to restaurants, live music, and mobility (although I yearn for them all). It is to feel that at every moment I rest in something larger than myself, no matter what. Regardless of how well I do at managing everything today, or how successful my decisions are, my struggles do not isolate me. They may feel that way at first but, by remaining present to what they make me feel and the work they call on me to do, I can know that my experience points to something bigger. Martin Buber famously articulates this Jewish mystical understanding of how we experience God. If I engage with others in my life, and the circumstances of my life, in a fully present way, those relationships reveal the Divine. There is a butterfly of the Divine to be known even within the chrysalis of this challenging immediate reality, if only I will bring myself to it fully.[7] Once again, this is easier said than done! But sometimes, sometimes, I can remind myself to be present in that way, and know it is true.
And what can we do if all of this talk of finding God no matter what is going on sounds like a lovely idea, but just doesn’t resonate for us? Even just the awareness of that yearning to feel something of God, or deeper connection, can itself be a way in. Guenther writes, “There is a God-component in all human experience, even in lives that seem pain-filled and remote from God. A sense of God’s absence or remorse at our own inattentiveness to God’s presence can be a fruitful place for beginning.... However the story is structured, it eventually includes fragments of the story from the past, the present, and the future”[8] Allowing ourselves to be aware of the possibility of connection that we are not feeling right now probably doesn’t feel good in the moment. But it can be a part of cultivating a life with awareness of God yet to come. We can pray to be able to connect at all, even when we don’t feel connected right now. As we sing before beginning the daily Amidah, the standing prayer with 19 blessings: God, open my lips, that my mouth may sing your praise.
We did not need COVID to teach us that we are not in control and that God can be present in all of our experience. Our liturgy and so much in our tradition teach that essential truth over and over. So much in how we have been called on to live this year is in fact “unprecedented.” But the Jewish wisdom for remaining alive and engaged—with one another and with God—has precedence and remains available to us through everything we experience. May we find the faith to remember and live by that eternal teaching. And may we live to see better times, and be a part of bringing them.
[1] Eugene Borowitz, Choices In Modern Jewish Thought: A Partisan Guide. (Millburn, NJ: Behrman House, 1995) pg. 216.
[2] Jonathan Slater, Mindful Jewish Living: Compassionate Practice (NY: Aviv Press, 2004) pg. xxiii.
[3] Arthur Green, Radical Judaism: Rethinking God and Tradition (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2010) pg. 6.
[4] Abraham Joshua Heschel, God In Search of Man: A Philosophy of Judaism (NY: Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 1976) pg. 74.
[5] Sheila Peltz Weinberg, “Spiritual Direction: No Inside, No Outside,” Jewish Spiritual Direction: An Innovative Guide from Traditional and Contemporary Sources, ed. Howard Avruhm Addison and Barbara Eve Breitman. (Nashville, TN: Jewish Lights, 2006). Pg. 137.
[6] Margaret Guenther, Holy Listening: The Art of Spiritual Direction (Cambridge, MA: Cowley Publications, 1992) pg. 2.
[7] Martin Buber, I and Thou. (NY: Touchstone, 1971). Pg. 69.
[8] Guenther, pg. 32.
