|
I just came home from the most glorious day at the river. A friend and I went, and we stayed the whole day long. So I could watch the sun cross from one side of the gorge to the other, never quite making it up to the middle of the sky. It’s not summer anymore, even though I’m tan and sunny inside.
Of course I’m well aware of the change of seasons just now, because I am deep in getting ready for the High Holy Days and all the festivals which follow them. Last month I wrote a bit about Elul, the month of preparation for the New Year, when I do lots of deferred maintenance on my checkered soul. This isn’t the perfect thing by any means, but often during the year I find myself thinking, “I’ll deal with this in Elul.” Now it’s Elul, and I am glad to be dealing. What would I do without Elul?
It’s also firewood season chez Mickey and Margaret. Mick has been a monster of chopping, hauling, stacking, while I ooh and aah from the sidelines. And Mickey and I have been chatting about getting new bamboo (and another roll of packaging tape ?) to build our sukkah. Mickey has a new architectural concept for this year’s sukkah in mind – to be revealed, if we can pull it off, when you all come to our house to celebrate the harvest. I’ve already had a couple of chats with Avrohm at Zion Esrogim in Crown Heights, and he promises to once again Fed-Ex a fresh and unbroken “standard set” of lulav fronds and an etrog with it’s “pit-om” – it’s belly button – cradled in foam, in time for the holiday. Tonk has already told me that he looks forward to the annual request to bring redwood branches to the shul for the schach – the see-through roofing – of the shul sukkah. Mick and I think ahead to dwelling in our little gazebo festooned with, you should forgive the expression, Christmas lights, probably with a bonfire going too, drinking wine, noshing at the shimmed-up yellow formica table, and feeling the particular this-is-a-little-too-chilly-but-still-so-glorious grateful, satisfied, blessed feeling of Sukkot.
People often tell me – with good reason! – that they don’t like organized religion. “I worship God at the beach,” they say. “I’m spiritual, not religious.” “I don’t need a priest/rabbi/imam/roshi/sangoma or anyone else telling me what to think.” “It’s all just about money and power.” Recently, though, I’ve been appreciating exactly the “organized” quality of the religious enterprise in a way which is new for me.
I’ve found myself thinking that intact societies need any number of tasks done: we need a marketplace, law, education, health care, recreation, art, food and shelter production, ways to make communal decisions and to enforce them. And we need stewardship of the individual and communal soul. This last is, at best, the brief of any religion: to help people’s inner beings flourish, individually and collectively.
And so every culture receives from its elders a package, as it were, an organized set of texts, rituals, norms, ethical maxims, contemplative practices, ways to cultivate peace and bliss, and ideas about ultimate reality. And it probably also gets institutions which make it possible to utilize the package in every generation: buildings, offices, teachers, officiants, licenses.
Every generation makes adjustments in the social system they’ve received. Education changes, culture exhibits new trends, health treatments change, economies shift. Likewise religious institutions and ideas change along with society. And today we live in a particularly culturally-mixed society, so that we are exposed to the best (and worst too) of lots of religious traditions and spiritual practices. We also have a great deal of individual freedom to choose whether and how we will engage with any religious tradition – that of our own heritage or any other.
We are often exposed to the most oppressive, dangerous and soul-deadening features of religion in society. And these need to be challenged over and over, from generation to generation. But we may not as easily see the ways that religion in our culture – in any culture – also guides people to a deeper sense of meaning in life and encourages community, service, sharing, deeper conversation, contemplation, virtue and wisdom. In some ways this is true whether or not we personally practice a religion. Religious ideas and values permeate society – sometimes in bad ways, but often in helpful and uplifting ways as well.
For example, I regularly get asked to be some part of “the religious community’s” response to social issues of the day: to oppose torture, call for health care reform, demand racial and economic justice, inspire reconciliation between enemies, reform prisons, steward our environment and much more. In our civic society, there is a sense that “the religious community” has a role in challenging us all to higher moral standards. Any of us might argue with one policy position or another – but that general sense that religion should help society see beyond its most self-serving agendas is a positive contribution to social life.
I actually think that there should be more religion – not less – in the public arena. One of the things that drew me to the rabbinate was seeing rabbis in the late ‘seventies writing op-ed pieces in the Los Angeles Times challenging Jews to respond to the crisis of Southeast Asian boat people. Our Jewish religious and historical experiences, they said, give us an especially powerful sensitivity to the needs of refugees. That voice in the public sphere changed things to some degree. Among other small things it changed was my life path.
For my part, I don’t think that Judaism is any better than any other religion or culture. And I am fairly critical and selective in the ways that I practice and teach and – yes – organize – our religion. But I am endlessly grateful for, to pick just one example of many, the cycle of holidays. What an ingenious way to deepen my personal experience of life, connect me with my family and my community, imprint moral values, engage me with history, uplift my spirit, encourage me to be charitable -- all the while offering sensual pleasure, intellectual deepening and spiritual bliss! The holiday cycle literally organizes me to experience a set of practices designed by many generations of ancestors for exactly these purposes.
Likewise with Jewish texts, with daily and weekly prayer, with Shabbat, with the Hebrew and Yiddish and Ladino languages, with tzedaka, gemilut hesed and other moral practices, with mystical study and contemplation – the whole package of organized Jewish religion. They do a fair amount in our world to make life more interesting, more civilized and, as my Bible professor, Stanley Gevirtz, of blessed memory, said, “so beautiful.”
They are also, like the organized religions of other tribes, full of problems, conflicts and conundrums. And full of thoughtful people rising to meet these challenges. This itself is part of meaning-making.
I mean this in no way as a pitch to make anyone consider being more religious, or to be religious in any particular way. But, whatever you do or don’t do in the religious sphere, you might reflect on the ways, negative but also positive, that religious traditions shape our society. And you might also ruminate a bit, along with me, about how religion, practiced in a thoughtful and reflective way, might shape your own inner life and your own experience of the world as well.
We are about to dive into the year 5770 – a new year organized into an ongoing cycle of holidays, Torah readings, life cycle events, communal obligations, seasons of inner struggle and renewal, fasting and feasting, study, action, penance and growth. Around us other peoples are engaging with their own cycles of religious practice, growth, reflection and struggle. May it come to our whole world for good.
- Rabbi Margaret Holub © 2009 (home)
(calendar)
(info)
(articles)
(sponsors)
(links)
(bios)
(reviews)
(travel)
(recipes)
(projects)
(photos)
(art)