Mystics move
The reading assignment this week for the "Introduction to Judaism" class I am taking at our shul in Galveston is on the mystical tradition within Judaism. The book we are reading, Essential Judaism, is not written in a style that makes for quick reading to begin with*, but I am finding myself taking longer than usual this week.
And this is not the first time I have stalled out trying to get a basic grasp of Jewish mysticism, commonly referred to as Kabbalah: about half a year ago, I picked up an audiobook on Kabbalah for beginners and found that I couldn't get past the introductory chapters (which, to be fair, took up about 2/3 of the book) to the part where you supposedly find out how Kabbalah is actually practiced or what impact it actually has in anybody's life.
I had thought at the time that this was simply a bad introduction to the subject, that there must be some entry point into the Kabbalah that would make me a Jewish mystic myself one day, but this week's reading has seemed to confirm that, whether the mystics are describing the mental chariots that took them to the inner chambers of God's house or decoding the Torah in ways it was never meant to be decoded in order to glimpse the inner life of a God with multiple personality disorder writ large**, this whole mystical effort seems about as disconnected from the practical living of a Jewish life as you can get.
I mean, sure, the mystics want to motivate us to perform as many mitzvot as we can. And to do so with the proper sense of kavanah (intention), which perhaps we get through regular meditation of some sort. I guess that's practical enough. But their reasoning for doing so? To harmonize the inner essence of the divine to reduce evil in the world, to help God's male side fertilize God's female side so that we get more creative and healing energy in the world, to repair the broken shards of divine energy that form our world, shattered as they were during the creation of everything way back when. Huh? See, I've lost myself already.
So, I'm not a Jewish mystic. Why should that surprise me?
Because, half a dozen years or so ago, a Seminary professor who I had deep respect for told me (and I quote as well as my memory allows): "I see you as something of a mystic, and mystics move." His point was, if I understood it, that mystics in the Christian tradition are seeking something that transcends any one particular, practical implementation of the faith, and as they find that one particular church community (or even one entire denomination) after another comes up short, they keep picking up their tent and moving on in search of the promised land. His words were not meant to harm, but neither were they a compliment for someone who wanted to be a Christian minister. How would I ever settle down to serve one congregation if I was doomed to wander in search of the true faith?
I have to admit, in a way he was right. I moved. From United Methodist to Quaker to Unitarian to UCC and back again in some sort of deranged spiral. To Episcopalian last of all, in search of that tradition's famous sense of mysticism, in hope that a tradition that values liturgy over belief might fit me better. Maybe it did fit me better, actually, but something still bothered me and, as the reader of this blog knows well, I moved again.
What is odd is that, after a solid year of Judaism, my religious wanderlust has disappeared. And, oddly enough, so has my "something of a mystic" side. It leaves me wondering if the two are connected?
One answer that occurs to me is that Christianity, by and large, is a religion that values right belief over all else. Admit to most Christians that you haven't been to church in a while, missed communion last week (or month, or what have you), that you aren't giving up something for Lent this year, or that you don't actually fast on Good Friday (I mean, who does anymore?) and you'll get something of a yawn in return. In my experience, if you tell the same person that you have come to disagree with them on some matter of belief -- doubting the virgin birth, or the divinity of Christ, the atonement on the cross, the Trinity -- then there is a fair chance they will proclaim your immortal soul to be in danger. Again, in my experience, the more your typical Christian can nail down for themselves the exact nature of God, the more confident they are that they are believing exactly the right things, the happier they are in their faith.
Why do I bring that up? The appeal, for me, of the mystical side of Christianity was that a lot of Christian mystics are willing, perhaps more like compelled, to move beyond issues of this belief or that belief, toward an understanding of God as beyond belief. They don't believe in God so much as they commune with God, they feel the love of God, they try to live as if they are transmitting that love to the people around them. And perhaps that is why mystics move: they keep feeling constrained in any belief-bound or belief-centered community (or, in the case of UUs, any belief-rejecting community) and so they keep looking for a place where they can commune with God and God's people at the same time and just be allowed to be whom they are and know God as they know Her.
So...what?
In Judaism, it seems the roles are reversed. For the typical Jew, at least in my experience, the idea of defining God is simply foreign. We read about all of the things Adonai does in the Torah and we say, "wow, that's one complicated dude" and that's about it. Anything else is pure speculation, and doesn't really affect how one does one's Judaism anyway. Because that's what most Jews' religion is about: what you do, here and now. Which doesn't require belief of any sort, just faith that keeping the tradition (trying to be a good Jew) and doing right by others (trying to be a good person) have value.
In Judaism, it seems to be the mystics who go to absurd lengths to define God, and I've had enough defining of God for one lifetime. On the other hand, the mystics did give us one great phrase: tikkun 'olam -- repair the world.
I intend to work on that. I can just do without the bizarre rationales, at least for now.
---
* it is a running joke between my wife and I that Christians seem obsessed with reducing the essential points of their faith to something that would fit on a simple pamphlet, whereas "essential Judaism" is a very dense several-hundred-page book!
** the Kabbalists say that God has ten sefirot, emanations of God's divine energy that bridge the gap between the true Eternal ayn sof to the temporal, mortal, material world. To maintain the strict monotheism of the Jewish tradition, however, these cannot be seen as divisions of God into multiple personas, a la the Christian triune-God concept. Hence, the ten sefirot are sometimes described as ten personalities of God. Hence, my admittedly flippant caricature here.
And this is not the first time I have stalled out trying to get a basic grasp of Jewish mysticism, commonly referred to as Kabbalah: about half a year ago, I picked up an audiobook on Kabbalah for beginners and found that I couldn't get past the introductory chapters (which, to be fair, took up about 2/3 of the book) to the part where you supposedly find out how Kabbalah is actually practiced or what impact it actually has in anybody's life.
I had thought at the time that this was simply a bad introduction to the subject, that there must be some entry point into the Kabbalah that would make me a Jewish mystic myself one day, but this week's reading has seemed to confirm that, whether the mystics are describing the mental chariots that took them to the inner chambers of God's house or decoding the Torah in ways it was never meant to be decoded in order to glimpse the inner life of a God with multiple personality disorder writ large**, this whole mystical effort seems about as disconnected from the practical living of a Jewish life as you can get.
I mean, sure, the mystics want to motivate us to perform as many mitzvot as we can. And to do so with the proper sense of kavanah (intention), which perhaps we get through regular meditation of some sort. I guess that's practical enough. But their reasoning for doing so? To harmonize the inner essence of the divine to reduce evil in the world, to help God's male side fertilize God's female side so that we get more creative and healing energy in the world, to repair the broken shards of divine energy that form our world, shattered as they were during the creation of everything way back when. Huh? See, I've lost myself already.
So, I'm not a Jewish mystic. Why should that surprise me?
Because, half a dozen years or so ago, a Seminary professor who I had deep respect for told me (and I quote as well as my memory allows): "I see you as something of a mystic, and mystics move." His point was, if I understood it, that mystics in the Christian tradition are seeking something that transcends any one particular, practical implementation of the faith, and as they find that one particular church community (or even one entire denomination) after another comes up short, they keep picking up their tent and moving on in search of the promised land. His words were not meant to harm, but neither were they a compliment for someone who wanted to be a Christian minister. How would I ever settle down to serve one congregation if I was doomed to wander in search of the true faith?
I have to admit, in a way he was right. I moved. From United Methodist to Quaker to Unitarian to UCC and back again in some sort of deranged spiral. To Episcopalian last of all, in search of that tradition's famous sense of mysticism, in hope that a tradition that values liturgy over belief might fit me better. Maybe it did fit me better, actually, but something still bothered me and, as the reader of this blog knows well, I moved again.
What is odd is that, after a solid year of Judaism, my religious wanderlust has disappeared. And, oddly enough, so has my "something of a mystic" side. It leaves me wondering if the two are connected?
One answer that occurs to me is that Christianity, by and large, is a religion that values right belief over all else. Admit to most Christians that you haven't been to church in a while, missed communion last week (or month, or what have you), that you aren't giving up something for Lent this year, or that you don't actually fast on Good Friday (I mean, who does anymore?) and you'll get something of a yawn in return. In my experience, if you tell the same person that you have come to disagree with them on some matter of belief -- doubting the virgin birth, or the divinity of Christ, the atonement on the cross, the Trinity -- then there is a fair chance they will proclaim your immortal soul to be in danger. Again, in my experience, the more your typical Christian can nail down for themselves the exact nature of God, the more confident they are that they are believing exactly the right things, the happier they are in their faith.
Why do I bring that up? The appeal, for me, of the mystical side of Christianity was that a lot of Christian mystics are willing, perhaps more like compelled, to move beyond issues of this belief or that belief, toward an understanding of God as beyond belief. They don't believe in God so much as they commune with God, they feel the love of God, they try to live as if they are transmitting that love to the people around them. And perhaps that is why mystics move: they keep feeling constrained in any belief-bound or belief-centered community (or, in the case of UUs, any belief-rejecting community) and so they keep looking for a place where they can commune with God and God's people at the same time and just be allowed to be whom they are and know God as they know Her.
So...what?
In Judaism, it seems the roles are reversed. For the typical Jew, at least in my experience, the idea of defining God is simply foreign. We read about all of the things Adonai does in the Torah and we say, "wow, that's one complicated dude" and that's about it. Anything else is pure speculation, and doesn't really affect how one does one's Judaism anyway. Because that's what most Jews' religion is about: what you do, here and now. Which doesn't require belief of any sort, just faith that keeping the tradition (trying to be a good Jew) and doing right by others (trying to be a good person) have value.
In Judaism, it seems to be the mystics who go to absurd lengths to define God, and I've had enough defining of God for one lifetime. On the other hand, the mystics did give us one great phrase: tikkun 'olam -- repair the world.
I intend to work on that. I can just do without the bizarre rationales, at least for now.
---
* it is a running joke between my wife and I that Christians seem obsessed with reducing the essential points of their faith to something that would fit on a simple pamphlet, whereas "essential Judaism" is a very dense several-hundred-page book!
** the Kabbalists say that God has ten sefirot, emanations of God's divine energy that bridge the gap between the true Eternal ayn sof to the temporal, mortal, material world. To maintain the strict monotheism of the Jewish tradition, however, these cannot be seen as divisions of God into multiple personas, a la the Christian triune-God concept. Hence, the ten sefirot are sometimes described as ten personalities of God. Hence, my admittedly flippant caricature here.
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