Authentic Reform Spirituality

What, then, is authentic Reform Jewish spirituality? First, spirituality is about God. To speak of God is to acknowledge that we are not about everything, but about something (or Someone). The Jewish spiritual search is about that which is inner, deeper, higher, and historic; the search for that which transcends the moment and individual need. It is simply not enough to speak of inwardness. The inward must connect to God.

Spirituality is about kedushah, holiness. Kedushah is an attitude towards life. Holiness, means to venerate the Divine; to seek out the mystery of God; to sense that some realms are set-apart, unique, linking heaven and earth, and manifesting a shared reality with the Divine. As Rabbi Lawrence Kushner writes, ``There are worlds more real than this one. Shabbat is more real than Wednesday. Jerusalem is more real than Chicago. The sukah is more real than a garage. Tzedakah is more real than income tax.''

Holiness means to enter into a conversation about the meaning of life; to ask questions not usually asked in the secular realm; to speak the language of what ought to be, even when it means speaking against the language of what really is.

The following are secular questions: ``What are my rights?'' ``How can I own it?'' ``What does the world owe me?'' ``Does it work?'' ``Will people approve of me?'' These are holy questions: ``What are my obligations?'' ``How can I proclaim in my deeds that ultimately god owns everything?'' ``What do I owe the world?'' ``Is this particular behavior right?'' ``Will God approve of me?''

Reform Judaism must create a life-long holiness curriculum that speaks of holy places (the home, the synagogue, Jerusalem, the Land of Israel), holy times (Shabbat and festivals, the life cycle), holy relationships (parent/child, husband/wife, teacher/student, sibling/sibling-and even relatively powerful/relatively powerless, which leads us into an involvement with tikun olam), holy ways of speaking (prayer and worship), holy ways of having and giving ( tzedakah as discipline and life plan), holy ways of eating (an awareness of kashrut as Jewish value), holy ways of reading (Torah and all that flows from it), and holy ways of being (seeing oneself as an inheritor of Jewish history and its lessons).

``Holiness'' is where ``spirituality'' becomes ``Judaism.'' Through a disciplined participation in authentic Jewish acts that increase our sense of holiness, we connect ourselves to our people, to our history, to God, and to that ubiquitous, ill-defined thing called spirituality.

Spirituality is about social action. In Judaism there is no dichotomy between the inner and the outer, between action and contemplation. Homelessness, the plight of children, and the loss of compassion and values in our society are spiritual issues. When we legitimately use ``God'' in a sentence that describes our action, then social action becomes a spiritual path. I am working in this soup kitchen because feeding the hungry is a mitzvah ordained by God. I am involved in a black-Jewish dialogue because God created on person at the dawn of creation, and therefore all people are endowed with immeasurable dignity. I am working against violence and pornography in the media because those things violate the image of God.

Spirituality is about study, about an authentic engagement with our people's sacred writings. Study is our way of redeeming ourselves from what sociologist Peter Berger calls ``the homelessness of the mind.,'' Moreover, study is the place where God dwells. The Torah blessing praises God as notein ha-Torah --- the One Who gives Torah --- in the present tense, rather than the past, teaching us to hear the revealing voice of God through ongoing Torah study.

Spirituality is about the Jewish people. Moments which connect us to the Jewish people are just a holy as moments of prayer, contemplation, and study. I will always remember the shiver down my spine during my first Soviet Jewry rally, realizing at age ten that I was part of a people that transcended my family and synagogue. I feel the same way today walking in Salute to Israel parades, knowing that Am Yisrael Chai (the people of Israel lives) is inextricably linked with Od avinu chai (God, our Divine Parent, lives).

We need to expose our young people to what it means to be part of an extended Jewish family. We need to teach them that they are part of a spiritual reality that exists beyond the borders of their own communities, one that reaches back to Abraham and Sarah and forward to the Messianic Age.

Spirituality is about the Land of Israel. Israel must become an integral part of every Jew's spiritual vocabulary. Eretz Yisrael is a tangible point of contact between us and God, one of the corporeal signs of the Covenant. When we travel to Israel, Professor Lawrence Hoffman points out, we must go as pilgrims, not as tourists.

Spirituality is about the everyday. We can encounter God in our daily lives, especially in our work. Our workplace, no less than the sanctuary or the place where we study Torah, ca become an arena for our spirituality and for the constant demonstration of our deepest values. How do we incorporate Jewish spiritual values into our daily lives? I suggest four ways.

1. Imitate God. A weaver told me that when she crates, she goes through the seven days of creation. ``First, there is chaos. You hover over your work, just like God did. Then comes the concept, which is the mundane equivalent of 'Let there be light,' As the idea becomes illuminated, you find the form for it. Then you say, 'This is good,' just as God said upon the creation of the world.''

2. Be God's partner --- finish the work that God never got around to finishing. Psychotherapists, social workers, and counselors are God's partners in helping people rebuild their lives.

3. Stand in God's presence. Judaism cares more about how you earn your money than what you eat. More than 100 commandments in the Torah are about money; only 24 concern kashrut. Caring about ethics at work means refusing to cut corners. It means doing tzedakah --- leaving the corners of the field for the poor. To echo Martin Buber, it means treating another person as Thou rather than as It.

4. Smash false Gods. Refuse to give into the idols of careerism and workahololism the only socially acceptable and laudable addition in America?'' In essence, everything we do in life --- whether at home or at work --- has spiritual possibilities. Spirituality is about how we talk to and about other people; how we treat our employees; what we eat; how we spend; what we give. The closest Hebrew term for spirituality is kavanah --- doing things with sacred intentionality. When on lives fully as a Jew, that life becomes a kiddush ha-shem, a sanctification of the Name of God.

Author Jeffrey K. Salkin is rabbi of Central Synagogue of Nassau County, Rockville Centre, NY, and co-chair of the Commission on Reform Jewish Outreach.