I was in grade 2, and our librarian was reading a picture book to our class. One of the images presented us with a white-haired, bearded man holding a paper scroll. I immediately thought of God, holding the Sefer haHayim (the Book of Life). This realization came along with internal struggle and chastisement. Jews do not picture God as any thing. Jews do not worship idols.
If cultivating spirituality means creating the drive to unify the self with God, to see God’s hand in one’s life, and to transcend the self to connect with others, then literature presents myriad opportunities to experience that transcendent sense of unity. In fact, E.B. White’s Charlotte’s Web (1952) may be a child’s first literary encounter with the foundations of this experience—friendship, which is woven of loyalty, kindness, compassion, and sacrifice. Interestingly, the spiritual nature of these four elements, i.e., transcending the self to empathize with another individual, is embodied by the web itself.
People are influenced by diverse approaches to spirituality. Greek philosophy purports a rift between body and spirit; Christianity claims that spirituality is a matter of faith, divorced from the realm of action; Buddhism offers a contemplative model of spiritual practice that removes one from worldly matters. By contrast, Judaism (based on Genesis 2:7) understands that our essence as humans is a combination of earthly physicality (adam-adamah) and an intimate relationship with God that animates us (the spirit of life that God breathed into adam; neshama-neshima).
I’ve never considered myself to be much of a spiritual person. It takes a lot to “inspire” me, and I am both skeptical and critical of the neo-spiritual movements that seem to be growing in popularity. So, it took me a while to warm to the podcast Harry Potter and the Sacred Text, a critical reading of the Harry Potter series by a pair of graduates from Harvard Divinity School. Their basic premise was that if you read a text, in a community, with rigor and commitment, it can yield meaningful spiritual value. They choose from a variety of spiritual practices, sourced from Christianity and Judaism, to focus on while reading each chapter of the series, looking for the meaning that emerges.
On a wet and cold Israeli January morning, I was invited to lead a “Spirituality Deliberation” with a group of fourteen fifth-grade students at a National Religious school in Jerusalem. The subject that we addressed was one that was familiar to the children from their daily lives and school curriculum, namely “The Meaning of Miracles.” It was clear throughout the forty-minute session that these kids had much to share with their friends and teachers on this topic.
Even if they haven’t theorized it, Jewish educators have known for a very long time that various developmental stages necessitate new and more complex theological approaches and frameworks, and that the failure to properly introduce or develop aspects of our theology stunts the development of the Jewish mind and spirit. The conception of God, the approach to Midrash, the reading of a Rashi—all of these are initially taught in some of our earliest years and in some of the sweetest, most endearing ways. Yet, we would certainly agree that should a student graduate from the day school system with the same conception of God or with the same methodological approach to Humash, that the system has absolutely failed him.
An attitude of gratitude is remarkably significant in Judaism, and yet, it is easy to overlook its import in the process of growing Jewish souls. As educators, we can successfully transmit the corpus of blessings that are the infrastructure of Jewish life, and still find our students to be kind of, well…ungrateful. For many, it is their nature to feel that they have less than others or not enough, which is what makes the repeated focus on gratitude so necessary. Nobody has ever said, “I am too grateful.”
In our learning and teaching, we have encountered many students who begin with the assumption that “spirituality is just not for me.” There may be a variety of reasons why some may feel as if they are intuitively turned off or alienated by anything labeled as spiritual, e.g., the association of spirituality with flightiness and lack of grounding; or associations of spirituality with specific individuals with whom the learner does not wish to identify with or emulate. Yet we’ve found it possible to overcome these predispositions, especially if spirituality is taught in accessible ways. In fact, some of Alison’s favorite meditation students are those that begin by saying, “My mind is too busy to sit still,” and “I’ve tried meditation before, it’s not for me.”
The term spirituality conjures associations of crystals, meditation mats, soothing music, transcendental wind chimes, and calm voices. When we add the term Jewish to spirituality, we might imagine a Safed-soaked environment, where spiritual seekers are entranced by kabbalah, niggunim, and gematria, and are dependent on others to unlock the spiritual inside of us.
As a teacher entering the davening space on any particular morning in my Modern Orthodox high school, I have a long wish-list of what I want for my students. I want them to understand the words they recite. I want them to connect with the community of mitpallelim (pray-ers) present in the room. I want them to see themselves as part of a community of mitpallelim stretching throughout Jewish history.
