20th Century Jewish Religious Thought: Original Essays on Critical Concepts, Movements, and Beliefs

Spirituality

Spirituality Arthur Green S pirituality as an essential value of the Jewish tradition is a striving for the presence of God and the fashioning of a life of holiness appropriate to such striving. As such, the spiritual life that stands at the center of Judaism is the shared goal of biblical priest and prophet, of Pharisee and Essene sectarian, of Hellenistic contemplative and law-centered rabbi, of philosopher, halakhist, kabbalist, and ~asid. Among these there are vast differences of opinion as to precisely how life in the presence of God is to be defined and achieved, but all would assent to the importance of this value. Postbiblical Judaism has striven to cultivate in ordinary human affairs the quality of holiness that was originally associated with sacred space and time, the temple precincts, and the holy days. The notion of the entire people of Israel as a "kingdom of priests" (Ex. 19:6) is essential to the Pharisaic transformation of biblical religion and stands at the center of any Jewish religious self-definition. The definition of spirituality proposed here does not coincide with ru~a­ niyyut, the Hebrew equivalent of the term spirituality. This Hebrew term, not found in the Bible or in early rabbinic speech, is an artifice of the medi- 904 SPIRITUALITY eval translators, first created to express philosophical and scientific concepts that were Hellenic in origin. and taken over only afterward by kabbalists and pietists to describe a religious ideal that by then was a thorough amalgam of the spiritual legacies of Israel and Greece. Spirituality in the Western sense, inevitably opposed in some degree to "corporeality" or "worldliness" (all apologetiCS to the contrary notwithstanding), is unknown to the religious worldview of ancient Israel and is a latecomer, though an important one, among the elements that comprise the religious legacy of medieval and later Jewry. The appreciation and cultivation of those ways of living, including inward states, in which the divine presence is most to be felt takes many forms in the history of Judaism. The rabbinic admonition that rua~ ha-kodesh (the holy spirit) is the culmination of a long series of moral and religious virtues becomes standard fare in the Jewish moral curriculum. Such influential later moralistic works as I:Iayyim Vital's Sha'arei Kedushah (Gates of Holiness) or Moses I:1ayyim Luzzatto's Mesillat Yesharim (Path of the Upright) begin their instruction with such "outer" virtues as patience, modesty, discipline, and the conquest of anger, only afterward moving toward those more esoteric aspects of training that lead to the evocation of God's presence. Many a Jewish moralist has deprecated the search for "religious experience" altogether , claiming that such a, quest is in itself only a subtle form of pride, inappropriate to the true goals of holy living. While both spiritual and material blessings are frequently promised as a reward for faithfulness, the higher path has always been seen as that which "serves not in order to receive reward" (M. Avot 1:3). For some authors, even the reward of "gaz[ing] upon the beauty of the Lord" (Ps. 27:4) itself is seen as a reproachful goal. The style of Jewish spiritual life has always found its common expression in the deed, meaning specifically the commandments of the Torah as amplified by the classical halakhah. The formulations of mystical or pietistic spirituality often grow out of the halakhic institutions themselves, as in the relationship between sanctifying the act of eating and the dietary laws of kashrut or "building a palace in time" (cL Abraham J. Heschel, The Sabbath) and the institution of the Sabbath. In these cases the halakhah is the soil in which the spiritual expressions take root. In modern times, all attempts to build a spiritual life on the foundations ofJudaism have had to contend with the issue of halakhah. A certain unfortunate polarization may be seen in such attempts, in which those committed to halakhah lose their spiritual focus in the great struggle to preserve the forms of traditional Jewish piety while the nonhalakhic (the primary example here is the kibbutz movement) drift toward secularism. The possibility of a heterodox or nonhalakhic Jew- SPIRITUALITY 905 ish spirituality, such as is powerfully evoked by the writings of Martin Buber, is only in our generation beginning to move toward realization. While all of the commandments are capable of spiritual interpretation, it is especially around the act of prayer that Jewish...