One thing that surprised me when I entered Jewish life was how little Jews, even religious Jews, spoke about God. Sure, they might say "Baruch HaShem" a lot but they rarely spoke spontaneously about God. I’ve met over a dozen Orthodox Jews who say they don’t believe in God.
Spirituality, said Rabbi Marc Penner, director of professional education at Y.U.’s Center for the Jewish Future, “is an issue that’s missing not only from the Y.U. curriculum but from the entire day school curriculum. The goal here is to begin to put it on the table. It’s the spice that makes everything more meaningful.”
Penner, who in addition to his position at Y.U. is a pulpit rabbi at the Young Israel of Holliswood, in Queens, described a sort of spiritual malaise in Modern Orthodoxy today. “Everyone feels that in our synagogues, there’s a lack of spirituality. There’s less singing. There’s a lot of rote behavior,” he said.
What, exactly, is Y.U. talking about when it speaks of spirituality?
“What we’re addressing is how we are supposed to envision God when we are speaking to him. That’s something we just don’t talk about. We talk about the laws of prayer, but we don’t really talk about how prayer works,” Penner said. “These are the kinds of things that beginners ask, but those who’ve been to yeshiva all their life don’t necessarily ask these questions. And that’s too bad, because they’re important questions.”
