As someone who has lived in both Christianity and Judaism, let me share that you don’t get the dramatic spiritual highs as easily in Judaism. When you go to a good church, you invariably get spiritually high, particularly if it is a black Gospel church. If you go to shul, you won’t usually get a similarly large spiritual high. You can’t because Judaism focuses on this life while all the other world religion stress leaving this world.
What you can get in Judaism, if you’re lucky, is a whisper of God’s presence.
Many of my secular friends say God has never spoken to them, but you have to put yourself in places where you are more likely to hear God. For instance, you’re more likely to get a sense of God in a church, mosque, or temple than you are at a bar, beach or bikini contest. Most of the time, you have to work to touch the divine (as revealed in Judaism or Christianity).
This blog post was inspired by Rabbi Shlomo Einhorn’s Rosh Hashanah lecture.
