Feeling close to God was relatively easy in Christianity. A good sermon, a good song, a good movie, and you started feeling very spiritual.<\/p>\n
I remember going to a Billy Graham crusade in Sacramento around 1984. Only the hardest of hearts could not have been moved.<\/p>\n
Spiritual highs are much harder to come by in Judaism. And most of them seem like cheap grace. I hear that feeling spiritual is pretty easy at the Kabbalah Centre. Because of the use of musical instruments on the Sabbath, I’ve usually found it easier to feel spiritual at a non-Orthodox synagogue.<\/p>\n
The type of synagogue I am most familiar with is the Modern Orthodox one. They have all sorts of trouble with spirituality. Go to a minyan there and you rarely see many people outside of the rabbi who are into their prayers.<\/p>\n
So the M.O. shul tries all sorts of tricks. They have their "Daven With Kavannah" specials. They bring in Eli Kranzler<\/a>. They use some Carlebach<\/a> tunes. They import their spirituality by bringing in some blacks.<\/p>\n No, I don’t mean negros. I mean the black-hatted ultra-Orthodox, particularly the Hasidim. These guys often have a genuine relationship with God and it’s infectious. Other times it does not work and I feel like I am at Sea World paying to watch the trained seals perform.<\/p>\n With few exceptions, the only reason Haredim come around Modern Orthodox shuls is to collect donations, which tends to reduce my capacity to kvell over their presence.<\/p>\n I don’t mean to say that my shul experience is a bleak one. I almost always leave feeling better than I came. I often get to spend time with friends and to learn a thing or two.<\/p>\n These days when I set foot in shul, I no longer feel like a whore in a church. But I still have a major problem. I’m not sure I want my behavior outside of shul to match up with my behavior inside of shul. I’m not sure I want to repent, that I want to clean up my writing, that I want to be pure and holy and acknowledge God in all that I do.<\/p>\n For instance, I completely skipped Yom Kippur this year. Yeah, I went to shul, but I didn’t ask anyone for forgiveness and I didn’t resolve to change anything about my life.<\/p>\n I like to take vacations from God. When I watch The Sopranos and the like, I tell myself to pretend for an hour that God does not exist. When I meet a hot chick who I want to play with, I tell myself to forget about God for a few hours. When I want to write some raunchy or vicious, I turn up the stereo and turn off God.<\/p>\n I have an amazingly flexible conscience. And if you point out to me that I did a sin, I always have an answer — I’m not at that spiritual level yet to give a damn.<\/p>\n Joe emails: "As Ernst Simon said: ‘The people I talk to, I can’t daven with. The people I daven with, I can’t talk to.’ At my MO shul, I love talking to people but don’t feel like I ever fully get immersed in the davening. It is superficial and thin for me. On the other hand, in a chasidic shtibl with an intensity of davening, I may not be able to have a meaningful conversation with anyone, but the davening is real. It’s visceral. People are davening like they mean it." Feeling close to God was relatively easy in Christianity. A good sermon, a good song, a good movie, and you started feeling very spiritual. I remember going to a Billy Graham crusade in Sacramento around 1984. Only the hardest of … Continue reading
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