A Match-book-Cover Rationale for Spiritualities

I was talking to a dear friend about the 20% affiliation rate of Jews in the San Francisco Bay Area, and I said to him: wouldn't it be wonderful to be able to come up with a back-of-the-match-book rationale for Judaism along the lines of

• Judaism or death - spiritual or physical.
  

Which parallels the twelve step idea:

• Recovery or death: I am either in my recovery or in my adddiction.
  

This is not a joke. Folks in recovery from addiction to drugs and alcohol know that without their sobriety - without their conscious and conscientious practice of the path of recovery - they would be dead in a couple of years. Evidently there are statistics that bear this out.

In Jewish language we say this as (from Ma'ariv - the evening service):

ki hem chayyeinu v'orech yameinu uvahem nehgeh yomam va-lailah
For the Torah is our life and the length of our days,
and that's why we need to meditate upon it and study it day and night

Such a rationale has to be simple, powerful and compelling. Like the 12 Steps, it must come equipped with:

• a description of the fundamental problem of existence
• a description of a solution. There is hope of healing/recovery!
• an action plan, a method of salvation/healing/recovery, like the 12 steps.

A benefit of such a rationale is that Jews and non-Jews would know clearly whether this path is for them. As much as I love my tribal Jewish identity by birth (over which I had no control), ultimately we are all Jews by choice.This is the language of Rabbi Harold Schulweis. It makes no difference if I were born Jewish or not.

Not everyone has to be Jewish (my holy stepsons accuse me - with justification - of seeing the entire world through Jewish-colored glasses). There are many paths up the mountain. The peak is the same for all spiritual traditions. Each path up the mountain appeals to a different (spiritual) temperament. In Chasidic terms, each human temperament (neshamah) requires a different sort of rebbe/teacher.

Judaism is a lot of different things: a tribal identity, a culture, a relationship to the State of Israel, a spiritual path. Here I want to focus on Judaism as a spiritual path. I am not sure I can tell you the difference between spirituality and religion. But empirically I can tell you that Americans respond a whole lot better to the word spirituality than to the word religion.

Before I share with you my back-of-the-match-book rationale for Judaism as a spiritual path, I'd like for us to take a look at the rationale for the 12 Steps, one of the most popular spiritual paths in America. Remember: the back-of-the-match-book has to describe the problem, the solution and a path for getting there. For 12 step programs (e.g. Alcoholics Anonymous, Codependents Anonymous), the succinct match-book-cover is the 12 Steps.

The Problem: I am an addict, I know it's going to kill me eventually, and I am powerless over my addiction (Step 1).

The Solution: There is a solution, it's called recovery. In 12 step program language: I can't heal my self, God can, but only if I let God heal me.

The Path for getting there: The 12 Steps, which I summarize as follows:

• Steps 1, 2, 3: I can't, God can, if I let God. Turning it (my life and will) over to the care of God, as I understand God.
  
• Steps 4, 5, 6, 7: Character Inventory. Confession of inventory to God, self and other human beings. Being willing to let God remove my defects of character, and humbly asking God to do so.
• Steps 8, 9, 10: Making amends (roughly teshuvah in Hebrew) to all those I have harmed, including myself!
  
• Step 11: Aligning myself with God's will for me. Developing a conscious relationship with God, as I understand God, praying only for the knowledge of God's will for me and the power to carry it out.
• Step 12: The Tzaddik/Saint/Boddhisattva step of service to others. Having had a spiritual awakening (for which we are grateful), we try to carry the message to those who still suffer from our addiction, and to practice these principles in all our affairs (teaching by example, walking the talk).

In my next post - God willing - I hope to outline a match-book-cover rationale for Judaism.

Und az der rebbe zingt ... my first post

Dear readers, shalom ve-chag Chanukkah sameach! Happy Chanukkah!

This is my first post to this blog. In fact, this is my first blog ever - she-hecheyanu!

First I want to thank my nephew, Nathan Abraham Thornburgh, a journalist and blogger, for his encouragement of my writing. You can read Nathan's musings on fatherhood at:
http://www.dadwagon.com/

I also want to thank my holy step-son, Tom Linford, who used his laptop to photograph me and upload my photo to this blog-site.

Google's blog set-up page required me to establish a title for my blog. So many possibilities ... so I picked Und Az Der Rebbe Zingt, which is the name of a popular chasidic song, which means in Yiddish: And as the Rebbe (chasidic rabbi) sings ... It is actually a parody of chasidism written probably by misnagdim (that was in Yiddish, in modern Hebrew mitnagdim), folks who were not terribly fond of the chasidim. The first couple of verses go something like this:

-----------------------------------------------------------------

Und az der Rebbe zingt, und as der Rebbe zingt, Zingen alle chasidim, zingen alle chasidim

And as the Rebbe sings, and as the Rebbe sings
So sing all chasidim, so sing all chasidim
...
Und az der Rebbe shloft, und as der rebbe shloft, shlofen alle chasidim, shlofen alle chasidim

And when the Rebbe sleeps, and when the Rebbe sleeps,
Then all the chasidim go to sleep, then all the chasidim go to sleep

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I think you get the idea, but being both Jewish and a rabbi I cannot help myself from telling you anyway! The mitnagdim - the opponents of the Chasidic movement in 19th century Eastern Europe (Poland, Russia, Ukraine etc.) mocked the chasidim for being sheep, blind followers of their spiritual leader, their rebbe.

Now you have to know a little bit about me relevant to chasidim and mitnagdim. My mother Zeni comes from a long line of chasidic rebbes. Her father, Reb Katriel (Hebrew for: God is my crown) Gross was a rebbe in the Vizhnitzer lineage, as a well as a schochet (Kosher slaughterer) and a mohel (ritual circumcizer). She came from a small town, Tereshva in Zakarpatia, now part of the western Ukraine. My father David (z"l - his memory for a blessing) worked as an electrician, and came from a modern Orthodox (misnagdish) family in Vilna - now the capital of Lithuania. He cames from at least two-and-a-half centuries of misnagdish rabbis in Lithuania. So in Ashkenazy Jewish terms, I am a mutt - the result of a mixed marriage. But that is a story for another time.

So this is a long-winded way of explaining the title of this blog: Und Az Der Rebbe Zingt. I have done a lot of different things in my life. I have a PhD in applied mathematics and spent 30 years in the software industry. Around 1995 I came to the end of the road for organizing my life entirely around my intellect, and realized that I had no choice but to walk the path of the heart. That led to getting into Co-dependents Anonymous - a twelve-step program, becoming an inter-faith hospital chaplain (CPE Level 2), and recently a rabbi with a vocation for prison chaplaincy and half-way houses for ex-convicts and addicts in recovery. Upon becoming ordained, many of my friends said: "You've been a rabbi - really, a rebbe - all your life. What took you so long?"

I have vast compassion for folks in recovery. I have next to no patience for synagogue politics. Nor do synagogue boards have much patience for me! This became clear during my last year of rabbinic school (AJR in Los Angeles) when I served as interim rabbi of a Reconstructionist synagogue in the California wine country. And yet I yearn to be a rebbe, a neo-chasidic rebbe. OK, I don't have the payes (the side-curls) and I don't wear the black jacket and pants. It doesn't matter: Ha-Shem (G!d) knows the heart. G!d doesn't pay attention to external appearances.

When I was in my twenties, my mother would call me. After the traditional berating for not calling her, she would say: "So, nu, ah-Reb Tsvi: how are you?" This was a ritual. I would answer: "Fine, mom." She would then say: "So, nu, ah-Reb Tsvi: and how are you chasidim?" Referring to the twenty people or so that I would invite to my one-bedroom apartment in Palo Alto for Shabbat dinner Friday night. And I would answer: "They're fine too, Mom."

I wonder who my chasidim are and who they will be?
Und az der Rebbe zingt ...
I guess it depends on the niggun (melody) that the rebbe sings.

Writing for me is confessional and healing. It is also a way to discern the path that the Boss has for me, and a way of dealing with the inevitable pebbles to boulders on the path. My hope is that what I write here will be of use to others who walk a spiritual path. I have a lot of material that I want to put out here. If blogging is right for me, I expect over time that certain patterns to emerge in my writing.

Monday evening (December 14, 2009), we light four candles for Chanukkah. May each of us be blessed to find the light that is ours and ours alone to bring into the world at this, the darkest time of the year.