I must begin by clarifying that I start from the position of what might be called “spiritual atheism.” I conceive of the physical world as sacred, and I want to connect with that conception as a source of meaning – that is to say, to have my emotional experience of living in my body in the world line up with my conceptual understanding. I would like to have that desire, that search, be supported in community.
I understand myself and my individual life to be the result of coevolution. Human beings, animals, plants and fungi exist in relationship to each other and the planet. I know all life, including mine, is held and nurtured by the world, although the world doesn’t “care about” me and it’s as dangerous as it is nurturing. As humans are beginning to recognize these days, our current civilization is well on its way to exceeding the limits it requires for survival. The planet will no doubt continue, and whatever animals, plants and fungi persist after humans are gone will go on evolving until the sun dies. Consciousness similar to ours might even evolve again. Or not.
Yet my life seems to have meaning and value in a religious or spiritual sense. The word “sacred” seems to fit somewhere. I know intellectually that I am part of the universe, that there is no real boundary between me and the world—everything is transition and membrane. I want to experience that interdependence, not just conceive of it. That is the basis of the liturgy I hope to find or create. In a way, it’s the basis of my poetry.
It seems to me that a major difference between liturgy and poetry is that liturgy speaks with a collective voice, while poetry ultimately represents one speaker, the writer, who may use many kinds of voices. Poetry has no limits in diction and imagery, while liturgy seems to limit both.
What liturgy (Jewish or other) would point me and people like me toward the sense of connection I’m looking for, framing it in a communal context? My understanding of liturgy comes from contexts where the God-concept is taken for granted and sought out as a source of meaning. Whatever philosophical or theological form it takes, the God-concept seems to assume a relationship of caring between “God” and individual human beings. This is the aspect of the God-concept I most reject. In rabbinic tradition, there are exceptions to this view, the idea of a hidden or absent God, but this esoteric perspective does not seem to be reflected in Jewish liturgy.
A poem creates an imaginative experience, using imagery as well as the music of language and voice. A poem communicates privately, evoking something like the writer’s imaginative experience within the reader or hearer. The better the poem is, the more it offers a new experience – not just a new thought, maybe not even a new thought at the conceptual level, but something expressed in a way that makes it new again. That’s what most poetry strives for, I think.
Liturgy seems to be more declaratory and invocational. When spoken aloud, it usually addresses and tries to connect with some element of the universe, most often characterized as a personality, in a way that aligns with the belief system assumed to be shared by the group using the liturgy. When spoken internally, as prayer or meditation, it still implicitly reflects the belief system of the group. This may limit the imagistic possibilities of liturgy, because the imagery must be immediately available to everyone in the group. It is not likely to surprise or startle, because its purpose is bonding the group rather than taking people in an unfamiliar direction. Jewish liturgy does this as much as any, invoking connection to a “God” that cares for the world. Or at least our diction and imagery assume that.
Liturgy creates several problems for me, both in general and Jewish liturgy in particular. For one thing, I resist being told what I think or should think. In addition, my relationship to language is exploratory, a way of asking questions about life. Both writing and reading others’ work offer the possibility of surprise and new ways of experiencing reality. As a writer, I hope to discover what I perceive/believe/feel. As a reader, I hope to share the way other writers experience their own lives and sensibilities.
Liturgy tells me what I think or should think, or requires me to make an effort to translate prefabricated concepts and images, trying to find a connection. I don’t experience much reward for the effort other than being part of the group carrying forward the tradition of my Jewish ancestors. That has never been enough. One of my deepest reasons for feeling at home in Quakerism is that, both in explicit teachings and in the experience of Meeting for Worship, no one can tell me what to think or what language to use to communicate my ideas and experiences. The discipline of silence requires that people only speak from the deepest truths they can find. Is there room in any liturgy for language that is truly personal? Both true and personal? The Quaker tradition mostly seems to say no, and so silent Meetings reject liturgy. Yet the tinge of Christianity in even progressive Meetings has made whole-heartedness difficult for me.
Particular aspects of Judaism brought me into active Jewish participation in the middle of my life. I have not seen them in other traditions, to the extent that I have explored other traditions. Among the core aspects of Judaism I value are:
- argument “for the sake of Heaven,” that is, trying to find truth by a mutual process of seeking;
- recognizing life in the body as the only possible way to the sacred (whatever that is);
- honoring and cultivating intellect;
- a textual tradition including self-contradiction, endless exploration and mythic richness;
- the humaneness that (sometimes) tries to include even heretics in the community;
- the idea of menschlikheit, that is, trying to be good human beings because we intuitively understand other people’s pain.
Most liturgy and especially the God-concept do not draw me in or make me feel more a part of the Jewish community. Instead, they push me away. I have found Jewish writers who open the tradition to me, particularly Arthur Waskow, Lawrence Kushner, Rami Shapiro, and moments of Aviva Zornberg. I have never found anything similar in worship services.
The question driving this essay is: can a Jewish liturgy exist that satisfies me or challenges me in a way I find meaningful, that is Jewish without being theistic? My brief experience of Humanistic Judaism totally failed to do so, because the movement seems to reject the possibility of the sacred altogether.
There are a lot of secular Jews who acknowledge a tug toward Jewish participation without acting on it. Others satisfy their spiritual needs in the Eastern meditative traditions, Unitarianism, Quakerism, and other options. I keep thinking that a liturgy that speaks to me might speak to some of them (or for some of us). What would such a liturgy be like? How can a liturgy speak for us “heterodox Jews” without putting us in a spiritual strait-jacket? How can it uplift the Jewish values I mentioned without requiring a God-concept?
Judy Kerman is a poet, singer and artist. She became Bat MitzvahLit. Commandment. It is traditionally held that there are 613 mitzvot (plural) in Judaism, both postive commandments (mandating actions) and negative commandments (prohibiting actions). Mitzvah has also become colloquially assumed to mean the idea of a “good deed." at 50 after discovering Reconstructionism. She considers herself to be a spiritual atheist in the Jewish tradition going back to Spinoza.
