Avoiding Surplus Guilt for the Day of At-One-Ment
Friends, many years ago I attended a pre-high holidays workshop at my Toronto synagogue led by psychiatrist Dr. Norman Doidge. He lectured on the concept of ‘surplus guilt’ that can be incapacitating and unhelpful as we navigate our Jewish identities and spiritual growth in these challenging times.
Let’s face it. Jews are good at guilt. Our ancient prophets lectured us on the concept that our many misfortunes personal, historical and communal were often linked to our departure from the key tenets and practices of our faith. We often drifted into various forms of syncretism (sharing the religions of our surroundings) and various forms of idolatry, or ‘worshipping the work of our own hands’ and worshipping God in appearance only, waiting for the end of the holidays to revert to exploitive and unethical business and economic practices.
I would suggest that in our current age of narcissistic excess, that too often I have witnessed a tendency in many uptown synagogues to worship our egos, bank accounts, or ‘the work of our loins’ or the birth of spoiled, undisciplined, uncommitted and spiritually illiterate children as though to prove that we had done our duty to perpetuate and sustain the Jewish people and its institutions and traditions. I firmly believe that quality and not quantity is more the question, and so did my teachers.
Pirkei Avot 4.3 tells us that we may not dismiss the value of any human being, for every one of us has our moment and our purpose, some of which may be challenging to our families and communities of origin.
https://www.sefaria.org/Pirkei_Avot.4.3?lang=bi
Our ancestor Abraham is celebrated in our liturgy, but it is said that he was the son of an idol maker, Terah, and that Abraham himself had to go on a long spiritual journey away from his idolatrous family and culture of origin to find himself spiritually, to establish ethical monotheism as the hallmark of the Jewish faith, and in so doing, to establish us as a people. Abraham had to go out from his place, for himself, and ultimately for others, even for us today.
https://www.chabad.org/parshah/article_cdo/aid/3161/jewish/Lech-Lecha-in-a-Nutshell.htm
Have you ever had an outfit or a pair of shoes you loved and had invested in significantly, only to realize that try as you might, they just don’t fit you anymore? This is true for many of us, not only practically in everyday life, but also in our spiritual practices. There are different spiritual strokes for different folks.
The Pew Centre reports indicate that many young people are leaving mainstream Judaism and abandoning support for Israel. In many cases they are undereducated Jewishly and so were their parents. They are facing unprecedented risks and social pressures including workplace and on-campus anti-semitic harassment and anti-Israel sentiment and rising hate crimes designed to intimidate them from their lawful purposes and social, educational, civic and professional participation and attainments. In the long term this will have catastrophic effects on the Jewish institutions who depend on their career success and charitable contributions. Think about this!
Often, they are trying to make the best of a bad bargain and economic and social challenges for their generation that were not faced by my generation. Let’s support them and stop condemning them.
Those of us who have done a bit of extracurricular ecumenical reading and spiritual studies realize that there are different forms of worship for different types of people. In his masterful study of spirituality, The Perennial Philosophy, Aldous Huxley suggests that there are forms of spiritual worship and practice that some of us may have outgrown, and to urge us to fit into these would be positively harmful to our spiritual development and perhaps contribute to greater alienation from Jewish life and our spiritual potential. I recommend it highly:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Perennial_Philosophy
We are not our parents or grandparents, and a key task of our maturation and individuation as adult Jews is to find ways of being ourselves and being Jewish in healthy ways that meet our needs and do not cripple us or hold us back unnecessarily. This challenge is often especially difficult for children of Holocaust survivors. The suffering of our parents and families and their communities and their resulting limitations and guilt-making have been too often visited on us as children. We must find positive reasons to be Jewish.
Each of us is commanded to take responsibility for our spiritual development and learning and to study our tradition, to find study partners and appropriate teachers, as we learn in Pirkei Avot 1.6, and to avoid bad company and damaging influences.
https://www.sefaria.org/Pirkei_Avot.1.6?lang=bi
In the Bhagavad Gita, the text of Hinduism and Yoga Philosophy, it is suggested that there are three main types of spiritual worship. Yoga means 'yoke' to God, and this yoke (which we call Torah or fear of God) can take multiple forms.
Karma Yoga is the path of dedicated spiritual action – it may include serving in the army, fighting a just war, charitable acts, social change, advocacy and activism. Gyana Yoga is the path of spiritual study and philosophy and metaphysics. Though it may seem dry, it enables the student to reach insights of the nature of God and awareness of God's foundational existence underpinning the universe and all our lives in every moment. Bhakti Yoga is the path of meditation and prayer, for those capable of it.
At their best, they enable the individual student to reach heights of spiritual and ethical insight that are often unattainable in crowded and noisy and undisciplined 'top down' synagogue services and sermons and Jewish institutions privileging our lowest common denominator sentiments and chest-thumping chauvinistic prejudices.
Ideally, Jewish practice combines all of these, in the home and in the community, but each of us must find a path for ourselves and for others. Many years ago, I was very much influenced by the work of Thomas Moore, a former Catholic monk who wrote a series of books on The Care of the Soul. I admire his work and series of books considering the soul requirements of relationships and work, etc. Check him out!
https://www.spiritualityandpractice.com/book-reviews/view/829/care-of-the-soul
Moore uses a compassionate interpretive approach to spiritual crises and the need for growth by employing holistic insights from philosophy, medieval medicine, and literary mythology. One of his greatest recommendations is that we should revisit the places of worship of our childhoods, whether they are churches, synagogues, temples or mosques, and let them inspire us as they will. I did so, many years ago, with some struggles and changes, and here we are!
The Buddhists and contemporary therapists often speak of self-compassion. I think this is a good place to start. We must value ourselves and each other in healthy ways. We must be honest with ourselves and each other on our needs and limits. We must learn to forgive ourselves and each other, even when it is hard, because carrying that pain is a burden that is unhealthy for us.
We must sometimes take the difficult decision to walk away from relationships or settings or beliefs that cripple us or manipulate us unduly or impede our legitimate learning, growth and development. This is often true for women and LGBTQ people. Sometimes we need to walk away, and grieve those losses and learn from them. Sometimes we need to find new families of choice, new communities, new relationships, and new ways of being in fresh settings that do not limit us unfairly.
I will close with a musical reference from the stories of the Buddha. Buddha had a student, Sona, who was very zealous and strict in his religious practices, like Shammai in the days of our Talmudic sages, but Sona found no contentment and no peace and even his search for wisdom was impeded.
Buddha asked this young man if he had played the lute in his youth. He had. Buddha asked him if the notes sounded correctly when the strings were over-tightened or overly loose. They did not. Buddha suggested that the student undertake his spiritual journey as one would tune a lute, and he would find greater contentment, peace, and harmony. There are similar sentiments in the Book of Ecclesiastes urging us not to try to be 'too good' or too strict or punctilious and sanctimonious or self-righteous in our religious observance.
With that in mind, I wish everyone a thoughtful and meaningful Yom Kippur, or what I like to call the Day of At-Tune-Ment, or At-One-Ment. Please support a food bank for Yizkor and all year round! I will be supporting Leket Israel and our local Jewish Family Services Kosher Food Bank. Please join me! G'mar Chatimah Tova. Best wishes for a Sweet and Happy New Year. Shana Tova.
Am Yisrael Chai. We send our love from Canada.
