A Primer for Jewish Meditation or Shiviti and the Gestures Part 4

The Absolute Basic Jewish Meditation Practice: Shiviti

Of course, gestures alone do not do anything. You need meditating in the heart and mind as well. The gestures serve to make the meditation happen and drive it forward. To that end, I will preface my comments on gestures with a few famous quotes from the Shulhan Aruch, (OH 1:1) which describe the Shiviti Meditation. It is based upon the phrase in Psalms “Shiviti Hashem Lenegdi Tamid” or “I place Hashem before me always.” This is a basic yet exaltedly important meditation for everyday life. This meditation goes back to the Rambam, who details it at the end of the Guide for the Perplexed.

Scripture says, "I place Hashem before me always." This is a great concept in the Torah and a paramount attribute for the Zadikim who walk in the way of G-d. The way in which a person sits, moves around, and carries out his daily activities while he is alone his house is not the same way he would engage in these activities while standing before a King. In addition, the way one speaks with his family and the conversation he has with his relatives is not the same manner in which he would speak while in the presence of a King. Surely when one considers in his mind that the mighty King, The Holy One blessed be his name, where the whole world is filled with his glory, stands before him and sees his deeds, as it states: "Can a man hide in secret and be unseen by me!” immediately the fear and awed of Hashem will descend upon him and he will always be ashamed before G-d. 

On the face of it this meditation is a straightforward visualization exercise. Imagine you are in the presence of a King, and not just any King, but the King of Kings. The presence of Hashem is very hard to visualize, but the presence of an earthly king is easier. When you are mindful of how your behavior changes because of this visualization, you infinitely expand the presence of the King in your mind (this means knowing that the real presence is always beyond what you can visualize) and let this presence hover in your mind throughout the day as far as possible.

It is difficult for most of us in this age of democracy in relating to this meditation, and understanding what we are supposed to get with it. No wonder many of us would rather imagine blue light or cosmic energy. Royals today are just irrelevant, although most of us probably still have some sense of honor and reverence for a head of state, and would feel quite out of the ordinary if we were called in for an audience with a president, prime minister or constitutional monarch. However, I think there is a more fundamental concern with the use of visualization. Imagining the King watching you is just a fantasy if you don’t know the King of Kings is real. If you have knowledge of Hashem, then you can use imagination as a medium for manifesting the Divine presence. The idea is not to imagine a human king, but to imagine the majesty and fear of the King's presence as it effects you emotionally and physically. Then you need to multiply this feeling times itself, until it reaches beyond what your experience can contain.You will know that you have found the real presence when, in the course of the meditation the imagination falls away, and you become aware in your mind and heart of the presence that transcends any human concept of Kingship. Knowing of Hashem is the foundation of this meditation, so you cannot avoid the work of clarifying for yourself the faith you have received from your tradition. That can be a problem for us, since our age is not one that encourages deep questions. The texts that help people do the work of establishing knowledge of God are seldom studied. Many tout the supremacy of simple faith over intellectual study. I have no interest at this point in arguing the principles of Jewish faith and how one can know them, be it through reason, faith, tradition or intuition. I am simply stating that visualization can get you to a destination, so it is best to know in your heart and mind that the destination is real. Now if, as it turns out, you honestly don’t know if God is real or not, doing this meditation is one way of finding out. When the imagination falls away and the presence remains, you have found God. The meditation will be quite useless to people who believe in the principles of Judaism because everybody in the community does, or because an authority figure told them its so, or because they are comfortable in their identity and prefer to play it safe.

I want to emphasize here that the Shiviti Meditation is not necessarily a Kabalistic one. It is appropriate (some might say obligatory) for all flavors of Judaism. It only becomes Kabalistic when one begins visualizing the letters of the Divine name. The gestures are not specifically Kabalistic either, but rather generically Jewish. In my presentation of them, I have tried to avoid Kabalistic explanations, even when pulling material from Hassidic sources. Of course, I have nothing against Kabbalah. The opposite is the case.  However, not all Jews emphasize Kabbalah in their ideology or practices, and I want me presentation of the Shiviti meditation and the gestures to be as universal as possible. We are all commanded by the Torah to affirm God’s reality, to deny the worship of anything else as well as to love and fear Him. This is the essence of Jewish Meditation, and it is not just for those who embrace Kabbalah or Hassidut. 

A Primer for Jewish Meditation or Shiviti and the Gestures Part 3

Gestures Transmitted by Observation and Imitation

But lately, I have come to revise my understanding that Jewish Meditation is about directing the mind without technique, and I have come to realize that techniques are plentiful too. This does not alter the nature of Jewish spiritual practice as an encounter. No amount of technique can force God’s hand. But I must concede that at the beginning of the journey the techniques are extremely helpful for getting focused. I did them for years without actually noticing them. Calling them “techniques” is perhaps too grandiose, they are really more “gestures.” Still they can have a powerful effect. They are not described much. They are seen and imitated. Often they are so obvious that no-one would consider labeling them as techniques for anything. Where does one go to learn them?  Any synagogue might present some. I learned them in Hassidic communities, where they are presented, I think, with greater emphasis and ecstasy.

There is a long standing tradition in Hasssidic communities that a Rebbe or Tzaddik’s actions are supposed to be witnessed. The Tzaddik prays, studies, eats, sings, dances and meditates at the center of a community which watches his every movement. For many viewers of the Tzaddik’s Divine service, the point of watching is to partake vicariously in the Tzaddik’s experience, which presumably is far above the comprehension of the average person. Undoubtedly, witnessing encourages imitation as well, so that a Tzaddik’s movements and gestures become part of the collective mannerisms and behavior of that community. Indeed there is a humorous old Yiddish song “When the Rebbe Sings, all the Hassidim sing. When the Rebbe groans, all the Hassidim groan. When the Rebbe cries all the Hassidim cry. When the Rebbe dances al the Hassidim dance.” One can see the whole range of the Tzaddik’s actions and gestures, as least as they are presented in public. There is no Halacha that mandates them, or defines how they should be done, nevertheless these actions and gestures form the basic movements of the Tzaddik’s method. They are imitated, learned and remembered in a living tradition. When the individual is ready to embark on the spiritual quest, these actions and gestures form the bodily Alef Bet for working the mind.

At this point, it gets rather funny too. The two most basic gestures (let’s face it) are shaking back and forth and saying “Oy!” or as one would say in Yiddish “shokeling” and “krechtzing” (or perhaps "Kvetching".) These gestures are identifiably Jewish, (even though Sufis also do a kind of shokeling) and they have been subject of a great many jokes and comments. To some, sitting silently in the Lotus Position may seem more dignified and spiritual-looking. But in the end, a Jew is a Jew, and if you were to find me in a deep meditation, you may rest assured that like my ancestors before me, I will be doing at least some shockleling and krechtzing. There is nothing quite the same. Of course, I can almost hear the snide comments coming at me from my old Yeshiva buddies about me trying to repackage shockeling and krechtzing as a form of Jewish Yoga.

In particular I have a problem with Krechtzing. If Jews posses anything analogous to a sacred syllable it would have to be OY. OY is the basic syllable that carries wordless Hassidic melodies. Many OYs can be lined up so they form OYOYOYOY. Old fashioned Yiddish melodies often utilized extravagant strings of nonsense syllables, a practice that made its way to Broadways via Fiddler on the Roof’s “If I was a Rich Man.” Still nothing else approached OY in expressing the deepest religious emotions of a Hassidic community and its Tzaddik. Here I must confess. I hate OY. My mother’s family was a well established American family from Chicago. They were reformed Jews and they never said OY. My fathers family, however, were all from Transylvania and they kvetched all the time about everything. If things were bad they said OY. If things were good they said OY too, in a tone just as whiny and depressing. Nu, in Europe Jews had a great deal to Krechts about. But at some point, I think, OY became a habitual response to everything, even wonderful things. I can still hear my aunt describe a neighbor’s good fortune “Moishe Green! OY! Nebech a Yid! He’s done very well in the hat business! OYOY!” (“Nebech a Yid” translates roughly as “How sad! A Jew!”) At any rate, once I made myself a promise that I wasn’t going to Krechts! My life, Thank God, has been very good. Sometimes there are frustrations, but I refuse to Krechts about them. Instead I give thanks for the freedom and bounty of this time, and I hope and pray that it become worldwide and for all time.

Later on I discovered that the real intent of the krechts is to express deep longing for the divine, not just as felt by the individual person, but as embedded in the whole universe, in the fabric of being, space and time.  It is not about moaning and groaning over the misery of one’s fate, although one can certainly do so out of a sense of identification with all that is painful in life the world. The krechts lifts the heart towards the Divine as the fulfillment of all yearning. I suspect that the reason why the Western Wall of the temple mount became known as the Wailing Wall is because Jews were always heard to say OY while standing there. It was assumed that they were moaning in misery. Well, a few times a year, like on fast days (and those commemorating the destruction of the Temple in particular) krechtzing is in misery. But on the whole, OY isn’t sad. It is deep. It is a yearning for perfection. It is the yearning of the Jewish People and of the universe for the Divine presence.

I have attempted to exchange OY for some other syllable which sounds better to me, like AHH or YA (which are also done.) Another alternative to OY is to intone words. And there are so many great words to choose from. So I will say much more about this when I discuss the “Gesture of the Voice”

So let me say for now, that in the following chapter I will give you a list of the Meditative Gestures which are traditionally used to “get into” meditation, to focus and still the mind, and build an awareness of the divine presence. These are gestures that we all know. They are so obvious that we don’t really see them. How many times does the question come up “Why do Jews shake when they pray?” Shaking is just one of many gestures. Each has a meaning and a function. The meanings are often found in the texts, but the instructions for the gestures come from observation and imitation. 

A Primer for Jewish Meditation or Shiviti and the Gestures Part 2

Jewish Meditation, Alive and Well

In any event, the fear that we today have no continuous meditative traditions is, in my experience, unfounded. Whether it is called “Hitbodedut”, “Hitbonenut”, “Kavvanah” or “Yihudim,” Jewish meditation is alive and well. Admittedly, the more westernized Jewish communities in Europe and the US failed to transmit the meditative traditions, largely because it seemed so inconsistent with modern scientism. In the rush to prove Judaism to be rational, much of the experiential aspects of Jewish tradition were jettisoned. Similarly, in the tradition of the Lithuanian Yeshivot, the tendency (in my experience) has been to focus on the legalistic aspects of Torah study which can be subject to analysis, and to avoid anything experiential or “emotional.” Thus Torah and Talmud study emerge as the way to find the Divine presence and even maintain the universe. There is no need to find or encounter God. The encounter is embedded in the Torah, its logic and structure. That logic and structure is the logic and structure of all reality. Torah study is, by its very essence, cleaving to God to the benefit all of reality, even though the Talmudic subject matter studies may be entirely about seemingly trivial matters like eggs laid on a festival, livestock that cause damages or the proper way to enact a sale of a boat.

However, other more “eastern” communities maintained their traditions and passed them on. I refer of course to Hassidim and to Sefardi Kabbalists. Hassidim lived on the borderline of modernity, in a state of deep tension with it. Many Chassidic communities maintain ecstatic and mystical traditions. Surprisingly, the major concern in Chassidic communities in not necessarily with the transmission of religious experience, mystical doctrine or forms of ecstatic worship. Most Chassidic groups are concerned primarily with the transmission of traditions in general, even when such traditions seem to run counter to the Halacha is learned from books. Mostly this tendency results in a more stringent practice of Jewish law. Many of these traditions are old pietistic practices. But on occasion the reliance on authoritative traditions results in leniencies as well. Hassidim are not always “more orthodox” but they are always more traditional. They are also quite adept at claiming that nothing changes, even when it is obvious that things have changed.  No matter how a tradition arose, Chassidim will maintain it steadfastly. As for the Sefardic communities of North Africa and the Middle East, the confrontation with modernity came much later. Modernity is a European idea. Many of the Sefardic communities did not identify completely with Europe and never entirely bought into modernity. Thus were many of their traditional attitudes and practices spared.

Wandering in Search of the Gate

So there are places in the world to day where one can learn authentic meditative practices. Still, there are difficulties. Let me put it this way. If you walk into a Mediation center you will see people obviously cultivating the transformation of consciousness. They are obviously meditating, and they are getting instructions on the “nuts and bolts” of how to sit, breathe, pose, still the mind and many other specific things.

If you walk into a Kaballah Yeshiva you will not see anything like that. You will see people performing Divine service, studying texts (both Kabalistic and Talmudic), conversing with each other, and listening to lectures. If you go to a Chassidic Yeshiva, you will find no less Talmud study than at any other yeshiva. You will not find anyone who appears to be meditating. There is certainly no instruction given in body postures, breathing techniques, stilling the mind or anything similar. Meditation is very much a private affair. That fellow in the Yeshiva sitting in the corner with his eyes closed…is he asleep? Is he experiencing the sublime? And if I tap him on his shoulder and ask him…he will certainly claim to have accidentally fallen asleep. A de-emphasis on technique seems to be part of the tradition. Once when I asked my teacher how to do a certain meditative visualization which he recommended for beginners, he too his finger, pointed to the place in the book where the visualization was explained, and said “Here it is, do what it says.”

“But how should I do it?”

“Just do it”

“Sitting or standing? How should I sit? What do I do?”

“You worry too much. Just do it. Find yourself a quiet spot and do it The lest will happen by itself”

This attitude, I think typifies much of how Jewish tradition deals with meditation. There are copious descriptions of the meditative states and what you are supposed to find in them. There is almost no description of how you are supposed to get into the meditative state. Even the most elementary aspect of “Being mindful of the breath” is almost entirely lacking. I received a few instructions about breathing, but nothing more. Prayers and rituals, of course, are done communally, but meditation, being perceived as an “inner” experience is done alone. There is even a tendency to hide meditation from sight. I think that this lack Technique and lack of public presence makes Jewish meditation hard to notice even when it is happening in front of your nose. While at first I was frustrated, I eventually came to understand that this lack of technique and public practice is in actuality the natural way that Jewish Meditation is practiced and transmitted. The sought after states arise in aloneness and through a personal spontaneous gate. When an individual chooses to go beyond texts, study, laws and observances, he/she goes beyond technique. That, it seemed to me, was the essence of the Jewish Meditative path.

According to Rabbi Avraham Ben haRambam in his Sefer Hamaspik, Jewish meditation is a preparation for an encounter. While some kinds of meditation may be thought of as a kind of science in the sense that they are thought to work objectively like a natural process, a Jewish spiritual experience just has to happen, like a meeting you have prepared and longed for but which is not in your hands to control. That being the case there is no technique for “getting it” You have to wander through the dry desert until the encounter happens to you.

The encounter cannot be forced, but in can be enabled. One cannot conceive of the encounter without Torah and Mitzvoth, the cleansing, sanctifying and empowering energy conveyed by fulfilling Halacha, the strengthening of the mind that results from focusing it on God’s law, the breaking through the Shells of misunderstanding that surround the radiant meaning of a Mishna, a Talmudic discussion or a Halachic decision. All this is shared communal experience, and the personal inner gates will not open to one who has not passed through the outer gates first.

A Primer for Jewish Meditation or Shiviti and the Gestures Part 1

A Primer for Jewish Meditation

Some Personal Reflections

Let me begin this essay by quoting Rabbi Alan Lew of Makor Or:

“I am largely indifferent to the argument as to whether or not there are precedents for meditation in Kabbalah. Certainly the Jewish mystical tradition includes a range of exercises for contemplative spiritual transformation. But the context and the actual practice of these exercises has largely been lost. I very much appreciate the honesty of teachers…who readily admit that they are not teaching a continuous, received tradition of Jewish mediation, but are, rather, inventing a new tradition of Jewish meditation out of a creative reworking of the raw materials of Jewish Mysticism. My own experience however, is that Jewish meditation is any kind of meditation, when done in a Jewish context, in the service of Jewish spiritual activity— in the Jewish morphic field, as it were...”

However, I am not indifferent to the question of the authenticity of Jewish Meditative practice as it is taught or performed today. When you get past my contemporary externals, I remain a Yeshiva student at heart, a first born child from a semi-Hassidic family. I had my issues with the lack of spiritual depth that I found orthodox and even Hassidic Judaism, where everything seemed to be focused on the correctness of one’s behavior, the level of one’s identification with the proper group, and most distressingly, on the proper look and mannerisms of a respectable Jew or Yeshiva student. To a large extent, questions about “what it all means” were discouraged, or worse, taken as an indication that one’s faith was lacking. While my family has strong ties to Hassidut, I was trained primarily in “Lithuanian style” Yeshivot. Many of my early teachers expected us to take the impossible Aggadot of the Talmud as literal facts, and urged us to see the study of Talmud, the clarification of the Halacha and the actions of normative Jewish practice as being completely adequate for perfecting the soul and achieving life in the world to come. I felt myself driven to ask the big questions which came to me simultaneously from the rationalism and scientism of the modern world as well as from the Mitzvot and Halachot themselves. So much Halacha deals with the seemingly trivial and uninspiring particulars of life, like the famous “egg laid on a festival” which is the subject of a voluminous literature. I would wonder “How far this seemed from the real concerns of religion and spirituality!” My teachers for the most part would reply using the Talmud’s paraphrase of a verse in Jeremiah “If only they would abandon Me and keep my Torah!” This was intended as a way of saying “God is best served when we forget about Him and the spiritual life which seeks to find Him and focus on the logical structures of the Halacha, for that, in the end, is the true closeness to the Divine.”

Fortunately, I had other teachers as well, whom I encountered in my teens, who opened my mind to other vistas and skylines ands convinced me that there was a spiritual dimension to Judaism. I actually have had quite a bit of guidance from my teachers over the years. The literature which dealt with the “big” questions had both rationalist and mystical elements. I poured myself into these texts, working from Hassidism, to Mimonidean rationalism, back to Kabbalah, Lurianic Kabbalah and Zohar. In the meanwhile I went from being a Talmud teacher, to a US army chaplain, and after moving to Israel I became a student on two Kabbalah Yeshovot in Jerusalem, one Ashkenazi and the other Sefardi. At the same time I pursued academic knowledge as well. Because of my academic, “Modernish” and “Americanish” leanings (to use some not-complementary yiddishisms) I am particularly sensitive to the issue of my “authenticity.” I would like to convey the traditions I received in a way that presents them as they are, not as I would wish them to be, and not as my readers or students would like them to be.

Of course, there is no denying that I attempt to present the tradition in a way which makes it conversant with contemporary life. I also cannot deny that in some way, I transform the traditions by making “my” sense out of them. Otherwise, I would not know them myself. Besides, if I transmitted them exactly as I got them I would be failing my students. For the most part; my students are not from within the ultra-orthodox communities. The members of those communities have no need for someone like me. Here I am sitting on top of a narrow uncomfortable fence. Still, I believe that I do, by God’s mercy, manage to be both authentic and contemporary. As I stated at the outset, I am very concerned with whether my meditative practice is a real part of the Jewish Tradition. If meditation in general, or any meditative technique is not Jewish then we should not, to my mind, make it part of our practice of Judaism. Indeed there is great wisdom in the wide world outside Judaism. One can and should meditate for one’s overall health and well being. I see no difference between doing a Yoga posture and taking fish oil pills to control cholesterol. But, the Torah forbids us from borrowing practices from other religions and adding them to Judaism to make our Divine service more fulfilling.