Primer part 7

Finding a Place and Time

It is a good idea to find yourself a special place for meditating. The place can be in your home, or out in nature. There is nothing wrong with having more than one place. Forests and caves have been popular choices, as well as graves of zaddikim (if you know of any zaddikim buried in caves, so much the better!) In the end, your local synagogue or Bet Midrash may be the best place of all. You can consider showing up half an hour early for Prayers and using the time for meditating. While in synagogue you should try to establish a spot you habitually use. You may find yourself drawn towards a certain spot, sometimes for no particular reason. I have always let my intuitions guide me.

There are no hard rules for picking a place, other than you should feel focused and calm there. While your local synagogue has the advantage of being a real sacred space unfortunately it is not always conducive to a calm and focused state of mind. You need a place where you won’t be self conscious, and if your local synagogue insists on a having formal, correct decorum, you won’t feel comfortable shaking, yelling and jumping around. If you think you will be doing gestures in a pronounced way, you will need someplace more private. There are some hassidic synagogues where everybody carries on in a pronounced way. The purpose is to create the kind of environment where you will have no need to worry that others think you’ve lost it, but then such places are often not conducive to a calm focused state of mind. Preferably, your place should be clean and nice smelling, and –let’s face it—some Hassidic synagogues leave something to be desired on that score. Of course some quiet spot in a forest could be wonderful, but spooky for people with spider and snake phobias. Likewise caves are a challenge to keep clean. Graves of zaddikim are plentiful in Israel and no-one will hassle you if you are seen carrying on there in the middle of the night. However, I would stay out of the mausoleums at the Forest Lawns Eternal Rest Park. Come to think of it, finding a place can be a challenge sometimes. For a long time, my place was in the laundry room in front of the window. I also have a little pine dotted dune at the top of a cliff where the surf pounds the sand. In the end, even if your place is not ideal it will be great because you are going to do great things there.

So, humor aside, your place should have as many of the following attributes as you can find: 1) Sanctity and or connection to nature, 2) Good quiet vibes and atmosphere 3) Cleanliness and nice smells, 4) Privacy and 5) Proximity. This means that your place should be close enough that it won’t be a drag getting there and back.

The best time for your meditation session is in the second half of the night, or during early morning, so it can feed into your daily prayers. If that doesn’t work, then any time is fine, just try to fit your meditation session so it prepares you for performing some mitzva or prayer that is part of your day.

Not only should your place be clean, you should also make a point of being clean yourself and wearing clean good smelling clothing. Be careful with basic hygiene. Go to the bathroom. Never underestimate the spiritual value of good regular movements. (According to the Talmud in Berachot, one who wakes up, goes to the bathroom, does the ritual hand washing, puts on tefillin, says shema and prays, is seen as building the altar in the temple and offering a sacrifice on it! So eat lots of fibre! Forgive me if I seem to be getting extreme here, but this is important both spiritually and for your health! Don’t rely on toilet paper to get you clean. Use water. You can always tell you are in a Kabbalah Yeshiva if the toilets all have little bidets installed in them!) Did I mention that you should brush your teeth? No point in searching for God with all that yucky plaque from last night. If you can get to a Mikveh, fantastic! If you don’t have a Mikveh in your area, you can shower and let “9 Kavs” (24 quarts) of water flow over you. This is usually estimated as being about three buckets, and any unrushed shower will probably use this much water anyway. In a very limited way, 9 Kavs is considered equivalent to the Mikveh for the purposes of sanctification and prayer (but not for Niddah or conversion which requires a real Mikveh.)

Once you have you place picked out there is a beautiful Kavvanah  you can do to “make an acquisition” of it for your meditation. Firstly, if you are fortunate enough to have a synagogue to meditate in, you can actually rent the place from the sexton. If not, well no harm done. The next step is to stand in your place and visualize the name YOD- HE- VAV-HE. Do not pronounce the letters, just see them. Then multiply the letter by each other. That is how you generate spaces mathematicly, right? Try to visualize YODxYOD (which is gematria ten times ten =100.) In your mind it should look like this :

י י י י י י י י י י 

Then visualize HExHE (five times five =25)

ה ה ה ה ה

 Then visualize VAVxVAV (six times six =36)

ו ו ו ו ו ו

And again HExHE (five times five =25)

ה ה ה ה ה

This all adds up to… (drumrole please) 186, which is the numerical equivalent of the word “place”

מקום

So visualize these letters, and dedicate yourself to using this place in a holy way, so you can find God (also referred to in Hebrew as “The Place”) 

המקום

I have heard of some people encircling their place seven times. I have even heard of some zaddikim who dance out the letters, taking ten steps here, five steps there etc, but I have never actually seen this done. I won’t recommend anything I have not seen first hand, but of course if you feel like dancing, why not?

As I said at the outset, not everybody is comfortable doing Kabbalah. When you start imagining letters and names that is when you have crossed the line between regular serious Divine service and Kabbalah. For those of you who want to avoid the Kabbalah, skip the visualization and go straight to the following little prayer: (In case you’re wondering it’s an original)

Master of all the worlds: In this place I will try to fulfill your commandments to believe in You and only You, to love You, to be in awe of You and do your will. Grant me success and draw me close to you always. Fulfill through me the verse: “One thing I asked from Hashem, and that I will request. Let me stay in the House of Hashem all the days of my life, to see the sweetness of Hashem and visit his sanctuary. Make your presence known in the world and redeem us! Amen!

Primer part 6

How to do the Gestures.

The gestures are meant to help you bring about the shifts in awareness. After all, it is possible to investigate the ephemeral nature of reality without actually getting it. You may imagine the name of God and imagine that the king is present; but you might not be able to hold the thought or focus. The idea of the king might leave you cold. The gestures help you concentrate your mind and make it reach down into your physical and emotional dimensions. The mind can think, but only when the heart and body awaken do spiritual truths become real. This reminds me of something I heard in the name of the Rebbi of Ishbitz. The Rebbe was heard to tell God “If you had really wanted that people should do your will, you should have put heaven in front of their faces and physical temptations in books. Instead you put heaven in books and temptations in front of their faces!” The point of meditating is to adjust the ratio between this-worldly experience and the light of truth. When your heart and body begin to respond, then you know you are getting the light. And again, please understand. Nothing is automatic. Believing in God means that you will trust in Him as you search, wait and wander. You can choose to find God, but you can’t force God’s hand. Also meditating with the gestures can look pretty strange, which is another reason why many zaddikim preferred going off into the forests by themselves. Eventually you may find that very small gestures can be more powerful than big dramatic ones. It seems sometimes that the smaller the gesture the greater its impact. But of course there is no right way or wrong way to do them. You have to go with what works and trust that G-d is drawing you close as you search for Him.

 The Shulhan Aruch supplies the basis for using gesture to bring about the transformation of consciousness (OH 48:1) “The pious customarily move about while reading the Torah, since the Torah was given in trembling. Similarly this is done while praying as well, in fulfillment of the verse ‘all my bones will say: Hashem, who is like you!’” while some authorities claim that the amidah prayer is best recited without motion, the Mishna Berurah concludes: “It all depends on the person. A person who focuses well through movement should move about. A person who does not, should just stand and pray making sure to focus the heart. Some of those who move about do so improperly. They keep their bodies stationary and move their heads back and forth in a haughty gesture, which should not be done.” By the way, I have never seen anyone just move his head. I wonder if perhaps the head movers were performing some left over Abulafian practice, which has since faded from common use. Rabbi Avraham Abulafia originally instructed his students to use elaborate head movements. Perhaps the Mishna Berurah was unaware of this tradition, or thought it to be an aberration. Since I want to stick with describing things that I have actually seen in a Hassidic worship, I will not expound on the head movements.

When you perform a gesture, you need to put your whole mind into it. This takes some practice and concentration. I like to think of a gesture as a riddle or a maze that one can solve by going into it and feeling it from the inside. You will experience the gesture as physical movement, as emotion and as thought. It will take you beyond thought as well. As the ancient philosophers noted, there is something in movement which defies logical categories. As you immerse yourself totally in the gesture, the hope is that you will open yourself to the larger process of which it is a part. Rising to the light of truth is a process intrinsic to being in the world. That is why the gestures are drawn from movements that happen spontaneously as a natural part of life. The light of truth is found in the ordinary. In describing the meanings of each gesture what you may discover in them I do not intend to offer a definitive and final statement. The fruit of the practice ripens when you find something new. If you find something other than what I describe, rejoice! It means you are walking the paths for real and encountering what is there. 

Primer part 6

A Primer for Jewish Meditation 5

Commentary to the Shiviti Meditation

Now let me continue with my commentary to the Shiviti Meditation. It looks like the point of the meditation is to create an all pervasive sense of fear and awe in the presence of G-d. This presence is everywhere and leads to almost instinctual shifts in behavior across the whole range of life’s activities. This leads one to ask: what is the point of this meditation? Aside from insuring better compliance with the rules of morality and Halacha, why is it good to be afraid and ashamed all the time? Why is the metaphor of G-d as king so central to this meditation? What are we to do if we have no experience in real life of Kings and courts?

Before I go on, I will just make one observation. Ultra orthodox Jews in general and Hassidim in particular, seem permanently welded to their clothing. The hats, jackets, white shirts, long coats, fur hats, ties or gartels are both uncomfortable and ever-present. There seems to be no acceptable time for casual attire. Of course when you wear formal clothing all day every day or during unseasonable weather it can all end up looking very shabby. This shabby-ness eventually becomes part of the accepted look. Sill, the original point of the ever present formal look is to embody this meditation. The idea is to dress as if one is always ready to greet a great dignitary…no less than the King of Kings, in whose presence we are at all times. On a personal note, I do not wear formal clothing much of the time. I dress appropriately for what I am doing. This doesn’t hamper my Shiviti Meditation. I am a created being, and as such I cannot be on the pinnacle of formality all the time. God knows I need time for shopping, cleaning and even relaxing. That is the way I am made. Still there is a substantial difference relaxing in the presence of the King because that is the way he made me, to just kicking back and letting it all hang out, as if I am alone in the world and owe nothing to anyone.

Now back to the meditation. The point is to realize the ephemeral nature of being. By seeing through ephemeral being you should come to the awareness of God who is absolute being. To live in the presence of the king means being in the presence of one who holds your fate absolutely. The king is seen as a higher order of being because he determines life or death for any one of his subjects. God is King because His Being and Freedom determines our being. The being of any given thing of person as well as the being of the universe as a whole is a freely given gift chosen over nothingness. The deeper and more all pervasive one’s sense of one’s own emptiness and ephemeral nature, the more one is sustained by the truth. One must know that one is ephemeral and that G-d alone is absolute. That knowledge, insofar as it can etched into the very fiber of ones mind and body is true life. To believe that one actually exists for real is to be sunk into illusion, which is death. Fear enters here in two forms. First it is the instinctual fear of non-existence and death than any living being experiences in the presence of that which determined life and death. Secondly, it enters as the fear of slipping from God consciousness, into the illusion of self sustaining existence. Paradoxically, along with fear come the bliss, joy and love of living in the light of truth, which is beyond all fear and mortality. Fear and joy are intertwined, as in the statement of the Talmud in Berachot “In the place of joy there should be fear” Similarly awe and love of God are simultaneous and mutually sustaining. Experiencing these feelings fulfill of two very fundamental Mitzvot.

There is great significance in the perception that each and every ephemeral being, (and particularly the self) exists as objects of G-d’s knowledge. As empty beings it would be appropriate for us to be mere dust in the wind, and yet we are held in a kind of orbit with God’s ultimate being at the center. We partake of God’s truth and discover life in the very midst of our emptiness. This is how we know that God knows us. Many great spiritual thinkers have known of G-d but have mistakenly assumed that in his own perfection he has no knowledge of anything outside himself. They have imagined G-d to be projecting the world in an impersonal detached way. Judaism and its prophetic tradition reject this. We perceive the world as willed, chosen and known. God’s being is beyond categorization, such that to be supreme perfect is also to be intimately involved. Each created being, for all its ephemeral nature and emptiness, knows that it known and loved, and knows that God’s knowledge extends infinitely down to the foundations of being. God’s infinity is beyond measure, but that means there is enough God for every single being no matter how small its size and brief its duration. The original choice at the beginning of time to create the universe is just as well the choice to create this individual being, this individual soul, and this moment in time. God’s knowledge fills every thing and every moment with infinite significance. This moment is chosen from the very beginning. It holds preciousness that cannot be wasted, as Moshe said in the Psalms “Let us know how to count our days and we will bring the heart of wisdom.”

Ephemeral created beings are hungry. We yearn to absorb into ourselves the source of our being. Just as we breathe, drink or eat, try to absorb, somehow, God’s being. All creatures (on some level) and Human beings in particular are instinctively driven to worship. To worship means attempting to fill ourselves with the divine. This hunger to become full of divine being lies at the foundation of the religious impulse felt by all human cultures. As the Rambam pointed out in his Guide, this religious impulse is very problematic. The worship and absorption of divine being requires objects of worship. The objects of worship we generally fashion unconsciously from our projected needs, hopes and fears. Furthermore, the attempt to satiate our hunger seeks an escape from our ephemeral nature and into being substantial. In fact there is no satisfying our hunger except through illusion, while accepting our ephemeral nature makes us live through God’s truth.

It might be said that Torah is anti-religion. If religion is based human needs and posits objects of worship, Torah challenges us not to attempt to control or delimit the Divine Presence. The Torah seems to encourages us to develop some concepts of God, (like Creator, King, Father and even Lover) yet our images continually and endlessly shatter against the His unknowable being. This is how the relationship works. God’s being shatters again and again all attempts to grasp him, turning the structure of knowledge inside out. This process of arising of projections and breaking them is the essence of Torah. Every time God transcends the limits of some imagination of him, the remaining form becomes a structure of Torah, a mitzvah, or a way of organizing life. God speaks and reveals his will by always transcending conceptions, by being endlessly holy. The emptied forms which are left from this transcendence stand as revelations of Divine will. The King is beyond the kingdom, but his presence is everywhere where his will is done. God’s transcendence itself gives forth divine words, and these have organized the stuff of the universe, the forms of life, the forms of human consciousness. The forms of the Torah, its commandments, observances and social organization let us cleave to the will of the King. In each form, awareness is turned outward so that the desire to absorb God’s being, becomes a way of becoming absorbed by the light of truth. Instead of becoming more substantial through absorbing divine being, we become ever more open, thankful, accepting and alive in our ephemeral nature. God’s words give form and structure to everything, and when we act out that specific form which encodes God’s transcendence and holiness in, that is doing G-d’s will and following the Torah.

All human societies are touched in some way by the Kings will. The light of truth translates into of a just society. Ephemeral beings accept each other as they accept themselves. Creating a just society is a basic commandment for all humanity. Bad people, (until they repent) will for the most part try to gratify themselves in secret by lying and cheating. They believe that behind the public exterior or society, such negative acts will find secret places to hide. However, when one realizes that society is founded upon the will of the King, there remain no secret places. The same fear or shame one would feel if one were caught doing something bad, will be felt before the act is carried out. When a person acts corruptly in secret that person becomes dead in the eyes of God. It is only a matter of time until the just society sniffs out the walking corpse. People who are aware of the presence of G-d become consistent in their behavior. Such people a feel a shame that does not let evil get a foothold even in their most private and personal lives. The shame which the Shivity Meditation brings about is not neurotic or masochistic. It involves the healthy understanding that a person should be as good on the inside as they are on the outside.

Ultimately, the fruits of the Shivity Meditation are: 1) a sense of faith and openness that negates manipulative and selfish desires, 2) an acceptance, appreciation and love for others, 3) an increased awareness of spiritual life beyond the physical being,

4) an increased consistency in ones personal and public behavior, 5) increased vitality and joy arising from the sense of being constantly created anew, and 6) the ability to “hear the word of God” as it supports, establishes and re-creates just societies. (For Jewish people this also means hearing the word of God vibrating within the framework of Halacha and Jewish Practice. As you progress to more intense levels of Love and Fear of Hashem, you can expect increased wisdom in understanding the Mitzvot and their meanings. You may find yourself discovering new Torah thoughts. You should relate to this as Hashem teaching you his word. Perhaps you may hear an echo of prophecy. I hesitate to say this because some people should not be encouraged to imagine themselves prophets. But if you are sane and well balanced, you should come to no harm. The Shiviti Meditation is one step on the road to prophecy. Admittedly, we are not on the level to become full prophets today. But an echo of prophecy (insofar as it makes you a better person and better in observing Mitzvot, studying Torah and doing good) is everyone’s birthright. Remember what it says in the book of Proverbs “The fear of God in the beginning of wisdom.”   

In my comments to the rather brief passage from the Shulhan Aruch I have tried to explain why one should think of God as a king, what benefits are derived from cultivating an all encompassing awareness of the King’s presence, and what point there is in feeling fear and shame. The Shiviti Meditation may be accompanied by the visualization of the Letters of the Divine Name, if you find this helpful. In any event, the commentary I have given here is based upon the Rambam, and it is not Kabbalistic (as far as I can know.) In actuality, this is all just basic Judaism, which is why the Shiviti Meditation is placed at the very beginning of the code of Jewish Law. Over your life time you will find yourself undergoing various phases. Initially you will be working to gasp the truth of this way of seeing the world, the self and G-d. Once that is passed you will be actualizing these perceptions across the whole range of you life experiences. As you become more and more absorbed into the light of truth, you will find yourself behaving more and more consistently and reacting to lifes challenges with greater faith and tranquility. You will find joy and significance in every moment, every thing and every person. When you are strong in the light you will sense your body fading as you become truth and eternity. There is no more basic meditation than this. Perhaps there is none more advanced either. 

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.