Claiming Faith

I have a havruta (Torah study partner) on Tuesday nights. Tonight we had the BEST talk. We only even got through two pasukim but talked for over 45 minutes.

Parsha Tetzaveh is about the mishkan. We talked about how boring it is to read about it, and then we talked about what it was like to have it, what it was like to make sacrifices etc.

We were thinking it would be easy to really live in fear under those conditions and to really believe quite easily and intensely in a G-d who could affect you easily and profoundly by taking away life the way your sacrifices are taken.

We compared that to how hard people have to work today to feel anything spiritually. I said that on Yom Kippur I sometimes feel like I'm play-acting and that whatever I feel isn't enough because I have to force it from an internal place and that there is not enough getting me there from an external place.

But then she said that in a community such as a chassidic community it would be easy to have all of th external stimulation, but harder to have your own path, your own thoughts and feelings. (We both agree that we are each too stubborn to live under those circumstances.)

Interestingly, she was raised frum and in a frum community. I was not. I followed my heart. She doesn't think she'd be frum if she hadn't been raised in it and then later claimed it as her own. I don't think I would have stayed with it if it had been so easily accessible. Both of us agree how beautiful it is to reclaim it voluntarily each day.

I don't really have a conclusion here. I've just been thinking about how lonely I sometimes feel in my desire to be spirituality stimulated, and yet when I'm in communities that look spiritually stimulating, I find things I don't like too. I think that loneliness and a desire to be close to G-d actually depend on each other somewhat, or else you're doing spirituality for the social high. On the other hand, I don't know if my feelings of "yearning" are for G-d or for other spiritually-inclined people.

We also said we think most people start out very spiritual but then unlearn it. That makes me so sad, and I think it 's true. That's why I want to teach meditation to children and moms.

It's late. And for the record, I have a minor cold again.