MADE YOU THINK

Can We Make JudaisM less BoRing?

Adin Even-Israel Stainsaltz

We cannot be imitators in everything that is real. We cannot be just followers. We are demanded, and especially our people are commanded, to be a Kingdom of Priests. The point is that a priest doesn’t need another priest to officiate for him. A Jew doesn’t need a rabbi. A Jew needs a personal connection with the “Boss,” with the Lord Himself. As a person I am demanded, and as a Jew I am demanded, to have such a connection. So I have one, and for me it’s a very personal one. I have to have some kind of meeting with the essence of my being a Jew. So I think that every one of us has at one point in his life to find out what is his or her basic connection...

When I speak about spiritual people, I speak about those people who are always immersed in higher mysteries, those who always try to deal with things that most people understand little about. I’m trying to say something else. I don’t believe that if one has to look for the Lord, one has to look to the ceiling or to the heavens. The Lord is everywhere, not just space‑wise, but everywhere in every meaning of things. To speak about the Almighty is being connected with the spiritual is correct, as long as we don’t say that He is spiritual because He is not material. But on the other hand, I can’t say that He is material because He is not spiritual. Both these terms are not adequate to describe that which is beyond all this. The Gentiles say that the Lord is on high. He’s sitting in heaven. We say that He is even higher because He looks down upon heaven and earth. The Lord is so infinite that He deals with the smallest physical being‑with the molecule and the germ, with a grain of wheat – in the say way that he deals with angels, with the galaxies. He is so great that all these things are in the same way insignificant, but very significant when all of them are together.

So in a way what I’m saying is that this is Judaism. Judaism is that belief that connects the earthly and those things that are not earthly. What is really of interest is something beyond us, and we can get to it by combining the two, by not leaning too much to one side or the other...

There is surely a lot that is boring. I find that there is a lot that is boring, at least about Judaism. However, I am not speaking only about religion. There are a lot of things that are boring. Doing things because they have “always” been done “that way” is boring. Listening and not participating is boring. And this is the danger for religion, especially in America, where people are becoming only listeners and passive participants. The way out of boredom is to participate. Participation doesn’t mean being a member of a group that holds brunches on Sunday mornings. Participation means being a part of what I would call the adventure of study, the adventure of prayer, the adventure of fulfilling any mitzvah. Thus, the way to participate is to get more involved personally, to try as much as possible to become part of things, and to ask every day, as once young people were asked in the cheder, “What new thing did you find out today?” That is what is called Chidush-Torah, the renewal of Torah.

I would say, therefore, that the function of a rabbi should be to call to his community and to ask each of them, what new thing did you find out about being Jewish. This is what we have to do in order to avoid being bored. We cannot be bored when we are participating, when we are part of the creative. Then we are a part of the Torah. EM

From an interview originally published in the Algemeiner Newspaper.