The Jewish Home | JUNE 9, 2022
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The Jewish ArT of MediTATion By MAlkie schulMAn
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OctOber 29, 2015 | the Jewish Home
“If
I was able to make one change in our educational system,” says Rabbi Baruch Klein, rabbi and counselor with a spiritual chassidic flavor in Brooklyn, NY, “I would implement 10-15 minutes of quiet time once or twice a day in every yeshiva, where children from the very young to the older ones, would sit quietly with the teacher or rebbe with no distraction and just have the opportunity to go inside themselves and meditate. “If our children would grow up knowing how to be present and completely focused on what’s in front of them, the Jewish people would look very different. In our world today, we are so distracted and so unable to just ‘be’ that when Shabbos comes, we go crazy, we don’t know what to do with our downtime.”
Jewish Meditation
What comes to mind for many when the word “meditation” is mentioned is the image of someone sitting on the floor in the lotus position, back and head erect, cross-legged, palms up on the lap with eyes gently closed or perhaps open and gazing into a candle’s flame. This, however, is not the definition of meditation; it is simply
one technique of one type of meditation. Some people believe meditation is a non-Jewish concept, taken from the eastern religions. “Nothing could be further from the truth,” explains Rabbi Doniel Katz, Founder and Director of The Elevation Project. There are numerous sources throughout the Torah from the Zohar to the Chumash to Shulchan Aruch and many other holy sefarim referencing meditation. For a start, according to Rabbi Aryeh Kaplan, zt”l, in his book, Jewish Meditation, in ancient times, when we had thousands of true prophets in our nation, an essential part of their process was the ability to meditate. Actual prophecy comes about through intense meditation. Even for those who understand that meditation is deeply sourced in the Torah, many are of the opinion that it is solely a chassidic concept. It would not detract from the validity of the approach if that was the case. However, even that’s not true. The classic mussar approach of Rabbi Yisroel Salanter, says R’ Klein, includes meditative practices. One method called hispaylus meditation includes the practice of repeating the same word or phrase over and over, fully engaging the body and emoting with the phrase until it penetrates the heart and, in due time,
the person’s character and behaviors change. There are, actually, many types of meditation and many techniques to practicing each of those types. There are also many goals to meditation. For example, do you want to feel more relaxed? The practice of meditation can help. Do you want to learn how to be in the present moment, experiencing everything in your life as it is happening right in front of you? Practice meditation. Do you want to be deeply and spiritually connected to G-d? Do you want to know your prayers are soaring to the Heavens? Learn the art of meditation. Do you want to improve your character traits, develop your personality, enhance your personal relationships? Sleep better at night? Meditation can help with all of these. For the purpose of this article, however, we will be mainly focusing on how meditation can enhance kavana in prayer. But to figure that out, we need a working definition of meditation.
Emptying the Mind
In its broadest sense, explains Rabbi Kaplan, meditation is using the mind in a controlled manner; deciding exactly how one wishes to direct the mind for a period
