Introduction to the Kavannah for Living Seminar

In the past year, CLAL scholars have been given the opportunity to transmit some of Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi’s teachings to a wider audience. The particular focus of our work with Reb Zalman has been a discussion of ritual life in a contemporary context. This includes teaching both renewed versions of traditional forms of practice and exploring new practices based on traditional paradigms.  Our starting point for this series will be daily life—the routines and rituals of a typical weekday. Our thinking is this -- While there are numerous resources for the holiday cycle and life cycle, the weekday gets short shrift when it comes to Jewish resources. Our goal is to create such a resource for the weekday, and to do so in a way that is pluralist in form and content so that it can be used by all Jews, across the denominational lines.

The Kavannah for Living seminar is being developed through two CLAL programs, the Rabbinic Community On Line -- generously supported by the Nash Foundation -- and Bringing the Spirit into the Center -- generously supported by The Nathan Cummings Foundation, The Righteous Persons Foundation, the Gigi and Samuel Fried Philanthropic Fund, the Yesod Foundation, the Richard Goldstein Foundation, Michael Gelfand, the Ute Foundation.

How is this spiritual guidebook different from the others?  

You could probably sum up the vast number of guidebooks on spiritual matters with about two words--“Live simply.” Here’s their basic strategy-- The authors surface the stress and pressure and anger that we experience in daily life and then ask us to remove ourselves from the world to release the tension. And you know what? The strategy works! Why else have the Jewish people spent an entire day each week in retreat and reflection for the past three thousand years?  

But there is something more to spiritual life than retreating from the world that you feel stuck in. If you’ve ever been on a vacation that was a spiritual recharge and then returned only to get stuck in the same routine when you left, then you might ask—What is the point of a spiritual high if it doesn’t effect my day to day life?  

But before we turn to that question it might help to ask: What do we mean by spirituality anyway? 

Simply put, spirituality is about the attitude, approach, perception, and awareness that we bring to experience. In traditional Jewish sources there are countless words for spirituality. They range in meaning from the quiet of Shalva or tranquility of Shleymoot to the experience of ecstasy, D’veykut. They also include words that highlight the intellectual side of spirituality, like N’vuah, the way in which learning and understanding shapes the mind.  

Here’s the problem—the richness and depth of Jewish spirituality is lost in a world in which seeking spirituality has become an activity reserved for the weekends, special vacations, or holidays. 

Over the centuries, Jewish spirituality infused daily life-- the actions we take and the decisions we make each day, with a sense of purpose. The Rabbis of the Talmud taught that one should recite one hundred blessings a day. When would they be recited? In connection to the activities of the day. One hundred moments of heightened awareness and gratitude that happened while washing your hands, or seeing someone you haven’t seen in a long time, or taking a bite of fruit, or hearing good news.   

So while other guide books ask—How can we escape this world? This guide book asks—How do we live in the world? How do we find sacred potential in the lives we lead at work, at home, and in our communities?

To answer that question, we must first ask another one. Think for a moment about a profound moment in your life that someone might define as spiritual. Where were you and what were you feeling and thinking? How would you describe the moment to someone else? 

If you ask this question to many people, you’ll find that no two answers are alike. There will be shared aspects of the experience, and similar contexts, but the ways in which we experience awe, gratitude, wonder, rejuvenation, and a sense of holiness are as unique as our fingerprints. For that reason, no spiritual path will work for all people.  

So how can we even begin to write a book? 

Luckily, for us, there are many paths within Judaism. Just as there are many words which describe spirituality, there have been many eras of religious thought and  innovation. From each era we will pull insights, rituals, and wisdom which bear upon daily life. A diverse array is presented here so that you may choose those that reflect your experience, and skip over the ones that don’t. 

Living an integrated life, one fused with a sense of purpose, happens when we connect the peak spiritual moments we have--when we feel fully alive, when we see the world in new ways, when we experience awe and gratitude-- to the ways in which we approach the most essential daily activities.  

In other words, there is not a big set of new things to do—but rather new ways to experience what we are already doing, and practices that help us to remember why we are alive in the first place. 

Ultimately what emerges from seeing the activities of daily life in new ways is a bigger picture, what some people call a web of connections, or a “spiritual consciousness”.  

Whatever language you choose to describe what happens when you experience this type of clarity-- theological, literary, cosmological, psychological—we hope that this book can be one of your guides. 

How do we envision your role in this process of collaborative learning?

Every two weeks we will post a new ritual resource unit, along with a commentary by Reb Zalman. We will post this material on the CLAL Rabbinic Community On Line website. We will also distribute it by email to the recipients of the rabbinic list-serve. If you want, you can simply enjoy reading (and using) this material and leave it at that. But since we would like your input in creating a truly pluralist resource, we hope that you will join with us for a substantive discussion of these materials, and of how their spiritual insights and pluralist accessibility might be enhanced. We also hope that you will want to "field test" these rituals and practices with your congregants, just as we shall be doing in the venues where we teach. We hope you will bring your "field notes" into the discussion as well.

B’Shalom,

Daniel Brenner dbrenner@clal.org