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I AM: A JOURNEY IN JEWISH FAITH

Rabbi Lewis John Eron, Ph.D.

Wifp & Stock, Eugene OR 2018

 

SUMMARY AND STUDY QUESTIONS

 

INTRODUCTION:

 

My connection to the Shema

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  1. When did you first learn the Shema? 

  2. Who taught it to you?

  3. What was the first prayer you learned?

  4. Was it the Shema?

  5. What was it like to say that prayer?  

  6. How did it make you feel?

  7. Do you still say it today?  If so, when?

  8. What is it like to say that prayer today?

 

CHAPTER 1: ADONAI ECHAD!

 

The call to love God – the Unique and Only One.  

 

In this chapter I explore the nature of being unique, unlike anyone or anything else in creation. Uniqueness is the one characteristic human beings share with God.  The discovery of our unique self is the bridge to the discovery of God.  Love of ourselves is the first step in loving God.  Learning to love God is the first step in learning to love others.

 

  1. Do you love yourself?

  2. If not, why not?  What keeps you from expressing the love?  Is there a part of you that you do love?

  3. If so, why?  What part of you do you love?  What part of you do you hate?

  4. Do you feel alone?  Does it frighten you or embolden you?

  5. Can you drive strength from your loneliness?

  6. How do you express this strength?

  7. Can you express this strength though love?

 

CHAPTER 2: GOD AS I UNDERSTAND GOD IS NOT GOD

 

The limits of human expression.

 

What God maybe is far beyond whatever name we use to talk about God.  Although the Jewish tradition has an expansive list of names for God, all that we have preserved from the Biblical name spelled Yud-Hey-Vav-Hey, is God’s biblical “nickname” Yah.  The names that one uses to address God reflects more on one’s own understanding of God – one’s needs, concerns, and interests – than it does on God. The names we use for God reveal who or what we feel we are and not who or what God is.  

 

Unlike other names for God which are words that refer to specific and concrete objects and experiences, Yah is no more than a Hebrew verbal prefix that in Biblical Hebrew indicates action that takes place over time.  By address God as Yah, we allow ourselves an open-ended view of God.

 

  1. What are your favorite names for God?

  2. What are your least favorite names for God?

  3. When and why do you use a certain name for God?

  4. What do you gain by using that name?

  5. What do you lose by using that name?

  6. Do you use different names for those people close to you? 

  7. When and why do you use them? 

  8. How do you think they feel when you use different names?

  9. How do you feel about the names people use to address you?

 

CHAPTER 3: GOD’S DOMINION

 

Naming What is God’s

 

What is God’s; God calls “Mine” and we call “God’s”.  What is ours; we call “ours” or “mine” which implies that in some way we experience that which we call “ours” or “mine” as not being God’s.  At best, it is our part of that which is God’s.  At worse, it is separated from that which is God’s.

 

Galut, “exile” is the Hebrew word used to express our sense of being in physical or spiritual space outside of the place that we see as God’s.  We describe this separation in negative terms as being “dark”, without light, or as “cold”, without warmth. 

 

Just as our sense of uniqueness is a reflection of the Unique God, our sense of what is “our” or “mine” is a reflection of what is “God’s”  As we care and nurture what is ours – our small, limited dominion – we can begin to understand that which is God’s – God’s unbounded dominion.

 

  1. Have you ever been to a place that seemed to you to be filled with God’s presence?  Where or when was this?  What did it mean to you?  How did you feel?  How has the experience influenced your life?

  2. Have you ever been to a place that seemed empty of God’s presence?  Where or when was this?  What did it mean to you?  How did you feel?  How has the experience influenced your life?

  3. What do you need to do to make that which is “yours” part of “God’s” and what do you need to do to make what is “God’s” part of “yours”?

 

CHAPTER 4: “O ISRAEL” – STRUGGLING WITH GOD

 

The People of Israel as God’s people and as our people

 

Describing something or someone as “mine” is not a claim of ownership but an acknowledgement of a relationship.  Thus, the theological expressions “my God”, from a human perspective, and “my People”, from a divine perspective, describe a relationship between God and an individual and God and a community.

 

Faith is the awareness of the relationship between individuals and communities with God.  Religion is the attempt to make that awareness part of our lives as individuals and as communities.  Judaism, the religious tradition of the Jewish people, develops as Jews seek to express their sense of connection with God using the historical and cultural heritage of the Jewish people.  To live out one’s faith within a Jewish context, one needs to be part of the Jewish people. 

 

The Jewish concept of Chosen People reflects the understanding that we choose our relationships and choose the ways in which we live out those relationships.  The image of God choosing Israel, the Jewish people, as God’s people, is a reflection of Jews, as a community, choosing God as their God. An individual Jew’s experience of that one’s “mine” meets God’s “Mine” in the Jewish people, which they both identify as “my people”.  

 

Choosing implies a considered decision.  The choices we make to live in relationships are considered choices.  The use of the image of Covenant to describe the relationship between God and the Jewish people reflects the sense that the Jewish spiritual path is one of considered choices.

 

  1. When did you first understand that you were part of a group known as “Jews”

  2. When do you feel most closely connected to the Jewish people?

  3. How do the spiritual and religious traditions of the Jewish people reinforce your personal faith experiences?  

  4. How do you bring your personal faith experiences to the religious expressions of the Jewish people?  

  5. How are your personal experiences expressed in the way you mark (a) Shabbat, (b) the Passover Seder, (c) Yom Kippur and (d) the passing of a loved one?

  6. How do you bring an awareness of divinity to your Jewish practice and how do you bring your Jewish community to an awareness of the divinity?

 

CHAPTER 5: “YOU SHALL SPEAK OF THEM” – THE JEWISH CONVERSATION

 

The Jewish tradition is a conversation over the generations.

 

When Jews recite the Shema, they are calling upon themselves and each other to listen carefully and respond affirmatively to the demands of the prayer; that is to build a way of life that reflects a whole-hearted commitment to the love of God and God’s creation.  This is a dynamic process as individual Jews over time and space brought and continued to bring their insights and efforts to the on-going project of living and reading Torah in every generation throughout the Jewish world.

 

Torah is essentially a living process – the Oral Law – the unfolding spiritual, ethical and ritual traditions of the Jewish people.  The Written Law, classically seen as the Chumash (the Five Books of Moses – the words written in the Torah scroll), marks a way-station on this pilgrimage.  At critical moments on Jewish history our people take pause and record where they have been and what they have learned to serve as guideposts for journey.  However, the dynamic oral tradition is preserved in these written records.

 

Anchoring Jewish expression to any one of the written mileposts of the Jewish tradition restricts the living, dynamic nature of Jewish faith.  Ignoring the guidelines renders one rudderless in navigating the seas of life.

 

  1. How have you used the established teachings and practices of the Jewish people to bring order and meaning to your life?  

  2. Does the celebration of the Jewish holidays affect the way you experience the seasons of the year?

  3. Have Jewish rituals and practices helped you in hours of sadness and loss and in times of joy and celebration?

  4. What have you brought to your Jewish practice from your own life –experiences?  How has this deepened your understanding of life?

  5. Have you shared your Torah, what you have done and learned, with others – children, family, friends, etc.?  Have you added your voice to the living, dynamic tradition of the Jewish people?  If so, how? If not, why not?

 

CHAPTER 6: “AND YOU SHALL TEACH THEM TO YOUR CHILDREN”

 

Teaching Torah is not the transmission of abstract facts but enabling others to use the traditions of the Jewish people to bring meaning, direction and order to their lives and the life of their communities.

 

Central to the Jewish people’s celebrations of life through the annual cycle of Shabbat and holiday celebrations and through the rituals that mark the passages in the cycle of life are opportunities to teach others, particularly the young.  In the Passover Haggadah we meet four different children, each one with one’s own learning style and specific set of challenges and questions.  We need to answer their questions in ways that honor and welcome them with their often challenging questions to our celebration so that they can full participate in the experience.  Good teaching requires us to respond honestly and modestly to each student according to that student’s individual needs and concerns.  At best we do not give answers but act as role models.

 

  1. What questions are the most challenging to you?

  2. How do you respond to challenging questions when you hear them from others

  3. What do you do when you know that your answers are insufficient?

  4. Who are your teachers and who are your students? 

  5. What kind of student have you been throughout your life?

 

CHAPTER 7: “AND SPEAK OF THEM AT HOME AND ON THE ROAD”

 

As the circumstances of Jewish life change, the ways in which Jews understand, teach and experience their spiritual and cultural heritage changes.

 

The Jewish people are a people on a journey through time and space.  Our home is ultimately on the road.  Life is essentially perilous.  From time to time, we find a safe haven but often we need to respond to changes in the greater world in which we live that challenge our well-established and cherished beliefs and practices.  The dynamic nature of the Jewish tradition has helped us cope with such challenges in the past.  The modern and post-modern world presents new challenges.  For the Jewish people and the Jewish tradition to survive and thrive, we need to be agents of both transformation and preservation.   We are empowered to draw on our inherited spiritual and cultural heritage for strength, insight and guidance as we find meaning and purpose in today’s world.  In doing so, we add new meaning, depth and substance to that heritage with the hope that generations after us will find courage and wisdom in our efforts as they meet the yet unseen challenges of their time.

 

  1. How do you deal with the uncertainties of life?

  2. Where do you find your bearings in a world of constant change?

  3. Does identifying as a Jew make you feel more or less secure?  

  4. Does your sense of insecurity move you closer to or away from your involvement in Jewish life?

  5. In what ways does life today modify or enhance your understanding of the Jewish tradition and your life as a Jewish person?

 

CHAPTER 8: BINDING AND WRITING – THEOLOGY OF IDENTIFICATION

 

What we do bears witness to what we believe.

 

The Sh’ma contains the directive not only to teach the traditions of the Jewish people but to incorporate them into the most intimate aspects of our lives – our homes and our bodies. The requirement to place the words of the Sh’ma on the doorposts of our homes, the mezzuzah, and to bind them on our arms and on our foreheads, the tefillin, are reminders that whatever enters or leaves our hearts and homes passes through beneath the preview of our beliefs and values.  

 

The physical nature of the mezzuzah and tefillin remind us that one bears witness to one’s spiritual commitments not only through verbal affirmations but also through tangible objects that stand as symbols of belief and belonging.

 

  1. Can you think of other objects that you own and use that make your Jewish identity and commitments visible and understandable to yourself and to others.

  2. Which ones come from our biblical heritage?  Which ones come from the modern Jewish experience?

  3. What is your favorite Jewish symbol? 

  4. How is wearing a Jewish star, the six-pointed star constructed from interlocking triangles, similar to wearing a more traditional symbol of Jewish identity such as a kippa, skull –cap?   

  5. Should there be a blessing for putting on a Jewish star as there is a blessing for putting on a tallit or tefillin.  If so, what might it be?

 

CHAPTER 9: “IF YOU TRULY LISTEN” – REWARD AND RESPONSIBILITY

 

How we chose to live our lives rather than the events in our lives determines the quality of our lives.

 

The warning in the second paragraph of the Shema that turning away from the traditions, teachings and values of our heritage will expose us and our community to punishment in this world reminds us that the life choices we make have consequences for us, for those close to us and for our communities.  While the strict moral calculus of this passage – there are tangible rewards for the righteous and real punishments for the wicked – does not reflect our reality, it does tie us to the real world in which we live.  This passage does not need nor support a belief in a supernatural world-to-come. 

 

All people experience in varying proportions both good and bad in their lives.  While we all hope for blessings, we all know that no one can escape sorrow.  From experience we all know people who lead meaningful and purposeful lives in spite of the hardships they encounter and others, although blessed with the good things of life, are unhappy, angry, lost and confused.  The ethical and spiritual choices we make will not secure a life full of blessings for us but can give us the strength to find deeper blessings in whatever life presents to us.

 

  1. In terms of your present happiness, what are the choices in life have you made that seem the most important?

  2. What choices have brought you a sense of blessing and what choices have brought you pain?

  3. Do you see things that once seemed bad and difficult in a different light now that you have moved on in life 

  4. Although one cannot and should not forget the evil that one has experienced, have you been able to go beyond that experience?  Have you been able to find a new sense of direction in your life because of it?

  5. Is there a difference in feeling unworthy of one’s unearned blessings and being grateful for receiving them?  If so, what is it?

  6. Why does the sense of being punished help us understand the hardships we might encounter in the ups and downs of life?  Is this a helpful feeling?

 

CHAPTER 10: “FRINGES”

 

The fringes of the talit, the prayer shawl, form create the soft and flexible boundary between ourselves and the world around us.

 

Setting boundaries, creating categories, defining concepts, establishing standards are important spiritual activities for Jews.  The determination of what is holy, pure and permitted and what is not plays an important role in Jewish religious life.  Yet the boundaries we set cannot be too rigid.  Twilight, the time between day and night, plays an important role in the Jewish spiritual imagination.

 

The fringes of the talit mark the border between our personal selves and the world in which we live.  It reminds us that we are connected to those around us.  As we move carefully in the world, our sense of being brushes against and gets intertwined with those around us.  The fringes remind us that we are neither completely isolated from the world nor fully subsumed by the world.  They both connect us to those around us and remind us that when we interact with them we need to bring our full selves, including the values, insights and practices of our Jewish selves to that interaction.

 

We are directed to wear the talit.  It is a symbol of our individual Jewish identity and it is also a sign that we are willing and encouraged to engage with the world around us.  The fringes of the talit mark our willingness to be in dialogue with others and our hope that such a dialogue will enrich our lives as Jews and help us share our highest values with the greater world in which we live.

 

  1. Do you own your own talit?  Do you have more than one?  When and how did you acquire your talit or talitot (plural)?

  2. When do you put on a talit? How does it feel to wear it?  Do you play with the fringes?

  3. If you were to design your own talit, what would it look like?  How would you decorate it?  What would you like other people to see? 

  4. If you were to give a talit as a gift to someone, to whom would you give it and what would the talit look like?

 

CHAPTER 11: “THE ONE WHO BROUGHT YOU OUT OF EGYPT TO BE YOUR GOD”

 

One cannot separate the experience of liberation from the memory of oppression.

 

The Sh’ma ends with God’s self-proclamation – “I am the Eternal your God who brought you out of Egypt to be your God.”  The Exodus from Egypt is the meeting place between God and the Israelite nation.  However, God’s liberation of the enslaved Israelites and their enthusiastic response to freedom leaves a number of unanswered questions, the most important being: “Where was God during the long years of Israel’s servitude as slaves in Egypt?”

 

The Exodus from Egypt changed Israelites relationship with God.  God became Israel’s redeemer, proctor and sovereign.  Prior to the Exodus, God, as the Israelites experienced God, was the ancestral deity of a small and powerless people.  To them God was El Shaddai, the personal God of the patriarchs and matriarchs. As a result of their experience of liberation from Egyptian bondage and their journey to freedom, they came to know their God as Yod-Hey-Vav-Hey, the sovereign of Israel and ruler of all creation, the one who overthrows human tyrants and the false gods that endorse oppression.

 

As the Jewish people came to understand their God as the God of all creation, the Jewish people came to understand the story of their small people being freed from bondage by the God of all as a universal story which resonated in the experiences and memories of all people.  They imagined that at Sinai, at the moment of revelation when the story of redemption and the responsibilities freedom demands was proclaimed, it was proclaimed to all people in all languages.  The story of Israel’s flight to freedom and birth as a nation was translated not into a universal language that blurred all distinctions.  Each nation and each individual heard the story as capturing the unique experience of all people and every person.

 

The God who liberated Israel is the God who calls all to freedom.

 

  1. Do you recall moments in your life when you felt oppressed?  If so, how does your experience of oppression affect your understanding of the Exodus story?  If not, how does the story, connect you to those who are in need of liberation?

  2. What sustains us during those periods in which we cannot feel God’s presence?

  3. In what ways can we use our memory of those dark times as a source of hope and/or strength?

  4. Does our liberation from bondage obligate us in anyway? 

  5. How can feelings of anger, disappointment or frustration with God and/or with life be used in positive, life –affirming ways?

  6. Can one be both oppressed and an oppressor at the same time?  How does overcoming the pharaoh in our hearts help us free others?

 

CHAPTER 12: “I AM ADONAI YOUR GOD”

 

The Shema beings with an individual’s call to other Jews to direct their attention to their unique God.  The Sh’ma concludes with God’s response to that call. 

 

At the very end of the Shema, the focus of the prayer switches its perspective.  No longer does it represent to human search for the divine.  The last three words picture God’s response.  We who have called on each other to love the Unique One as our God with all that is ours and make that love visible in what we say and do, at all times and in all places, now hear God affirming our love.  

 

The prayer ends with God’s self –identification – “I am Adonai (Yod-Hey-Vav-Hey) your God”, and we respond with the opening of the next prayer – “Emet – It is true”.  It represents a moment when our own small “I am” meets the unbounded “I am” of God.

 

  1. How are the twin commandments “You shall love the Eternal Your God with all your heart, with all your soul and with all your might” and “You shall love your neighbor as yourself” related?

  2. Can they be seen as different perspectives on the same commandment?

  3. If the meeting point between God and a person is marked by love, what is this love?

  4. How do we live out love in a covenantal context?

  5. What connects “love” with “truth”?  

 

CONCLUSION: SHEMA

 

Listen Carefully – Respond Respectfully – Proceed with Humility

 

Listen carefully all you people of Israel, the Eternal is our God, the Eternal alone!

 

  1. When you listen, what do you hear? 

  2. How does listening to your own “voice”– your heart/mind/soul – help you hear the “voice” of God? 

  3. Can you know others without knowing yourself? 

  4. Do you know yourself well enough so that you can begin to know others, including the absolute other, God?

  5. If not now, when?

 

 

Rabbi Lewis John Eron, Ph.D.

1229 Liberty Bell Drive

Cherry Hill, NJ 08003

Cell: 609-502-1127

Home Email: lewiseron@hotmail.com

Web Site:  https://lewiseron.wixsite.com/mysite

Pronouns: he/his/him

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