Erev Rosh Hashanah Sermon

Rosh Hashanah 5771

A Mystical Approach to God

Temple Beth Jacob

Rabbi Larry Freedman

Kellee is a friend of mine. That’s not completely true. She’s a Facebook friend. She was in high school with me.

When I first got on Facebook, Kellee friended me in the digital world and I was pretty surprised because I don’t recall us being friends in the analog world. Let’s just say she ran with a sleeker, smoother, less geeky crowd. And I see she lives in Miami now and based on the photos of her at all sorts of swell parties I would say she continues to run with a smoother, sleeker, less geeky crowd, the kind of crowd where everyone dresses like they are 26. But Kellee’s not fooling me. I graduated with her so I know exactly how old she is. 46. And three quarters.

I bring up Kellee because a little bit ago she posted a loaded statement on her profile looking for comments. She wrote this: “Ok...I do NOT do "church" my "god" is the earth, the air, the trees and the spirit of light, goodness and positive energy...I don't need to read a book or go to a building to celebrate all that is true... Just sayin. (Had to get that off my chest.)”

Some of her friends responded shaking their heads with promises that they would pray for her.

Another person offered a secular amen. A few people offered books she might be interested in.

I chimed in too. I chimed in like an elbow patch tweed jacket at a South Beach fashion show. Like Birkenstocks at a Jimmy Choo boutique.

But, she friended me first, right? She was asking for comments. Here’s why I tossed in my two cents: because I hear this sort of thing all the time. I hear it with kids, I hear it with adults. I hear it at camp, I hear it at synagogue. The ideas of God that many people have, that they were taught just leave them cold. I’m guessing Kellee had a little church as a child but as an adult couldn’t buy into it. She just can’t accept whatever it is people try to tell her God is. But, despite this, she has maintained a sense of awe that moves her. She doesn’t care much for God but she has a great sense of wonderment. I suggested as part of my less smooth, more geeky post that she might just be a mystic.

Kellee ignored me. As she always did.

But even though Kellee ignored me again, she would find good company here with many Jews who struggle with God. Lots of Jews struggle with the idea of God and yet, despite not believing in God or being skeptical about God, these Jews come here tonight and fully embrace the themes of the holiday, enjoy reflective moments and leave renewed and refreshed. The idea of deep self reflection and honest self-assessment leads to meaningful moments even if one is skeptical about God.

For others this holiday is very much a day with God. These are Jews with a deep sense of God in their lives. These are Jews who find an immanent God, a being or something, apart from themselves to which they can turn to and pray to and lean on and confess before. The liturgy of Rosh Hashana sings out to them without being metaphor or poetry or anything other than an honest turning over to a higher power. And so they enter and then leave the day feeling grateful that their prayers have been heard, that God cares, that God desires to turn from punishment, that God prefers forgiveness if we just do our part.

And we all come together easily because our way doesn’t require one path. Our sacred stories and teachings and holidays may refer to God, they may presume God’s existence but we do not have a doctrinal requirement to believe in God in order to gain value and benefit.

But is that it? Either skeptics who enjoy the themes or believers who turn themselves personally over to a higher power? What about people like Kellee? She can’t accept God as others are preaching but she still wants something more than poetry. What can we offer people like her?

I actually think she is on to something. She represents a third path, a path that ambles between the classic idea of God as a being distinct from us and the rejection of God entirely. Kellee talks about trees and air and the earth. She suggests wonderment at the world at large and gets a spiritual charge from that, a moment to see amazing things and feel connected. And she doesn’t need some building to teach her that. How could she see the grandeur of a sunset if she’s sitting inside?

So I added my comment suggesting that she is describing a mystical approach, a kabbalistic approach even.

And I would like to share it with you. Now, let me say that going to Hebrew Union College, a seminary firmly rooted in German enlightened rational thinking, mysticism was not offered at school. Mysticism is the stuff of poets and not serious students of theology they would sniff. But outside the seminary, mysticism brings an idea of God many always imagined but couldn’t identify. Mysticism frees agnostic Jews from images of God they can’t stand and envelops Jews who believe earnestly in God. And it may just give atheists a chance to appreciate a sense of God without having to accept supernatural phenomenon.

The idea of taking in the air and stars and all that refers to an idea called panentheism. Not pantheism. Pantheism is the idea that everything is a god and leads to worshipping various natural things. Panentheism is the idea that God is the whole of everything. God is the entirety of the entire universe and so you and I and the wind and sun and mountains and sea, that book, this wall are all part of God. The world, the universe is the manifestation of God. We enter the idea of the nonduality of God meaning that all is within God, everything is an expression of God. We may regard the world as separate from us but this mystical idea says that the world is not separate from us at all. We are part of the world. We are one with the universe.

This can be hard to imagine.

It’s hard to imagine because mortals that we are, we need to characterize, we need to codify. We need to say this is here and that is there. We are organized to distinguish one thing from the next. It’s hard for us to see everything as an entire whole.

Imagine we go to a museum and we see a painting of a landscape. We will notice the field or sky or mountain. Our eye will move about from element to element. That’s pretty normal. This part is here, that part is there.

But sometimes, for a moment, we can grasp the whole canvas, we can see the whole picture as a totality. Our eye stops roving and we see it all and if we are truly lucky, we cease to see anything else but the scene and we lose sight of the walls of the gallery and we are within the scene. At that moment, we have a brief sense of non-duality. The landscape ceases to become oil on canvas; it becomes our world, all that we are. We are in the painting. We are part of the painting as a whole. We are enveloped.

It’s what happens when people have that Grand Canyon moment at the Grand Canyon or a mountain peak or looking out at the ocean; because that is what it takes to shake us out of the usual idea that I am here and that is there. We are, standing at the rim of the Grand Canyon, on top of the mountain, at ocean’s edge, enveloped by the tableau before us, finally achieving that sense of oneness with all that is before us. We realize how small we are and yet at the very same time, how we are part of something so vast. We realize the unity of the whole universe and that is given the name God. God is the totality of everything and we are part of it.

Back in the gallery, the painting is all around us, we are in the painting. But then, we notice we are in the painting, we become aware of feeling enveloped, we recognize the awe and that very awareness thrusts us out of that thinking. We return to the usual boundaries. The gallery walls, the floor underfoot. The painting there and me over here. And the moment is gone. Awareness is gone. But for that moment we have a fleeting moment of being one with the universe and thus one with God. We gain a sense of things as all connected and then, that awareness is gone the moment we recognize we had that sense of things.

A Jewish mystical name that speaks to this vision of God is ein sof. That means, without end. It is the idea of God as no thing. God as no individual thing, no single thing. It removes the idea of any thingness about God at all. It removes any sense of God with boundaries, any sense of God as apart from all that goes on in the universe. The idea of ein sof suggests the idea that the universe -which is without boundaries- is in its totality God. All things are within God. Or to put it another way, God is no one thing but all things. There is no thing other than God.

But like any good mystical idea, it takes some quiet contemplation to imagine the ein sof, the idea of God without boundaries because if we can imagine God ein sof, without boundaries, all that is in the universe, we can also remember that we are part of that universe and thus, part of God.

How are we doing? Confused? Well, this sort of discussion is best suited for small group study, not a sermon. And Torah has fed us a constant stream of episodes of God as a separate being, a separate character in the Torah. We have a repeating cycle of God as watching, speaking, doing and performing supernatural miracles. This is the vision of God that is the essence of most types of Orthodox Judaism and the classic idea given to Jewish school children.

It is also the image that has been spurned by generations and generations of free thinkers or enlightened thinkers or rational thinkers. And it is the vision of God ridiculed by the new atheists. We shouldn’t ridicule of course. Faith is a method to something larger so a classic image of God may work for some but what is most important to know is that it does not have to work for everyone. Judaism has welcomed new ideas of God for a long time. That’s why I don’t worry too much when parents come to me upset that their child doesn’t believe in God. The simple answer to those kids is to ask, what God are you rejecting? The answers often describe some variation of the man with the beard in a chair and a vision of God that is more magician than Creator. They describe to me an idea of God that I couldn’t possibly adhere to. Somewhere, somehow, people are picking up unsatisfactory ideas about God, find them absurd and assuming that’s all there is to it, reject the whole enterprise. Truth be told, the idea of this sermon came from adults, our members, who have no use for the synagogue because they don’t believe in God. I would bet I don’t believe in the thing they are rejecting either. I would also bet that given a chance, many of these adults might enjoy a Jewish approach to awe once we dispense of supernatural miracles.

I have to say that I’ve never rejected God but I’ve never really embraced the classic vision either. I appreciate Maimonides who pretty much says we can’t describe what God is, we can only say what God is not. And for starters, God is not a man with a beard on a throne.

I like Martin Buber whose famous I-Thou approach offers the notion of relating to God in a profound, internally felt manner that can only be experienced. We have a profound moment where we know. Once we begin to describe it, we lose that brief connection.

And I like the mystics who use a little poetry, a little creativity and a willingness to see the whole world as one.

There is more to mysticism and I propose we study it a bit. I’m going to teach two classes this year about mysticism. One will be some introductory reading of some basic mystical ideas. And, since I’m not a mystic myself, we’re going to go on this journey together. But I’ve already read the book so I’ll be your guide. This is the chance for everyone who has rejected God to see alternatives to that idea you rejected. This is a chance for those with faith to explore another way of understanding the unknowable. There’s no goal in the class other than awareness. This approach has made me more comfortable with ideas of God, more certain in my rejection of other ideas of God, happy to have some kind of logic and intellectual thought to the mystery of God. I encourage all of you to come try it out, especially those of you who rejected God a long time ago.

The other class will be on the Tanya. The Tanya is the pre-eminent text, next to Torah, I suppose, for the Lubavitch Chasidim, also known as Chabad. I’ve already started looking at some of it and it is fascinating. The Tanya will be thoughtful and mind bending at times with meditations on the soul and how we can elevate our souls to be the very best we can be. And it will be maddening at times as well.

No prior knowledge is required. We’ll take our time and move at our own steady pace. If you are up for something you may love or hate or love to hate, this will be for you. It will be a chance to study something with little practical application but great personal potential. And what could be more mystical than that? I hope you can see that as enticing.

Kellee, in her effort to cast aside church was actually embracing something larger. She is open to something larger than herself, the first mystical step, and open to the idea that all that is around her is interconnected. She is willing to feel the awe of being at the edge of the Grand Canyon without having to be at the Grand Canyon. And she is willing to feel that awe wherever she is. Kellee lives in Miami so I don’t think she’ll join us but I hope you do, especially you who are here but are uncomfortable at best with all the God language. Those of you who strain to be polite with our addressing an immanent being, those of you who rebel against turning ourselves to a God of emotions should join me for the study. I hope you do. I hope you join to fine tune your anger, open yourselves up to greater awareness and walk away with language to dismiss what you know and maybe embrace something new. Rosh Hashanah is the new year and we’ll begin with some new study.