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“Each of us must seek a path to genuine spirituality. Each moment can be a
Sinai for the one whose heart and mind are open…”
Rabbi Arthur Green has prepared A Simple Serious Judaism
for Today and he explains the things a person should do to achieve this:
- Know that all of life is holy, all exists within the
One. There is no time or place in which God’s presence cannot be found.
Meditate on this each day. Think about it at home, while commuting, at work
and back at home.
- Take responsibility for your own spiritual life. It is
we who lock God out of our lives. Therefore open your heart, train your heart
to fill up with God’s presence and God’s love. Be aware in each moment, no
matter where you are or what you are doing, of the divine radiance within you
and all about you.
- Train yourself to see the miracle of each day’s arrival
and departure. Celebrate the two sacred times of day, dawn and dusk, with
prayer.
- If your life is too complicated or too fast-paced to
remain aware, work to live more simply and more slowly. Keep Shabbat
as a time to slow down, live in harmony with nature, and reflect. Make room
for that Shabbat consciousness to enter your weekday world as well.
Slow down.
- Live the rhythm of the sacred calendar—Shabbat,
holidays, seasons—as rich with traditional forms or as simply as your spirit
desires. Remember that it is you who has to fill those forms with God’s
presence. It is the joy of your spirit that brings them to life!
- Study Torah every day. Choose those texts, methods of
learning, classes, and study partners that make for a challenging and exciting
learning experience. If learning Torah is dull, you are doing something
wrong. If it is exciting to you, teach others.
- Share with others the fullness of spirit that flows from
your religious life. Give to others beyond measure, just as no one has
measured the great gifts you receive. Give of yourself; give time, not just
money; give directly, not just impersonally. Above all, give love.
- Live in community with those who most closely share your
path, but live in genuine openness to learning from others who do not. In
choosing your life partner and friends, try to find those who will be open to
and encourage your quest. Make space for spiritual awareness in your marriage
or partnership. Talk about the holiness of your love, seeing it as a part of
your love of God.
- Recognize every person as the image of God. Work to see
the Divine Image, especially in those who themselves seem oblivious to it.
Seek out the divinity in those who annoy, anger, or frustrate you. Hope to
find and uplift sparks of holy light, even where it seems hardest. Do all the
work that is needed to help others to discover the image of God within
themselves.
- Learn to recognize evil, usually a creation of
frightened, selfish, or otherwise distorted human hearts. Always try to
transform it, but be ready to confront it and to battle it with courage when
there is no other choice.
- Love the Jewish people, the root from which you are
drawn. Work to improve the quality of Jewish life, both in Israel, where
Judaism is most fully lived and tested in our day, and wherever you are.
Contribute to the growth of Jewish life spiritually, intellectually,
culturally, emotionally, in whatever way you can. Be part of the great
healing process within the Jewish people, the repair of feelings and attitudes
created by centuries of persecution and by the terrible holocaust of the past
century, a healing that is not yet completed.
- Work toward the expansion of the sacred into new realms,
the creation of new religious forms appropriate to our age. Treat Judaism as
a growing, dynamic tradition, one that wants to creatively engage the future
as much as it wants to preserve the legacy of the past.
- Share the witness of God’s Oneness with all who want to
receive it. Witness by public prayer, by teaching, but mostly by doing. Be
willing to share in mutual witness with those of other faith paths. Open your
heart to be inspired by them, without losing confidence in the path that is
your own.
- Recognize once again that all of existence is divine.
Devote yourself to the healthy preservation of life: your own, that of people
around you, but also of all creatures on our much-threatened planet. Engage
in the great collective mitzvah of our time, that of protecting this
earth and its resources for generations that will come after us. Come to see
humanity as part of the greater chorus of all creatures, each one an
embodiment of divinity and a vital singer in life’s great, complex, painful,
but ultimately joyous and triumphant song: Hallelujah!
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