Movement Seeks to Ignite Jewish Spirituality

c. 2005 Religion & Ethics Newsweekly SILVER SPRING, Md. _ Shortly before the Jewish High Holidays began, a small group of Jews gathered in a suburban home to recite the traditional “Al Cheyt” prayer of repentance. But there was nothing traditional about this Al Cheyt. Instead of recited prayers led by a rabbi, these Jews […]

c. 2005 Religion & Ethics Newsweekly

SILVER SPRING, Md. _ Shortly before the Jewish High Holidays began, a small group of Jews gathered in a suburban home to recite the traditional “Al Cheyt” prayer of repentance. But there was nothing traditional about this Al Cheyt.

Instead of recited prayers led by a rabbi, these Jews created their own prayers of repentance and offered them while the group chanted in response. Some sought forgiveness for “losing touch” with themselves. Others for not recycling or composting. This modern twist on the traditional is a key hallmark of the growing Jewish renewal movement.


The movement is an effort to encourage Jews to re-ignite their individual spirituality by rediscovering ancient practices of the faith. It combines elements of Kabbalah, or Jewish mysticism, with the fervor of 18th century Hasidic Orthodoxy.

Participants in the movement come from across the Jewish theological spectrum of Reform, Conservative and Orthodox Jewry and also include secular Jews.

“It really has given me a doorway to a personal relationship with God,” said Holly Shere, one of those at the Silver Spring gathering. “I never would have thought it was Jewish at all.”

Typically, renewal worship includes dancing, chanting, drumming and meditation. It tends to be grass roots and participatory and, in part, a reaction to a Judaism that some believe overemphasizes the intellectual.

“Often people go to shul, and there’s a rabbi or cantor as the prayer intercessor or the intermediary between the congregation and God, and renewal really says no, that’s not how we do it. We are the performers, and God is the audience,” said Shere.

The renewal movement’s spiritual leader, Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi, says the goal is to help people form a deep connection to God.

“Once you begin to speak about the longing that we have, and you sing the melodies that bring the longing to the fore, and you express that in prayer _ in that longing there is a response that comes from the universe, and the best way in which we can say, this is God,” he told the PBS program “Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly.”


Schachter-Shalomi, affectionately known to his followers as Reb Zalman, is a Polish-born Orthodox Hasidic rabbi who fled the Nazis and came to the United States in 1941. He became increasingly concerned about what he saw as a lack of spirituality in American Judaism.

In 1976, he founded ALEPH _ the Alliance for Jewish Renewal _ based in Philadelphia. Today, ALEPH has 40 affiliated communities around the world.

Schachter-Shalomi traces some of the impulses of the movement to the aftermath of the Holocaust.

“There are some people who, after the Holocaust, felt that we have to do a restoration,” he said. “We have to get back to where Judaism was before Hitler decimated 6 million (people). And it was such a deep cut, as it were, of vital power and energy of our people.”

Professor Neil Gillman of the Jewish Theological Seminary of New York has studied the renewal movement and agrees the movement “is, in a sense, a revival of the more mystical” forms of Jewish worship.

“Some young Americans Jews rediscovered the fact that, hey, there is this Hasidic and mystical tradition that our parents and grandparents had rejected, but that’s fun and it’s attractive and it meets our needs in a way that the synagogues that the Western European Jews transplanted into America did not,” he said.


But the movement also transforms the ancient practices for a modern culture, often incorporating elements from other traditions, such as reggae and gospel and even a Jewish version of yoga.

“We may borrow a form from another tradition, they may borrow a form from us, but the essential experience is something that each gets to in our own way,” said Rabbi Daniel Siegel, rabbinic director of ALEPH.

Schachter-Shalomi said different faiths have much to teach each other. In 1990, he traveled to Dharmsala, India, headquarters of the exiled Tibetan Buddhist movement, for a dialogue with the Dalai Lama. That dialogue later became the subject of the book, “The Jew in the Lotus.”

“We work in different spaces, but it doesn’t mean that we do different work,” the rabbi said. “We each want to preserve as much of the ethnic and traditional material that we can, but to transform it so that it can be practiced in the present.”

According to those who study the movement, it is having a growing impact. Renewal practices are now used in synagogues across Jewish denominations and it has also attracted many disaffected Jews, especially those attracted to Eastern religions.

Rabbi Shefa Gold, director of the Center for Devotional Energy and Ecstatic Prayer in Jemez Springs, N.M., said she is one of those disaffected Jews who returned to Judaism because of the renewal movement.


“One of the reasons why I left the synagogue … (was) because when I began to pray, I wanted to move my body, and I wanted to feel my emotion and bring all of myself to it,” she said. “And it felt as if I could just be there from the head up.

She said she experimented with several other spiritual paths before the renewal movement brought her back into Judaism. Now, she writes hundreds of chants that are used in services around the world.

The movement also provides a spiritual home for people like Judy Barokas, who was raised Orthodox but considers herself a secular Jew.

“Jewish renewal is very low on dogma, and people come to it from all angles,” she said.

“The expression of joy through drumming, through music, through chanting _ I think there’s parts of the brain that are only touched by communal expressions of joyful sound, and that touches my heart and touches my head and touches the rest of me, and that’s where I find religious expression,” she said.

But JTS’ Gillman said the loose, free-form style of the renewal movement’s worship service is not for everyone.


“A lot of people want a much more straightforward service,” he said. “There are some people for whom the intellectual side of Judaism is primary, and they love that and they want to sit and study.”

Some worry that the movement’s all-inclusive approach may water down Judaism, and others are concerned that the movement emphasizes spiritual experience over observing Jewish law.

“Jewish law takes prayer very seriously and codifies what you say, when you say it. … In a traditionalist framework, you just don’t say, `I don’t feel like praying now, or I don’t feel like saying these words, or I want to pray (in) a much more spontaneous way,” Gillman said.

Renewal leaders say such criticism misses the mark.

“It’s always our intention to augment and enhance existing practice,” said Siegel. “We are not in the business of trying to replace anyone. And over time, I think people are beginning to realize that is true and slowly and surely, people are becoming more accepting and more open to what we have to offer.”

Added Schachter-Shalomi: “I feel that as long as I can connect people in a loving direction with God, the rest is up to God.”

MO/JL/DEA END LAWTON

(A version of this story first appeared on the PBS program “Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly.” This article may be reprinted by RNS clients. Please use the Religion & Ethics Newsweekly byline.)


Editors: To obtain a photo of Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi and Rabbi Shefa Gold, go to the RNS Web site at https://religionnews.com. On the lower right, click on “photos,” then search by subject or slug. If searching by subject, designate “exact phrase” for best results.

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