[HANASHIR:3182] Re: Spirituality and H.N.

[Andy Curry <acurry...>]

My reply to Ethan:

I have at times been concerned with the very issue you raise; however, I
need to restate the issue in my own words to make sure that we are talking
about the same thing.

B'ney Yisrael did not ascend to the top of the mountain; we were told not
to get too near, and, furthermore, we were too frightened to receive the
words directly from the "mouth" of Hakadosh Baruch Hu.  The community
stayed at the foot of the mountain and continued to do what people do:
Eating, sleeping, eliminating, giving birth, getting sick, getting well,
kvetching, dying, remembering yesterday and wondering what tomorrow would
bring.

It is easy to have a spiritual experience on top of a mountain, but it is
at the foot of the mountain, where the community lives, where the steady
day-to-day performance of mitzvot (what is asked of the Jew) leads the way
to true spirituality.

I believe the above statement to be true.  I have a mistrust of new-age
modes which focus on the individual, and of synagogue mission statements
which are all about serving the congregant and not at all about the
congregant's serving the congregation.

However (in Judaism, there is always "on the other hand"!)...

We know what happened when Moshe took too long in coming down from the
mountain:  The people despaired and made themselves a substitute god so
that they could dance and sing before it.  This story suggests to me that
the community needs for people to go up to the mountain top from time to
time and come back down to share revelation and inspiration.  And no, I
don't think we're in the same league with Moshe.

Craig Taubman told us more than once that our work is holy.  Those of us
who ascended Har Hava Nashira are returning to our communities with
something that was not there before.  We have seen and heard and felt what
tfila CAN and MIGHT be and are obliged to reveal that possibility to our
communities.

On Monday night, Linda Salvay and I played for the Florence Melton Adult
Jewish Studies graduation.  How did our HN experience change what we did?
We were not AFRAID to have fun.  We were not AFRAID to show emotion.  We
were not AFRAID of making mistakes.  We were not AFRAID of nudging the
people to participate.  Yes, there were some stony faces.  But if we can
hold on to the HN spirit and keep being NOT AFRAID, there will be fewer
stony faces over time.  In this way we shall serve.

So, Ethan, if we were to do Hava Nashira and keep it to ourselves, you
would be absolutely correct in your reservations.  That we do not (can
not?) keep it to ourselves justifies our having a wonderful time for four
days and rejoicing in the "spiritual high."

Kol tuv,
Andy Curry

At 01:57 PM 6/9/99 -0400, you wrote:
>
>Hi all,
>
>Each year after Hava Nashira this list is filled with beautiful accounts  
>of the depth of spiritual experience and the heights of spiritual ecstasy
>achieved during the workshop. I have attended Hava Nashira in the  past,
>and I'll even admit to having felt many of the same sentiments being
>expressed now. Nonetheless it always troubles me. So, I thought I would
>take this opportunity to try to put into words what it is about the
>conception of spirituality being expressed here that disturbs me.  I would
>love to hear the reactions of others. This message is really long and not
>specifically about music, so be warned.
>
>What is spirituality? Heschel argues that the Jewish spiritual quest
>involves "addressing oneself directly to God with the aim of getting
>close to Him; it involves a desire for experience rather than a search for
>information." (God in search of Man, 28) (excuse the gendered God
>language, it is Heschel's not mine.) This, it seems to me, is the
>vision of spirituality most supportive of experiences such as Hava
>Nashira. I don't think that it is by any means the definitive view of
>Jewish spirituality.  But I will go with it for now.
>
>It is precisely the experience of the Divine that people describe as
>having experienced at Hava Nashira. "I felt the presence of Adonai," "the
>Shechinah was dwelling among us," are the types of things that have been
>written in the past week and in years past. The intensity of feeling, the
>wonder of the music, a community of people who choose to express their
>spirituality in a way similar to your own is a miraculous thing. And,
>because H.N. is first and foremost about music, in some ways I think it is
>this last that really is the backbone of the community and the spiritual
>experience at H.N. A group of people who love to worship and express their
>spirituality in exactly the same way I do is amazing.
>
>This, I believe, is what made those who love to dance so frustrated with
>H.N. last year. They were in a community of people who chose to express
>their spirituality primarily through music. And this shared musical
>expression was the glue of the community. So a person who wanted to
>express spirit through dance not only felt the absence of dance itself,
>but also felt a separation from the community rooted in expressing
>spirituality through music. The point of all of this is that in the Jewish
>context, spirituality (that is the experience of God) is itself communal.
>
>The greatest moment in the Jewish spiritual quest was at Mt. Sinai. It was
>a communal experience. The people are commanded by God to form a circle
>around the Mountain and not to break out of the circle on pain of death to
>"many of them," not just the one who broke through.  Moses warns the
>people of this and then proceeds up the mountain where God instructs Moses
>to once again go down and warn the people not to break the circle.  So
>important was the community to revelation that Moses went up and down the
>mountain twice to repeat the same warning; that no one was to single
>themselves out from the community.  And if someone did, disaster for them
>all. (Lev. 19.9-19.25)
>
>So here is what is troubling me.  The Israelites had been slaves
>together, faced death at the sea and starvation in the desert together,
>had experienced countless miracles together. Only after all of this were
>they given communal responsibility for each other's spirituality.  It is
>within a deeply intertwined and interdependent community
>that shares experience, history, love, death, miracles and deep communal
>responsibility that, I think, the Jewish tradition teaches us that we
>truly experience God.
>
>Hava Nashira (and other short events like it) is not such a community.  It
>is a group of wonderful people with some deeply shared interests. Judaism,
>teaching, music. But it is not a community of true and lasting mutual
>responsibility. Nor is any group that gets together for but a week once a
>year.  How could it be? We see how tenuous the communal bonds are when we
>see that some people do not experience the spiritual wonder because of the
>lack of dance. Dance is just an expression, surely the lack of dance
>cannot impede the spiritual experience. As I said above, I don't think it
>was the lack of dance, per se.  The lack of dance made those people feel
>somewhat outside the community because the community was based on music. A
>deeper Jewish community can only be formed among people who live in
>community and share their lives together. And it is in this context that
>one can reach the highest levels of spiritual experience according to
>Tradition (in my view).
>
>So what am I trying to say?  I  am not trying to denigrate Hava Nashira.
>It is wonderful.  But I would like to question what a profound spiritual
>experience is. If we are climbing no higher in spirit than what is
>experienced in H.N., in a community that will exist only for a few days
>and will not bear responsibility for the true communal needs of our lives
>(simchas, daily friendship, mourning, raising children together, etc.),
>then I think that we are not achieving the sort of spirit our Tradition
>advises. We feel a spark at Hava Nashira. But it is a spark that is found
>without the fuel of a deeply experienced community. I wonder, are we
>mistaking the spark for the fire? I think the fire can burn only in a
>community with which one shares one's life. 
>
>So, why does the "spark" at H.N. seem so much brighter than the "fire" in
>our communities? Is the experience of H.N. really as high as we can go? Is
>the intensity of feeling at H.N. a genuine spiritual experience? And if so
>(and I thin it is) is it the pinnacle of spiritual experience? Why does
>life in our "real" communities rarely seem to have the same "brightness?"
>Is this because we are not achieving heights of spirituality in our own
>communities or is it because we are mislabeling what a profound spiritual
>experience really is? I don't know, but I'd love to hear what people
>think.  Sorry for the length.
>
>L'shalom,
>
>Ethan
>mesquita (at) fas(dot)harvard(dot)edu
>
>
>
>
>
>

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Andy Curry
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