D'var Torah

I hope you all had a happy Thanksgiving, ate your fill and enjoyed the company of family or friends.

Thanksgiving is a unique holiday because of its American universality and its focus solely on food and gathering.  It is also unique, for many of us, due to the absence of religious or spiritual content. This doesn’t mean that we don’t find meaning in the holiday, just that whatever experiences we have are not usually labeled as “spiritual.”

In the Torah portion this week, Jacob leaves home and begins his life’s journey.  He spends a night in the desert, using a stone as a pillow.  During the night, Jacob has a moment of transformation, and who wouldn’t in his situation?  He is in a time of crisis, as he flees the threat of his brother’s anger and strikes out for the first time on his own.  He lies on the desert rock through the night, a memory that I myself will never forget from my own times in Israel, staring up at a vast sky full of bright stars.  Jacob awakens in the morning with a new feeling of purpose in his life. 

At our best, our lives are full of moments like these, though some of them may feel deeper than others.  Perhaps the difference between Jacob’s experience and ours, most of the time, is not only its depth but the significance he attaches to it.  Jacob exclaims aloud, “Surely, God is in this place and I did not know it!”  He understands his experience as an encounter with God.

Like Thanksgiving, Jacob’s exclamation reminds us that moments of meaning can be found whenever we are able to recognize them for what they are. It encourages us to open up our concept of what spirituality is and how we talk about it.  Some call it God, some call it our connection with something beyond us.  For some it’s about our connection with each other and with community. Reform Judaism challenges us to look for a sense of spirituality in our lives, in both “religious” and non-“religious” ways – not just in the stereotypical places we hear about today, like in prayer, yoga, meditation, or spending time in nature.  We are reminded that spirituality is present whenever we experience something profound, whether a deep encounter with another person, a feeling of wonder, appreciation, or meaning, or a sense of being connected to something beyond the world that we see and touch.  Our religious lives, and the life of our congregation, can be made fuller if we welcome those experiences, and share them with each other – whether at a family dinner, or up in the mountains, or here, at Temple Rodef Shalom, and whether through studying Torah and other types of learning, through acts of Tikkun Olam, through the personal connections we make with each other and the conversations we have.  

Wishing you a Shabbat of rest, rejuvenation and fulfillment,
Rabbi Jeffrey Saxe