By: Jim Morgenstern
One of my favorite aphorisms says: Institutions [and religion, universities, corporations all qualify!] … “Institutions by their nature transform experience into dogma.”
The inference that is drawn [ albeit subconsciously!] is that by practicing the dogma we will recover the actual experience. Clearly not correct.
Yom Kippur is a Jewish moment in the year where we have the great desire for recovering the experience [of t’shuvah / Kipur / atonement]. And we do not lack for dogma or rituals or practice: Consider: We have Five services in lieu of the usual one or two or three or four, we have more prayers in every service than usual, we recite the confessionals aloud as a group, we fast for 25 hours, we retell the ritual of the scapegoat and Temple service, etc. Tennis shoes, anyone ? I do not mean to ignore these pieces of dogma – They are all useful tools in our toolbox or arrows in our quiver – choose your metaphor!
If I go through my to-do list of ritual today and check off each item as I accomplish it – will I therefore automatically experience the feeling of t’shuvah? Is it sufficient to focus on V-ing all my check-boxes? Or is there a gulf between the practice and the experience and if so how do I bridge that gulf? and no – I do not have the magic answer to this. moreover, I think it unrealistic to expect that a single answer would be applicable to all in the community.
It strikes me that one of the key aspects of today’s Judaism is that our spiritual experience is the responsibility of each of us individually — I do not now have go-betweens between me and God … no pope, no ‘high priest’, no “spiritual leader” to intercede for me. To me, the beauty of the Reconstruction Movement is that it recognizes THAT individuality of practice.
But I need to ask the burning question: How can I during the course of my day transform the practice of the dogma of Yom Kippur into the experience that I seek?
I think that the best I can do for myself is to recognize that this gulf exists – between executing the rituals, practicing the dogma as it were, and recovering the experience. I think that aspiring to the Yom Kippur experience extends beyond executing the checklist of rituals and I need to open myself to the search towards recovering the experience.
gmar hatimah tovah
