Last week, we read the Ten Commandments. We read about Moses climbing up that mountain for an intimate and awesome conversation with God. And the Torah was revealed to Moses, the ultimate religious experience. It was a jolting transformation, and overwhelming sense of God’s presence. We have all moments of awe and transformation and sometimes we imagine that these moments are the height of spirituality. Not so, in a Jewish context. Jewish spirituality begins as an authentic experience, after the revelation. Jewish spirituality begins when Moses comes down off the mountaintop and wakes up the next morning. Last week we read about Moses on Sinai, but we learn about authentic Jewish spirituality begins in this weeks Parasha – when God teaches us about the discipline of performing the mitzvot.

This week’s parasha is a collection of laws that help us live our daily lives: laws of marriage, employment, lost property, honesty in courts, humane treatment of one’s enemy, extending loans to the poor, financial practices ... These are mitzvot, commandments, the concretization of our mission to reflect the image of God. The mitzvot from the Torah have evolved through a long process of interpretation and debate—into the body of law know as hallacha, the path toward holiness. This week’s parasha, teaches us how to live a spiritual life, through the discipline of Jewish living—our contemporary system of mitzvot.

Judaism and Jewish practice is a spiritual discipline. Our system includes dietary laws, Shabbat observance, moral codes, and ethical practices. Yes, Judaism is a culture and a social network, and a lifestyle, but it designed to be a spiritual discipline. For a long time, I didn’t understand this. Growing up in a modern, observant Jewish community and orthodox day schools, the system of mitzvot seemed oppressive and rote. When I went off to college, I joined a wave of seekers seeking alternative forms of spirituality to bring purpose and meaning into my life. I turned my attention to Asian culture. I took a semester of Tai Chi, I studied the Ching I Chuan, a meditative form of martial arts. I read the Tao de Ching, a book of Confucinaist Wisdom; I have 4 different translations on my shelf. I was exploring Asian culture, until I realized what I was looking for—I was looking for a system. I was looking for a discipline. I was in awe of the nobility and the honor of commitment and discipline. The more I learned about meditation and spirituality, the more I realized the amount of discipline and structure that it required. In order to achieve spirituality through meditation, you have to meditate every day—religiously. It requires a daily commitment and extreme resolve to practice and learn, and ritualize the experience. All authentic, sustainable spiritual experience requires a system and a commitment to that system. Judaism is our system. I didn’t realize this growing up because no one had ever taught me that a mitzvah is a religious and spiritual experience. Reciting a blessing over food, acknowledges God as the Source of that food, and inspires gratitude, humility, and grandeur. We are commanded to recite blessings before and after we eat, it is a spiritual discipline to connect us to our Creator. Judaism is an ancient, and brilliant spiritual discipline. It’s a beautiful and rich language of ritual practice.

There is a perception that Jewish observance is restrictive, fossilized, outdated, and unyielding. But, I’ve been blessed to see Jews of all denominations living observant Jewish lifestyles that work. Their commitment to daily Jewish observance gives them structure, order, a vehicle to become better people, a vehicle to become more spiritual and directed, a vehicle to bring God into their lives. It makes decisions easier, it makes issues go away, it bring comfort and confidence, nobility and humility and respect. This is the Jewish observance I love. Over the coming months and years, we’re going to learn about our conservative system of hallacha, its authenticity, its potential, its beauty and its content.

Our purpose, our mission as the Jewish people is to reflect the image of God into this world. In other words, to make this world more just, more sacred, more compassionate. We don’t look for God with closed eyes, but with open hands. We don’t look for God to appear in a Cloud of Glory, we find God in the still, small voice crying out for our help—the voices in Darfur, the voices on the streets, the voices of our neighbors and friends, who need our help and our kindness.

In last week’s parasha, Moses has his experience with God. When he comes down off the mountain, he begins to teach us about how we achieve a connection with God in our world. Many of those same laws that we read today are still relevant in our day, many of those laws have evolved over time through our evolving system of Jewish law, hallacha. The mitzvot, the commandments, are there for us today, as a spiritual discipline to connect with our Source.  Today, when I read about the honor and discipline of the great samarai warriors, I no longer feel envy, because I’ve discovered the nobility and honor of my own tradition—when we’re doing it right. I pray that we commit ourselves to living noble and disciplined lives. But prayer’s not enough. Here’s how we’re going to begin. Choose one mitzvah that you don’t currently practice, and commit. If you don’t light Shabbat candles each week, light them every week—religiously, as a spiritual discipline. If you don’t pray on a regular basis, come to shul every week—

religiously, as a spiritual discipline. If you don’t give tzedakah every week before Shabbat, put some coins into the tzedakah box, religiously, as a spiritual discipline. Honor your parents with a phone call on the same night every week, choose one, and commit yourself to it, as a discipline. For your own sake, for the sake of your children, for the sake of the future of Judaism, for God’s sake, I pray that we’re able to become more spiritual and more connected with God, as we reclaim our great heritage of commitment, honor and discipline through our daily system of mitzvot.

© Ranon Teller 2006

Sermon Classification: 91