The Virtual World and the Spiritual World, it's Mirror Image

We have come here today on Rosh Hashanah, the spiritual New Year for something – or perhaps for a few different reasons. In the Torah, Rosh Hashanah’s only instructions are that we gather and listen to the sound of the shofar. We listen that it might speak to us and arouse in us a desire. Perhaps we might call it a desire for spiritual renewal or spiritual nurturing. The S’fat Emet taught that there is a spiritual point in each of us which we yearn to expand, placed there by the Divine Presence. The word spiritual means that which is related to the spirit – the non-physical world. We have come here with a hunger in our souls for some kind of connection or renewal-to that non-physical world that we intuit but seemingly have limited access to. The Torah speaks about this when we are barred from re-entering the Garden of Eden.

In ancient times, this renewal was framed in a moral sense. Our machzor, our prayerbook for the Holy Days quotes Maimonides, who lived in the 12th Century. He said, “Awake from your slumber and rouse yourselves from your lethargy. Scrutinize your deeds and return in repentance…mend your ways and your actions; forsake the evil path and unworthy purposes.” Our moral choices have much more to do with spiritual renewal than we might think. They either form barriers or enhanced access to the spiritual universe, or, in other words to the Divine Presence. We have moved beyond that idea of crime and punishment in our modern sensibilities. Who wants to be part of religion that threatens us?

We look at the Torah today in an entirely new light, interpreting it with more love, kindness, soul, and understanding than our ancestors did, to mine its deep wisdom and benefit from its assistance. Some of you have heard me speak about the evolution of human consciousness. I explain this to myself with the image of a beach. I am standing on a beach at the water’s edge looking at the horizon. Those born after me: the 12 year old Bar & Bat Mitzvah kids I teach who were born after me, are standing well into the water. They can see a farther horizon than the horizon I can see. Those born before me are standing up the beach. They can’t see as far as the horizon I can see. This image is also useful in that it helps me not to make others who hold different opinions wrong, as the reality they see is different from my reality. We know we are physical beings, living in the physical world. And this too is shifting. In the late 1960’s Woodstock’s Love-In, the idea of the Age of Aquarius from the show Hair represented the movement that began at that time, in which we began to accept and include all people: people of color, different ethnicities, genders, religions, sexual orientations, and physical and mental challenges.

This progress has continued through the advent of cell phones and the internet, allowing us to see people across the earth and form connections with them. Our current reality is that we now spend much of our time in the non-physical world. Stores are disappearing. We talk to each other via cell phone, skype, and other platforms, across the city and sometimes across the world. We are coming together and in a sense, we are no longer as bound to the physical world as we once were. A brief comment about transgender publicity in the media: I have a cousin in Israel who made a comment about all the transgender emphasis in this country. I told her that it’s the physical representation of what is happening within people: Mothers are working, Fathers are nurturing; gender roles are changing and becoming more fluid, more malleable. Most of the young people who come to me for me to marry them tell me they are spiritual but not religious. The recent Pew Survey of Religion in the country has identified the fastest growing segment of our population, the “Nones.” Between 70 and 80% of young people who do not have a high level of religious commitment are identified as “nones- having no religion.”

Religion is losing its grip on people. This was foretold by one of the Chassidic masters, Rabbi Zakok HaKohen of Lublin, as quoted by Rabbi Shlomo Carlebach and Rabbi Zalman Shachter Shalomi: “Some say the world is becoming less and less religious, but I say, on the contrary, the souls of people are becoming more and more refined. Perhaps on the outside it looks as if they are breaking away from God, but on the inside they are getting closer and closer.” Now we do yoga and tai chi for our bodies and also for our souls; for the hunger within us: a hunger for the sacred. We know we have physical needs AND we also have spiritual needs – perhaps more spiritual needs than we are aware of. We know we need love and friendship. We also need to experience beauty and art. We need time for quiet, a sense of community, beliefs that give meaning to our lives and inspire us with hope, giving us comfort. We need integrity, truth, and justice. In fact, we yearn for these three even though we are not always aware of it. Rabbi Shimon ben Gamliel said in the Mishna, during Roman times, “By virtue of 3 things does the world endure: Truth, justice, and Peace.” We need to feel safe, to have ethical values, to contribute to others, to pray alone and sometimes together. One teacher from Islam said we need recognition and appreciation; AND we need a connection to the Divine. The Medical Community worldwide has begun to articulate and teach physicians, nurses, and other professionals about our spiritual needs. From the University of Maryland Medical Center to the US Army, to groups in Liverpool, Japan, Germany, to the IDF, the Israeli Defense Forces – in all of these organizations and locations people are speaking about and teaching about our spiritual needs.

Judaism is changing in this area too. There is an expansion occurring for us clergy so that we can live in the same interfaith, accepting world where non-clergy live, not only partly in the virtual world, but partly in the spiritual world. When we gather each year to look inside ourselves, we have an opportunity to be renewed by creating sacredness here together. The Judaism you find today, not only in this synagogue, but also in the greater Jewish Community is expending, even in Orthodoxy, where a few women Talmud scholars have been ordained as rabbis. Each of our spiritual needs is a gateway into our souls. Finding a way to express and explore those needs is an entry point into the spiritual world, which is a companion to the virtual world and its mirror image. What is the benefit of all of this? It directly affects our contentment, happiness, and well-being – all that we want for ourselves but are unsure just how to achieve.

And where is God in all of this? One perspective is that God is the Divine, creative force which has brought us to this time and place and is continuing to lead us forward from here. We know how little of our spiritual potential we currently use. How much of our spiritual potential can we realize by seeking the Divine within? In the future, we will be more aware of our intuitive nature and in tune to its wisdom. The Torah teaches us that the physical and spiritual universes are a unity. To change our physical reality, we have to change our minds, opening them to the possibilities within us. By enlarging our perspective to encompass not only the virtual world where we spend so much of our time, but also the spiritual world, its mirror image, we can vaguely see where we humans are going, and how we will live in several more generations.

The pathways into this dimension of our lives is contained in the Ancient teachings of Judaism. The Divine Presence gave us these pathways as a gift, to be opened when we were ready. Ancient mystics like Moses, Rabbi Akiva and Shimon bar Yohai, who lived in Roman times, Moses de Leon, the author of the Zohar, who lived in the 12th Century, Moshe Chaim Luzatto in the 17th Cent., and the Baal Shem Tov in the 18th Century, through their understanding and wisdom were able to unwrap these gifts. I know one very spiritually gifted person who was able to receive one of these gifts. He told me that he goes into this state as easily as you or I would go onto the internet. The pathways have been waiting for us in our generation, to be discovered by us, not only by the great souls and teachers of the past. We are now ready as ordinary people to begin to understand them. We have a hunger for this knowledge, wholeness, and connection in our souls. We stand at a doorway we can now choose to walk through by growing in goodness, caring, kindness, integrity, charity, and forgiveness. The doors are now waiting for us. Judaism holds some of the keys. It is a marvelous journey that we humans are programmed to take. As the rabbis of the Talmud so often said, “Come and Learn.”
Given on Rosh Hashanah, 2016