by Rabbi Andrea C. London

In February, The Forward, a prominent national Jewish weekly, published an article about the Yoga Minyan (article can be found in the February 27, 2004 edition, online at www.forward.com), the Shabbat morning service that Julie Singer and I have choreographed to yoga postures. While we were very excited to get national coverage, the article did not adequately explain how I think this service is an authentic expression of Jewish prayer. I would, therefore, like to devote this Talmud Torah column to my thoughts on the connection between Judaism and the body and prayer.

In the morning service we begin with blessings thanking God for creating our bodies, giving us the ability to study Torah, and for our souls. After acknowledging God’s role in the intricate functioning of our bodies, it seems to me that we ignore the body during the rest of the service. We say lots of words in Jewish prayer – words from the Torah and written by the rabbis – to remind us of our history and to teach us about our values and sacred obligations.

By adding music to our worship, we seek to bring the words of our tradition off the page of the prayerbook and into our hearts and souls. In the Yoga Minyan, we add another dimension to our worship by connecting the prayers to our body. Judaism has remained steadfast in its belief that the body is not inferior to the soul and that our bodies are vehicles through which we can access the Divine. By using our body to express our prayer, we strive to create a symbiotic relationship between the body and soul, restoring the body and soul to spiritual wholeness.

Let me offer you an example: The Shema and the blessing that follows, known as the V’ahavta, signify an acceptance of the yoke of G-d’s kingdom and commandments. Jewish prayer, however, is not strictly a contractual exercise, but a daily act designed to help us internalize ideas about our relationship with G-d and G-d’s creation and to recognize G-d’s immanent presence in our lives.

In traditional Jewish prayer, we recite the words in the prayer book while using symbols such as the tallit, music, and choreographed bowing to nurture our connection to G-d. The Yoga Minyan simply employs a broader range of choreographed body movements to add another dimension to the kavanah (spiritual intention) of our prayer. The prayers that precede and follow the Shema speak of G-d’s love for us (Ahavah Rabbah) and of our love for G-d (V’ahavta). The postures that we assume for these prayers are an embodiment of these emotions.

Ideally, prayer should move us to act more in consonance with G-d’s will. To that end, in the Yoga Minyan, we use our bodies in addition to our hearts and minds in an effort to bind ourselves closer to G-d. In this way, we can stand, bow, and stretch out our arms in praise of the Creator of our bodies, whom we refer to in our morning prayers as the Wondrous Fashioner and Sustainer of life.

I invite you to join us at our next Yoga Minyan (April 3 and April 24) so that he might experience for yourself the layers of meaning that are uncovered and the connection to G-d that can be felt when the body is more fully integrated into prayer.

​Rabbi Andrea C. London
Beth Emet The Free Synagogue
Evanston, IL
847-869-4230 (w) 847-677-0846 (h)
[email protected]

by Rabbi Eli Mallon, M.Ed., LMSW
http://www.rabbielimallon.wordpress.com/
Adam and Eve ate fruit from “the tree of the knowledge of good and bad.” [1] Afterwards, they thought that they could determine what’s best for themselves (e.g. they should be clothed). [2] This attitude underlies “pride”: “I know what’s best and I want my way.” But this, we come to see, is also the root of all fear, anger, worry, envy, etc. [3]

No one really knows the future. An act that seems “wrong” at first, can sometimes turn out to be beneficial. Conversely, an act that seems “right” at first can ultimately have negative consequences (e.g. appeasing Hitler pre-WW II). Outside of the general guidelines of mitzvot, or nama/niyama, we ourselves really can’t know.

So: Adam and Eve didn’t actually “know good and bad” after eating the fruit They erroneously believed that they “knew.” Their “pride” had no basis in Reality.

This world (or universe) in which we now live actually is “Eden,” when seen from the “Divine” viewpoint (which, for us, means higher states of conscious-ness).

Eating the fruit, “Eden” became a world of toil, trials and fear – but in appearance only. Eden never ceased to be Eden in reality. The world isn’t “less filled with G-d” just because we don’t see G-d in the world or the world in G-d.
The Midrash [4] says: when Adam and Eve were in the Garden, they were 200 cubits [@350-400 ft.] tall; when they left the Garden, they were 100 cubits [@150-200 ft.] tall.

Were people ever really 100 cubits tall, let alone 200? No. But from higher heights, we see further. So, perhaps the midrash is saying that while in Eden, Adam and Eve could “see further”: Their consciousness, their field of vision, was “higher,” more inclusive, while they were in the Garden, and lower after they left it. While in the Garden, they saw the world more from a Divine perspective; afterwards, from more of a human one.

Another Midrash [5] says: Before their disobedience, Adam (and Eve?) saw a light in which they could see “from one end of the world to the other.” It similarly says that their faces “glowed.”

It’s our “natural state.” All of us should be in a higher state of conscious-ness, filled with light and glowing with health, joy and love. If we take it further, all of us are already perfect! Our perception became limited by Adam & Eve’s error [*] but the essential truth never changed. In effect, our perception is inaccurate.

Rabbi Hisda said: “Of all in whom there’s a ‘prideful’ spirit’ [גסות הרוח], G-d says, ‘he [or she] and I can’t live in the world together’.” [6] It means that our own mistaken sense of separation obscures G-d’s ongoing Presence to us.

Our “pride,” our assumed “separate self”, has no actual reality. It’s a “tendency” that each of us carries – as a consequence of Adam and Eve’s foolish non-compliance – that can be corrected by re-harmonizing ourselves with our own Divine Source – i.e. by surrender of our sense of separation from G-d.

As Steve Sufian, teacher of TM, has commented, this isn’t a “thought” or “mood.” It’s an actual change in consciousness. Jewish tradition calls it “D’veikut” — “cleaving to G-d.”

It’s the ultimate goal of any meditation or spiritual method.

Until Avraham (“Avram,” at first), Biblical characters either “walked with G-d” or walked immersed in their own worldliness. Avraham’s the first to demon-strate the possibility of rediscovering that we’re living perpetually in Eden.
There are multiple paths to this “rediscovery,” as Maharishi Mahesh Yogi and others teach [7]. Among them could clearly be counted “karma yoga” — the surrender of the self through “selfless action;” what Maharishi Mahesh Yogi calls “the innocent path of action” (as in “Torah lishma”) [8]  — or “bhakti yoga” — transcending through the love of G-d (as in Hasidut) [9]. In later midrashim, Avraham is even spoken of as coming to his realization through a process of “reasoning” — i.e. “jnana yoga;” the “intellectual” path to G-d-realization (as in learning Kabbalah, Rambam, Luzzatto, etc.) [10].
But the outcome is the same: the surrender of the self to the Self. It’s called “obedience” in the Bible: Not the frightened groveling of a slave or prisoner, but the submission of one who would learn all that his or her teacher can share with a willing student.

It’s reunifying ourselves with our Divine Source.
​
It’s coming back to what we are meant to be.
________________________________________________________________
 [1] B’reishith/Gen. 3:6
 [2] B’reishith/Gen. 3:7
 [3] B’reishith/Gen. 3:10
 [4] Pesikta Rabbati 1:1
 [5] G’morah to Mishnah Hagigah 2:1 and elsewhere
 [6] Sotah 5a
 [7] Maharishi Mahesh Yogi; The Science of Being and the Art of Living (1966); p. 281
 [8] Maharishi Mahesh Yogi; Commentary on the Bhagavad Gita (3:3); p. 185
 [9] Maharishi Mahesh Yogi; The Science of Being and the Art of Living (1966); p. 290; see also Commentary on the Bhagavad Gita (4:25); p. 293
[10] Maharishi Mahesh Yogi; The Science of Being and the Art of Living (1966); p. 283
 [*] We could also interpret the “Adam & Eve” story allegorically as a process that’s taking place within us, but that would be outside the limits of this short piece.

​

by Rabbi Eli Mallon, M.Ed., LMSW
​
The subject matter of the Advaita Vedanta of Shankara (the non-dual branch of Indian philosophy) is the true, real unity of all apparently diverse things; “from the one comes the many,” but the “many” only seem to “come from” the One. In truth, there is always, only the One. As Maharishi Mahesh Yogi wrote in “The Art of Living and the Science of Being,” “The whole of creation is the field of consciousness [expressed] in different forms and phenomena.” (p. 29)
In Vedanta, it’s often summed up in the statement: “All this is That.”

In Kabbalah, this process of the “One becoming the many” is called the “Seder Hishtalshelut,” often translated into English as the “process of emanation.” Things are said to “emanate” from their Divine source, like lightrays “emanate” from the sun. In fact, the rays have no separate existence from the sun itself. This emanation proceeds by “degrees,” called the S’firot (or Sephiroth, etc.). Yet, the S’firot themselves are only varying expressions of the unchanging, all-encompassing “Ein Sof.”

Rabbi Mosheh Cordovero, the great systematizer of Kabbalistic teachings, said that until he began learning Kabbalah, he was “as if asleep and pursuing idle thoughts.” He wrote: “Do not say, ‘This is a stone and not G-d.’ G-d forbid! Rather, all existence is G-d, and the stone is a thing pervaded by divinity.”
Or, as Vedanta says, “All this is that.”

Cordovero famously depicted the s’firot as emanating one-within-the-other, from “outer” to “inner”, beginning with “Keter” (of which כ is the first Hebrew letter). Each subsequent name is indicated by its initial Hebrew letter.
Other Kabbalistic diagrams and illustrations depict Divine emanation as a process that unfolds from the “inner” to the “outer.”

These might seem to conflict. However, if we remember that these aren’t “empirical” illustrations of the process itself, but rather depictions of different ways that we can view (or conceive of) the process, we see what our teachers are trying to tell us: Both “outer” and “inner” only describe our own limited viewpoint.

Meditation, or contemplation, in Kabbalah/Hasidut, may begin on the “process,” but points back to the essential, unchanging Oneness. As Rabbi Shneur Zalman of Liadi says in his book “Tanya,” from G-d’s viewpoint, the “emanation” never took place. It only takes place from the “human” viewpoint. Contemplation of this ultimately produces changes in consciousness and spiritual growth.

All “this” eternally remains “That.”

I see real parallels with Vedanta; you might, as well.

Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook extolled the contemplation of “emanation”:
“How beautiful is the mystical conception of the divine emanation as the source of all existence, all life, all beauty, all power, all justice, all good, all order, all progress. How great is the influence of this true conception on all the ways of life, how profound is its logic, what a noble basis for morality. The basis for the formation of higher, holy, mighty and pure souls is embodied in it.

The divine emanation, by its being, engenders everything. It is unlimited in its freedom, there is no end to its unity, to its riches, to its perfection, to its splendor, and the influence of its potency and its diverse manifestations. All the oceans of song, all the diverse torrents of perception, all the force of life, all the laughter, the joyous delights — everything flows from it. Into everything it releases the influence of its soul force. Its influence, its honor, its deliverance reaches to the lowest depths.

The innocent and luminous will of man has already embraced some of its splendor. He continues to ascend, and he elevates everything with him. Everything proclaims G-d’s glory: ‘The grandeur of Your Holiness fills Your creation; (yet) You are forevermore, L-rd’ (Psalm 93;5).” You are forevermore.

All this is that.