Description
Feeling It: Feeling the Divine Presence On A Daily Basis – By Rabbi Pinchas Winston
I STILL REMEMBER the experience. It was over 40 years ago, but I can still see it clear as day. At the time I didn’t realize it, but it marked another major turning point in my life, not too long after the previous one when I decided to accept upon myself to be “frum.”
I had a Conservative Judaism background, which meant I went to Cheder three days a week, Sunday mornings, and two afternoons a week after Public School. And it meant that I (forcibly) went to synagogue on the High Holidays. My mother, to her credit, tried to get me to attend Junior Congregation services on Shabbos, but I made sure that it did not last too long.
First chance I could bolt, I did. It was Grade 9, and I remember being spoken to by the rabbi of the synagogue who tried to convince me that my Jewish education did not have to stop there. I greatly begged to differ, but I just smiled and shook my head in agreement. Debate would have kept me there too long.
I left and never looked back. Judaism was archaic, I did not really know what Torah was, and the Western world seemed so much more with it. I was finally free to make my own personal path through it, and I, like so many others with my background, found that exciting. I had no idea at that time, nor would I have believed anyone who told me so, that I would be clawing my way back in for good, some five years later.
What happened during those five years to turn my compass 180 degrees is a book, or at least a couple of chapters, of its own. But not in this book. Let’s just say that it was a combination of people, places, and events, some predictable, some not, that came together to change my perspective on life and, in the last year, Judaism.
At the end of that period I was back in Jerusalem, because I felt it was the best place to learn and become more religious. I was in a yeshivah and making it my home, and I was learning Torah all day. It was quite the adjustment, but honestly, it felt right.
I came to yeshivah towards the end of the summer when Rosh Hashanah was fast approaching. It was going to be my first real Rosh Hashanah, and I actually looked forward to it. In my Conservative synagogue years, I suffered terribly painful hours of boredom as an operatic chazzan and his choir prayed on behalf of an unlearned and disinterested congregation. That Rosh Hashanah in yeshivah, like everyone else around, I was going to pray on behalf of myself.
I don’t know what I expected to happen, but nothing did. I prayed as planned, using an English translation to help me understand what I was saying. But I remained unmoved by what I read, even distant, and for some reason I found that frustrating…even though it was only my first Rosh Hashanah.
It didn’t help that the guy next to me was bawling his eyes out. I mean, what was going on with that guy? Did I have to be party to his sorrow? What about respect for your neighbor? Couldn’t he keep his stuff to himself?
Each sob made me cringe and seemingly said to me, “What’s the matter with you? Don’t you feel anything?” I got so uptight that I actually walked out in the middle from the Bais Midrash where we were dovening and sat on some stairs about 15 meters away. I didn’t know what to do with myself.
As I sat there, head in my hands and elbows on my knees, waiting for something…anything…to help me feel better and get back to the dovening, a thought occurred to me. I realized that though I may not have felt anything godly, I clearly had wanted to. “Look how frustrated I am!” I thought to myself. “Look how badly I want to get into the dovening! That’s gotta count for something!”
That’s when I looked “up” towards God and said my famous words. Well, at least famous to me:
Listen God, I may not want to connect to You now as I should, but at least I want to want to connect to You. And if I don’t even want to want to connect to You, then at least I want to want to want to connect to You, etc.”
Then thinking a bit more I concluded:
“Listen God, I don’t know how many want tos are in the equation. But clearly, on some level, I truly want to connect to You…to feel Your Presence…Hopefully at some point in the future I can start knocking off some of those want tos.”
It worked. That realization, together with the little tête-à-tête with God, somehow spoke to me. It calmed me, and finally I felt ready to go back inside and continue dovening. I did and did not suffer that frustration the rest of Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur, or ever again. And I was no longer bothered by the emotional guy next to me, in front of me, or behind me…
I had definitely tried too hard that Rosh Hashanah because my expectations had clearly been too high. But it had taught me something very important about myself, my core self, and that gave me something to work with. Clearly, as anti-religion as I had once been, I wasn’t inside. There was room for God in my heart.
It would take years before I would learn about a chiddush in the Rambam that would make sense of all of it. But I’ll save that for the next chapter. In the meantime, something else and rather unplanned occurred to change my connection to God quite dramatically.
One of the most difficult things for a ba’al teshuvah to get used to is prayer. The idea of staying in one spot and focussing on something invisible and abstract for a period of time is new and, well, uncomfortable. The problem of trying to make someone else’s words your own while trying to learn the Hebrew makes it even more awkward. Your heart becomes like a person stuck under water too far from the surface to get air.
The tendency for some is to “just get it over with.” Why prolong the suffering? Say what you must say and do what you must do, but don’t get bogged down in the details and a lack of emotions. It’s an obligation. Fulfill it, and move on.
That was certainly my approach in the beginning. The only problem was that I finished well ahead of the shaliach tzibbor, which meant waiting around for him to start his repetition, which I did. But I wasn’t such a learner at that point, and there was little else to look at in the Bais Midrash, so I just stood around and waited, looking out the window from time-to-time.
Borrrrring. Verrrrrry borrrrring. Then it occurred to me one day out of the blue that it might be less boring if I just took more time to say the words and finished later. I had actually learned that trick years ago in my Conservative synagogue days when I once prayed just to keep myself busy and distracted from the boredom. It actually worked.
And it worked this time as well. In fact, it more than worked this time. By saying the words more slowly I ended up saying them more soul-ly, because they had time to do their thing. For the first time, the words triggered things…thoughts…ideas…memories. They had time to soften me up, and that actually began to trigger some emotions, personal emotions. The words became a little less someone else’s and more my own.
There was no turning back now. Once you’ve tasted that connection, you just want more of it. It is so enlivening, so uplifting, so sincere, so…so…soul-like. Yes, that was it. By saying the words slower I said them more sincerely. By saying them more sincerely, I said them more soul-ly. And for the very first time ever in my entire life, at least that I could remember, my soul felt like a participant, and no longer just a spectator.
Talk about game changers. That was a game changer, and the most important lesson I have ever learned, though it took me years to articulate it. That is when I began to feel what the holy books call Shechinah, the Divine Presence because, it turns out, when you open yourself up to your soul, you open yourself up to the Shechinah. Your soul is your portal to the Shechinah.
That first Rosh Hashanah I had just wanted to feel different, more spiritual. Years later, I realized it was the Shechinah that I had really wanted to feel, though I had barely known what it was at the time. In fact, the truth is the same for everyone, even, believe it or not, the atheist and agnostic. We can’t help it. It is just part of who we are, how we were made.
Once you start to feel the Shechinah in tefillah, then you start to feel it the rest of your day as well. It effects how you behave, how you feel, and you interact with others. And when you “fail” it, you feel melancholy when it distances itself because, while you feel it, you feel the most alive, as we say:
But you who cleave to God your God are alive, all of you, this day. (Devarim 4:4)
After all, He is the Source of life. It makes sense that the more you cling to Him, the more life you have.
Many, many years later, it is not the same Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur that it used to be. It is a rendezvous with God. But not like the rest of the year when tefillah is so short and there are other things to do in the day. Just as you get started you have to stop.
Not on the Yemai Norayim though. They are days of tefillah. We are in shul for hours, and there is nothing else to do and nothing else to think about on these days. There is time on Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur for a long “flight.” They are days for releasing your soul so the Shechinah can find its way back into your heart where it belongs.
Is it real, or imagined? People talk about “feeling” the Shechinah, but is it just wishful thinking, you know, wanting something so badly that you convince yourself you’re actually having it? We know that the brain is capable of evoking all kinds of feelings and emotions, so is a person’s feeling of Shechinah, at least today in non-prophetic times, just that, a real feeling but just personally induced?
Even if it is, that may not be so bad. For example, let’s say you had to go somewhere far away for a while but did not want to be forgotten by your loved ones. So, you hang sentimental pictures of yourself around the house for your family to look at and recall you and the experiences you had. It won’t feel exactly like you’re there, but it will be a little bit like it.
Maybe it is not possible to actually feel the Shechinah today while exile remains so intense, as it says:
My fury will rage against them on that day, and I will abandon them and hide My face from them, and they will be consumed, and many evils and troubles will befall them, and they will say on that day, “Is it not because our God is no longer in my midst, that these evils have befallen me?” (Devarim 31:17)
And hide My face: As though I do not see their distress. (Rashi)
And perhaps, so we shouldn’t completely lose touch with God, He does things in such a way as to catch our attention and invoke certain reactions within us that only resemble feeling the Shechinah. Or, perhaps, as mentioned before, it is just a nice delusion. After all, why would we talk about returning the Shechinah to Tzion in the Shemonah Esrai if it was still here?
One thing is for sure, it is hard to prove it to someone else. Someone who has not yet experienced what we will call a Shechinah Experience has a tough time believing that such “feelings” are anything more than manmade, or at least man-imagined. If they aren’t, why haven’t they felt them as well? Why can’t they just do something to feel it?
These are good questions, but not unanswerable. It is the answers themselves that allow people to actually have a Shechinah Experience, and to confirm it for themselves. But how? Some answers only make sense from the other side, and with the help of God, this book will help a person get there.
