Meditating in a Jewish perspective

“Our sages used to sit an hour before prayer”, says the Mishna.

They did so to increase their kavannah, their intention, their mindfulness. We want to apply this to all of our life.

Only from a place of openness can we receive. Only from a place of stillness can we see. Only from a place of quietness can we hear.

Our meditation tools are hitbonenut (self-inquiry) mussar (ethical discipline), and the teachings of Torah in words and in our body . Our influences include Maimonides, Rabbi Salanter, Rav Kook, and the Aish Kodesh.

Meditation strengthens this place of silence, stillness and peace within us, so that we can let the divine light shine through us in our daily lives.

Because the concept of Jewish meditation can mean many different things, we offer here some more detailed explanations on the background of the practice, before presenting the specific approach of Nefesh Shalom.

“Meditation(s)”: one word, three semantics

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“Meditation” comes from the Latin meditari, which means “exercise” and “reflection”. In its most elementary sense, “meditating” means exerting one’s thoughts in a focused manner: directing one’s mind to a specific object. This object can be intellectual (in the case of philosophical meditations), physical (in the case of Buddhist breath meditation), or divine (in the case of mystical meditation). In these three disciplines, the goal of meditation is completely different: philosophy seeks to understand reality, Buddhism seeks to bring awareness to the functioning of the mind, and mysticism seeks to connect to G.od.

It seeks to do so through contemplating, “reflecting”.

While the common sense translates “reflecting” as “thinking”, its most original meaning refers to a physical action: that of sending back, or “reflecting” an image just like a mirror or a body of still water.

“Meditating” can therefore be defined as “dwelling still” in order to “reflect”, to “show” the image of something else but the dweller. A spiritual translation of this process would be to say that Man, through meditation, becomes the reflection, the mirror by which the divine appears. This may be one of the reasons why ”betselem elokhim’, “in the image of G.od“ אֱהִים בְּ צַ לְ מֵ we say that man is formed (Berechit 1.37): G.od shows through Man.

We don’t always see it, because our egos are so often in the way of the divine light.

But when man makes himself still, G.od shows through him. When man meditates, he “reflects” God: the divine presence appears both to him, and through him. Thus the soul of man is at ease and at peace. It shines happily.

Judaism knows three main forms of “meditation”: intellectual meditation: the way of study; devotional meditation: the way of prayer; and spiritual meditation: the way of silence. Nefesh Shalom focuses on the latter.

Meditation in Judaism: a branch of “Jewish mysticism”

While the way of study and the way of prayer were written down to preserve Jewish knowledge in the diaspora, more esoteric forms of meditation were only transmitted orally. This is why meditation in Judaism pertains to the realm of mysticism.

Mysticism aims specifically at drawing one closer to G.od. So even when it makes surface use of the intellect—for instance, through the contemplation practice of focusing on a passuk from the Torah—it draws on emotion, intuition and piety.

Jewish meditation is not about being mindful of ourselves, it is about having or Mind-full of G.od.

Because the idea of a subjective encounter with the divine is so intimate, so ineffable, and so difficult to grasp with words, it pertains to the realm of mysticism (esotericism), as opposed to mainstream or upfront religiosity (exotericism).

Truth is hidden. G.od is Truth. G.od is revealed

The words “mysticism” and “esotericism” take their roots from the Greek word µυω, “to S-T-R or satar) which)סתר conceal”. But we can trace it further back to the Hebrew root also means “to conceal,” or “to hide”. Mysticism is the esoteric, the hidden side of a system. It considers not only that reality (“truth”) is hidden behind appearances, but also that reality is “spiritual”: inhabited by the spirit of G.od (ruach ha kodesh), the divine presence.

Whatever you take the divine to be, if you are moved when you see a sunset or the face of a baby, if you see soul behind a flower, if you feel singing niggunim wash over yours, you get it. It is beyond words anyway, so the word “divine” can even be dropped if it gets in the way.

But it is not surprising that you would get it. In the Jewish view, man is a spiritual being, because he was created in the image of G.od. This is why he can have access to spirituality from his own being, from his own body-mind. This is the path taught by Jewish meditation. The world in the mystical view: “G.od in drag”

According to the mystical view, the world as we see it is a cover; a beautiful curtain that mirrors the true reality it conceals: that it is divine.

The world is divine because the world is G.od.

.(ein od milvado) אין עוד מלבדו :In the Jewish mystical view, G.od is everywhere

But we don’t necessarily see it in our ordinary experience of the world, in our day-to-day lives.

Thus the Jewish view of G.od is in itself an exemplification of mysticism: the Jewish G.od is that which cannot be seen. G.od, which is, in the Jewish view, the ultimate truth of the world, its “raison d’être,” is hidden.

Jewish theology articulates this beautiful paradigm that the G.od who is revealed is the G.od who is hidden.

Jewish mysticism, mostly known through the school of “kabbalah” (the receiving), is therefore the mystical path of an already mystical tradition.

Why meditation? On prayer and meditation

It is because the divine is concealed to the ordinary experience, that Jewish meditation comes to be. It teaches us to learn a more refined “way of being” so that we can perceive the divine. Part of this training involves our own soul cleansing. How can you see through water if it is turbid?

Prayer was designed to be a path of communication towards G.od. Nevertheless, the words of prayer are written by others, and the words of the other are not always sufficient to make us “feel” what we are saying. But this is not the deepest reason why meditation comes to be.

There is an essential difference between prayer and meditation: prayer is a communication we address to G.od, from where we are, from the mundane. Meditation is a key that opens a doorway from where we “go” to meet divinity. But we go on the spot. There is nowhere to go, since G.od is everywhere.

So in prayer we talk. In meditation we learn to see that we already “are” in presence. This is why in meditation we say that we “go within”.

Both practices are designed to provoke an encounter, in different ways that makes them complementary. The main way these paths have been combined in the Jewish tradition is by using meditation as an introductory practice to prayer. When there is space within us, we “see” that we already “are” in the presence of divinity, and then we can “talk”.

This meditation practice can be described as kavannah (intention) meditation. In fact this practice is the main trace we have of silent meditation in the Jewish tradition.

The mishna says (Berakhot 5.1): .אין עומדין להתפלל אלא מתוך כובד ראש

חסידים הראשונים היו שוהים שעה אחת ומתפללים

.כדי שיכונו את לבם למקום

“One should not stand up to pray unless from a head full of respect

The first pious men (chassidim) used to wait one hour and then pray in order to direct their hearts towards the Omnipresent.”

Everything we “have” about silent sitting meditation in Judaism stems from this little sentence. This means that any Jewish meditation practice today, is a partial reconstruction from fragments. This first implies the necessity of subjective creativity, and second that any claim of “purity” and of “authenticity” is illusory. So everything we build on this hint from the mishna as well as on other texts from the esoteric tradition, will necessarily involve a process of interpretation. Our tools for that will be textual archeology, intuition, and interpretation.

We have set off on the journey of living hermeneutics.

Jewish meditation techniques: a basic practical presentation

We have very few written traces of specific Jewish meditation practices and techniques. This is due to two main reasons: firstly, meditation, as an esoteric field, was an elitist practice exclusively transmitted orally from master to disciple. Secondly, too many keepers of this tradition were destroyed during the Shoah, along with the texts they were carrying in their bodies and in their hands.

This is why again, one has to keep in mind when approaching the topic of “Jewish meditation”, that this is a practice we can grasp today only in fragments, only from its echoes from the past.

In addition to being exclusive and esoteric, meditation was not popular in mainstream society until recently.

Since the seventies, the counterculture’s general thirst for spirituality, meaning and healing hasn’t exempted the Jewish community, and Jewish meditation has experienced a striking revival over the past decades. Today, not only meditation is being taught again in synagogues; it has ‘come out’, and “spirituality centers,” JCC’s, Universities, and Retreat Centers all across the United States are offering courses in kabbalah, Jewish mysticism and “Jewish meditation”.

Please refer yourself to the “resources” page of this website for links and bibliographic suggestions for a more in-depth exploration of the concepts, the teachers, and the historical contexts of “Jewish meditation”.

This website is practical and aims only at presenting the main concepts of Jewish meditation as they are understood here and in their most basic sense Deveikut: The purpose of Jewish meditation

The purpose of Jewish meditation is to connect us to this ultimate reality behind the apparent reality, so as to be more infused with holiness. This is the concept of dveikut, clinging to G.od, central in Jewish mysticism. It is illustrated by this passuk from the tehilim (Psalm 16), which is recited every day during the morning prayer:

שִׁוִּיתִי יְהֹוָה לְנֶגְדִּי תָמִיד

(sheviti ladonai lenegdi tamid “I place G.od before me always”).

For this reason most Jewish meditation techniques can be defined as contemplative- devotional: they focus the mind on specific objects, words or images (visual or mental), in order to feel the embrace of the divine.

Common examples among traditional practices include the contemplation of a flame, the visualization of G.od’s name, or the recitation of Hebrew letters.

Kavannah: Meditation as a preparation or as an end in itself

Jewish meditation techniques can be seen as twofold: they refer either to preparation techniques for the encounter with G.od (such is the case of meditating before prayer), or to the actual form of the encounter. Most Jewish mediation techniques can be used at either or both stages.

This is in particular the case for the concept of kavannah (intention): kavanna is either the intention brought to prayer or learning, or a form of meditation in itself. When the mishna says that our “chassidim ha rishonim used to sit an hour before, prayer,” we can imagine they were practicing some form of kavannah meditation to prepare and process the encounter with the divine.

But the kabbalistic “kavannot” are a practice in themselves: a visualization meditation whereby the notion of “intention” becomes a contemplation, a visual meditation focused on the Hebrew letters.

Hitbonenut and Hitobdedut: two ways to encountering the divine

Today, Jewish meditation is mainly represented through two concepts: hitbodedut and hitbonenut

.”badad: “alone,” “apart”), can be translated as “self-isolation)בָּדָד Hitbodedut, from the root Early 19th century Chassidic master Rabbi Nachman of Breslov had the practice of “isolating” himself in the woods and talk, shout, and cry to G.od. Hitbodedut is a form of meditation by way of intimate, and even familiar, conversation with G.od.

.”binah: “understanding”), can be translated as “self-inquiry)בִּינָה Hitbonenut, (from the root It is the main form of meditation advocated by the group Chabad, a 18th century-born Chassidic group which practice focuses on the combination of chochma (wisdom), Bina (understanding) and Daat (knowledge). However, Chabad understands hitbonenut exclusively as a form of Torah study, consisting in dwelling in contemplation of the text. But this approach can be regarded as a very specific application of the concept.

In itself, “hitbonenut” really means “self-seeking” or “self-inquiring.” This is very close to a mussar form of meditation.

Mussar: silent meditation and self-inquiry for a mindful ethical life

,Mussar: “ethics”) is a spiritual-ethical movement started in the 19th century in Europe)מוּסָר as an alternative to pietistic-devotional Chassidism.

The approach of Mussar is based on Proverbs (Michlei) attributed to King Salomon. They as a way of life. Here are the ,(מוּסָר) encourage building ethics and wisdom as a practice second and third psukim (verses) of the first perek (chapter):

ב .לָדַעַת חָכְמָה וּמוּסָר לְהָבִין אִמְרֵ י בִינָה

ג .לָקַחַת מוּסַר הַשְׂכֵּל צֶדֶק וּמִשְׁפָּט וּמֵישָׁרִ ים

To know wisdom and discipline, to comprehend words of understanding

To receive the discipline of wisdom, righteousness, justice, and equity;

Mussar’s founder, Rabbi Israel Salanter, introduced a form of meditation consists in taking some time to sit in silence each day and engaging in a gentle self-inquiry - literally hitbonenut.

The purpose of such a practice is to observe the wanderings of our minds, distinguish our conscious from our unconscious thought-processes, and, from the awareness gained from this introspection, to work on developing ethical qualities within ourselves so we can so act in the world.

Here is the way the Mussar Institute describes today the practice of Mussar:

Mussar is a path of contemplative practices and exercises that have evolved over the past thousand years to help an individual soul to pinpoint and then to break through the barriers that surround and obstruct the flow of inner light in our lives. (…)

The Jewish community spawned Mussar to help people overcome the inner obstacles that hinder them from living up to the laws and commandments—the mitzvot—that form the code of life. (…)

The goal of Mussar practice is to release the light of holiness that lives within the soul. The roots of all of our thoughts and actions can be traced to the depths of the soul, beyond the reach of the light of consciousness, and so the methods Mussar provides include meditations, guided contemplations, exercises and chants that are all intended to penetrate down to the darkness of the subconscious, to bring about change right at the root of our nature. http://www.mussarinstitute.org/wisdom- way.htm

One of the main influences of Mussar meditation is Maimonides’ reflections on ethical self- inquiry.

Maimonides’ work on mental states: the “middle way”

Maimonides, the famous sepharadi Rabbi-Doctor of the late 12th century, was also what would be called today a “soul seeker”: someone who believed in the importance of self- knowledge to improve the moral quality of one’s life. Maimonides considered ethical behavior and self-knowledge as inseparable.

In his shemona Perakim (“eight chapters”) introduction to the Mishna Avot (colloquially called the pirkve Avot and translated as “the ethics of our fathers”), Maimonides states that the cultivation of morality can only be attained through knowledge of one’s soul.

From then one can attend to its specific needs and work on fixing or curing what needs to just as a doctor would do on a body, with oneself.

Hence Maimonides recommended that one would check daily one’s soul, so as to engage in its tikkun (repair).

The soul fixing advocated by Maimonides is done through adjustments: if the temperament is inclined towards one extreme, working on cultivating the opposite quality to bring more balance.

The general rule according to Maimonides, in terms of temperament, is to cultivate the middle way. He explains it in his Hilchot deot, his “laws on temperament”:

The first of these 11 laws is to imitate God, and we do by walking on the middle way:

Therefore, the early Sages instructed a man to evaluate his traits, to calculate them and to direct them along the middle path, so that he will be sound {of body}. (…)This path is the path of the wise. Every man whose traits are intermediate and equally balanced can be called a "wise man. (Hichot Deot 1.4)

Maimonides specifies that the one who is called wise is not only the one who displays these qualities, but the one who simply reaches towards balancing his midot (character traits), not matter how little the steps.

The inner freedom of contemporary mystics: Rav Kook and the Aish Kodesh

Two 20th century rabbis have been influential in today’s revival of Jewish meditation: Rav Kook and the Aish Kodesh.

Rav Kook, the first Chief Rabbi of Palestine, highlighted the connection between inner and outer dimensions of life. He wrote extensively on the concept of Tshuva, “return”. Teshuva is often translated as “repentance,” but for him it exemplified returning to our true nature. A nature which is divine, and which is free: “Teshuva is the aspiration for the true original freedom, which is the divine freedom, wherein there is no enslavement of any kind.” (Orot haTshuva).

He advocated that the inner teshuva, the return to the true nature of our soul, would also be exemplified through an outer, literal teshuva: the return to the land of Israel.

Rav Kook can thus be seen as exemplifying the concept of “embodied spirituality”. For instance he considered our diet and spiritual nourishment being one, and advocated mindful eating habits.

For the Rav Kook, a major hindrance in our ability to shine the divine light is our ego. He encouraged meditating on the interrelatedness of breaking down the illusory barriers of separation:

“Is not the good and the nobility in ourselves but an expression of our relatedness to the all? How can we allow ourselves to be severed from the all, a strange fragment, detached like tiny grains of sand who have no value?” (Orot haTshuva).

Rabbi Kalonymous Kalman Shapira, better known as the Aish Kodesh from the title of one of his most famous books, was a chassidic rabbi who lived and died in the Warsaw Ghetto during World War II. His writings were buried in the ground and found after the war. One of his life projects was to create a “conscious community” within the klal (community), “in order to transform each of our members into a person of spirit and mindfulness”.

He believed working on the refinement of our soul was necessary to fully live a holy life, a healthy life, a happy life. He taught spiritual and meditation practices in order to implement this transformation. The most important “tool” was “mindfulness”. He believed that the increased awareness gained from mindfulness could lead to a transformation of our view of things and our relation to life:

“As we develop our capacity for mindful observation, we begin to perceive in ways that were never available to us before.” (Conscious community)

Project Nefesh Shalom is dedicated to his memory Z’L and to his work.

Jewish meditation at Nefesh Shalom

Nefesh Shalom regards Jewish meditation as an ethical-spiritual path through which the encounter with God, self-improvement and tikkun (repair) are seen as inextricable. Therefore Jewish meditation can be seen both as a spiritual therapeutic practice, and as a therapeutic spiritual practice.

Our approach of Jewish meditation mainly focuses on Hitbonenut as self-inquiry and on Mussar as ethical cultivation. We draw mainly but not exclusively on the approach of Maimonides, Rav Kook, and the AIih Kodesh, as well as on our own encounter with Torah. In each generation, in each culture, Jews look at the Torah, at their tradition, with their own eyes, and these eyes reflect their culture and their time. So our practice is also naturally informed by the empirical and intellectual encounters awaiting a life lived in the contemporary Western World. Influences include the Dharma (the philo-therapeutic teachings of the Buddha, a 6th century BCE Indian philosopher), Greek and Western philosophy, and Freudian and Lacanian psychoanalysis.

And isn’t that the task of every Jew, to make the Torah alive anew every day, with their own gaze, with their own life?

עֵץ חַיִּים הִיא לַמַּחֲזִיקִים בָּהּ

“It is a tree of life” (Michlei 3.18) indeed, that keeps bringing us alive as we bring it into life with our own experience, that is to say interpretation of it. There is nothing more reciprocal than this mutual movement of life-giving.

Just like with the breath.

Meditation at Nefesh Shalom

A typical meditation session typically lasts about an hour. We start with body-mind quieting instructions and a cheshbon ha nefesh yomi (a soul assessment for the day). We then proceed to a guided meditation on the topic of the session, followed by a silent meditation. We conclude on a niggun, to transition back to the world of extroversion, but also because singing is in itself a deeply beautiful spiritual practice within Judaism.

Nefesh Shalom calls itself a “Torah-based meditation” for two reasons:

First, the guided meditation draws on psukim or on themes from the Torah. Second, we consider the body to be in itself a depository of the teachings of the Torah. This means that a body-based meditation comprising body scanning and focusing on the breath can be literally considered in itself a Torah-based meditation.

The embodied Torah

We draw this from this passuk that tells us that the Torah is not a teaching that has been cast far away beyond reach, but on the contrary something that has been placed very close to us, inside of us:

כִּי הַמִּצְוָה הַזֹּאת אֲשֶׁר אָנֹכִי מְצַוְּ הַיּוֹם א נִפְלֵאת הִוא מִמְּ וְא רְ חֹקָה הִוא

א בַשָּׁמַיִם הִוא לֵאמ ֹר מִי יַעֲלֶה לָּנוּ הַשָּׁ מַיְמָה וְיִקָּחֶהָ לָּנוּ וְיַשְׁמִעֵנוּ אֹתָהּ וְנַעֲשֶׂנָּה

וְא מֵעֵבֶר לַיָּם הִוא לֵאמֹר מִי יַעֲבָר לָנוּ אֶל עֵבֶר הַיָּם וְיִקָּחֶהָ לָּנוּ וְיַשְׁמִעֵנוּ אֹתָהּ וְנַעֲשֶׂנָּה

כִּי קָרוֹב אֵלֶי הַדָּבָר מְאֹד בְּפִי וּבִלְבָבְ ֹלַעֲשׂתו

“For this commandment which I command you this day, is not concealed from you, nor is it far away. It is not in heaven, that you should say, "Who will go up to heaven for us and fetch it for us, to tell [it] to us, so that we can fulfill it?" Nor is it beyond the sea, that you should say, "Who will cross to the other side of the sea for us and fetch it for us, to tell [it] to us, so that we can fulfill it?" Rather, it is very close to you, this thing/word [the Torah]; it is in your mouth and in your heart, so 30:11-14 דברימ that you can fulfill it.” Devarim We infer from this that the Torah has also been placed within us so we can be intimate with it; so that we can learn from our very observation of it.

There are many other examples of the way the teachings are “embodied” within us.

A beautiful example is our spine.

As we sit to meditate and learn a posture different from the ordinary: both relaxed and upright, we are drawn to reflect on this paradox we live in. We live in tension between the spatial forces of weightlessness and the terrestrial forces of gravity. We don’t drift in space yet we don’t collapse. Unlike animals, whose spines are horizontal, our spine is vertical. How can a simple stack of small bones keep us upright? When we meditate we consider how our spine seems to be the embodiment of Yaakov’s ladder: the ladder Yaakov dreams of is a vertical bridge between earth and sky. Malachim walk up and down of it, creating a communication between higher and lower forces.

This is where we spend our lives; in this very communication, this beautiful, albeit often painful, tension between high and low, divine and mundane, spiritual intuition and lowlier instincts. This is the space of man’s life. Not the world, but this tension.

Another beautiful example of the ways or bodies can teach us about Torah is the lesson of the breath.

We maintain ourselves alive every second because we breathe. But it is not “we” who breathe. It doesn’t require of us any effort, to breathe. We are being “breathed” by our bodies. If we pay attention to the creation narrative in the Torah, how were we brought to life? By G.od breathing into man. So with every breath we can come back to our beginning, and to our connection with God.

We were born with the kiss, and this kiss is as ineffable as it is precious. Less than a hundred seconds without breathing, and we would die. This intimacy between our existence, our breathing and our soul, is even deepened when we look at the Hebrew words: In Hebrew, Neshama). Both)נְשָׁמָה neshima); and our higher level of soul is called)נְשִׁימָה breathing” is“ Shema”: the Jewish“ שְׁ מ וֹ ַע words contain the root “shin” “mem” which forms the word proclamation of faith, in which we exhort people to simply “hear”, listen to the fact that that God is one.

This is what we do in meditation. We sit, we “listen” and we see.

In order to hear one needs to be silent. This is why silent is so praised in Jewish ethics. Here is what Rabbi Simon said in the Pirke Avot:

“All my days have I have been raised among the sages, and I have found nothing better for a man than silence. Not study, but practice is the main thing. And one who talks excessively brings on sin” Pirke avot, Chap 1.17

We are used in the Torah narratives to seeing G.od manifest in striking dramatic ways: setting a bush on fire, splitting a sea, sending thunder on top of mountains. But other less upfront sources, offer another vision of the encounter with the divine. In the book of Melachim, the manifestation of G.od is described as a “still, small, voice.”

“And, behold, the Lord passed by, and a great and strong wind rent the mountains, and brake in pieces the rocks before the Lord; but the Lord was not in the wind: and after the wind an earthquake; but the Lord was not in the earthquake: And after the earthquake a fire; but the Lord was not in the fire: and after the fire a still small voice. And it was so, when Elijah heard it, that he wrapped his face in his mantle, and went out, and stood in the entering in of the cave. And, behold, there came a voice unto him” (I Kings 19:8-13).

When we make silence in our heart, when our only noise is our breath (neshima), we can hear (shema) God (Ha shem). When god shines through our silence, our soul (nefesh) access its higher level (neshama). As we are whole (shalem), we are at peace (shalom).

נשימה

נשמה

לשמוע

שָׁלֵם

שלום

Working on being holier-whollier and encountering the divine can be thus seen as one, as it is said:

קְ ד שִׁ י ם תִּ הְיוּ כִּי קָדוֹשׁ אֲנִי יְהוָֹה אֱהֵיכֶם

You shall be holy, for I, the Lord, your God, am holy. (Vayikra 19.2)

From connecting to the holiness we were created in the image of, we can retrieve our own .שָׁלוֹם we can be at peace ,שָׁלֵם ,wholeness; and that when we are whole