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God 101: Jewish Ideals, Beliefs, and Practices for Renewing your Faith

af Terry Bookman

MedlemmerAnmeldelserPopularitetGennemsnitlig vurderingSamtaler
241943,491IngenIngen
Is there really a God? What is God like? Does God have a plan for each of us? Why do bad things happen in the world? How can we reconcile science with a belief in God? For thousands of years, the human race has asked questions about God--looking for answers in traditions and rituals, stories and scriptures, and even in everyday experiences. In this lively, open-minded book, Rabbi Terry Bookman looks at these questions asked by every seeker, with a special emphasis on the Jewish perspective. But this book is more than a theoretical study. It offers concrete spiritual practices--prayer, study, action, and relationships--that can help anyone discover the four essential pathways to God. It is an ideal guide to finding a deeper, more meaningful spirituality--and to knowing God more fully.… (mere)
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A friend and generous supporter from Miami kept singing the praises of his rabbi. Finally, he passed along to me a signed first edition of God 101 by Rabbi Terry Bookman (Perigee paperback, 2000). Immediately I realized that Rabbi Bookman was also the author of a book of meditations that I had already grown fond of (The Busy Soul: Ten-Minute Spiritual Workouts Drawn from Jewish Tradition, a Perigee Book, 1999). “Remember,” he had said, about halfway through that sequence, “becoming one with God is a dance. Not every step will be forward. It is all part of the dance. As you take each step, feel the joy of dancing.” Ah, yes, the joy of dancing.

So I immersed myself in God 101, the subtitle of which is Jewish Ideals, Beliefs, and Practices for Renewing Your Faith. I am not Jewish, but I already knew from my experience with The Busy Soul that Rabbi Bookman’s word would contribute to the renewal of my faith. I was not mistaken.

The book begins with eight conventional questions; for example, Is there really (a) God? What is the nature of God? Why do bad things happen to good people? How can we reconcile science with belief in God? and the like. Most of his answers to these questions are, for religious people, fairly conventional answers. But then in the middle of an explanation, suddenly there will be a new insight, a way of wording what we have heard a hundred times before in a provocative, enlightening way. On the nature of God, for example, he retells the story of Moses’ encounter with the burning bush. “Moses wants God’s business card,” he says. So God gives him a name to remember: “Eh-hee-yeh ah-ther eh-hee-yah,” or in plain English, “'I will be that which I will be. Tell them I will be sent you.'” OK, that sounds pretty much like the story I’ve heard all my life. But Rabbi Bookman goes on:

“God’s self-naming, self-definition is Be-ing coming into Be-ing. God is a not-yet moment, not finite, not a noun, not some thing that we can limit in some way. God is not a what or a who; God is a when. Or an almost when. A moment that is always almost about to happen.” Suddenly prayer becomes easier, more natural for me. I may call upon El Shaddai or Adonai or YHWH or “Our Father which art in heaven . . ,” but I am really addressing my thanksgiving, my praise, my confessions, and my petitions to the Infinite One, the “moment that is always almost about to happen.” Ah, yes, the joy of praying. Let it be.

But, frankly, it is Part Two of this book that is newer and stranger to me—and even more helpful, though the terms and rituals are foreign to me: for instance, tallin (or prayer shawl), yarmulka (or skullcap), and t’fillin (or phylacteries that contain verses of scripture). Bookman calls these prayerphernalia. “You may want to experiment with these,” he says, “or create alternatives. They are intended to enhance prayer, to help you focus and get ready, not to be an encumbrance or to get in the way.” So be it.

I am reminded that another of my favorite writers, Thomas Moore in Care of the Soul, recommended a box of artifacts from the attic, “a container of holy things.” Not exactly the alternative Rabbi Bookman had in mind, but an alternative for those of us who do not wear a yarmulka. All of us can, according to Moore, “create sacred books and boxes.” Such prayerphernalia, indeed, can help us focus and may enhance the experience.

So the rabbi develops in considerable detail four “pathways to God”: the path of the heart, which is prayer; the path of the head, study; the path of the hands and feet, action; and the path of the soul, relationships. Of course, I love the pathway of study and fail most often in the pathway of action. However, it may well be in his concern for relationships that Rabbi Bookman achieves his most heightened expressions as well as his most down-to-earth common sense. One key concept that he talks about on a level that we can all understand is “falling in love,” that moment when we achieve “a oneness with the other.” Ah, yes, the intense pleasure of falling in love!

He quotes M. Scott Peck, who identified love as an “escape from the loneliness of our individual ego boundaries to a feeling of merger with our beloved.” But only two paragraphs later, he admits, “We cannot maintain the merger state indefinitely. No one can. As important as this stage is for the formation of our romantic relationships, it cannot last forever. . . . Falling in love leads to the creation of relationship; staying in love is actualized by our actions. . . . Love is an action, a welcome and endless task, something we do for one another.” Suddenly we are talking about commitment, trust, support, altruism, compromise, communication—in other words, community. Of course, we talk about intimacy, sex, marriage, parenting, and “parenting our (aging) parents.” But we are also talking about all our relationships—with friends, with nature, with humankind, with God. Ah, yes, the sense of loneliness and the joy of Oneness.

Remember the Shabbat? Ah, yes, the sabbath. In the very last paragraph of God 101, we come back down to earth. Back to our need for “a fully relational day to help [us] catch up and be with one another. . . . A time for relaxed meals instead of quick bites on the run, real conversations instead of sound bites of informational exchange, quality and quantity time instead of ships passing in the night.” Ah, yes, remember the Shabbat.

So I’m glad I enrolled myself in God 101. Though I wrote him expressing my appreciation and a wish that someday I might meet him personally, Rabbi Bookman probably doesn’t know that now he is my rabbi too.
  bfrank | Jul 16, 2007 |
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Is there really a God? What is God like? Does God have a plan for each of us? Why do bad things happen in the world? How can we reconcile science with a belief in God? For thousands of years, the human race has asked questions about God--looking for answers in traditions and rituals, stories and scriptures, and even in everyday experiences. In this lively, open-minded book, Rabbi Terry Bookman looks at these questions asked by every seeker, with a special emphasis on the Jewish perspective. But this book is more than a theoretical study. It offers concrete spiritual practices--prayer, study, action, and relationships--that can help anyone discover the four essential pathways to God. It is an ideal guide to finding a deeper, more meaningful spirituality--and to knowing God more fully.

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