The Yearning for Spiritual Living

All thoughts and feelings about the tangible and knowable
world do not exhaust the endless stirring within us. There is
a surplus of restlessness over our palpable craving. We are
lonely with people, with things, with our own cravings. The
goals are greater than the grasp.
      A person is in travail with God’s dreams and designs.
      What is the essence of our feeling for God? May it not
be defined as a yearning that knows no satisfaction, as a yearn-
ing to meet that which we do not even know how to long for?
      We are used to living with ephemeral desires, but we also
know that life is a little higher than our daily interests, that
when we sigh self-complacency away a joy comes over us
that is not only ours. Bereaved of delusive satisfactions, our
hearts become drunk with an endless yearning which our
minds cannot fully apprehend.
      Like the vital power in ourselves that gives us the ability
to fight and to endure, to dare and to conquer, which drives
us to experience the bitter and the perilous, there is an urge
in wistful souls to starve rather than be fed on sham and dis-
tortion. To the pious person God is as real as life, and as nobody
would be satisfied with mere knowing or reading about life,
so they are not content to suppose or to prove logically that there
is a God; they want to feel and to give themselves to God; not
only to obey but to approach God. Their desire is to taste the 
whole wheat of spirit before it is ground by the millstone of
reason. They would rather be overwhelmed by the symbols of
the inconceivable than wield the definitions of the superficial.
      Stirred by a yearning after the unattainable, a pious person is
not content with being confined to what they are. Their desire is not
only to know more than what ordinary reason has to offer,
but to be more than what they are; to transform the soul into a
vessel for the transcendent, to grasp with the senses what is
hidden from the mind, to express in symbols what the tongue
cannot speak and what the reason cannot conceive, to ex-
perience as a reality what vaguely dawns in intuition.

The Noble Nostalgia

The yearning for spiritual living, the awareness of the
ubiquitous mystery, the noble nostalgia for God, have rarely
subsided in the Jewish soul. It has found many and varied ex-
pressions in ideas and doctrines, in customs and songs, in
visions and aspirations. It is part of the heritage of the psalmists
and prophets. Listen to the psalmist: “As the hart panteth
after the water brooks, so panteth my soul after thee, O Lord.
My soul thirsteth for God, for the living God, when shall I
come and appear before God?” (42:2-3) “My soul yearneth,
yea even pineth for the courts of the Lord; my heart and my
flesh sing for joy unto the Living God” (84:3) “for a day
in Thy courts is better than a thousand” (84:11) “In Thy
presence is fulness of joy” (16:11).
      Is Judaism an earthly religion? “I am a sojourner in the
earth” (119:19), the psalmist declares. “Whom have I in
heaven but Thee? And beside Thee I desire none upon earth”
(73:25). “My flesh and my heart faileth, but God is the rock
of my heart and my portion forever” (73:26). “But as for me,
the nearness of God is my good” (73:18). “O God, Thou
art my God, earnestly will I seek Thee; my soul thirsteth for
Thee, my flesh longeth for Thee in a dry and weary land,
where no water is…for Thy lovingkindness is better than
life. My soul is satisfied as with marrow and fatness…
I remember Thee upon my couch and meditate on Thee in the
night watches…My soul cleaveth unto Thee. Thy right
hand holdeth me fast” (63:2,4,6,7,9).
      Awareness of God is incompatible with self-righteousness,
with the conceits of taking one’s achievements too seriously.
“If I be wicked, woe unto me; and if I be righteous, yet will
I not lift up my head. I am full of ignominy; see Thou mine
affliction.’ (Job 10:15)
      There are many laws in the Bible demanding the offering
of sacrifices at the sanctuary. Yet although the prophets in-
sist that the true “sacrifices of God are a broken spirit, a
broken and contrite heart” (Psalms 51:19), there is no com-
mandment to be contrite. For is it necessary to issue such a
precept? How is it possible not to be sick at heart in a world
such as this?
             The earth is given unto the hands of the wicked…
               The tabernacles of robbers prosper,
               And they that provoke God are secure.
                                                                (Job 9:14 12:6) 
    Self-contentment is something which is too hard to bear
together with the knowledge of coexisting woe. Who could
feel that one’s own ugly failures would be wiped off with
petty excuse or be happy in pleading moral incapacity?

      Is not thy wickedness great?
      And thine iniquities infinite?…
      Thou hast not given water to the weary to drink,
      And thou hast withholden bread from the hungry.
      And as a mighty man, who hath the earth,
      And as a man of rank, who dwelleth in it
      Thou hast sent widows away empty,
      And the arms of the fatherless have been broken.
                                                           (Job) 22:5, 7-9) 

      “Nothing is as whole as a broken heart.” The sense of con-
trition should not impair the awareness of our spiritual might,
of the eternal nobility that goes with eternal responsibility.
      A learned man lost all his sources of income and was look-
ing for a way to earn a living. The members of his commu-
nity, who admired him for his learning and piety, suggested to
him to serve as their cantor on the Days of Awe. But he con-
sidered himself unworthy of serving as the messenger of the
community, as the one who should bring the prayers of his
fellow-men to the Almighty. He went to his master the 
Rabbi of Husiatin and told him of his sad plight, of the invita-
tion to serve as a cantor on the Days of Awe, and of his being
afraid to accept it and to pray for his congregation.
      “Be afraid, and pray,” was the answer of the rabbi.

The Endless Discontent

The aim of Jewish piety lies not in futile efforts toward the
satisfaction of needs in which one chances to indulge and
which cannot otherwise be fulfilled, but in the maintenance
and fanning of a discontent with our aspirations and achieve-
ments, in the maintenance and fanning of a craving that knows
no satisfaction. Thus, Judaism is the cause rather than the re-
sult of a need; an objective requirement rather than a subjec-
tive interest. It teaches a person never to be pleased, to despise
satisfaction, to crave for the utmost, to appreciate objectives
to which they are usually indifferent. It plants in them a seed of
endless yearning, a need of spiritual needs rather than a need
of achievements, teaching them to be content with what they have,
but never with what they are.
      Most of us are unhappy, not because we are dissatisfied with
what we are—for example, callous to other people’s distress or
privation—but because of our being discontent with the what we
possess. Religion is the source of dissatisfaction with the self.
      Happiness, as was noted above, is not a synonym for either
satisfaction, complacency or smugness, but is essentially the
certainty of being needed, of having the vision of the goal
which is still to be attained. It is self-satisfaction which breeds
futility and despair.
      Animals are satiable and pleased with themselves, while humans
are only capable of being satisfied with themselves when their
spirit begins to decay and to stick in the morass of overrated 
deeds. Self-satisfaction, self-fulfillment, is a myth which pant-
ing souls must find degrading. All that is creative stems from
a seed of endless discontent. It is because of humanity’s dissatisfac-
tion with the customs, sanctions and modes of behavior of their
age and race that moral progress is possible. New insight be-
gins when satisfaction comes to an end, when all that has been
seen or said looks like a distortion to them who see the world
for the first time.
      Self-contentment is the brink of the abyss, from which the
prophets try to keep us away. Even while the people of Israel
were still in the desert, before entering the Promised Land,
they were warned to brave the perils of contentment. “When
I bring them into the land which I swore to their fathers to
give them, a land abounding in milk and honey, and they eat
their fill and wax fat, and turn to alien gods, and serve them,
despising Me, breaking my covenant…” (Deuteronomy 
31:20). For this is the way of languid downfall:
 
       Jeshurun grew fat, and kicked-
       Thou didst grow fat, thick, gorged.
                              (Deuteronomy 32:15)

      If we should try to portray the soul of the prophet by the
emotions that had no place in it, contentment would be men-
tioned first. The prophets of Israel were like geysers of dis-
gust, disturbing our conscience till this day, urging us to be
heartsick for the hurt of others.
 
       Woe to them that are at ease in Zion,
       And trust in the mountain of Samaria…
       That lie upon beds of ivory,
       And stretch themselves upon their couches,
       And eat the lambs out of the flock,
       And the calves out of the midst of the stall;
       That chant to the sound of the viol,
       And invent to themselves instruments of music, like David;
       That drink wine in bowls,
       And anoint themselves with the finest oils,
       But they are not heart-sick for the hurt of Joseph.
                                 (Amos 6:1, 4-6)

Aspirations

Together with potentialities locked up in our nature we
possess the key to release and develop them. The key is our
aspirations. To attain any value, we must anticipate, seek and
crave for it. A stone does not strive to become a statue, and
when transformed into a statue, the form is forced upon it rather
than anticipated. Yet a human lives not by needs alone but by
aspirations for that which they do not even know how to utter.
      A person  is what he aspires for. In order to know myself,
I ask: What are the ends I am striving to attain? What are
the values I care for most? What are the great yearnings I
should like to be moved by?
      They who are satisfied have never truly craved, and they who
crave for the light of God neglect their ease for ardor, their life
for love, knowing that contentment is the shadow not the
light. The great yearning that sweeps eternity is a yearning to
praise, a yearning to serve. And when the waves of that
yearning swell in our souls all the barriers are pushed aside:
the crust of callousness, the hysteria of vanity, the orgies of
arrogance. For it is not the I that rambles alone, it is not a
stir out of my soul but an eternal flutter that sweeps us all.
      No code, no law, even the law of God, can set a pattern for
all our living. It is not enough to have the right ideas. For
the will, not reason, has the executive power in the realm of
living. The will is stronger than reason and does not blindly
submit to the dictates of rational principles. Reason may force
the mind to accept intellectually its conclusions. Yet what is
the power that will make me love to do what I ought to do?
      A young man became an apprentice to a blacksmith. He
learned how to hold the tongs, how to lift the sledge, how to
smite the anvil and how to blow the fire with the bellows.
Having finished his apprenticeship, he was chosen to be em-
ployed at the smithery of the royal palace. However, the
young man’s delight came soon to an end, when he discovered
that he had failed to learn how to kindle a spark. All his skill
and knowledge in handling the tools were of no avail.