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Jonathan Kligler: Shabbat is a gift because we have been given this instruction, to pause and remember how good is it to be alive. I'm feeling better already.

Deborah Waxman: Me too.

[laughter]

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DW: I'm Rabbi Deborah Waxman, and I'm so happy to welcome you to Hashivenu, a podcast about Jewish teachings on resilience. It's my great pleasure today to talk to my friend and my colleague, Rabbi Jonathan Kligler. Jonathan is the rabbi of the Woodstock Jewish Congregation, Kehillat Lev Shalem, in Woodstock, New York, and we're going to talk today about embodied practice in Judaism. Welcome, Jonathan.

JK: Thank you so much.

DW: I want to work toward an explanation of what is embodied Judaism, and I wanted to ask you to start by talking about the Hebrew name of your community.

JK: Many years ago, we chose the Hebrew name, Kehillat Lev Shalem, which means, "the congregation of a full heart." It comes actually from the Yom Kippur liturgy, "'kulam ye'asu agudah echad, laasot retzonkha belevav shalem." "And let us all form one union to do your will with a full heart," which is a beautiful line. But our intention, also, was that we wanted that full-heartedness to be an experience that we have in our bodies, of openness and generosity. Not just a intellectual idea.

DW: That's so moving. From our conversations, you've told me that this understanding-ness of embodied practice is really central to that full heart.

JK: That's right. Judaism as a subject of intellectual inquiry is fabulous. I have said to my community many times that I'm not interested in ignoring any aspect of our questing and our searching: Intellectual, spiritual, physical, emotional. I want us to be going on all pistons, as they say. And we maintain a very active intellectual life, here at the synagogue. But for me personally, that's far from sufficient for a satisfying spiritual life. I actually have a background in dance and movement and mime and theater, and I was drawn to that because of my temperament, my predilection which was -- sitting still in a classroom never, shall we say, was my cup of tea. That meant that I needed some other way to experience being alive than just the life of the mind. And I found it, personally, through dance and movement.

JK: When I decided to become a rabbi, and I started exploring the prayer book, which I had been versed in as a child going to yeshiva, I knew the prayers by heart, but I had never actually done anything other than recite them, by rote. I realized that that the prayer services were set up to bring us into the fullness of our being, and that prayer was an imaginative activity that can actually direct our attention towards being present and alive in the world. And that is actually the function of prayer. But the only way to be present and alive is to be inhabiting where you are, which includes your body. So, for me, successful, effective prayer could not possibly be simply a rote exercise.

DW: I'm so intrigued and moved by that description because I tend toward the heady. I think I have a big heart, and I think sometimes my head takes precedence over my heart. And years ago, in my 20s, I was really aware that if I drew a self portrait of myself, and I'm not a particularly good drawer, it would probably be like a stick figure with a really big head. And part of my path, through my 30s and 40s, and now in this next decade, has been about trying to remember and honor my body alongside my head. So, it's very compelling to me, what you're saying.

JK: That's great. For me, since the God we address in the prayer book can't be an intellectual concept or a storybook concept, for me to connect to it, in a living way, I have come to understand God as a pointer word towards the life that inhabits the whole universe, the energy of existence, the flow of life, all the different metaphors we can use for what animates us and all creation. The mystery that animates us. And so with that idea of prayer, I am summoning, relating to, calling upon, becoming aware of, giving thanks to, the energy of life that animates me. And when I remember that, and make that the purpose of my prayer, and the prayers actually lend themselves to that so beautifully, when you approach them that way, as opposed to, "Do I agree with this concept or not?" and making it into an intellectual exercise. When you treat it as poetry, inviting us to call upon the energy of life, I become more alive. Becoming more alive, by definition means that my body becomes more alert and alive. And by definition, as my breath deepens, or I become aware of my pulse or of the tightness and that I need to loosen up my body or of the flow even in a more subtle way of the energy that's pouring out of me all the time, my frame of... My mood changes. I become uplifted. I become softer. I become more available. For me that is the purpose of prayer. It's to make ourselves more available to the life around us.

DW: I heard a colleague once talked about tuning ourselves like an antenna, so that we are receptive to the divine pulse that animates the universe.

JK: Beautiful.

JK: That's what -- yeah.

JK: But what I want us to do is to, there are so many metaphors, countless metaphors. It's one of the reasons I love our prayer book Kol Haneshamah because of the choice made to translate the "yud hey vav hey," the Ineffable Name of God, "I am that I am," into countless metaphors because everyone's going to find their own entry points through metaphor. So if you love being an antenna and it makes you vibrate with life, that's beautiful. One of my favorite metaphors that I often share with the congregation is, I say, "Imagine that you're a sponge that's gotten a little dried out. Imagine that this energy of life saturates you. Feel your body begin to soften and become more juicy. Until you reach the point where giving of yourself is not a willful or effortful thing, but just the result of over flowing with life's goodness." As soon as I share that, people transform. We think of ourselves as a closed system but there's nothing about us that's closed, absolutely nothing. We are a porous container and a conduit. And so when I give people the right metaphor, their whole consciousness changes.

JK: And they find out that they have... When we say we are loved by an unending love, and unbounded love, and I translate that into something that can saturate you physically. I then will say to people, "Now pour it out. It's effortless. You have an unlimited supply." And this is an embodied practice. They don't have to do anything. They don't have to actively show their affection to somebody or anything like that. They can be doing it completely within their own private space, but these embodied practices of prayer are transforming for people. And personally, it's my favorite way. My most powerful way to transform my consciousness through the practice of prayer is to embrace these metaphors and then embody them. And that's what I encourage my congregation to do.

DW: I'm just scanning my own body as we're having this conversation, and realizing that there's a shift. And you know that the organizing principle of this podcast is about cultivating resilience and how powerful this is in trying times, whether it's personal or cultural, or social -- to have access to this kind of re-orientation that... I'm very moved by that image of a parched sponge getting saturated with exactly what it needs. It's very moving.

JK: This activity of becoming into your body, therefore, is an antidote to trying times, because what trying times are doing to us is distracting us from the goodness and glory of just being alive. And rather than, and I talk often to my congregation about: rather than considering happiness and well-being as the result of an external set of circumstances. I mean it's great to win the game. And that makes you happy and feel fulfilled for a little while. There's nothing wrong with that, but there's this other level of experience, which is not contingent on external events. It's the awareness of the goodness that is pouring through us at all times. The aliveness. The fullness. And it can also manifest as tears. There's a lot of crying that goes on in my congregation. And sometimes congregants will say, "I don't even know why I was crying", but I know why, because we've unblocked the energy. It can flow. And we only  exist in our bodies. The energy can only flow through us and release as it needs to release so that we can be ready for more. And so, yes, this is an antidote that allows us to be resilient.

JK: And I say every week, I say, "Shabbat is a gift because we have been given this instruction to pause and remember how good it is to be alive." And then I love to point out the word at the end of God's, the Kiddush when God says, where he spoke "vayinafash," "God rested." And "vayinafash"  gets translated as "refreshed" or "restored", but "nefesh" is your life force. It said, "God's life force was refreshed." And that's our assignment on Shabbat. That's our fundamental assignment. So for me, because of my background, it necessitates a physically aware approach because we're talking about our bodies. How else do you get refreshed? 

DW: Our colleague, Rabbi Jacob Staub, he translates "vayinafash" as "resouled", R-E-S-O-U-L-E-D, you know that? 

JK: Oh yes, I love that one. And I always have to explain to people how I'm spelling it.

DW: Yes, yes, it doesn't work when we're just talking about shoes. We're talking much more about our hearts and about our body.

JK: Or davka when we're talking about being in secondhand clothes, either... [audio unclear]

DW: Exactly. That's true. That's true. So I know that you, especially think that the morning blessings, the very beginning part of the service on a weekday morning or on Shabbat especially lends themselves to embodiment. Do you want to speak a little bit about that? 

JK: Yes, yes. I think the morning blessings -- well, I want to credit Reb Zalman Schachter of blessed memory for introducing me to this concept. When he was teaching at RRC, when I was there in the 1980s -- he taught us the deep structure of the prayer service that he felt travelled through all the realms of experience, and he would describe the four worlds of prayer: how Birkot HaShakhar, the morning blessings which opens the morning service are for embodiment. And then he would describe how the Pesukei deZimra, the psalms of praise, are for opening our hearts with song. And then he would describe how the Shema and its blessings are for cognitively aligning ourselves with the idea of the oneness of God. And then the Amidah for him was beyond all of that into the realm of communion. And it's a beautiful...

DW: Just for folks who don't know the structure of the service, you are tracing our way through a morning service. Those are the major parts in order of the morning service.

JK: Right, right. That the Jewish mystical teachings explained the morning service as a progression of moving through different realms of our experience that... So, we sequentially and sort of all at the same time, we're awakening the different levels of our experience and allowing aliveness to flow through them. And that, Reb Zalman called that the Four Worlds Approach. And I do a very... I don't talk about that in services, but that's my understanding of what I'm trying... Where I'm trying to climb to with everybody. So the first part, the morning blessings, seems very clearly to me designed to awaken our bodies, to become -- land in our bodies. And the whole section is called the morning blessings. And then this specific section called the Morning Blessings, which are how many? 

DW: Different prayer books have a different numbers. It's like 18 or 19.

JK: 18 or 19. And when you look on the Talmud where these blessings are sourced from, the Talmud explains clearly that these are to be recited as you wake up, come back into consciousness, get out of bed, put on your clothes, brush your teeth, and each blessing, were I this disciplined, would be a moment to pause and give thanks for every bit of coming out of the sea of sleep and unconsciousness and back into the world of physicality. But I don't do that. I'm just trying to get out of bed. So, it turns out that I'm in good company because eventually, the rabbis decided to incorporate these blessings into the prayer book and when people were together, just in case all the usual Joes like me, hadn't done them before. So, when I leave the service, I will often say, "Let's wake up again. We got out of bed but now, let's wake up slowly with awareness and with gratitude." And by the way, gratitude is always the key. Gratitude is the fundamental idea of why we say, "Blessed are you source of life. Thank you for... " And then we can list one at a time.

DW: Well, even before this list, we have modeh ani, I thank you, God. That is... The teaching there is as soon as you awake, that should be the first thing you say. Although, that too got embedded into the prayer book.

JK: That's right. The first thing you say. And again, bless those people who are more disciplined than I who actually put this into their practice. That's why, being the kind of person I am, I thrive in communal situations where I have people to do it with. It's just the kind of person I am. So, there's so many different temperaments and ways to approach this. Modeh ani, it's such a beautiful, "I give thanks to you, living everpresent spirit, of life for restoring my soul to my body this morning."

DW: "How great is your lovingkindness."

JK: Lovingkindness, yeah. Isn't that beautiful? I'm alive again. Thank God.

DW: Yeah. I say the words in Hebrew and that translation, and I have my own translation that's not about a personal God, it's about the source of life, the power that animates the universe, and this opportunity to awaken again to consciousness and to the opportunity to act.

JK: I've been given another day.

DW: Yep, exactly.

JK: Yeah. I want to encourage all the listeners to take God language and substitute the words that reflect your take on life.

DW: That's right.

JK: Blessed are you. Sometimes I just choose the word "mystery", "great mystery". It's just, there's no right word here other than the one that will awaken your consciousness to gratitude.

DW: Right. And the fact that we are awake to another day to have that consciousness.

JK: Right. If the word that you feel you have to use in prayer stops you from an appreciation of being alive, then it's worse than counterproductive. It's almost deadening to your spirit. So, I'm feeling better already.

DW: Me too.

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JK: So those morning blessings, each one addresses... For instance, one of the blessings says, "Who removes sleep from my eyes and slumber from my eyelids." So in my synagogue I tell people, "So you get the sleep out of your eyes. Go ahead and wipe your eyes." And we all do and we go, "Ah, I'm starting to wake up again." And then the next blessing says, "Who gives the bird of dawn..." Some people think it's the rooster, the ability to determine day from night. So it's hearing the cock crow at dawn. And I say, "Let's become aware of our capacity for hearing." And we pause and listen for a moment. And then it says, "Who spreads the earth upon the waters?" And I invite people to stretch and just like they were doing that first morning stretch as they come into their physical being. And they go on from there. And they become, after... In the order in our prayer book they become more... After we sort of gotten into our bodies. There are such beautiful ones like, "Who provides for all my needs?" And I always say to the people in the community, "Now imagine that you could enter your day without feeling like you have to get yours or grasp.

JK: And life could just come to you and you could open and soften yourself and receive it." And "Who crowns us with splendor, radiance?" And I say, "Imagine you're a radiant being." I say, "You don't have to imagine that, it's true. Become aware of the energy emanating from your body." And then we get to "Who made me in your image, in the divine image?" And I say, "Look around the room and look at all your beautiful beings here." And by then, we're all very happy to see each other. It's just... And then, "Who made me free?" Which for me is, free to choose the awareness I want to live with. Moment by moment. Oh, I love those blessings. And then the next blessing after that, once we've completed those is a blessing in gratitude for the body that also comes from the Talmud. Some listeners may know that this blessing is listed in the Talmud as the one you should recite when you successfully go to the bathroom in the morning. And it's not to... What's the word? 

DW: Explicit. Yeah, it's not to... It would just... It just seems an earthly religion but it's poetic rather than just literal.

JK: Poetic, right. We have countless openings and vessels of the body. And if one of them is opened when it should be closed or blocked up when it should be free, we couldn't be here. We couldn't stand up and be here today. So thank God for a body that's functioning. And I always pause there and ask people to just notice that their body's functioning. Just in the act of noticing, they're embodying their awareness. And sometimes, I'll elaborate. I'll talk about the circulatory system, the digestive system, the nervous system. And I'll use it as a avenue to remind people that our very presence here is a mind-blowing phenomenon. The number of moving parts that has to be working for us to be sitting here, having this beautiful conversation.

JK: And that, too is an embodied experience because you're noticing your body. And then the next prayer is the prayer in gratitude for the breath that also comes from this Talmud, and the breath and soul are the same words in Hebrew, just like spirit and respiration are in English. So I use this prayer as a breathing meditation. We do it very slowly. We'll say; and I'll always explain that you don't really take a breath, that you receive a breath, that's it's a gift to you. Every breath is a gift to you that you couldn't possibly earn. That our very life is un-earned and that the only response I can think of is overwhelming gratitude. Now that just cuts right under all the real complaints we have about the world. But if we are only our complaints, well, especially in the world at this moment, we're going to plotz (yiddish: collapse). Our quality of life is going to plummet. Our appreciation of the countless daily good things that are with us, so the Amidah said, "Your miracles which are with us morning, noon and night," that basic awareness of the goodness of being alive, if we are only focused on our complaints, is gone. So I never...

DW: And we're gonna collapse in on ourselves, too.

JK: That's right. It's a physical contraction.

DW: Right. Right.

JK: How can we be the effective beings we want to be in the world if we are contracted and if our energy is trickling instead of flowing? So then prayer has an actual real effective function which is to set us up for our day in this troubled world and we can remind ourselves that the world is always troubled. Sometimes more, sometimes less but if our response is to close down, we lose our ability to make a change. So this is a spiritual activism, by taking the time to reboot our awareness of how good it is to be alive in this body, at this moment, with the people we are with... Oh, thank God. And when I say thank God, again I want the listeners to know, I don't know who I'm talking to. I just know I need to thank somebody here.

DW: Right.

JK: So that's the word that comes out of my mouth. At that point, I'm a better and more effective change agent. Because I'm coming towards the world with my fullness, not my contraction. That's the purpose of prayer for me, it's a necessary way to recover from the difficulty of living.

DW: And I feel like I am a better person just for this conversation, Jonathan. It's so lovely, and feels profoundly true to me, and I think that you are right that gathered in community, and in engaging in that intersection between the words and the embodied practice, and the energy of the room, that, that is an incredibly transformative and full experience. And even this discussion achieves some of the aims that you desire.

JK: Thank you, for me too. I often say to my congregation that I appreciate them listening to me, because I need to say this to myself every week.

[chuckle]

DW: It's true.

JK: Really, I say that.

DW: Yeah. Well, I hope the listeners experience this conversation the way I did. We need to wrap up, but for our listeners, we will post the Hebrew, and the translations, and the transliteration of some of the prayers that we were just discussing, from the Reconstructionist prayer book, Kol Haneshamah, and we'll also post some additional resources for you, if you're interested.

JK: Thank you.

DW: I'm just so grateful for this conversation.

JK: Oh, thanks Deb.

DW: Today, I would like to thank my guest, Rabbi Jonathan Kligler for our wonderful discussion on prayer, and on embodied practice. For more information, you can find resources on Hashivenu.fireside.fm. You can also find more resources on this topic on ReconstructingJudaism.org, and on ritualwell.org. I'm Rabbi Deborah Waxman, and you've been listening to Hashivenu: Jewish teachings on resilience.

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