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| "Between the Keruvim" |
עמד והתבונן נפלאות אל
Stand still
and contemplate the wonders that G-d has performed
Iyov 37 14
The Gate of Transformation
There is an exceptionally other-worldly moment in the Biblical account of the giving of the Torah at Sinai when the experience of the entire nation of Israel becomes synesthesic. The initial (and some say all) words of that prophetic revelation to an entire people were experienced not as something heard or seen but as something resembling yet exceeding the limitations of both those senses.
וכל־העם ראים את־הקולת
And all the
People saw the sounds.
Shemot 20:15
We experienced The Voice in a uniquely inter-sensual or supra-sensual way which was above and beyond normal hearing. We were listening with our spiritual Heart.
In 2003, I made a choice to focus on developing the activity of listening to that Voice anew. I was standing on the threshold of a metaphysical gate and once I had summoned the courage to pass through it, my life would never be the same again.
This was my epiphany:
My auricular hearing was being taken away so that I would be able to experience a much deeper level of spiritual attentiveness. I accepted that it was not just a natural infirmity that I was experiencing, but also that it was a supernaturally charged one designed to give me the biggest thump of my life to date—to drag me kicking and screaming, back into the dedicated contemplative life—a vocation from which I had fled when leaving the Carmelite monastic order in my youth.
I began to pray at length again—with
newfound kavanah (intentional focus) for the first time in many years,and I ceased being “a
semi-retired teacher experimenting with some studious and creative solitude”
and became “a full-time intentional religious contemplative” again.
I have never had any trouble believing that prayer was a form of action or that contemplatives are as spiritually and cosmically valuable (and perhaps as necessary) as any other professionally philanthropic group. But in my thirties and forties, I never imagined that I would be re-joining that contemplative work-force myself.
What surprised me even more was that I was about to attempt to do this as a Jew—and as I have outlined in The Cave of the Heart: Kuntres Maarat HaLev and other writings— Judaism is a religion where solitary contemplative lifestyles are a fringe minority activity that has become almost extinct.
Furthermore, single and solitary
living is also a Jewish practice which
has many Jewish denigrators and few supporters in our own era. Living and promoting solitary contemplative practice gets me full
marks for chutzpah, but I
have always been cast (sometimes
unknowingly and unexpectedly) as something
of a pioneer in music education
and it
seems I was thus embarking on a similar project within Judaism.
Q:So how exactly had it all come about?
A: Ve-nahafoch hu—everything was turned on its head:
— I began to see my ‘curses’ as blessings. My spiritual wilderness (midbar) was actually a potentially productive vineyard (karmel) It had been so all along though I had not seen it for what it was.
— Composing and making music had been a way of praying. My hearing difficulties took music away, and I was left with the sound of silence—which made space and time for a still small voice to be heard.
—Human relationships had been the motor of my life. Relationships had failed or, even worse, dwindled into acquaintanceships at a distance. I was left with the One who had been waiting for me all along—the One who may actually be my only intended life-partner.
—My music-teaching career was in shattered ruins, but in fact it had only ever been a preparation for something else. I could not hear well enough to teach music anymore and I did not know what other skills I could use. I despaired trying to see what I had left to offer. The answer that had emerged was:
“You can pray and give G-d your full
attention.”
Accepting that this truly was the answer I was being given, and choosing to do it full-time was a risky choice which I fought against for a very long time. It involved ascesis and it necessitated being self-supporting with limited funds—so it was far from being a cushy number.
—During the period that led up to this transformation, I had
complained about my life-circumstances (to G-d daily, and to my distant but long-suffering
friends periodically). I had spent so
much time moaning on and on about my lack of purpose, my health, my
poverty, and my needs that I bored myself silly, and the fire of that
particular hell simply burnt itself out.
But the Hound of Heaven[1] is no respecter of denominational fences and it had been at my heels since the day I left the Carmelites. I finally accepted that I had been pursued and was now cornered in Judaism. I began to see that the act of walking-out on G-d when I left the monastery as a young man was a selfish mistake and that I was being given a chance to prove my love for Him all over again.
I turned my whole attention to G-d in devekut by attempting to maintain a nebulous but near-constant awareness of Him. That produced an unexpectedly dynamic move into prayerful tikkun olam as I found myself thinking about others for a change. I remember that— sometimes and somehow — it felt as though I was (as it were) seeing things through His Eyes.
And almost imperceptibly, in jerks and bounds over a period of around two years in almost complete solitude, it had simply clicked into place:
-Not lonely—but alone with G-d;
-Not alone—but united in spirit to all other G-d-Wrestlers;
-Not unfulfilled—but now seeking fulfillment in G-d alone;
-Not inactive or escapist—but actively praying for all creation, all of the time.
With this new perspective, I returned to the practice of reciting the formal daily services.
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| My current place of prayer in Safed 2024 |
In the first three years of the twelve year cave-retreat I am trying to describe for you, I focussed on the recitation of the Amidah[2] with the utmost kavanah and devekut that I could muster. This meant that the Shemoneh Esreh might often take hours. Though I frequently took editorial liberties with the other texts in the siddur, for the last eight years of this retreat period I davened every service without fail daily.
I mention this not to score piety points, but because there are many who doubt that this kind of liturgical regularity can be easily achieved without the support and incentive of community recitation in a physical minyan. In my experience—within the context of an intentionally dedicated life of intimate prayer— the regular recitation of the daily services can become as reflexive as breathing. To forget to pray the daily services in such circumstances is almost impossible.
In those totally eremitic days in Spain, although this performance of the liturgy produced a major change in my routines, my return to regular periods of silent contemplative prayer was of even greater significance: As a Carmelite monk, I had practiced two hours of this kind of silent contemplative prayer each and every day. Then it had been done formally, in community, and in a chapel. As a solitary Jew I practiced it either on the roof, in the garden, or in the cave-room itself. With its woodburning stove the latter was the preferred location each winter.
I simply gave all my attention to G-d and sat or stood with Him (as it were) morning and evening—sometimes words were involved, sometimes issues were considered, sometimes I just sat in His Presence. Sometimes these regular periods of contemplative prayer lasted thirty minutes or so, sometimes they lasted three or four hours—especially the evening one.
This needs unpacking and I could say much more about this practice — but for now, I need to explain something for any non-Jews or Jews who are reading this who are unaccustomed to talk of ‘contemplative’ prayer.
oo0oo
For many observant Jews their most intimate contact with G-d is made through tefillah (liturgical prayer) and Talmud Torah (shared Torah Study). The most common approach of most Orthodox Jews is to regard liturgical prayer as a duty of Divine praise; a time for self examination and repentance; and a time to recite set texts expressing love and obedience. It is, for them, a time when one speaks to G-d using time honoured and fixed formulae recited in common and at set times.
The silent Shemoneh Esreh allows for a small measure of personal silent prayer and everyone is expected to recite the whole prayer with intense mental concentration on fulfilling the obligation to pray as perfectly as one can. But there is usually no space in public worship for extensive silent prayer during the liturgy itself.
Catholic Christians, for example, are very familiar with the practice of sitting in silent prayer communally after receiving communion during the Eucharistic liturgy and also in visiting churches individually for silent prayer sessions when the building is almost empty. In our days, the practice of silent communal prayer is almost non-existent in most Rabbinic Jewish synagogues. This was not the case in ancient and classical times as we know from Berakhot 32b in the Talmud.
As to the individual and private practice of meditation in a synagogue building—whenever I have sat in silent contemplative prayer in a synagogue outside of the formal service times, I have invariably been approached and invited to join a study group on the assumption I was a lonely would-be student; asked if I am “O.K.” on the assumption such a person,sitting alone at such a time, must be either depressed or distressed; or (on several occasions) had a book thrust forcefully into my hands on the assumption I was neglecting study and had fallen asleep!
Torah Study—whether undertaken ritually in the middle of Shacharit or the other liturgical services, or as a separate activity—is almost always a communal or partnership activity. The latter often involves animated argument and even verbally aggressive conflict (for the sake of heaven) as differences of opinion are ironed out. Together with the ritual reading of the Sefer Torah,[3] such study periods are regarded as being the time to ‘hear’ what G-d is saying. Rarely is it something that is done alone in meditative prayer or with extended periods of silent reflection.
Yet I believe that it is possible to receive direct and individual Divine responses during our solitary study, davening, and in our contemplative prayer.[4] To assume that a person sitting alone in a place of worship in silence, with eyes closed, or without a book in their hands is either dozing or depressed is a tragic commentary on common contemporary practice. That such people are actually engaged in the silent ‘study’ of the Torah of the Heart is often rarely understood or appreciated these days.
Suffice it to say, for the moment, that definitions of what constitutes essential Prayer and essential Torah Study are not so rigidly clear-cut when one looks at the various schools of Jewish mysticism in antiquity, or at the Kabbalistic or Chassidic traditions—all of which have been unanimous in claiming that contemplative prayer in solitude is an authentic auxiliary to public worship and study. Some have even said it exceeds them in importance. I am most definitely and passionately aligned with this latter approach.
ooo0ooo
I hope that the reader will appreciate that my choice to live as a Jewish hermit was not merely to reinstate contemplative prayer or solitary practices into my life because of a nostalgic longing for my catholic-monastic past.
I was consciously doing it because I believe that silent contemplative prayer and solitary ascetic retreat practices both have a legitimately Jewish history that is in quite urgent need of renewal after a long hiatus. (I outlined some of my views on this in an essay entitled "Solitude in Jewish Contemplative Practice")
Once I had decided to be a full-time contemplative with a mission, my daily and seasonal horarium became similarly transformed as follows:
The week I divided quite simply into Shabbat and l’chol. The weekdays (l’chol) always seemed like one long day somehow. Shabbat observance was a work in progress: in the early years of the cave-retreat, I observed Shabbat according to Masorti/Conservative principles and then in the last eight years I became (to this day) fully shomer Shabbat in the Orthodox manner.[5] I was, as yet, unable to attend any communal Jewish services as the nearest community was several hundred miles away—but I united intentionally in everything I did with all Israel in spirit.
L’chol routine involved a morning of davening and hitbonenut (silent contemplative prayer) followed by a walk and snack—and a Spanish siesta. From the third year onwards, the walk was frequently skipped as I often remained in the cloistered enclosure of the house for three or four days at a time—sometimes for several weeks. I spent a part of each morning in study, writing letters, checking world news online, and writing articles for this Jewish Contemplatives website.
The afternoon became a period of manual work (housework, decorating, laundry, gardening, or sweeping the street by neighbourly rota). To paraphrase the Carthusian founder, Bruno of Cologne : each weekday afternoon was a time of Quies[6]—leisure which is occupied and work which is performed in tranquility—and as such, it was often my favourite time of the day.
Throughout this period I rested in G-d. My hands and body in motion but with my attention on/in Him. Ninety percent of the time I chose only tasks which enabled this, and I was well aware that being able to do that, free from pressing family or career responsibilities, was an enormous blessing in itself.
In the evening I would daven and make the second (and usually longer) daily period of hitbonenut, most often on the roof. This would be followed by a main meal and an evening of text-based study, or writing. I had budget internet access in the evening, and I made full use of it. The internet was my library and almost all of my surfing time was spent on Jewish sites. I had no access to Jewish library books and could not afford to buy more than one or two books per year, so the internet was gold to me.
Inside and outside of the periods of liturgical prayer and contemplative hitbodedut/hitbonenut—one way or another—my time was devoted to the cultivation of a ‘shiviti’ focus: keeping the Presence/Name of HaShem in mind at all times.
For me, this did not consist in the maintenance of a literal focus on the written Divine Name, nor was it a kabbalistic activity as expressed in the beautiful Hakdamos to the siddur commentary Keser Nehora[7] by Rabbi Aharon of Zhelichov.
The shiviti text I refer
to is a
popular meditational text that may appear at the top of a siddur page: or on a
calligraphic plaque just above Tehillim
67 in the form of a menorah.
The text reads:
שויתי יי לנגדי תמיד
“I will set
HASHEM always before me always.” (Tehillim 16:8).
Some take the shiviti graphic to be an aid to hold the letters of the Tetragramaton visually in their minds, others regard it as a purely ethical statement. Some others regard the concept it represents to be a description of the contemplative practice of maintaining a more-or-less constant awareness of the Presence of G-d. This is the way I attempted to practice it.
For me it was a way of remaining attached to the Divine Presence by a sort of thread—sometimes verbal, sometimes conceptual—a thread somewhat like that which is attached to a kite or fishing line. That is to say, it was sometimes taut and highly charged with activity, sometimes passively floating in the wind/water: yet always attached. This was a persistent attempt to practice devekut rather than the conclusive attainment of it, but I was blessed to have been given both the time and the inclination to offer this attempt as my Service of the Heart.
Many years after writing those last few paragraphs I was excited to discover that this is also a highly developed core Sufi practice known as dhikr. I hope to expand on that discovery shortly.
oo0oo
Almost all of what you have read here in this ‘chapter’ of A Hermit’s Tale was actually written between 2010 and 2014. I have merely added and deleted a few passages. In the very first version, I wrote:
“At first sight, it might appear that what I have described in this chapter is simply the record of a personal psychological solution to adversely changed circumstances: a possibly defeatist or quietist approach to accepting the vicissitudes of life with equanimity. This is not so. For intentional religious contemplatives, there is more going on behind the veil.
The process of turning things on their head to see curses as blessings is a combative struggle which is anything but passive. It is a process which produces an active mode of acceptance which needs constant renewal and reaffirmation. The process of purification seems to be cyclic and lessons are repeated on a kind of learning spiral. The Teacher in this process is not the individual standing alone, but the Divine One in whose Presence they stand.
Furthermore, I believe that the quest for a state of hishtavut (equanimity) is, in itself, part of the answer to many of our global problems and not a matter of self-improvement. I discovered, by experience, what the sages and mystics have been telling us for centuries: Contentment is something to do with seeing things in a certain light not something to do with something that we lack or think we need—And the power of individuals being used to channel Divine Peace and Harmony is under-estimated.”
Reading those words again in 2024 I am convinced that the perspective I described in that passage is still the prime motivator of my perseverance and development as an intentionally solitary contemplative. I did not realise it at the time, but—once again— I was experiencing and writing about concepts that are central to Judeo-Sufic practice.
In Part
Six of A Hermit’s Tale, I hope to give you an account of the way that Sufic encounter arose and burgeoned to produce a new experiment in contemplative community.
©Nachman Davies
Safed March 12
2024
Previous
chapters of A Hermit’s Tale can be found here:
Part 1, Part2, Part 3, Part
4 .
NOTES
[1] Hound
of Heaven: A reference to the title of a mystical poem by Francis Thompson
(1859-1907).
[2] Amidah: (Standing before G-d) The Amidah is the central
prayer of the daily services. It is also called the Shemoneh Esreh (the Eighteen Blessings) in reference to the
original number of constituent blessings—there are now nineteen.
[3] Hand-written parchment scroll of the Torah
[4] We also learn from Midrash Tanchuma and from Rav Yisrael
Salanter that one should actually consider Hashem to be one’s chavruta
(study partner) when studying alone…and
regard the study as a personal and intimate conversation with the Divine. I heard this from R' Boruch Lev in “Are you
growing?” ( Feldheim, November,2010)
[5] In 2014 I had almost exhausted my private funds and was forced to sell the house and became a rental tenant. I relocated to live as part of the vibrant and supportive Spanish Moroccan Jewish Community of Torremolinos, where I studied and worshipped. I completed an Orthodox conversion in Madrid in 2016, made aliyah to Safed in 2019, and in 2020 returned to an intentionally solitary lifestyle.—but that is another story for another time.
[6]
see ‘An Infinity
of Little Hours’, Nancy Klein Maguire, page 161(Public
Affairs/Perseus Book Group, Cambridge MA, 2006.)
[7] Rabbi Aharon’s prefaces (hakdamot)
to this commentary contain instructions for developing a ‘shiviti’
consciousness in davening. B’ezrat Hashem, these Hakdamot will
hopefully soon be available in an English translation by Rabbi Dovid Sears.
