And you will say in your heart, ‘My power and the might of my hand made me this wealth.’ - Deuteronomy 8:17
Defining The Challenge
It’s already axiomatic that gratitude is central to basically every flavor of Jewish religious practice. While Jewish liturgy isn’t always popular, the morning’s first recitation is pure goodness, think butterflies and flowers, well-known and well-liked.
Modeh/modah ani, I am grateful before you, King who is alive and sustains, because you returned my soul to me with mercy; Your faith [in me] is great.
So too, the first formal blessing of the birkot hashachar, the morning blessings:
My God, the soul You placed within me is pure. You created it, You formed it, You breathed it into me, and You guard it while it is within me. One day you will take it from me, and restore it to me in the time to come. As long as the soul is within me, I will thank You, Lord my God and God of my ancestors, Master of all works, Lord of all souls. Blessed are You, Lord, Who restores souls to lifeless bodies.
At its core, gratitude is about living in ways that are connected. In part, it’s about being aware of our ultimate reliance on others, on other people in our lives, on other systems and institutions (the government, the electricity grid), on planet Earth and its majestic ecosystems, on the universe, even multiverse, and yes, on the Cause of all Causes, The Prime Mover, The Life-Giver of the Worlds. Usually, it’s only the most proximate reliances on other people, people who are significant and very much a part of our lives, that we tend to call, “gratitude.” But really, it’s infinite and expansive. As Ralph Waldo Emerson put it, “because all things have contributed to your advancement, you should include all things in your gratitude.”
There’s another common misperception about gratitude. People commonly relate to gratitude as a past-tense phenomenon. I am grateful for things that already happened. Really, though, just as memory is a present-tense relation, in the here and now, to things that have occurred, gratitude is about now, not then.
We might combine these two (2) elements into an informal definition of gratitude: A positive emotional state stemming from a (1) present-tense feeling of (2) connection to and reliance on others.
Now, it’s fair to say that we all feel this more easily and strongly if we’re in particular need and someone helps out, or if someone does something extremely valuable or unexpected. But the underlying conditions for gratitude are always present. More than that, cultivating gratitude is a way to strengthen the frame of a charitable, compassionate life. Actively feeling blessing and interconnectedness causes us to live less selfishly and increases our capacity for compassion. When we feel blessed, we want to reciprocate. When we’re aware that it’s not just about us and that we’re all in it together, our own problems seem smaller and the needs of others loom larger. This not only makes sense, it’s also well-documented in the scientific literature and, frankly, yesterday’s news (though still as crucial and important as ever!) at this point.
But it’s worth noting that gratitude is not about the past, and it’s also not about the theory or the value. Knowing that gratitude is important and beneficial is one thing, cultivating it in any given moment is quite another. And at this moment, there are particularly strong impediments to gratitude in practice. I’ll name a few:
1) Isolation - If gratitude is a practice of interconnectedness, we’re actively seeking to distance and be physically disconnected, and for quite a long now. Sure, it’s all in service of our interconnectedness, actually, but that’s theoretical. The physical experience of living in a pandemic is one of solitude and isolation, to varying degrees. That’s what affects our emotions.
2) Suffering and Stress - The Hebrew word for the state a mourner just after the death of their loved one and before the burial has occurred is termed aninut. Rooted in ani/I, the onen is not obligated in mitzvot and their sole focus is the burial of their relative. The etymology of the term suggests a psychological truth; when a person is dealing with significant grief and loss, they naturally become self-absorbed.
Chemically, when it’s all breaking down, stress hormones kick in. The survival instinct causes people to look out for themselves and prioritize self-preservation. My grandfather used to say “there are no atheists in a foxhole” but it’s also true that “everyone in a foxhole is primarily concerned with their own self-preservation.” Now, this sort of isolation can boomerang. Stress can cause people to feel disconnected, further perpetuating narratives and lenses where people feel abandoned and forgotten. With all the death, illness, job loss, uncertainty, upheaval, and so many other losses, grief is ubiquitous, it’s in the water. Anxiety is in the air. And so we’re not only physically distanced but emotionally quarantining
3) Rushed and Scattered. With everything going on, a lot of people are finding shortened stints at work, trouble reaching colleagues dealing with their own difficulties, various household members home or quarantined or sick on a semi-regular basis, etc. In case you forgot, before this global pandemic, modern life was already frenetic and stress itself a much larger problem than the underlying stressors. We were too busy and getting busier, as a society. For some people, this has improved in the pandemic. But for many, it’s that much worse. It is so difficult to stop and smell the roses when you can’t afford a break.
And so here’s the rub. It’s precisely when gratitude is most important that it’s most elusive. This is a time when we all ought to act as if our lives are intertwined because my irresponsible behavior could harm or kill you, and vice versa, and on net, the effect of individual actions on the lives of others is staggering and apocalyptic. This is the time where grit and resilience are most needed, yet the preponderance of the evidence demonstrates they are clearly lacking.
In the paragraphs that follow, I’d like to highlight some classic Jewish practices but reframed in a context of gratitude. My hope is that the frame might help make life sweeter, more meaningful, and just a little bit easier to handle these days.
Shema
What is the kavvanah for the recitation of the Shema? What does the first verse mean? I’d like to address this question not from the perspective of the first verse alone, but also the rabbinic interjection, “baruch shem kevod malchuto l’olam va’ed,” a phrase not found in the passage in Deuteronomy or in the Jewish Bible altogether. Maimonides cites the midrashic version when codifying Shema followed by this addition:
When reciting the Shema, after concluding the first verse, one repeats in a low tone the sentence, "Blessed be the name of His glorious sovereignty for ever and ever" and then resumes the reading of the first section in the regular order from the verse, "And thou shalt love the Lord, thy God,…"to the end of the section. Why is the sentence above mentioned interpolated? We have a tradition that when the patriarch Jacob, residing in Egypt, gathered his sons about him, in his dying hour, he earnestly charged them concerning the Unity of God and the Way of the Lord in which Abraham and his father Isaac had walked. He questioned them, saying to them, "Possibly, my sons, there is some one among you who is unworthy, and is not at one with me on the doctrine of the Unity of the Creator of the World," in the same way as our teacher Moses charged the people in the words, "Lest there be among you a man or a woman … whose heart turneth away this day" (Deuteronomy 29:17). They all answered, "Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one." This means, "Our father, Israel, hear this, our [confession of faith]: 'the Lord our God is one Lord'". The aged patriarch then exclaimed, "Blessed be the name of His glorious Sovereignty for ever and ever." Hence, all Israelites keep the custom of reciting, after the first verse of the Shema, the thanksgiving uttered by the Patriarch Israel. - Maimonides, Laws of Reciting the Shema 1:3
The Zohar (1:18b), however, understands each phrase, “Shema Yisrael . . .” and “Baruch Shem Kevod . . .” as unifications of the Divine, a “higher unification and a “lower unification.” As always, the Zohar is cryptic, enigmatic.
Shneur Zalman of Liadi, the founder of Chabad Hasidism, focused on the meaning of the word Echad/One at the conclusion of the first verse. By way of background, the peshuto shel mikra/plain meaning of the biblical text is that echad means levad, alone. In other words, “Listen Up, Israelites, YHVH is our God, YHVH and no other.” This interpretation is almost monolatrous (look it up if you don’t know what it means). There is another stream of interpretation, one that stems from Maimonides’ approach to God’s unity. God is not only one in number, what we’ll term external unity, God is indivisible and unique. There is no differentiation in God. That God has no body, no emotions, does not change God’s mind, all of these characteristics flow from this aspect of internal unity. And then there is the Chabad interpretation (repeated also by in by the misnagdim in Nefesh HaChaim) that there is only God! In other words, if God is the source of all and all existence constantly emanates from God, then it’s all within God, and so there’s only really God. Everyone and everything is God. “There is no place devoid of his presence.”
Lately, when reciting the Shema, I’ve been thinking fondly and often of the great poem of Levi Yitzhak of Berdichev, You.
Where I go: You!
Where I stand: You!
Just You. Again You. Always You!
You! You! You!
This is the first verse. The first direction on this journey is inwards, cultivating spiritual presence and delving into the depths of the self, traversing the channels of creation in reverse and following our contingent existence more deeply until we reach the place of “higher unification,” transcendence. In this place, there is a bitul hayesh, a cancellation of our own individual existence, the experience of real transcendence and connectedness.
In psychological terms, this kind of Shema kavvana, the higher unification, should lead to a decrease in activity in the right parietal lobe in the brain. A decrease in activity here has been associated with selflessness, feelings of transcendence, identification with others, and can be cultivated during meditation and other religious practice. So it’s important to note that the Ba’al HaTanya, Shenur Zalman of Liadi, wasn’t given an intellectual opinion about the meaning of the Shema. He was trying to describe, normatively, the experience he felt we ought to have when reciting it with the right kavanna, share a bit of his experience.
The lower unification of baruch shem kevod becomes a necessary counterweight. After all, our perception of our own lives is that they are real, very real. We live day to day in physical bodies, we experience joy and anxiety. And bitul hayesh alone could easily lead to nihilism. What’s the value in being an actor in God’s dream, as it were. So it can’t stop there or be the endgame for us mortals. We’ve got to bring it down into our bodies and into our world. This is a unification of God in our individualized lives, as we experience them.
So what does all that have to do with gratitude? Well, this is gratitude. The first part of Shema, in this frame, is about cultivating absolute connection, going to a place even beyond the creation of the universe and trying to break into godly realms. But this experience of transcendence, to whatever degree we can cultivate it, will leave us ready to appreciate the infinite ways in which we receive blessings from God and others. Every moment, really, life is being gifted. What gift could be more valuable or unexpected? And the second part is about bringing into our world, our lives. When you’re done with this yichud, the next verse in the Shema feels obvious. “You shall love the Lord . . .” because of these first-order gifts. Your soul, your body, your life.
Now, to make it explicit, in order to do this, you have to recite the words slowly enough to have the experience, to prolong the word echad and pause after, and work your way into that place. A lot of folks like to focus on the halachic requirement to prolong the dalet of echad in the abstract, but even in the Talmudic episode, the enlongation of the letter is tied to kavvanot and intention (See Talmud Berachot 13b).
Shabbat - Eliminate the Rush!
Many commentators have suggested reasons why mizmor shir l’yom hashabbat, the psalm for the Sabbath day, Psalm 92, is centered on gratitude. “It is good to thank the Lord and sing psalms to Your name, Most High - to tell of Your loving-kindness in the morning and Your faithfulness at night.”
I have a feeling the reason is quite practical. Without rest, it’s impossible to appreciate blessing. Now, I want to confess that this has always been a personal challenge. Multiple people in my life (Naomi, my wife, and Jessica, our office manager) have independently named me, “Hurricane Barry”). They probably did not have the clear skies and calm winds of the storm’s eye in mind. I’m raising the personal challenge to the fore because it’s important to learn to view Judaism not as a relic and us Jews as curators. Judaism is not a museum of traditions we visit with no affect on our lives. The traditions, then, in every then, as now, are meant to be real.
Shabbat becomes even more important. A precondition of gratitude is a sort of mindful presence, to appreciate what is happening, what is real, to get out of our own racing thoughts and worries in our head-world and enter the natural world. In his classic work, B’nai Machshavah Tovah, the holy Piaseczner provided advice for seekers living in a material world to live the spiritual life:
But to reach this end, you must distance a great distance from rushing, far far away, because one who is rushing cannot contemplate.
Folks, we have it built in to our system. A day where we do not need to rush. Now, there’s a longer and important discussion to be had about our ordering of Shabbat. We’ve chosen a different need, I think, to focus on, that of community and connection in an isolated world, and turned Shabbat into a summer-camp for all ages, call it the extrovert’s Shabbat. And that’s valuable too. But the need for Shabbat as a day of slow-living and quiet rest, the introvert’s Shabbat. What the slow cooking movement has done for food, Shabbat can do for life.
Conclusion
Gratitude is not about things that have happened to us in the past, it’s about our living with recognition of the incredible gifts we’re recipients of, and the connection and generosity that ensue. Morning blessings start with the soul, itself a doorway to spiritual practices to cultivate gratitude. But our practices done by rote won’t do the trick. Recitation of the Shema is a great place to start. Shabbat can help eliminate the rush which makes grateful living impossible.
I’ll end with Levi Yitzhak’s poem, a spiritual Thanksgiving paean, in full:
You!
Where I go: You!
Where I stand: You!
Just You. Again You. Always You!
You! You! You!
When it goes well with me: You!
When it goes wrong with me: You!
Just You. Again You. Always You!
You! You! You!
Heaven: You!
Earth: You!
Up: You!
Down: You!
Where I turn at every end: You!
Just You. Again You. Always You!
You! You! You! (translation from Shoshannah Brombacher from Chabad.org)