My religiosity / spirituality is more ephemeral than a siddur could articulate. I practice largely as a matter of discipline (the same way a buddhist meditates daily) but am always looking for liminal currents into a more existential and immediate covenantal relationship. For me, the foundational mitzvah in this regard is my reading of Genesis 17:1 as “Walk in my ways and be blameless.”
הִתְהַלֵּ֥ךְ לְפָנַ֖י וֶהְיֵ֥ה תָמִֽים
While by no means close to the goal, I think if one were to boil it down to a one-liner in Torah – this could be one of them, with the rest being commentary. How does one “Walk in G!d’s Ways and Be Blameless” in fluid unmediated covenance?
The Slonimer Rebbe – despite what appears to be obsessiveness with respect to strict observances in current-day Slonimer circles in Mea She’Arim – boils it down similarly. Riffing on Exodus 19 in the Netivot Shalom compendium – what comprises “essential Jewishness” is captured in the lines (5-6): “Now if you listen to my voice and if you keep my covenant you will be my treasure of all the nations for the whole world is mine. You will be a kingdom of priests and a holy nation.” This utterance comes before the giving of the commandments – so what’s key in the interpretation is that תִּשְׁמְעוּ֙ and וּשְׁמַרְתֶּ֖ם have no sense of obeying in the sense of the commandments. Listen and keep. “The meaning here is that the essence of a Jew is the constant listening to the Divine voice that speaks from all creation.”
Keeping covenant (the verb could also be interpreted as “guard”) refers to maintaining the covenantal relationship rather than upholding specific laws. The essential fear of G!d is not so much a matter of the fearing the wrath lest the laws be broken, but instead likened to “the case of two lovers who refrain from going against each-other’s will for fear lest they damage the love that they share.”
The paradox is that one can never be sure what to refrain from – so while the goal seems fluid – the fences of tradition are really the only things we have to fall back on. In the post-modern, post-Shoah world I have difficulty with the notion of “returning to” Judaisms past, but rather seek a “return of” Judaism. I thus identify somewhere in the spectrum between Renewal and Conservative Judaism (and Kaplan was under Conservative auspices, so I consider much of the Reconstructionist corpus absorbed therein). And matters of Convenance are always Existential in nature (may Franz Rosenzweig’s memory be for a blessing).
Community is integral in bringing tradition forward and community is essential in finding a non-solipsist vocalization of what is Judaism in the present, an authentic Judaism of Presence. I respect Orthodoxy’s piety in fencing the whole thing in, but there seems to be something missing in terms of G-d Wrestling – that such a structured inward gazing culture has lost the plot of its role amongst the nations. The energy of arguing technical points could be better spent on Tikkun Olam, in my nascent view. It may seem like I am trying to blog this on one foot, but I fully recognize that there is always a lifetime of study- probably several lifetimes.
Baruch HaShem.