Amongst the Jewish writers whose wisdom and exeprience of God has touched and opened my heart to important truths are Abraham Joshua Heschel, Chaim Potok, Jonathan Sacks, Elie Wiesel, Joseph Kaplan, Susannah Heschel, Martin Buber and Emmanuel Levinas. And of course Isaiah, Jeremiah, Qoheleth, the Psalmists, the writers of Torah, and the other writers and communities behind the Hebrew Bible.
This collection of contemporary Jewish Spirituality doesn't include those classic expressions of jewish faith and practice. What it does offer is a wide ranging selection of wisdom and reflection on such themes as God, community, prayer, meditation, mysticism, study, blessing, repairing the world and other characteristic emphases of a faith that is profoundly practical as well as profoundly reflective. Either browsing and dipping, or reading more intentionally in this book, you become aware that you are invited to read and think on the rich history of a people's rich experience and the changing contiuity of its story of the journey with God.
Some of what is written here is lightweight, a kind of self-help with a religious underpinning. Some of it presupposes, as it should, an active practice of Jewish faith, ritual and liturgy. But much of it offers wisdom and guidance in what it means to make room in our lives for God, to pay attention to the world around us, and that radical goal of Jewish compassionate action, "to repair the world".
As spiritual reading it is a good balance and corrective that reminds me as a Christian that my own faith and the faith of the Christian church, has deep roots in the soil of the Jewish people and an indebtedness and incorporation into their story which has become our story. And our story, not because the Church co-opts the elected preciousness of the people of God, or renders the Jewish story and faith superfluous. But because from the story of the Jewish people, came the One we call Messiah, and in the purposes of God, Jesus fulfils the great messianic promise that the Suffering and Sovereign Servant will be a light to the nations, and the blessing of the world. And that to act justly, to love mercy and walk humbly with God is an imperative within the Christian faith as in the faith from which the Church was born.
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