Happiness and the Jewish Search for Meaning based on a talk for the Milwaukee Community Kollel Judy Belsky, PhD Clinical Psychologist Private Practice Clinical Supervisor Lman Achai, Ramat Bet Shemesh
		In Biblical terms we must be living in the era of seven fat cows. Times are luxuriant with material comforts. And yet there is a pervasive sense of unease, anxiety, a hollow center. An emptiness that drives a search for happiness. Why does the search prove fruitless? What is missing? What skills do we lack? What must we do differently in order to affect a different outcome? What makes our times enriched and yet impoverished? There is at the foundation of contemporary life a set of values and beliefs. We do not recognize these as beliefs because there has been a great abandonment in western culture of religion. They are the all more ingrained and insistent because they operate as culture; that is, the taken-for-granted, unlabeled schema that direct living. Rarely questioned, we live out the assumptions that are delivered constantly by the mind-numbing media. The media operates like priests to the temple of culture reminding us how to live in accordance with its mores. To step out of the rhythm of culture is difficult. Much of it is subconscious and we may fear to lose the strength or tacit approval of belonging. We don't think of the values of the marketplace as religion but we approach them with devotion and sacrifice. Material or m-values rotate around competition, aggressiveness, and gratification. The way we surround ourselves with new and better models is m-values. The way our children depend on us for an evolution of new things is m-values. Their pain if we fail to dress them in cool enough clothes is an exaggeration of our own desire to conform. M-values are geared to productivity. There is a great energy that drives them. Through them we achieve, succeed, feel competent and contribute to a viable community. True religious values are not antithetical to m-values. But if m-values are rarely named, soul values are even less discussed. There is a tacit assumption that western Jews no longer have s-values. our souls have been silenced. What are the needs of the soul? Can m-values speak for the souls? Soothe the soul? Nourish it? What does the soul require? S-values assume a love relationship between the soul and its Maker. The relationship between G-d and the soul is described this way: the flame of G-d is the soul of man. Both are hidden. The soul is hidden in the body, G-d is hidden in the world. G-d is all-powerful with indelible imprint on our lives both as individuals and as a community. The soul insinuates itself, imprints itself as it pushes upward in the flame of G-d to a higher existence. S-values are unity, transcendence, the noetic, the sublime. The Soul knows itself in the poetics of dialogue, in prayer, in expression, in creativity, in community, in communion, in the expansiveness of mitzvah, and in Torah study. The Torah is the map that underlies the cosmos. The love letter G-d writes to us, our means of cleaving to Him. S-values are intimacy and love both between person and G-d and between persons. Faith is its shape. Between persons Most often we operate from our bodies, sleeping, eating, working. Our souls are starved and neglected. But G-d works (so to speak) for the preservation of our souls. In the Covenant with Abraham, G-d instructs him to take several animals and a bird. The animals he is to cut in halves. The animals represent power, resistance, aggressiveness, m-values. The bird represents transcendence, the bird can always rise over the moment, above time and space. The bird is never cut. The bird symbolizes our ability to rise above the human drama, above its limitations. G-d will never cut the bird, He leaves open our flight path to Him. He desires our soul values. He does not ask us to abandon our corporeal selves but to alter them , to channel and uplift them, to use them in the service of the soul. He waits for us to favor our soul selves, to bring Him into the foreground of our existence. Marriage If we operate from m-values much of the time, what effect does this have on our relationships? Are m-values at work as villains in marital discord? M-values teach us to win, to seek ego gratification. We have become more and more demanding. We confuse ourselves. We become instantly dissatisfied. We think we deserve to win. If we are unhappy, we feel cheated and we look at the spouse as the one denying us. M-values spiral quickly from progress to change to obsolescence. Even well meaning partners are mystified by the devastation in marriage. M-values have convinced us of the right to perfection. If it’s missing, we are depressed. In fact we are always doomed to be pale imitations of media models, so let-down and depression are a part of our built-in responses to this culture. M-values encourage our appetite but leave us in a constant state of hunger. By their nature material things are never enough. The search is always addictive. If we approach marriage from the demanding viewpoint of m-values, marriage buckles. Marriage needs help, it needs shared goals, Sgoals. Marriage shrivels in a state of conditionality...I love you IF you are thin enough or rich enough or beautiful or smart enough.. Love does not know itself in constraint. On the other hand, love thirsts for acceptance. True love is two souls leaning toward each other, burning together in the flame of the Source. Two souls reaching toward each other and upward. Love is the language of G-d. Loving-kindness is the root of the world. In s-marriage there is a sacred trust, a union of beauty that feels safe and awesome. True love leads us closer to G-d. M-values mislead us about the nature of sexuality. M-values contaminate the marriage with competition, destroy openness, and encourage hedonism. Then, there is never satisfaction, because none can ever satisfy our narcissistic needs. They need to be outgrown, not kept as a guide to living! S-values rescue us from our persistent lower tendencies, help us create a love that borrows from the sacred journey, that leads us on the sacred journey. Every book on marriage says communicate, communicate. But the vocabulary of m-values is impoverished. Acquisition is always urgent and frenetic and simple. Love requires time, s talk, gentleness, a lack of coercion and a higher road that helps us abandon selfishness for the sake of s-success. Parenting Families seem to talk in signals these days as if they were players on a football field. Signal, pass and run. The frenetic quality of m-values prevents the healthy tempo of home life. Children love intimacy. When they are small they never tire of hearing their birth story, who their grandparents are. They love to be with the family. We allow m-values to shorten their attention span, destroy their appetite for nourishment. They need the oasis of the home. Of Shabbos, they need time for healing, for slow and meaningful talk, for rehearsing who they are. For simple pleasure of being together, our hand in theirs as we walk to and from the Beit Knesset. M-values deprive the parent child relationship in many ways. Svalues direct us as parents to giving. S-values direct us to the Operative question. What does my child really need? How do I convey the skills, knowledge, and abilities to help them grow. Svalues keep parents clear about their role, clear as adults, clearly bringing the child into the spiritual journey. M-values leave parents in their own unfinished childhood where rage, disappointment, determination to win keep them stuck. Then m-values incompetition so that sometimes we don't know who is younger! Power struggles characterize parenting from M-values because winning is the bottom line for both parent and child. M-values teach parents to see themselves as providers of goods and services. Parents get caught in a spiral of over-indulgence and consequent anger at their children when "nothing I give is enough" This is a sister refrain to nothing I get is enough. Children measure their parents by what they give. They lose out on who they are. M-values rob parents of appropriate authority as the proper authority as conduit between child and G-d, the vehicle between birth and soul growth. A home is not a periphery, but the center of Jewish life. The task is to reconfigure the Jewish home as the s-center. The workplace needs our consideration as well. Recently I visited the shuk in Israel. The vendors are sharp businessmen, competitive salesmen. At 4:00 on a wintry afternoon I was interrupted from browsing by a call to mincha. Everything stops, competitors become partners in a minyan, a meaningful community prepares itself to address G-d. The shuk is transformed. Which was real? Which the masquerade? Perhaps the marketplace is really a pause between prayers or study time. Hard times and grief, a transition between person and G-d M-values mislead us when we must face inevitable loss. M-values teach us to play to win. M-values do not support us in the face of our mortality, weakness, aging, death. M-values teach us impression management. We forget who we are behind the mask. We suffer feelings of alienation from the true core of our identity. We can't reach out for help. M-values convince us we are alone, stigmatized by loss, shamed by being losers. We swerve away from the potential to be inspired by the memory of a loved one, we are drowning in ego pain. M-values create a poor vocabulary that devastates our relationship with G-d. We drag conditionality in, IF YOU loved me you would not have done this. Or, I only love You when You treat me well, or I only love myself when I am good and if bad things happened to me I am bad. I have no right to love... S-values teach us we are the children of G-d, humble learning creatures. Even in loss we approach Him in faith. Even in the face of inexplicable loss, we await Him. In some painful way, the more places the tree is cut the more its opportunities for renewal. So with the resilient soul. The pain of loss is always shared, always seen against the backdrop of community. Even the blessing to the mourner places him among the mourners for Zion and Jerusalem. There is the power of shared consolation and hope of redemption. S-values release us from where we are stuck. We do not comprehend the mind of G-d. But His mind annexes us. When we are attached to Him, we can be consoled. Separate from him, left to our own devices, we are stuck in rage and disappointment. The mission G-d intends for us is good. The soul is given to us in love. To stretch to our potential uplifts us. We take the conditions of m and infuse them with soul, elevate the m to the service of soul. Take material existence and refine it. Balance body and spirit. Restore harmony to ourselves and to the world. We take the marketplace and transform it as the pause between prayer, charity and study. We take our home and create a place where people grow and G-d can enter.   Back to the Article Page Links and Dr. Belsky's articles: MASK Introduction to Retorno 2003 Stages of Recovery in a MASK group MASK Parents at Work