objects

I'm an over-eater. I'm not fat, but I eat like I have an extra twenty feet of intestine. I realize that a lot of what I eat isn't for hunger, but anxiety. Food is soothing, whether in a stressful social situation, with family, or both. Sometimes we eat because we're hungry and sometimes we eat because we're just scared.

You can get wrapped up in food and consumption, like insulation from the cold - as though some amount of possessions will ward off trouble. Some people can't wait for the newest flat screen, while others shop constantly for small trinkets. I daydream about old video games. And we get bored with almost all of it. Isn't there something more important?

When asked to recall an item that she considered sacred, a good friend named her breath. In the past year, she moved, went to another friend's funeral and then was robbed twice. After that, she says, it didn't pay to put much faith in physical objects. But her breath, she said, would always be there. Friends and cherished possessions come and go, but her breath would be hers until the day she died.

I'm not telling you to sell everything you own and go off to Alaska, although I've always wanted to cycle through Denali. Judaism is opposed to monkish behavior. It is important to have food, shelter, friends and family. And that means living a life with a certain amount of material goods, even enough to give some to charity. All of this requires what George Carlin calls "stuff". Even so, be realistic about what you need.

In the end, you can't take it with you. A Jewish burial shroud has no pockets. Besides our flesh and bones, all we really have is our breath. Even these things, sacred as they are, will one day end. And no amount of plastic toys will stop that. So try not to get caught up in the buying and eating and collecting of stuff - don't waste the time, and breath, that you have.

practice

Why be religious? Can't we just be spiritual?

I don't think so. The soul has got to be in tune before it can sing with God. We get this tune-up through religion, and we're playing with the Maestro. Religious observance is the practice that prepares us to experience God.

According to Alasdair MacIntyre’s definition in After Virtue, a practice is “any coherent and complex form of socially established cooperative human activity through which goods internal to that form of activity are realized in the course of trying to achieve those standards of excellence.” For example, yoga, chess, weight-lifting and reading are all practices - they are human activities with set standards and their own essential goals. With regular effort, we are rewarded with the skills or muscles we need: in yoga, flexibility; in chess, strategy; by reading, wisdom, and so on.

In my life, Jewish observance is a practice that raises my awareness of the fragile beauty of life and increases my thankfulness for it. Although the practice does not promise an experience of God, it can make me ready for it, by making my soul fit and precise. “I would rather be exact,” says Ernest Hemingway in The Old Man and the Sea, “Then when luck comes you are ready.” Like Hemingway's fisherman, we all train for that one special moment.

The goal is to be ready to meet God with love, awe and reverence. “The purpose of observance is to train us in achieving spiritual ends,” said Abraham Joshua Heschel. Religion is gym for the soul. It can stretch and strengthen your spirit beyond prior limits. When you prepare with God, you are driven to new abilities. It's like being on Venice's Muscle Beach in1979, and your soul is training side-by-side with Arnold Schwartzenegger as he prepares for his ultimate Mr. Olympia title.