On Shabbat, we greeted the month of Elul and began our liturgical and hopefully spiritual preparations for the approaching days of judgment, Rosh Hashanah, and Yom Kippur.
My wife recalls how, as a girl in Mattersdorf, she would see older women weep openly in shul on this Shabbat. If anyone asked why, they would look in bewilderment: How could one not cry? The Days of Judgment are approaching.
My wife recalls how, as a girl in Mattersdorf, she would see older women weep openly in shul on this Shabbat. If anyone asked why, they would look in bewilderment: How could one not cry? The Days of Judgment are approaching. Likewise, innumerable observers have noticed that while a few generations ago the sound of sobbing during Yom Kippur prayers was widespread, nowadays such tears are rather rare.
Of course, not everyone cried then, and not everyone is dry-eyed now, but the shift is dramatic. On the side of ahava, too, it seems that exultation and tears of joy have become rarer. Once-common reflexes of raw religious sentiment have nearly disappeared. Something profound has changed in the religious temperament of our world.
From Trembling to Technique
One explanation is that we are experiencing a regrettable decline in yiras Shamayim—fear of Heaven, and no doubt this is partly true. The sense of Hashem’s living Presence, at once benevolent and judging, has diminished, and with it the visceral intensity of religious life. In many ways, the religious experience of our generation is impoverished compared to that of our great-grandparents.
However, I believe the transformation is primarily in the character of our religious engagement, rather than its level. I would describe the change as the professionalization of frumkeit.
Professionals in modern society usually do their jobs through a combination of credentialed expertise in their fields, a sense of commitment to the principles of their profession, and a general pursuit of excellence. Emotional involvement and obsession with incentives are intentionally circumscribed; it is usually assumed that an excess of involvement and of focus on incentives harms professional judgment.
It seems the correlation between tears and competence is weak. Often it is the cool professional, not the emotional one, who is most reliable. And fear of failure does not always augment vigilance; just as often, it can be paralyzing
And this approach seems to work pretty well. In authoritarian countries such as North Korea or the Soviet Union, professionals such as army officers, athletes, or even computer programmers can enjoy an unrivalled standard of living when they are in favor, and be punished with lengthy prison terms (or worse) when they underperform. But they don’t outperform their peers from free countries, who mainly risk missing out on a promotion.
And while we occasionally encounter professionals who are so emotionally involved that they sob when they make an occasional mistake and exult demonstratively when they do their jobs well, these individuals don’t seem to perform better than their colleagues who confine themselves to dry professionalism.
It seems the correlation between tears and competence is weak. Often it is the cool professional, not the emotional one, who is most reliable. And fear of failure does not always augment vigilance; just as often, it can be paralyzing.
Religion Without Tears
The average Torah Jew today is a pro, an expert. Almost all of us are intimately familiar with the user’s manual for religious life, and if we forget something, we can always download the manual from the Manufacturer’s website. We have all internalized the rules; Torah observance is for most of us a deeply ingrained habit that we seldom think about.
Today’s religious life is drier and more “professional,” but by the same token it appears to me to more exacting, more consistent, more disciplined
And it turns out that professionalism in frumkeit is just as effective as professionalism in the workplace! Today’s religious life is drier and more “professional,” but by the same token, it appears to be more exacting, more consistent, more disciplined. Our religious performance metrics are historically outstanding.
Here is an example: The sefer Emunah u’Bitachon (chapter 4) tells of a pious Jew who faced the temptation to desecrate Shabbat so as not to disappoint an honored guest. In moving prose, the Chazon Ish makes the inner struggle of this chareid palpable to the reader. When the Chazon Ish penned those lines just over seventy years ago, it seems the average frum Jew could easily identify with this dilemma. But today, it is hard for me to imagine a committed Jew who would seriously consider desecrating Shabbat simply to avoid an awkward social situation with a guest.
The Evolution of Torah Observance
So, Torah professionalism is not all a bad thing. Indeed, several great Torah figures taught that when religious commitment is more advanced and refined, it is less motivated by emotion and fear.
Rav Kook wrote in a 1908 letter that young people abandoning religion in that generation uniquely do so not from lax standards, but rather from a genuine, though misdirected, commitment to moral principles. As a result, their repentance will come primarily through “intellectual acknowledgment”. He continues, “We do not have to imagine it as a picture of terrible sadness and awesome dread, as ordinary penitence is perceived, but rather simple wisdom, in the same way that one corrects a mathematical error when the right answer becomes evident.” (Igeret 138, Tzvi Feldman translation)
The late Lubavitcher Rebbe consistently sought to spread a general awareness that ideally mitzvot are not be performed because they are commanded, but simply because they reflect natural expressions of truth
In a similar vein, the late Lubavitcher Rebbe consistently sought to spread the understanding that ideally, mitzvot are not performed because they are commanded, but rather because they reflect natural expressions of truth. He urged all Jews to anticipate the imminent arrival of the Messianic era, when the commandments will be abolished. Yet, he didn’t look forward to any diminution in our acts of observance of the commandments, but rather in the consciousness of being commanded.
The need for emotional involvement
While it is worth recognizing the benefits of being a Torah expert, we need to acknowledge that Hashem demands emotional involvement as an inherent part of His service, and not merely as a means to an end, in order to fulfill the commands scrupulously.
In his Haharuga Alecha, the late Slonimer Rebbe, Rav Shalom Noach Berezovsky, mourns the passing of a generation that excelled in this — a profound emotional connection with Hashem. In his words:
The spiritual greatness of that generation was expressed above all in the fact that they were Jews in the very essence of their being. One may find a person who is called a Jew because he was born to Jewish parents, or because he conducts himself in accordance with Jewish custom and practice. But there is a higher level still: one whose very essence and entire existence is Jewish. All his feelings, his outlook, his thoughts are Jewish; his heart is a Jewish heart, and his blood is pure Jewish blood flowing in his veins. As the verse in Megillas Esther declares, “There was a Jewish man” — his entire identity was Jewish. And because they were such “natural Jews,” their Torah study, their prayer, their character traits and good deeds were also natural, flowing from within, rather than contrived or artificial.
As he expounds, the new generation, while excelling in a technical upkeep of the Torah, lacks the profundity of this connection.
We all understand that in family life, a strong emotional connection between husband and wife, as well as between parents and children, is even more important than fulfilling the formal demands of these roles. Clearly, such a connection must equally be present in our religious life.
In the Torah portions of the last few weeks alone, Hashem repeatedly commands us to fear Him as part of our mitzvah observance (Devarim 6:2, 6:13, 10:20, 13:4). Moreover, Shlomo haMelech informs us (Kohelet 3:14) that Hashem directs the world as He does “so that people will fear Him.” This is not merely an instrumental fear, beneficial only to the extent it induces observance; it is an essential part of our relationship to Hashem, an organic expression of what Rav Berezovsky calls “a Jewish heart.”
The Achievement—and the Danger
The modern world is one of institutions, protocols, and professionalism. Our religious life has been a part of this shift. Once drawing on raw dread, it now rests to an unprecedented extent on rulebooks, training, and ingrained discipline.
On the one hand, today’s Torah Jew no longer needs lurid visions of divine wrath to keep him observant. He has read the manual, internalized the system, and checks the instructions when in doubt
This is an achievement, but also a danger. On the one hand, today’s Torah Jew no longer needs lurid visions of divine wrath to keep him observant. He has read the manual, internalized the system, and checks the instructions when in doubt. Knowledge is more profound than ever; halachic competence is at an all-time high. Our communities live with a meticulous fidelity to mitzvot, seldom considering the terror of punishment or the lure of reward.
But we have also paid a price. The sense of God’s Presence—immediate, overwhelming, intimate—has receded. The trembling that once cracked the voice in prayer, the tears that once stained the machzor in Elul, are almost gone.
As we enter Elul, it is worth facing this paradox head-on. We are justified in feeling satisfaction with our “expertise” in Torah observance, and observing that most of the transgressions in the vidui are rare among the Jews in our shuls today.
However, we should also recognize the emotional and spiritual loss that accompanied this transformation, and strive to restore the palpable sense of Hashem’s presence. We need to recall that even if we are sometimes indifferent, He rejoices in our mitzvot, He is pained by our transgressions, and He longs to see us repent for our misdeeds and renew our closeness to Him.
Hence, simple empathy should induce us to augment the emotion we experience in prayer. Without the moisture of our tears, our service of Hashem risks becoming an arid desert.
From Rupture and Reconstruction:
I grew up in a Jewishly non-observant community, and prayed in a synagogue where most of the older congregants neither observed the Sabbath nor even ate kosher. They all hailed from Eastern Europe, largely from shtetlach, like Shepetovka and Shnipishok. Most of their religious observance, however, had been washed away in the sea-change, and the little left had further eroded in the “new country.” Indeed, the only time the synagogue was ever full was during the High Holidays. Even then the service was hardly edifying. Most didn’t know what they were saying, and bored, wandered in and out. Yet, at the closing service of Yom Kippur, the Ne’ilah, the synagogue filled and a hush set in upon the crowd. The tension was palpable and tears were shed.
What had been instilled in these people in their earliest childhood, and which they never quite shook off, was that every person was judged on Yom Kippur, and, as the sun was setting, the final decision was being rendered (in the words of the famous prayer) “who for life, who for death, / who for tranquility, who for unrest.”96 These people did not cry from religiosity but from self- interest, from an instinctive fear for their lives.97 Their tears were courtroom tears, with whatever degree of sincerity such tears have. What was absent among the thronged students in Bnei Brak and in their contemporary services and, lest I be thought to be exempting myself from this assessment, absent in my own religious life too- was that primal fear of Divine judgment, simple and direct.
and
It is this rupture in the traditional religious sensibilities that underlies much of the transformation of contemporary Orthodoxy. Zealous to continue traditional Judaism unimpaired, religious Jews seek to ground their new emerging spirituality less on a now unattainable intimacy with Him, than on an intimacy with His Will, avidly eliciting Its intricate demands and saturating their daily lives with Its exactions. Having lost the touch of His presence, they seek now solace in the pressure of His yoke.
KVCT
After Rav Soloveitchik of YU was niftar, they held a memorial service there, that I heard in Michigan by simulcast. I was disturbed by the dry academic tone of some speakers, as if that demeanor was expected of them even at the funeral of their revered Rav.
I think a main issue is that people are embarrassed to cry in general. People who cry these days are constantly apologizing for showing emotion, those around them pass them tissues in a hurry and feel very uncomfortable, and we all continue in our buttoned-up, unemotional ways. I think this is a key factor that the article didn’t mention.