Discovering Meaning in Ritual

By Susan Esther Barnes

Often, when I hear people say they are not religious, or they want to explain why they don’t come to services more often, they say they’re not interested in meaningless ritual. That sentiment is certainly something we have in common! What is implied, however, is that they find most, if not all, ritual to be meaningless. I would argue this is a misconception.

Ritual is so much a part of our lives, it’s easy not to recognize it for what it is. Ritual, and its inherent meaning, is more easily recognized when it stops, because that is when you miss it.

For example, I’m one of those people who can’t sleep through the night without having to get up at least once or twice. When my husband and I were first married, every time I crawled back into bed I would find a piece of him – a hand, his head, whatever – sticking out from under the covers, and kiss it.

Then came one very cold night. When I got back into bed, I saw he had the covers pulled up over his head. There was no skin sticking out anywhere at all. I didn’t want to lift the covers off of him to find a place to kiss, because I didn’t want the cold air to rush in and wake him up. “He’s asleep anyway,” I thought, “It’s not like he’s even aware I’ve been doing this.” So I lay down to go to sleep.

Suddenly, I heard a drowsy voice beside me saying, “What, no kiss?” To my surprise, even though he had never mentioned it, he had been aware of the ritual, and he missed it the first time it didn’t happen.

Similarly, most people in the US are used to receiving a cake on their birthday, as well as a chorus of people singing, “Happy Birthday to You.” If, for some reason, this doesn’t happen, most of us would feel disappointed, let down, almost as if the birthday hadn’t really happened.

This is because ritual is meaningful to us. It connects our present to our past, and to other generations. We are hard wired for it. If we don’t have enough rituals in our lives, we will invent some, whether it’s pizza every Wednesday night, or a stop by Starbucks in the morning, or whatever fits the bill.

TV producers picked up on the importance of ritual long ago, and they have never forgotten the lesson. Carol Burnett ended all of her shows by singing, “I’m so Glad We Had This Time Together.” What would the show “Good Times” have been without Jimmie Walker saying, “Kid Dy-no-mite!” or what would happen if the creators of “Survivor” suddenly decided not to snuff out a torch every time a person is voted off the island?

These actions are rituals. On the surface, they may appear to be meaningless, but we know they are not, because we would feel a sense of incompleteness, almost a sense of being cheated, if they were omitted.

Who could have predicted that a particular song, or phrase, or a snuffed torch, could become important to us? We couldn’t know for sure in advance. The first time we experienced each of these things, for most of us, they felt like no big deal. It is only through repetition and familiarity that they grew in importance and gained in meaning.

And so it is with religious ritual. It makes no sense for someone to light Shabbat candles just once and then say, “Well, that did nothing for me, so I won’t ever do it again.” It is only by repeating a ritual multiple times, giving it a chance to sink in and become a part of our lives, that we can start to discover what meaning, if any, it may have for us.

We were told on Mount Sinai, as recorded in the Torah in Sh’mot 24:7, “na’aseh v’nishma” – “We will do and we will understand.” It is the doing that comes first; the understanding doesn’t come until later. When contemplating a ritual that is new to me, I need to see how it fits, through repetition over time, before I can even begin to decide whether it is something that will have meaning for me.

After all, the first several times you try almost anything new, it’s hard not to feel self conscious and awkward. It takes time and repetition before you can relax and actually experience a new thing in its own right without having these kinds of other feelings get in the way.

And while having cake on my birthday is delicious, and seeing a torch snuffed gives me a certain sense of finality, it is only religious ritual which brings me a sense of closeness to God and to something bigger, and more universal, than I get with those secular rituals.

No, I am not interested in the least in meaningless ritual. To the contrary, since I know I’m going to have ritual in my life one way or the other, I want to find the most meaningful rituals I can. That is why I am willing to put in the time and effort to repeat new religious rituals over time, in order to discover what depth of meaning they may hold for me.

Ok, I Admit It: I'm Religious

By Susan Esther Barnes

I’m religious. I’m going to guess this doesn’t come as a great surprise to readers of my blog. I have to say, though, it did sneak up on me slowly over time, and it’s not something I often admit to myself in so many words.

This was brought to my attention a few weeks ago when I was speaking with someone who was at our synagogue for the first time. After some small talk, he asked, “Are you religious?” and I said, “Yes,” but then I immediately felt embarrassed. “He’s going to think I’m a nut,” I thought, regretting my hasty response.

But why should I feel embarrassed? Maybe it’s because when I think of the word “religious” a whole bunch of images come to mind that don’t represent me at all. These include faith healers, people who shout, “Praise Jesus!” repeatedly, Orthodox Jewish women who think it’s immodest to let their own hair be seen in public but who think it’s okay to wear someone else’s real human hair instead in the form of a wig, priests, nuns in traditional habits, Jewish men hurling chairs across the mechitza at the Women of the Wall, etc.

As Rabbi Lezak says, why should we let other people define for us what it means to be religious? Isn’t it way past time for the word to be reclaimed by those of us who may be more moderate than some of those listed above?

I used to think religious people were either out of touch with reality or hypocrites. Out of touch with reality for believing things that can’t be real, like the parting of the Red Sea or the resurrection of Jesus, or hypocritical for following a religion even though they don’t believe in some or all of the things it says are true.

However, that analysis relies on the assumption that religious people have to take the Bible literally. I have since learned that a person can look at it as a source of inspiration and learning without believing that everything happened exactly like it says. Which is a good thing, since there are several places where the Bible gives more than one, contradictory, version of events (such as the creation of humans in Genesis).

So that begs the question, what do I mean when I say I’m religious? Is it that I go to synagogue most Friday nights and most Saturday mornings? I have talked to plenty of people who go to services who say they’re not particularly religious.

Is it that I learn about the mitzvot (commandments) and try to find ways to incorporate them into my life? No, I think people who do that to excess are edging closer to obsessive compulsive than they are to being religious.

Is it because I believe in God? Is it that I talk with God pretty much every day? I think that’s getting closer to it. I bought a piece of art in Tzfat in Israel that says “Ein od malvado,” which means, “There is nothing but God.” I see a bit of God in everything, from every person I meet to every tree and plant, and even in inanimate objects. I guess that makes me religious.

The thing is, I feel incredibly uncomfortable with much of what I wrote in the paragraph above, even though it’s all absolutely true. There is a part of me that is concerned it’s possible those feelings and beliefs mean I’m crazy.

To show how irrational my discomfort is, the clergy people at my synagogue are religious, but, on average, I don't think they're any more crazy than the average Joe. It makes no sense for me to think religious equals crazy for me but not for them.

So the only reasonable option I see is to go forward in the world believing what I believe and feeling what I feel. And as long as I remain a fully functioning, upstanding member of society, I guess that’s okay. Even if it may be a bit embarrassing from time to time.