Sh'ma on Cultivating Spiritual Intensity

This issue of Sh’ma focuses on the many different meanings of spirituality. Rabbi Arthur Green, rector of the Rabbinical School of Hebrew College, opens up the issue with a powerful call for spiritual engagement that seeks to update the tropes of Hasidism — where the focus of attention is on the personal encounter with the divine. Several rabbinical seminary heads—as well as other rabbis and spiritual leaders—respond to his call and raise their own questions and challenges. How spiritual practice works without a commanding God, and whether such exercises are serious—perhaps even narcissistic—are among the questions explored. In these next pages, mysticism, a farm, the Shabbat dinner table, a painter’s canvass, and FaceTime, all play a role in this conversation.