Spirituality Studies 10-2 Fall 2024 31 Jeffrey Katzman, Ben Bernstein, Matthew Ponak respect offered to the companion on the journey. A few paragraphs following this passage, the Me’or Eynayim goes on to say that a wise person searches for the divine within others, not merely what is on the surface. This is a relational Self, connected to and one with the eternal through a life-force. The individual Self ultimately is not separated from the source of creation. There is no Self independent of other selves, nor of the creator, Ein Sof. We are all interconnected in this way. When we make contact with this force, we feel expansive, inspired, ecstatic, and ultimately a different sense of realness and authenticity. The sense of ourselves as connected to this force of Ein Sof is again seen in our story of our Velveteen Rabbit, who ultimately becomes real through such contact. While finally in a garden with other rabbits, he is kissed by the Garden Fairy and has a moment of contemplation, unaware of how the experience of contact with the divine had led to a change – a change toward becoming real (Williams 2022, 25): But the little Rabbit sat quite still for a moment and never moved. For when he saw all the wild rabbits dancing around him, he suddenly remembered about his hind legs, and he didn’t want them to see that he was made all in one piece. He did not know that when the Fairy kissed him that last time, she had changed him altogether. Jewish spirituality also underscores the relationship between individuals. A general idea is that the Shekhinah or “God’s presence on earth”, lives within the spaces between individuals. It is through intentionality and honoring one another that we may discover this experience. Disrespectful behavior toward one’s teacher, for example, “causes the Divine Presence to withdraw from Israel (Talmud, Berachot 27b). An experience of the Divine may transpire through a moment of realization that the force of God lives within all of us, and when this connection is made, one can begin to feel the presence of a higher force: “If two sit together and there are words of Torah (spoken) between them, then the Shekhinah abides among them” (Pirkei Avot 3:2). Of interest, the Hasidic rebbes also inform us of some critical components to facilitate this experience. Among them, humility, compassion, and viewing another as one’s equal become important contributions to facilitate the emergence of something greater between individuals. An important story comes from Rebbe Naḥman of Breslov, writing at the turn of the nineteenth-century. His work was infused with folktales to guide students toward experiences of the divine. He is known to have influenced important writers such as Martin Buber discussed earlier, as well as Kafka (Feuer 2015). In one such story, he shares a discussion from a Rebbe Dovid of Lelov. This involved the writing of the name of the Creator as represented by the letter yud twice in succession so as not to write down the name (Buber 2013, 185): When you see two yuds in the Ḥumash or the siddur, that is Hashem’s [note: God’s] name. When two yuds are next to each other, it’s Hashem’s name. But when one yud is higher than the other, it’s a separator between one pasuk [note: verse] and the next. Rebbe Dovid of Lelov said he learned from this the following lesson: When two Yidden (two yuds) feel equal, no one feels greater than the other; Hashem is there. But when one yud feels higher than the other, it’s a separator, and Hashem doesn’t reside there. This idea reminds us that to have an inspired relational experience, there must be a recognition of a representation of the divine in the other. When this does not exist and one feels higher or lower in status than the other, there is no such experience. Rather, we experience cognitions such as “better than” or “less than” and all that follows from these ideas. Another compelling idea from Rebbe Naḥman of Breslov is the practice of hitbodedut (He. “self-seclusion” or “meditation”) (Philmus 2024). Through this practice, an individual enters a spontaneous and heartfelt conversation with the Creator, becoming vulnerable with what is in one’s heart. In this way, a real, spontaneous, relatedness develops with personal meaning beyond what is found in prescribed liturgical statements, which may not allow some practitioners to communicate authentically. Through this direct relatedness at the right moment, when one is in the right place, and with the right words, an individual can find himself experiencing a deep sense of connectedness adding to that which we experience between one another. 4 Language and the Self From the beginning of life, an individual’s developing Self grows through communication with the external world. This happens at first through a mutual gaze with the parent, in which the developing Self of the infant develops a sense of meaning through the response of the other. This is reflected through Winnicott’s idea of the mother as mirror to the child’s experience from the start, challenging prior notions of an autistic period of development following birth (Winnicott 1971, 111). The mother interacts with the infant
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