Against Spirituality - personal spirituality versus social connectedsness through religion

ONE OF THE MOST SIGNIFICANT BOOKS OF SOCIAL CRITICISM published in recent years is Robert Putnam's Bowling Alone. [1] Its subtitle, "The Collapse and Revival of American Community," describes the dour findings of a Harvard social scientist. Where once bowling leagues flourished, now lonely bowlers fill the alleys. Where once the "great generation" that survived the Depression and the Second World War created social institutions and social cohesion, the Baby Boomers, born roughly from 1945 to 1965, have collapsed the world of relationships into private and ever tinier units. Despite the criticism of such writers as Everett Carl Ladd in The Ladd Report. [2] which tries to refute Putnam's first probe, published in a small journal several years earlier, newer, fine-tuned research seems to have proved Putnam's point.

Political participation, voting, and seeking office were all down sharply in the second half of the last century. Civic responsibility withered and almost died. Religious institutions of almost every kind are suffering losses of membership and of leadership, and the workplace no longer is a locus of friendship or of loyalty. Informal social connections plummeted, including such markers as entertaining friends at home, eating family meals together, or sharing a night out with another family.

Even more important, examples of altruism, volunteering, and philanthropy were declining sharply. As Jewish wealth increases, for example, Jewish giving remains a stable percentage (or a smaller share) of discretionary income. Simple human trust in other people, the expectation of reciprocity and honesty have declined. The need for many more lawyers than practiced a half-century ago is largely because the old hand-shake or gentlemen's agreement could no longer be trusted.

Putnam suggests many causes for the loss of social capital in the era of the Baby Boomers: pressures of time and money, mobility and urban sprawl, technology and the imperialism of the media, together with many other putative causes. In any case, civic and professional associations, and even national goals and hopes, are inevitably dashed by these findings. Crime, anomie, poorer schools, even bad personal health are all symptoms of declining social cohesion. Not all organizations were ever benign; we know of the Ku Klux Klan and the German-American Bund. But the many ways that Americans met one another face to face, whether bonding with those like themselves or bridging to others across boundary lines, were mostly powerful forces for good. Perhaps religious life most of all depended, and still depends, on a community of people who are not strangers in the dark.

Jews and Judaism are deeply committed to bonds of loyalty and social connectedness. We are, after all, a religious people, a civilization, if you prefer, with historical roots that unite us and make us responsible for one another. To lose this social Jewish capital is to undermine our religious life with all its gifts.

Jewish Boomers created the short-lived havurah movement with consequences that still enrich our community life. But many of our now aging Jewish families are absenting themselves from congregational and community life, preferring the private joys of domesticity and the rewards of a demanding professional life to sharing the tasks and rewards of commitment to Jewish and human needs and tasks. Many of them would say, "I am not religious but I am spiritual." That, in my view, translates into eschewing group traditions and obligations, choosing instead to find Judaism within the narcissistic self. God is discovered not in a people's search, but in introspection, meditation, and, above all, "spirituality." That kind of spirituality, or "Jewish renewal," found everywhere today, can be the enemy, not the ally, of social capital.

If one examines the catalog of Jewish Lights, the most successful and prolific Jewish publisher today (with the possible exception of the neo-frum ArtScroll), one finds "spirituality" by far the most pervasive concern. Forty-seven of the new catalog's seventy-nine pages fall under that rubric. Representative book titles include:

Criminal Kabbalah

The Jewish Lights Spirituality Handbook

Moonbeams

Six Jewish Spiritual Paths

One God Clapping: The Spiritual Life of a Zen Rabbi.

There are also, of course, books on holidays, but far more on meditation. There are almost no books at all on ethical or political issues, but a great many on healing and recovery, that is to say on personal self-improvement. Something profound is missing, and I believe it is precisely the communal, the historical, the great Jewish legacy of collective social responsibility.

Another testimony to the inundation of personal spirituality is the ninth international Aleph Kallah, held in De Kalb, Illinois, from July 2-8. Perhaps the best of the many Jewish spirituality centers, Aleph is not unaware of community needs that are social and political. But most of its undoubted energy is focused on topics like these: