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Dec. 23, 2005
Connecting with the divine
New books help readers fulfil their aspirations with spirituality.
CYNTHIA RAMSAY
For anyone seeking greater meaning in their life or a deeper connection
to God, there are two new books that take vastly different approaches
to helping people reach these goals.
Sarah Laughed: Modern Lessons from the Wisdom & Stories of
Biblical Women (McGraw-Hill) is written by Vanessa L. Ochs,
PhD. Targeted toward a female audience, it uses the stories of biblical
women to "illuminate the lives of contemporary women."
Reaching Godward: Voices from Jewish Spiritual Guidance (Union
of Reform Judaism Press) by Dr. Carol Ochs is a collection of stories
of people who have developed – with Ochs's guidance –
a more intimate relationship with God, thereby enriching their lives
because they better understand their purpose in life.
Vanessa Ochs is the Ida and Nathan Kolodiz Director of Jewish Studies
at the University of Virginia. She has written several books, including
Words on Fire, and dozens of articles for American newspapers
and magazines. She was motivated to write Sarah Laughed when,
suffering from a long-term, painful illness, she "encountered"
Tamar – who disguised herself as a prostitute in order to get
pregnant by her father-in-law Judah, which she did, but almost at
the cost of her own life. Tamar averted death only when she shed
her disguise. To this time, Ochs had been hiding her condition from
her friends and colleagues. From Tamar's story, she learned that
she was expending too much energy pretending and she needed to reveal
her true identity, which she did, to the benefit of her health.
"Tamar came to me as a role model and spoke deeply to me when
I stopped trying to enter into her story and started letting her
into mine," writes Ochs. "I discovered I could invite
the other women of the Bible in as well."
In Sarah Laughed, the chapters are arranged in themes that
connect biblical women – Eve, the Woman of Valor, Naomi and
Ruth, Yocheved, Job's wife, Hannah and others – to the concerns
of women today: being wise, living in a woman's body, being a friend,
being a parent, healing and being in the divine presence.
Ochs focuses a chapter on each of the women, with some chapters
having as their subject more than one woman. Ochs relates the biblical
passage in which the women appear, then follows with her own, midrash-like
version of the story. The next section of each chapter is a discussion
that connects the past and the present. Finally, Ochs closes each
chapter with the description of a ritual meant to help readers remember
the lessons of Sarah Laughed and apply them to their lives.
The mix of academia, fiction and advice makes Sarah Laughed
unique. It provides an interesting and practical way for people,
albeit mainly women, to interact with Torah and bring the spiritual
into their daily lives.
Reaching Godward attempts to satisfy a similar goal: to help
people recognize the presence of God in their lives. Carol Ochs
is director of graduate studies at Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute
of Religion in New York, where she also teaches philosophy and serves
as a spiritual guide for students. She has written seven books,
including Jewish Spiritual Guidance and Our Lives as Torah.
Rather than recommending specific activities to help people develop
a more meaningful relationship with God, Ochs plays a less direct
role. She acts as a facilitator, in that she mainly listens to people
as they try to figure out what is making them unhappy and what would
make their lives more complete. Sometimes she directs their thought
process, but the guide's role is "to help the guidee overcome
fear. The guide must foster a safe space for the guidee to recognize
what he or she is being called to and what is being recovered. The
guidee must be helped to notice and claim aspects of the self abandoned
or unrecognized at an earlier juncture. Somewhere along the way,
we are all called to life, to wholeness, to fruitfulness, to joy,
and we must sometimes be guided to recognize the call."
The subjects in Reaching Godward are composites of people
with whom Ochs has worked as an advisor. They include Deena, who
loved dancing when she was younger but, in her quest to grow up,
get a "real" career and, in effect, do what she thought
adults were supposed to do, she either stopped dancing entirely
for periods of time or assigned it a lesser priority. Despite great
success as a rabbi, Deena was unhappy and was contemplating quitting
her job, but with Ochs's guidance, Deena eventually (almost organically,
without planning) began to introduce movement or dance first into
her synagogue's programming, then into its services. When Deena
reclaimed dance in her life, she was happier and her personal and
professional relationships improved.
One man described in Reaching Godward had to deal with the
death of a stillborn daughter and the news afterward that his wife
would not be able to bear any children. Over a period of more than
a year meeting with Ochs, discussing various topics related to the
meaning of life and the universe, he gradually healed and reached
a point where he and his wife were able to contemplate adopting
a child.
Through these and 14 other stories, Ochs tries to inspire people
to open their minds to themselves and to God. She does so from a
Jewish foundation, especially the "essential Jewish view ...
that there is meaning in life – not merely the meanings
we create, but also the meanings we discover." And that we
are not alone: throughout the Tanach, God says, "I will be
with you." At the heart of Judaism, writes Ochs, is the primacy
of relationship: "We did not create ourselves, and we are not
our own ends."
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