Kindergarten Emuna

I recently read an article in a magazine that spoke about Kindergarten Emuna. I thought this sounded like an intriguing concept. The article, written by a rabbi, bemoaned the immature status of emuna in the religious world in particular, though the malaise goes far beyond those confines.
 
Kindergarten Emuna, he says, is the frozen state of emuna that we learned as very young children, and have since retained, pure and intact: the idea that G-d created the world, and now sits up in the clouds and runs things. By “things”, we mean nature and the cosmos. The rabbi sorely laments the fact that most people have not yet graduated to the next logical level of recognition of G-d’s Omnipotence, that is, that He not only runs the world at large: but our personal lives as well, including every heartbeat.
 
At around the same time, I read an excerpt from a book titled: “All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten.” It was a charming little collection of values learned in the early years such as: share everything, play fair, clean up your own mess, take a nap every afternoon, wash hands before you eat, don’t take things that are not yours….. you get the idea. There is certainly a ring of truth to it: and not in any small part because these are all values imparted by Torah, no less. In any case, I found it interesting that these two publications both touched upon, and utilized, the Kindergarten years to drive home important points, though they in fact say the opposite.
 
On the one hand, the rabbi’s article mourns a lack of spiritual growth. On the other hand, the book hints at an overgrowth of sophistication. One insists we move forward, the other suggests we step back. There is an interesting dynamic, a certain balance in this opposition.
 
Kindergarten emuna is something that most people are not often even aware that they have, they simply take it for granted. It’s instinctive for our holy souls to acknowledge G-d. He is a part of us, embedded within our soul, so it is only natural that we should unconsciously accept His presence. It is the fragile beginning of our spiritual awareness, the diving board for future spiritual growth.
 
As young children, our natural sense of wonder is at ease with G-d, and His Divinely wondrous nature. This emuna is the source of all future emuna, the ABC’s and the 123’s. But this is not enough to sustain us through life’s travails. As we grow, we need to work hard on our emuna. As in school, learning the letters and numbers do not make the mathematician and author. We need to move past the basics and grow with time, effort and experience. And lots of staying power.
 
During the school years, things get more challenging as we progress. We need to work hard in order to move up the scholastic ladder. We don’t really feel the advance, just the daily drudge of learning and homework. It isn’t really until we have another year of academia under our belts that we look back and see how much we’ve learned, how far we’ve come, what we achieved: and realize that not only are we going to have to do it again, we actually want to, because we have a goal: we understand that our future depends on it.
 
It works much the same with Emuna.
 
When we first discover Emuna, we are somewhat like Kindergarteners. It’s so wonderful! We learn the rules, we feel as if we’ve grown, a new life lies ahead of us. Everything is new and exciting. Every day leads to a new discovery. The Kindergarten learning curve is immense. And so it is with Emuna. We soak up our newfound closeness to Hashem, we delight in our new status. We want to grow, already! Be a fireman! A doctor! We want to be a Tzaddik, a truly righteous person!
 
Then reality sets in, and the work begins. The rosy glow of Kindergarten is replaced, year after year, with increasingly hard slog. Apart from the brief glow of achievement and purpose at the beginning and end of each year, we forget ourselves in the daily grind. We don’t see the forest for the trees of assignments and exams. Hopes and disappointments. Trials and tribulations.
 
Emuna plays itself out with same rhythm. We are so busy with our lives, we forget our daily emuna and don’t see Hashem’s forest of involvement in our lives for the trees of daily frustrations, spoiled plans, unruly kids and financial stress. Even when we do personal prayer, and work on our emuna, we may not feel the progress; that we are, in fact, getting spiritual work done. We are using our emuna, we are activating it every day, only we don’t see our spiritual progress, so we think it doesn’t exist. But spiritual progress IS tangible, and we ARE progressing. Sometimes we just have to look back to see it.
 
Remember when we first realized that Hashem was part of our personal lives? It was mind-blowingly wonderful. So perhaps now we take it for granted. In reality, this is progress: now we understand inherently what we didn’t realize or accept before. Let that sink in for a minute. That is true spiritual growth. Whereas before we would boil in frustration during a traffic jam, now we are calm in the knowledge that it’s Hashem’s Will. So we don’t have the same composure with our children, our spouses, or our colleagues? Never mind. There’s more work to do, but that doesn’t mean that nothing has yet been achieved. Maybe we are still in emuna grade school, and maybe some of us have graduated already.
 
The main thing is progress. And one great way to check on progress, is to look back. This is why we count the Omer – the seven weeks between Passover and Shavuoth – as days gone by, in cognizance of what we have already achieved, and not as ‘days still to go’, in expectation of what is to come. Rabbi Nachman himself recommends looking back fondly on times of spiritual strength, to encourage us during the INEVITABLE times of spiritual lows that progress is possible.
 
In the same vein, Rebbe Nachman teaches that every fall is a necessary prerequisite before a rise in spiritual growth. In school, when we reach the zenith of one year, only to find ourselves back at the bottom of a new year; we simply must remind ourselves that we are at yet another new beginning, this time at a higher level. And that’s how spiritual progress works as well. Many times we think that we have nipped a nasty trait in the bud, only to find it rearing it’s ugly head again. This can be compared to review chapters at the beginning of each school year: when we reach a new level we need to be tested on our knowledge of our previous level before we can continue.
 
On this topic, Rebbe Nachman teaches that each higher spiritual level comes with the same negative spiritual forces that we had to fight for the previous level: this explains why we constantly seem to repeat the same struggle and suffer from spiritual déjà-vu. But if we take a look back, we will see how this time we dealt with it differently, even if we still feel like we failed: if we look carefully there was a new element of emuna at play that we didn’t utilize before. In the same way, we hone our essay writing or formula solving skills as we become more knowledgeable in literature or math.
 
Progress in emuna, spiritual progress, is really only possible with constant work, even though it IS a little hard to bear at times. Just as someone without formal education may be, sadly, illiterate: someone who does not progress past Kindergarten emuna will remain without the tools they need for an honest, healthy spiritual life. And in order to move forward and motivate ourselves in this necessary yet challenging mission, it helps to look back and see how far we’ve come; to recognize that we have long since moved on from our Kindergarten years, while at the same time appreciating the vital role our then-newfound, basic and simple faith in G-d played in our subsequent growth.
 
Looking back at the two aforementioned pieces of writing, I realize that both of them are correct, when utilized in tandem.  On one hand, we need to constantly move forward and grow in our cognizance of Hashem in our daily, minute-by-minute lives. On the other hand, there are two ways we must look back: one is when we start to become battle-weary and spiritually jaded, we can look back and see how our pure, simple Kindergarten emuna has grown in leaps and bounds. This re-energizes us. The second way to look back is when we enter the danger zone of overly-sophisticated emuna and start questioning esoteric concepts of free-will and the like, which is forbidden by our sages: then we need to stop, go back to our Kindergarten emuna and simply believe, without questions.
 
It seems that the two Kindergarten concepts are actually illustrating, in a way, what Rebbe Nachman calls “running and returning”. The Rebbe speaks constantly of this balance between going forward and back in our spiritual quest. The maintaining of this spiritual balance of knowing when to surge forward, and when to reign in, is the key to a healthy spiritual life, free of both despair and arrogance.
 
So let’s get our bags and lunches ready. We don’t need to wait until the holidays are over, Kindergarten has started already. For all of us.