Making Jewish Rituals Habit

Every January, I try to reread "Atomic Habits" by James Clear. I love Clear's book because it breaks down the science behind habit building and gives real-life examples and prompts to help you build habits. He teaches that you build habits from tiny (atomic) building blocks and strive to improve only 1% every day, which is a vast improvement over an entire year. Clear shows that habits are what build our identity; we are the product of the actions we repeat every day, not our words. Our daily, weekly, and monthly habits are what count. My favorite line in the book is: "You do not rise to the level of your goals, you fall to the level of your systems."

I have always found Reform Judaism so intriguing because I have been encouraged to learn the rules, teachings, habits, and structure that our religion has held in place over many centuries. Then, I am encouraged to question, prod, and ultimately build a ritual and spiritual life for myself that is meaningful.

Reading Parashat Vayak'heil-P'kudei in Exodus forces me to consider the role of rituals and rites of passage in Jewish life. Moses gives instructions for Shabbat, the people are blessed after contributing to the Tabernacle, and the priests are anointed and consecrated. What is the difference between habits and our routines in Judaism? How do we create meaning with ritual? Must our observance be habitual to be meaningful?

We hear from parents every year that after campers return home from Camp Newman, they often will say birkat hamazon, the blessing after the meal, for many days. Some tell us that their family begins lighting candles every Friday night too, a habit campers get into while at camp and sometimes continue after out of habit alone. One of the beautiful parts of Jewish overnight camp is that everyone lives on Jewish time and we make every Jewish ritual or observance into a habit that we all partake in. It's all "just what we do" and through the education we offer around all these bits, we help campers learn to make meaning from every habit or ritual. We bless before and after meals, we pray daily, we say shehecheyanu at the beginning of the session (the prayer we say at the beginning of something or when we do something for the first time), we have a Shabbat observance that everyone participates in that includes meaning-making, community, repetition, joy, and fun. All of it is simply part of what we do at camp.

Looking at my Shabbat observance, I began to examine these questions to try to figure out the interplay between habits and ritual in Jewish life. A family could light Shabbat candles every week, but the act of lighting them alone doesn't necessarily hold any deeper meaning. The intention an individual or family puts behind the ritual matters, similar to the small moments of teaching at camp that accompany rituals. Does the family take a pause and say, "We're entering into Shabbat now, let's think of how we will rest for the next day?" or do they simply go through the motions to light the candles? And do we need to partake in regular rituals to be "fully Jewish" in Reform Judaism?

No! That's where the beauty of Reform Judaism lies for me. I have built my identity around being a Reform Jew. I enact that in my habit of living out Reform values. I move through the world with chesed, loving-kindness. I instill our values into my children. I try to see every person I interact with as b'tzelem Elohim, created in the image of God. Personally, I find prayer and ritual meaningful. I wear a tallit and kippah while praying, but I do not pray in a synagogue regularly. This does not make my prayer less meaningful when it happens. Some days, I long to create a better habit of daily prayer, yet, like so many folks, I juggle a myriad of responsibilities and must choose how to spend my time. I intentionally choose to pray when and how I am moved to do so, by saying "thank you" to God when I see something beautiful in nature; wondering with awe at my children's development and growth; and recognizing the power of goodness in this world and godliness in peoples' good deeds and interactions.

Then there are Judaism's rites of passage. Today, we mark time constantly in Judaism. The Shehecheyanu thanks God for allowing us to reach this time and season the first time we do something. The Mi Shebeirach blessing allows us to pray for healing of the mind, body, and spirit. Watching someone lead the community in prayer or blessing the Torah and reading from it marks their taking on the responsibilities of Jewish adulthood. Witnessing a Jewish wedding marks our communal recognition of a couple's commitment to one another. These rites of passage not only mark time but create time; they create the beginning or end of a phase. Some are big, some are smaller, some are communal and some are intensely private (such as going to the mikveh). These rituals help us create meaning in our lives in Jewish ways.

In the end, it seems some rituals require habit while others stand alone as moments that act as a signpost for a turning point or milestone. What meaning do you give rituals, and do you use the power of habits to help you consistently enact these rituals? What would you change about your Jewish life if you were to identify other rituals you wanted to complete daily, weekly, monthly, or yearly?

What a gift we have in Judaism to help us create this structure and meaning in our lives!