"How Do We Deliver “The Religious Experience” to Our Kids?"

In response to an on line article from the OU,
available at

https://www.ou.org/life/parenting/how-do-we-deliver-the-religious-experience-to-our-kids/

I sent in the following response.

I would be most interested in your comments.

RBH

Dear Sirs:

In regard to "How Do We Deliver “The Religious Experience” to Our Kids?", I would like to comment on what I (and others who have read the article) perceive to be the author's, unfortunate, singular understanding of the religious experience. The challenge that we face in transmitting the religious experience to others, including our children, is actually in its inherent personal -- and, thus, individually, singular -- nature. We all, and I believe that this is a fundamental principle within Torah thought, uniquely relate to HKBH; we all have our own distinct religious experiences. A problem thus actually arises when I assume that the Other is having and/or will have the same religious experience as me, when we assume that the religious experience is a similar, singular experience to all.

There is still, of course, clearly value in sharing our personal religious experiences with others but it demands a recognition of the distinct, personal nature of the experience and, most importantly, the potentially vast divide between one and an Other. What I  experience as positive, the Other may find negative and what moves the Other, I may find challenging. It is only with this recognition and the subsequent openness we display in our conversations regarding our connection to the Divine that, I believe, we can truly touch the Other religiously.

This concept, furthermore, was actually, in my opinion, most fundamental in the thought of Rabbi Soloveitchik. One can look at the opening remarks in his Worship of the Heart (edited by R. Shalom Carmy) to see how he defines the religious experience as most personal and unique. The Rav's opening remarks in "The Lonely Man of Faith" are actually most powerful in this regard. He demands of the reader to recognize that he is sharing the personal and it is important that his remarks be seen in this context. Remarkably, in presenting this most brilliant discourse on the nature of human existence, he describes it not as a thoughtful presentation to be incorporated objectively into one's mind but as a description of a personal response he wishes to share with the recognition that the reader may not relate. It is in this language of the Rav that I believe we do find the best way to deliver the religious experience to others including our children.

Rabbi Ben Hecht
www.nishma.org