Random morning thoughts

I recently had a dream in which I had a sleepover with my school and it was time to say shema (the bedtime prayer) and nobody was doing the meditation portion of it but me. The way my family taught me growing up, there is an acupressure meditation in which you put your hand and fingers like so, breathe like so, and focus on such thoughts etc… it’s very different from the shema we learned in school which was simply reciting the prayer with your hand covering your eyes. Anyway, in the dream, I asked what was the point of shema without the meditation, and my teacher replied that meditating was for drug addicts and hippies. That was my dream! Lol. But I think it encapsulates a lot of my perception of Eastern versus Western Judaism.

That’s what this whole ramble was about, by the way. Looking back. I don’t think I’m too concerned Ashkenazi (German) Jews versus Sephardic (Spanish? But more accurately Mizrachi = Eastern) as much as what the way Western versus Eastern religions have been taught growing up represents to me. One is to me more intellectual, more sophisticated and frontal lobe, the other is more primitive, but more concerned with body/ spirit. One to me represents memorizing as much as and spending HOURS a day reciting words you feel zero connection to no matter how much you try but are just doing so out of sheer force and obligation, counting all the tiny little technical rules that you could possibly fit in your already squeezed consciousness, and the other represents a stronger, fundamental relationship with your body and soul. I love the combination of the two, and I feel like Judaism has been coming together with recent travel and communication to merge into like one beautiful body of all the different cultures, but still, to me it feels like “East” is simply trying to mimic “West” in the same culty fashion that I described above and it’s only a matter of time until families like mine lose alignment with their body/spirit too. Not to say that is bad fo..