God is here Reimagining the Divine

Massachusetts rabbi Spitzer offers a deceptively simple approach to finding the spiritual in everyday life. While she founds much of her insight on the the first five books of the Hebrew Bible as well as on Talmudic learnings from sages, and sprinkles myriad Hebrew terms and definitions throughout, Spitzer makes it clear that her writings are non-ecumenical, applicable to any human searching for a higher spirit as a life guide. She makes use of metaphor, explaining that beings make sense of reality and the world through metaphor and that religion, in turn, offers a viewpoint of the world and formulates truths about it through these metaphors. Spirituality, Spitzer insists, is about how we act and who we are--the key to her exposition. The rest of her thoughts center on nine metaphors: God, water, a sense of place, sound/silence, rock (shelter/refuge), clouds, fire, becoming, and the material world. Sound, for instance, is a way to connect. A handful of exercises demonstrating her precepts follow every chapter--for sound, her examples are being alone with yourself, listening, and experiencing silence. Poetic and thought provoking, Spitzer's good, wise counsel for forging a meaningful life describes a faith anyone can believe in.

Spitzer, a congregational rabbi, examines metaphors and broadens popular conceptions of God in her uneven debut. She notes that many find the traditional notion of God as "Someone or Something that we're told is both all-powerful and all-good" difficult to reconcile with the existence of evil and suffering. In response, the author proffers several metaphors for God--including rock, water, voice, fire, cloud, and electricity--intended to expand how one thinks about God and appeal to those turned off by conventional understandings of a higher power. In unpacking scriptural comparisons of God, Spitzer reveals, for instance, how a reference to God as the "Rock of Ages" highlights God's eternal nature, and "Fount of Living Waters" speaks to God's capacity to provide spiritual sustenance. The author also weaves in less expected sources, including Black American civil rights history and personal anecdotes such as her father's kayaking obsession and the death of her partner due to cancer. Despite ostensibly writing for those troubled by theodicy, Spitzer offers little to address that paradox, and the platitudes she does offer ("We can never really predict the future") fall flat. Though wide-ranging and imaginative, this doesn't live up to its own ambitious goals. (Mar.)