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 By Ron Wolfson
How are the Olympic Games like an uplifting experience of worship?
I am a huge fan of the Olympics. Not because I am such a big sports fan, but because they move me. Along with millions of people, I have watched in awe as the finest athletes in the world compete for themselves
and their countries in a spectacular display of discipline, hard work, and courage. I find myself having what I can only call “goose bump moments,” times when my skin literally tingles and my eyes grow watery with emotion as I witness their achievements. What is it about the Olympics that turns me, night after night, into a blithering mushball?
It turns out that the Olympics are hardly about sports at all. An executive at NBC, which broadcasts the Games, put it succinctly: “The Olympics are a human drama played out on the stage of sports.” That explains why there are as many stories about the athletes as human beings—their travails and triumphs, the obstacles they had to overcome, their families—as there is coverage of the events. These stories turn the athletes into people, people we can identify with, people who represent the best in what we hope we all can be.
There are many goose bump moments during the Olympics. Watching the reactions of the families of the athletes as they perform, anyone who has been a parent can identify with the tension and then the joy of family members celebrating the triumph of their children. When the athletes enter the Olympic Stadium to celebrate the youth of the world in the pageantry and ritual of the Opening and Closing Ceremonies, how can one help but be moved? When “The Star-Spangled Banner” is played and the athletes (and most of America) well up with tears, who can resist the emotion of the moment?
Is there such a thing as a spiritual goose bump moment? My colleague and eminent professor of philosophy, Rabbi Elliot Dorff, talks about “hitting a home run in prayer.” Sometimes, the combination of the service, the moment, and the place you are at results in a moving worship experience. Sometimes, prayer does not result in goose bump moments; it is more of a regular experience—a “single,” in Elliot’s conception—and this is important, too. Yet, I wonder why I can be touched emotionally night after night for two weeks during the Olympics, and I can count on one hand the times I have been truly moved during a worship service. And I have been attending services my whole life; imagine how much more difficult it must be for someone who is setting foot into a synagogue for the first time.
And yet, in the hands of innovative and skilled worship leaders, I have witnessed and felt spiritual goose bumps during the Synagogue 2000 model services and in many of the seeker services that have been developed during these past ten years. More importantly, I have seen newcomers and regulars moved by a Jewish prayer experience that touches the heart and stirs the soul. This is a marvelous and important development in American synagogue life.
The above excerpt, “Spiritual Goosebumps” by Dr. Ron Wolfson, is from The Spirituality of Welcoming: How to Transform Your Congregation into a Sacred Community © 2006 by Ron Wolfson. Permission granted by Jewish Lights Publishing, P.O. Box 237, Woodstock, VT 05091; www.jewishlights.com.
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Dr. Ron Wolfson is author of The Seven Questions You’re Asked in Heaven: Reviewing and Renewing Your Life on Earth; God’s To-Do List: 103 Ways to Be an Angel and Do God’s Work on Earth; Be Like God: God’s To-Do List for Kids; Hanukkah, Passover, and Shabbat, all Federation of Jewish Men’s Clubs Art of Jewish Living family guides to spiritual celebrations; The Spirituality of Welcoming: How to Transform Your Congregation into a Sacred Community; A Time to Mourn, a Time to Comfort: A Guide to Jewish Bereavement and Comfort; and, with Rabbi Lawrence A. Hoffman, What You Will See Inside a Synagogue (all Jewish Lights), a book for children ages 6 and up. Wolfson is Fingerhut Professor of Education at American Jewish University in Los Angeles and co-founder and co-president of Synagogue 3000.
Ron Wolfson is available to speak on the following topics:
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Building Good Tents: Envisioning the Synagogue of the Future
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God’s To-Do List
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The Seven Questions You’re Asked in Heaven
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Blessings and Kisses: The Power of the Jewish Family
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A Time to Mourn, a Time to Comfort
Click here to contact the author.
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