High Holiday Theology: a Conservative Perspective

How the High Holidays Affect My Relationship with God by Spencer Kaseff

For many years I have been engaging in a journey of clarity surrounding my belief in God. From reading Here All Along by Sarah Hurwitz, I gleaned, for the first time, a real understanding of the many different versions of God that can be found within Judaism. Then a few years later, I was chatting with my dad during virtual High Holiday services and he was sharing a conversation he had with our Rabbi. He was making a very solid point, that if he was god it would kind of freak him out to have everyone just saying how great he is over and over again. I took this to mean that he was overwhelmed by the quantity of praise prayers that we say, and I relate to that. There is a lot of “this entity is so great, so powerful, so incredible, the best” and it’s broken up by moments of acknowledging ourselves as people who have made mistakes. Albeit true, there does appear to be a lack of questions about the goodness of God. Is it possible that God has also made mistakes? That God also needs to ask us for forgiveness? Something my dad sort of brought up in passing, and we haven’t really come back to, has certainly sat with me. This opened another gate for me. Hearing that my parent’s belief is not exactly what I thought gave me encouragement to feel even more comfortable figuring out what I believe. 

I was raised going to the only Jewish Day School in Kansas from Kindergarten through senior year, attending services, mostly during the holidays, at the conservative synagogue my family has always belonged to; participating in USY, summer camp; a pretty stereotypical conservative Jewish upbringing. To be honest, the idea of God, to my recollection, was not brought up all that much. I learned a lot about Judaism, the values, our laws, the history, and I did not receive it as exclusively a religion, and thus felt a belief in God and my being a practicing Jew are not necessarily tied. This has been a throughline for my life. 

The time when God is most on my mind, unsurprisingly, is the High Holiday season. God is hard to get away from in conservative Jewish services during this time of year. During this season I glean the most meaning from ruminating on myself, how to return to my highest self, use this time to reflect on who I am, who I was, and who I will be. 

But every year I have this intense amount of emotion during the Aleinu. I’ve noticed this for a few years, when I first relocated to Los Angeles and was in my first Rosh Hashanah service in a new community. I have a distinct memory of imagining God that day as the “man in the sky”. (To be honest it was closer to the image of Zeus in Hercules, the scene where Hercules is talking to the statue version of Zeus.) That was the image. And for the first time in my life, that image brought me to the verge of tears. I was so full of awe, even though I usually veer away from that imagery. It surprised me that that was what I was thinking of. Generally speaking, that is not at all the version of a higher power I believe in. But for whatever reason, that day, that was what came to me.

I have since begun going to High Holidays services at IKAR in Los Angeles, and the power created in the community during that moment of Aleinu, when everyone in the room gets down on the ground, and we stay there for a while, it’s just electric. We sit there in reflection, and it’s in this moment that I feel the closest to whatever God I do believe in. That God is not something that is spiteful or punishing. The God I lean towards is loving, present, and supportive.

The language of “loving parent” resonates more with me: an entity that loves unconditionally, wants what’s best, wants me to be my best self. An energy that elevates the clarity that we are imperfect beings, and that does not mean we cannot strive to be better, or own our missteps, but rather the fact that we are imperfect is what gives us those opportunities for growth. That is what I am able to connect to during this holiday season, this duality of focus on the self and on God. I will forever be grateful to have been brought up in a religion that encourages me to always question, allows me to live Jewishly, with or without a clear understanding of God. 

This is Spencer's perspective and his alone. He does not represent Conservative Judaism as a whole. Affiliation and connection with official movements are subject to change as individuals grow and experience different ways of doing and being Jewish. This reflection represents one individual perspective within a diverse Jewish movement and should not be understood as representative of everyone who identifies as Conservative.

Spencer Kaseff is a Jewish professional based in Los Angeles. He has worked for Hillel and Repair the World and is now working at MAZON: A Jewish Response to Hunger, building communities of anti-hunger advocates. He is an alum of Chapman University, a former Hillel Springboard Fellow, and a former HUC Jewish Ideas Fellow.