Holy Shivers

Did anyone do something awesome this summer? Think about it for a second. 

Did you stand at the edge of Grand Canyon? 

Were you at a concert when the whole crowd sang together and something just felt magical?

Did you meet a new baby for the first time … or sit with an older relative… for perhaps the last time. 

Summer can bring some uniquely beautiful moments. I hope you had many and I hope they replenished you and re-energized you for this new year.

For me it’s crossing the state line into Vermont. The waterfall of green hills, the cooler mountain air, no traffic, no schedule, more cows than people. 

When I cross that state line, if the right music is playing and I’m present enough to feel grateful for that exact moment of summer start up, I get goosebumps. 

Actual goosebumps, on my skin, even when my thinking brain is fried at the end of a three day road trip … My body feels something before my mind catches up. It feels magical and precious.

So I’m curious, did you have any goosebump moments this summer? And in general, where and when do you get goosebumps? 

You probably know that goosebumps are a leftover animal instinct that makes our hair stand up when we’re afraid or cold because for our ancient ancestors, a little more fur meant a little more warmth, a little more protection. 

Goosebumps were a safety mechanism.

But somewhere through our evolution, goosebumps got repurposed. 

They shifted from signaling cold or fear to signaling beauty and awe and maybe even a spark of the divine connection in the universe.

Researchers at MIT and elsewhere built an open database called ChillsDB, hundreds of songs, film clips, and speeches that reliably give people goosebumps.

Patterns show up. In music, the moments that trigger chills tend to be the ones that surprise the ear: an unexpected key change, a sudden swell after quiet, a voice entering where you didn’t expect it. 

Researchers have found that the songs people reliably get chills from are slower, softer, more emotionally weighty than upbeat music …think Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah” or Eric Clapton’s “Tears in Heaven.” 

In film, one of the most reliably chill-inducing clips researchers found wasn’t even a tearjerker. It was the dinosaur battle in “Jurassic World,” pure spectacle and scale.

But here’s the catch: no single trigger works on everyone. 

What gives you goosebumps might do nothing for the person next to you. Because It isn’t really about the song or the scene. 

It’s about what that trigger touches in each of us. 

The chill isn’t because of the music. Chills come from what the music symbolizes or conjures up for each of us. Goosebumps are a bodily reaction to a story we are telling ourselves.

That’s why I used to cry at the Disney World parade, not because I loved Mickey Mouse (which no offense, I do not)  but because I was watching my kids stand in awe of something, and I was so moved to witness their pure delight. It gave me goosebumps to see them so happy.

More recently, researchers have started testing whether this feeling can be used on purpose, as treatment.

One study exposed a hundred people living with depression to chills-inducing music, film, and speech, and found real shifts in how those people saw themselves. There was a softening of the harsh, stuck beliefs depression tends to lock into place. 

It turns out that music and movies that bring goosebumps aren’t just fun and refreshing, they’re actually good medicine.

Which means our tradition may have been doing something wiser and more scientific than we may realize. It even has a name, a lot older than any clinical trials. In Hebrew we call it kadosh.

I’ve been struggling to find a corresponding English word for kadosh because holy doesn’t quite capture it. 

Kadosh literally means separated, marked as different. 

But the sentiment is even bigger – Grand Canyon isn’t  just different, it’s astonishing, it’s awe-inspiring. 

It’s a breathtaking, speechless wow. 

That’s what kadosh is supposed to be. Something rare and something precious. Something time limited – not for every day.

Here we are on our High “Holy” days, our Days of “awe” … and it’s sad but true that many of us feel none of that in services.

We sit with a prayer book in our laps, our eyes move across letters, Hebrew we can or can’t read, or English we can read just fine, and maybe nothing stirs. 

This is not news … most traditional services are not awe-inspiring, and as amazing, truly incredible as our choir and our musicians are … sometimes we’re just not touched, not awed, we get no chills or goosebumps … from this whole enterprise of Jewish prayer. 

And I think a lot about that. Because of course I want to present the best possible experience for our community but I also want to teach and model what really triggers awe, transcendance – that big wow that is so magical when it happens. 

Judaism has known that our bodies and souls need this goosebump for centuries but the vehicle for this experience has malfunctioned for many of us, myself included sometimes, along the way. 

We tend to assume we know why services aren’t a spiritual experience. It’s the Hebrew. If only I understood the words, we think, I’d feel something. Let’s test that theory. I’m going to read one line of English prayer, out loud, together, right now.

Did that feel spiritual? Be honest. Probably not. Maybe a little strange, saying words together in a room full of people. But kadosh, elevated, awe-inspiring, astonishing. Probably not. So there’s our answer. Hebrew is not the barrier. We just did it in English and nothing happened.

What is the barrier? To me, it’s the story we tell ourselves. 

Remember the trigger alone doesn’t cause chills – it’s how we relate to the trigger that moves our bodies, that causes goosebumps. And it’s a practice. Not a magical mood that just descends from the heavens.

Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel taught: Faith, doesn’t begin with belief in doctrines. It begins with the capacity to be astonished, to stand in front of an ordinary sunrise as if you’d never seen one before. 

That capacity for astonishment is as a discipline, something you practice, the way you’d practice an instrument.

While I can’t promise that everyone here today be awed by something spiritual or moving, I can promise that if you spend time thinking about what this holiday, this tradition, these words mean to you and why, it will be a richer experience.

What is the story we tell ourselves about gathering for the new year? Is it just obligation? Because my parents/ grandparents did? Because I’ll feel guilty if I don’t? 

If that’s the case, I’m not surprised if goosebumps don’t come. 

I hope part of your experience today is about thinking about your why … what is the story you tell yourself about being Jewish? What is your answer to why you’re here?

This is my story:

We are here today because we are the current generation of an ancient people who did it this way, on this date with these words and symbols. We are here as our link in the chain of Jewish tradition. We’re here so the ball doesn’t get dropped.

We are here today because, in some generations, gathering was impossible and or dangerous and we today are blessed with freedom and also responsibility to do so because we can.

We are here today because we are human beings not human doings – our presence, our lives are more than our jobs, our roles and our output. Rosh Hashanah celebrates our being  just as we are right now.

We are here today out of gratitude, that we made it. That we’re still here despite the haters, despite the life challenges, despite the odds. A new year, even a new day is a gift and Judaism gives us this day to shout out our gratitude loudly.

We are here today because of humility. Because we know we make mistakes and Judaism offers a pathway back to our best selves and to repair with those whom we’ve hurt. 

To me, this story is awesome, it is awe-inspiring and it is precious. Not because of the Hebrew words, but because it means something to me personally, in my neshamah.

My soul is touched by our history, our community connection and the potential for personal growth. All of that in 2 hours!

So here are some recommendations, not for two hours straight of goosebumps perhaps, but for a few real holy moments.

First, pick one line and slow down. Let your eyes stop moving somewhere. Read a line twice, three times. Ask what it would mean if it were true. Ask what it means to you, or what could it mean to you. 

Entertain the what if: what if something really depends on my focus, my intention, my presence here today? What if this is really true?

Second, notice your body before your mind. 

Close your eyes, breathe, relax a little. There’s nothing to do here, just be. Feel what it’s like to sit with a room full of people, familiar or strangers, who are part of one people. We share something: history, values, traditions. There’s a bond here even with people we don’t know. Notice how that shared energy feels in your body.

Third, let go of needing to believe everything to feel something. You don’t need certainty about God to be moved by a room full of people singing, choosing joy, sharing traditions and doing honest self reflection. This is a beautiful moment. Such a holy moment in fact that doubt and questions are welcome. We can hold doubt and awe in the same room.

The Baal Shem Tov, who founded the Chassidic movement told this story:

On Yom Kippur, in a shul full of learned men who knew every word of the machzor by heart, a boy in the back had never learned to read. 

He didn’t know a single prayer, but he wanted more than anything to give God something that day. So quietly, he began reciting the only Hebrew he knew, the alef-bet, over and over, again and again. 

Some of the men nearby turned around, embarrassed for him.

But the Baal Shem Tov, leading the service, stopped. He turned to the boy and said that his simple letters had just done more than all the learned prayers in the room, because the boy had given everything he had and trusted God to arrange the letters into the right words. 

The Baal Shem Tov called it the most kadosh prayer of the entire service.

That boy didn’t have the right words. He had a story, his own reason for showing up, and that was enough.

So do you.

Whatever brought you into this room today, gratitude, guilt, memory, hope, even just habit, hold onto it. That’s your alef-bet. That’s the only prayer you actually need this year.

And if somewhere in these two hours, in a melody or a memory or a moment of honesty with yourself, you feel that little prickle run down your arms, don’t let it pass by unnoticed. That’s kadosh. 

One philosopher of religion called it a holy shiver, the body’s private amen to something the mind hasn’t caught up to yet.

May we have many moments of holy shivers today and into the new year.

Shanah tovah.