Welcome to Soulful Jewish Living: Mindful Practices for Every Day with me, Josh Feigelson.
I’m grateful you’re here, and I hope you benefit from our time together.
On a recent episode I shared the story of my family flying to Zagreb, Croatia for a winter vacation a couple of years ago. There were a lot of delays and a lot of fretting about missed connections and lost luggage, but your mindful host here was cool as a cucumber. So cool, in fact, that one of my kids said, “Wow, Abba: that meditation stuff really seems to work.” In the words of Telemundo soccer announcer Andres Cantor, “Goooaaaaaaallllll!” [play 0:12-0:24]
Okay, maybe I said that a bit more calmly and quietly in my head. But I was thinking it.
Here’s another story from that trip.
We were traveling to visit my sister-in-law, who is a Canadian diplomat, and her husband. The Shabbat of our visit also happened to be the yahrtzeit, or death anniversary, for my father. I wanted to say Kaddish. Zagreb doesn’t have a huge Jewish community to begin with, and a lot of their regular shul-goers were out of town for winter break, so there was no service on Shabbat. But thanks to one of the local rabbis that my sister-in-law has gotten to know, we were able to gather a minyan before the community Hannukah party on Saturday night.
As I entered the room in the community center that also functions as a shul, I immediately felt a sense of familiarity: There was an ark with a Torah at the front, just like my synagogue at home. There was a ner tamid, an eternal flame, over the ark. There were even old Conservative movement siddurim, prayerbooks.
I didn’t speak Croatian. The rabbi didn’t speak English. So we spoke in Hebrew. And here, thousands of miles from home, in a place where I definitely felt like a stranger, I said the words of the Shema and the other evening prayers, reading from the siddur and reciting from my heart. The small group of people answered amen when I recited Kaddish—in the same Aramaic formula that would be recited in virtually any synagogue in the world. And even though I was a stranger in a strange land, I felt profoundly at home.
In this fifth episode in our miniseries on being at home, I want to explore this dimension of at-homeness, namely the way language can be a kind of home for us.
Nelson Mandela said that “if you talk to someone in a language they understand, that goes to their head. If you talk to them in their own language, that goes to their heart.” What I think he meant is that when we are able to communicate in our own language, we feel at home. Because, as the old saying goes, home is where the heart is.
Language here doesn’t just mean the formal idea of English versus Korean or Swahili. That’s definitely one level of feeling at home—just getting the basic understanding and the feeling of ease and familiarity that comes with it. But I think it can also mean the intimate language that exists between friends or romantic partners or spouses or families—which is to say, even when we’re formally speaking the same language, there are deeper layers to feeling at home inside it.
Feeling at home in language is a core aspect Jewish life. You may have your own version of my story of finding a synagogue in a foreign country and feeling a kind of at-homeness in the shared language there. That’s one of the things that binds us together. As the Mishnah says, wherever two Jews share words of Torah, the Divine Presence is there. Which is to say, Torah, our shared holy language, is what makes it possible for us to feel connected with our own hearts, with one another, with the world, with life.
At the same time, not everyone understands Hebrew (and let’s not get started on Aramaic). For a lot of folks, that can actually lead to a feeling of alienation, a sense of not being at home when they walk into a synagogue. For other folks, even when they do understand the language, they can often mumble through the words without really being at home inside them.
Which brings us to an amazing, often overlooked teaching in halakha, Jewish law. You might think that traditional custom insists you have to pray in Hebrew, no matter what. But the Shulchan Arukh, the main code of Jewish law, says explicitly: A person can pray in any language they understand.
Why? In the words of Irish poet John O’Donohue, because “prayer is the bridge between longing and belonging.” The ancient rabbis recognized that if you don’t understand the words coming out of your mouth, you’re not crossing that bridge to belonging—you’re just making sounds.
The Hasidic masters took this even further. They taught that the word for “ark” in the story of Noah and the flood—the word Tevah—also literally means “a word.” When God tells Noah, “Go into the Tevah,” the Baal Shem Tov interprets this as a spiritual instruction: “Enter deeply inside the words of your prayer.” Make the word a sanctuary, a home. If you’re praying in a language where your heart feels like a stranger, you can’t step inside. You have to pray in the language that lets you unpack your soul.
Whether that language is ancient Hebrew, conversational English, music, poetry, or even silent tears—the language that brings you home is the language God wants to hear.
So how do we practice finding a home inside our language?
I want to invite you into a short, simple exercise right now.
Think of a single word or short phrase that feels like a refuge to you. It could be Shalom (peace), Hineni (here I am), or Hesed (loving-kindness). It could be an English word like Safe, Breathe, Enough, or Gentle. Or maybe it’s a phrase someone who loved you used to say when you were a kid.
Find that word or phrase in your mind.
Now, like Noah entering the Tevah, the ark, I want invite you to step inside that word.
Take a slow, deep breath in, and mentally speak it to yourself. Feel what it feels like in your throat, your chest, your body.
As you exhale, let the noise and distractions of the day fade into the background. Let the word hold you.
For the next few moments, whenever your mind starts to wander off—pulling you into your to-do list, your worries, or the news—don’t fight it. Just gently speak your word again. Let it act like a lighthouse guiding a ship back to harbor. Let it bring you home.
Keep breathing, and as you inhale, recite your word and feel it. As you exhale, allow yourself to be at home inside it.
When we speak words that don’t belong to us, we live in exile. But when we find the words that express our true hearts—and when we listen to ourseles and others in our own native emotional language—we can create a refuge, a sanctuary, a home.
Blessings for the journey. Know that I’m on it with you.
ENDING
Thank you for joining us for Soulful Jewish Living: Mindful Practices for Every Day, a production of Unpacked, a brand of OpenDor Media, and the Institute for Jewish Spirituality. This episode is sponsored by Jonathan and Kori Kalafer and the Somerset Patriots: The Bridgewater, NJ-based AA Affiliate of the New York Yankees. If you like this show, subscribe, share this episode with a friend, give us five stars on Apple Podcasts. Check out our website, unpacked.media for everything Unpacked-related, and subscribe to our other podcasts, and check out the Institute for Jewish Spirituality. Most importantly, be in touch–about what you heard today, what you’d like to hear more about, or to dedicate an episode. Write to me at josh@unpacked.media.
This episode was hosted by me, Rabbi Josh Feigelson. Audio was edited by Rob Pera and we’re produced by Rivky Stern. Thanks for joining us.