In synagogues worldwide Jews today beseech God for grace and mercy. It is the celebration of Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, the opening of the book of life, which closes on Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement.

According to Jewish tradition, God gets closer to us during these 10 days, so an exemplary behavior is expected before the holy days end in a fast.

While many Jews find the traditional prayers to be meditative in themselves, for a small group of Jews, forgiveness can be secured through other means: by feeling our inner emptiness and imperfections through contemplation and visualization, even repeating a mantra to achieve a state of deep concentration.

These practices may seem imported from Eastern religions, but they aren't. They are traditions that remained buried in the rabbinical literature of past centuries and that, finally, are being rescued by a movement that promotes Jewish meditation.

By incorporating meditation, scholars and rabbis of different denominations hope to attract a significant number of Jews who distanced themselves from Judaism. Many of those Jews adopted other beliefs, such as Buddhism and Hinduism, arguing that Judaism had nothing spiritual to offer them.

Services in synagogues often are perceived as cold and sterile, and some congregants talk among themselves instead of praying. Yet historical sources in Judaism cite meditation as a means to achieve an extrasensory perception that enriches the soul's experiences.

Monotheism was born of meditation, because it was by contemplating the meaning of life that Abraham, the patriarch, discovered God. Meditation also was essential for the biblical prophets, who achieved high states of consciousness through chants and music.

In his book Jewish Meditation, Rabbi Aryeh Kaplan explains that until the Jewish Enlightenment, or Haskalah, in the late 18th century, intellectualism and mysticism had equal value in Judaism. But once the religion's intellectual aspect began to be more appreciated, the mystical aspect -- especially meditation -- was perceived as occultism.

Constant inner voice

Thus, references to meditation disappeared from Jewish traditional literature for almost two centuries. Later on, during the Holocaust, many of the spiritual leaders who knew those teachings were killed.

To progressive Jews, it is a relief to find meditation in Judaism, because even when we assimilate other practices and philosophies into our lives, we never stop hearing that inner voice that chides us for turning away from ``the truth'' that was taught to us in our childhood.

Of course, Jewish meditation is not the same as the meditations of other cultures, although generally they all have a common purpose that entwines them.

According to Kaplan, the most common word for meditation in Jewish literature is kavanah, meaning ``concentration'' or ``feeling'' or ``devotion.'' If you study the origin of the term, the most accurate translation is ``directed consciousness.''

In general, kavanah is used in the context of a prayer or worship, which shows the fine line that separates prayer from meditation in Judaism. It is also associated with the observance of rituals and commandments, suggesting that it is one's duty to concentrate totally on the action at hand and erase all other thoughts.

From that we learn that meditation in Judaism means the cultivation of a certain dedication and attitude toward life while we observe the holy acts, or mitzvot, inherited from our ancestors, which extend from prayers to loving one another.

Resist commercialization

The challenge today is to translate that philosophy into the language and reality of the 21st century, something that is barely being tried. The other problem faced by the Jewish community is that there has been no dearth of groups that commercialize those concepts with arguments that easily seduce those who don't believe in organized religions.

Unquestionably, to meditate -- no matter in what tradition -- is the best way to reevaluate the direction of the life one wishes for oneself, and to adopt whatever changes are necessary to achieve it.

Spiritual sensations are ephemeral because they are overpowered by the material world, therefore one must know how to tune into them.

Rosh Hashanah celebrates the creation of mankind. So, what better time than this birthday of the human race to meditate and discover, as Abraham did, all the wonders that surround us. It is our spirit's favorite present for the New Year.

Daniel Shoer Roth, El Nuevo Herald's Metro Columnist, writes monthly about spirituality and values.

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