Jewish spiritual turn

The Jewish spiritual turn is an intergenerational movement through which religious life enters a family first as theological argument, then as a daughter’s vocation, and finally as a tentative practice in her father’s daily life. Chaim Lerner’s account of God as a question supplies one intellectual point of departure; a book given to Hannah Loeb by Rabbi Kaplowitz becomes a more intimate, material link between that theology and the family’s later choices.

Chaim Lerner’s theology of inquiry

Chaim Lerner presents spirituality not as possession of settled answers but as the act of searching. Explaining a passage from the Zohar, he describes the word for “who” as a name of God: the question of who created the universe becomes both a statement about creation and an invitation to inquire. In his explanation, invoking God’s name means asking and seeking an answer. The idea gives religious life an intellectual form that can be approached through study, even by Judah Loeb, who admits that he cannot read or speak Hebrew or Aramaic.

Chaim’s position is notably not a simple return from secularism to religious observance. He is described as secular, yet regards God as central to Jewish consciousness: in his view, Jewish identity depends on a covenant with God, and Judaism cannot exist without God. He sees the urgent task of the twentieth century not simply as building a homeland, but as creating a theology capable of explaining God in light of the Holocaust. His last book advances a vision of God with infinite love but limited power; Chaim is remembered as a theologian trying to teach people about God and, more urgently, to rescue God from the theological crisis posed by catastrophe.

That work also takes him into settings where religious difference is palpable. At a large gathering in Pisgat David, a West Bank settlement, Chaim first wins over a full theater with humor, then shifts to a quiet, emotionally charged register that holds the audience’s attention. Two nights later, at the Rav Kook Institute, he addresses North American Modern Orthodox rabbis, many of them former students. He praises their work and says that under different historical circumstances he might have become Modern Orthodox and almost certainly a rabbi. His talks use jokes and Holocaust stories to build connections across religious boundaries; the performance makes his theology a public practice, not only an argument on the page.

A book offered at parting

The Jewish spiritual turn becomes personal at Judah Loeb and Hannah Loeb’s departure from Jerusalem. At Michal’s flat, Hannah is packed for the airport when Judah notices a plastic bag containing three thick books. Rabbi Kaplowitz has brought them for her, and apparently for Judah as well. The most prominent is Returning for the Answer: A Guide to Coming Home for the Young Jew, a title that turns spiritual return into an invitation rather than a conclusion already reached.

On the plane, Judah asks why Rabbi Kaplowitz thought the book might help him. Hannah explains that it was intended for his spiritual life. Judah’s surprise at the phrase is sharpened by her age: she is fifteen, still in high school, and unsure what having a spiritual life means. She nevertheless likes Rabbi Kaplowitz and plans to try the book during the long flight, adding that at least it is not about suicide. The response places the new interest beside the subject that had previously occupied her, without suggesting that the transition is complete or that she already knows what faith will mean to her.

The book’s influence becomes clearer only in retrospect. Seven years later, when Hannah applies to rabbinical school and is accepted, she identifies Rabbi Kaplowitz’s book as her most important religious influence. The gift has thus outlasted the airport farewell: what first seems like a tentative reading choice becomes part of the history Hannah herself gives for her religious education.

Hannah Loeb’s vocation

Hannah’s interest develops into a declared commitment after high school. She loses interest in suicide bombers, but the books from Rabbi Kaplowitz give her a new focus: Jewish spirituality. On the day she graduates, she tells Judah that she intends to become a rabbi. His response is unsettled, though he can identify no rational reason for his discomfort. When he thinks of rabbis, he thinks of Rabbi Kaplowitz and Alon as black-hatted Haredim; his initial picture of religious life is narrower than the future Hannah is choosing.

Hannah’s senior sermon at Hebrew Union College changes that response. She speaks confidently, eloquently, and with humor, urging her listeners to consider Chaim Lerner’s theology of a God with infinite love but limited power. The sermon joins the family’s religious development to Chaim’s intellectual legacy: Hannah does not merely enter a religious institution but carries forward the theological question at the center of his last book. Judah is won over within moments of hearing her, a reversal that shows his resistance yielding to the clarity and force of his daughter’s own expression.

Her path also makes the idea of return more complex than a simple conversion narrative. Hannah’s starting point is uncertainty, and her early reason for trying Rabbi Kaplowitz’s book is partly practical: it is something to read on a long flight. Her later choice of rabbinical school and her use of Chaim’s theology in her sermon mark substantial development, but the account preserves the casual, questioning beginning alongside the public vocation it eventually leads to.

Judah Loeb’s tentative practice

Hannah’s turn alters the religious atmosphere around Judah without making him claim a decisive conversion. After Hannah marries a software engineer she met on JDate, she shows her father how to use a dating app. Six months later, Judah meets Liora, a tax attorney, who takes him to Friday-night services. He finds that he sort of enjoys them. Afterward, she brings him to a home-cooked Shabbat dinner of challah, kiddush wine, and roast chicken. Religious life appears here through recurring social acts and shared meals, not through a declaration of belief.

Years later, at Zehava Lerner’s funeral, Michal tells Judah that Hannah has said he has become religious. Judah initially corrects her: Hannah is the rabbi. But Michal replies that Hannah was speaking about him. Judah thinks of the services and dinners Liora has introduced him to, and decides not to contest Michal’s description. His qualification matters. The turn does not erase his earlier distance from religion; instead, it shows him allowing practice and companionship to count as part of a spiritual life, even while leaving the label unresolved.

An inheritance without a single answer

The book’s central pattern is transmission through different forms. Chaim offers a theology in which questioning is itself spiritual; Rabbi Kaplowitz gives Hannah a book that she later names as a formative influence; Hannah turns that influence into study, preaching, and a rabbinical vocation; Judah moves more hesitantly toward services and Shabbat meals. The three paths do not amount to one uniform religious identity. They show how a question, a book, a sermon, and a shared dinner can each carry an inheritance forward without requiring the next generation to reproduce the last one exactly.