In search of awe in the ‘High Holy Days’

By Emma Goldberg

There’s a type of awe that surrounds the Jewish High Holy Days that is solemn, fearsome. People beating their chests, dressed in all white, lying on the ground.

During these 10 Days of Awe, God is said to be deciding who will and will not be inscribed in the Book of Life for the coming year. Even the word itself is tinged with dread: Etymologists traced “awe” back to the Middle English “ege,” which meant fear.

I grew up more religiously observant than I am now, so that awe used to feel easier to come by. At synagogue, reciting prayers, I was tuned into the divine, the otherworldly. More recently, I have spent these holidays curious about a different kind of awe, one that is more based in wonder than in fear.

Praying on Yom Kippur in New York last year. (Credit: Yuki Iwamura/Associated Press)

In his book on the topic, aptly titled “Awe,” Dacher Keltner, a psychologist at the University of California, Berkeley, argues that the sensation is not mysterious or unknowable. Instead, he writes, it is an emotion that scientists can detect. Keltner and his team collected 2,600 accounts of awe from people around the world and created a taxonomy of activities that spark it.

After reading Keltner’s book, I sought out rabbis, priests, poets and artists and asked them how awe functions in their lives. Out of a dozen conversations, three themes emerged.

1. Experiencing awe, counter to what one might think, is about quantity and not only quality.

I had always associated awe with singular, standout experiences, like traveling out west and taking in the otherworldly colors of desert wildflowers. But my panel of awe experts focus on finding little nuggets of awe in their everyday routines.

Barbara Brown Taylor, an Episcopal priest, told me that awe is reinforcing: The more often she seeks it out, the more easily she finds it. Taylor lives in a farmhouse in Appalachia, and each morning on her walk to the mailbox, she finds what she calls “at least three miracles.” The roaring orange of the azaleas in her yard, the insistent song of a whippoorwill, the galloping of horses at feeding time. At this point, she said, “even a spider can knock me out.”

Indeed, Keltner’s research found that awe, unlike pleasure, isn’t subject to a hedonic treadmill. An activity that brings pleasure, like eating chocolate, may yield diminishing returns with every bite — but awe-inducing experiences stay just as powerful every time.

2. You can create tools to proactively find awe.

These folks treat awe as if it’s a muscle to develop, not an experience that washes over them.

A.J. Jacobs, author of “The Year of Living Biblically,” has a roster of awe-inducing habits. On the subway, he pretends the view in front of him is a “Where’s Waldo?” scene and zeros in on tiny and delightful details, like a toddler cupping her hand around a friend’s ear to share a secret. Jacobs wrote another book chronicling his quest to personally thank everyone responsible for his daily cup of coffee. Not just the barista, but also the truck driver who transported the beans and the woman who did pest control at the warehouse — 1,000 people in all, which made the coffee awe-inspiring.

Keltner’s book traces all kinds of activities that spark awe. Some were expected, like listening to music. But he also highlighted less obvious ones, including what he calls “collective effervescence,” the joy of doing something in a crowd, like marching or moshing.

3. Looking around for awe can change the way you interact with other people.

“I try to remember that wondering about another person is a path toward wonder,” Rabbi Sharon Brous told me. “I want to be carried away by the human experience, by grief and by love.”

She told me about a day when she helped a congregant with the devastating burial of a child, then rushed to a hospital where her sister-in-law was giving birth. As she cradled the newborn, Brous realized she had dirt under her fingernails from the cemetery. She was awed by the way life and death bump up against each other — and by the fact that people invited her into these intimate moments.
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Credit: The New York Times Morning Letter