Abstract
This article examines the role of vulnerability in personal religious transformation. It offers several “working” definitions of the terms and also mines the use of the term through the portrait of three adult Jewish learners who each experienced vulnerability as a result of Jewish text study for different reasons. This sense of vulnerability was either itself a religious experience characterized as a mixture of humility, gratitude, and belonging or catalyzed enhanced study that led to a greater sense of knowledge of and participation within a religious community. Vulnerability is understood by one learner as the insecurity of ignorance, which inspired her to take agency for her learning and compensate for pre-existing gaps. For the second, vulnerability is less about ignorance or openness in an act of study, but the insecurity of the performative aspects of Judaism in the shared space of community. This prompted him to learn more to overcome these uncomfortable feelings. For another, vulnerability represents an existential state of humanity that connects all people. Vulnerability for her is a positive state of openness; she seeks out Jewish experiences of study and prayer where she can exhibit her vulnerability in the presence of others equally willing to share their own moments of joy, doubt, humility, and failure. In each instance, vulnerability created a paradoxical motivation to study—the discomfort of not fitting in or knowing enough that, in turn, gave rise to feelings of enhanced religiosity induced by the study experience. To that end, the paper also explores vulnerability as a generative aspect of transformative learning that leads to enhanced spiritual states.
Highlights
This article examines the role of vulnerability in personal religious transformation
Much as the prayer that opened this article, vulnerability captures the deeply religious sense of smallness or brokenness from which a relationship to God might be crafted. The psalmist captures this sense of vulnerability: “The Lord is near to the brokenhearted and saves the crushed in spirit”
The first stage consisted of a selection process to identify adult Jewish learners who had been studying for a period of several years, demonstrating a solid commitment to learning, rather than an idiosyncratic interest in a particular subject or instructor
Summary
Vulnerability has been defined as the capacity for woundedness or the susceptibility to receive wounds. Much as the prayer that opened this article, vulnerability captures the deeply religious sense of smallness or brokenness from which a relationship to God might be crafted. The first state is the capacity to suffer and to be susceptible to suffering as an ontological condition of humanity Vulnerability is they argue, “fundamentally social or relational” since it describes particular groups of persons who may be under harm or threat because of their nature or condition. Our very mortality, means that we may not be feeling vulnerable at any particular moment, we are always thrust in the shadows of our vulnerability because of the simple fact that we will one day no longer exist Knowledge of this reality can prompt a search for meaning, purpose, and community often satisfied within a religious context (Reker et al 1987). For many adults, can be an act of vulnerability
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