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All too often, we think about connection with the sacred—with the holy, with God—as being about warm, fuzzy feelings. Spirituality. Mysticism. Those moments in prayer and meditation when something feels like it’s opening up, even just a little. And yet. The Torah makes it clear that even the most powerful theophany—encounter with the divine—isn’t, in the scheme of things, all that important.

After the giving of the Ten Commandments, while the Israelites are still hanging out at Mt. Sinai, God invites Moses to “ascend to God” (Exodus 24:1) with Moses’ brother Aaron, Aaron’s sons Nadav and Abihu, and the seventy elders of Israel. They do so, and, the Torah tells us, they

“saw the God of Israel; under God’s feet there was the very likeness of sapphire brickwork, like the very sky for purity… they beheld God, and they ate and drank.”(Exodus 24:10-11)

It’s an amazing thing, really—they saw God! They had a snack with God! They beheld the divine in a heavenly vision of brilliant sapphire blue! This is peak religious experience, is it not? (Remember: the anthropomorphism is a metaphor).

This is so much of how the popular conversation often talks about spirituality—it’s immersive, ecstatic, "authentic." Powerful, profound experiences that are deeply aesthetic—they feel good, so good. Whether or not one actually, well, sees something (Divine brickwork! The Holy One’s toes!) or even gets a nosh (!!!!!?!!!), the experience of peak religiosity is often painted as being about what happens in the moments of profound connection—the beholding. The feeling. The experiencing. The grooving.

And yet.