One of the mini-reunions this summer is once again hosted by 5WPR (a PR firm in NYC headed by Ronn Torossian, a UAlbany alumnus). They are now located on Park Avenue in Midtown. A few years ago when they were back at the Helmsley Building, we shared Helmsley Building Lessons, and another time we did a class on “Torah’s PR Problems”.
This time, we did a twist on the 5WPR name. Instead of: The 5 W’s of Who What When Where & Why of Public Relations, we’re going with: Five Wavelengths of Personal Relations.
Chassidus and Kabbalah teaches that there are 5 Levels to the Soul, namely: Nefesh, Ruach, Neshoma, Chaya and Yechidah. Nefesh is the most external level, Yechidah is the highest level and most innermost core.
These five soul levels are often layered and labeled as:
Nefesh = Action
Ruach = Emotions
Neshoma = Intellect
Chaya = Willpower, Drive, or Passion
Yechidah = Soul Core, or “Pintele Yid”, the Soul-Essence
Shabbos House-wise, or in life in general, when engaging with different types and stripes of people, relating to them and caring/catering/programming to their needs, different levels and layers come into play. Sometimes one or two of the five above, sometimes all five. Some events or programs appeal more to the emotional side, some engage primarily on the action level, classes hope to engage the intellect. Some events or classes may engage multiple layers at once, depends a lot on the person, their mood at the time, and type or vibe of program or engagement.
Sometimes all a person needs is to feel Jewish, that spark of Jewish identity and connectedness even for a moment stop at a campus table. That’s Yechidah in play, even if it wasn’t an intellectual or emotional experience. Sometimes you can have dancing on Simchat Torah for hours on end that engages body and all levels of soul, from innermost soul-core down to dancing feet, emotionally (and perhaps even intellectually) invested.
Our goal is to have multisensory, multi-facted and multilayered and leveled Jewish experiences, so everyone can take from it what they need and want, something for everyone. And hopefully for some it can even be a full-on full-powered soulful experience, firing on all and every soul-cylinder they’ve got.
A great Shabbat dinner ought to taste good and feel good physically and spiritually, satiate and satisfy emotionally and socially, enrich intellectually and even tickle one’s inner soul and core identity. And maybe create some thirst and drive to do and connect more.
Shabbat dinner is easy to be multi-layered like that. But how about prayer? Torah study? How about an event we’re working on, a project we’re involved with or a presentation we’re making? Or our conversations, our personal interactions? How do we give and invest more of ourselves in things we do? There are ways to make such things multi-layered and multi-dimensional as well, but takes a little (or a lot) more to get that right.
Anyone remember “5 Alive!”?