Rabbi Bonita Taylor on being active and yet withdrawing to allow for sacred study and practice

Holy Collaborations

Good CPE Supervision depends – in part – upon how students see and relate to each other. As a CPE Supervisor, my responsibilities include engaging students in ways that support their individuality and also assist them in forming as a working group, more than that – as a k’hila k’dosha (a holy community) in sacred study and practice.

By way of an example, through their common experience, the individuals who stood at Mt Sinai became a k’hila k’dosha, which resulted in both individual and communal transformation. Replicating that model, I seek to foster a committed, caring, extended family whose peers see each other on individual, though not isolated, journeys. In these holy collaborations, peers are encouraged to work out situations in cooperation with each other; to appreciate one another enough so that each feels respected and cared for – even amidst critique; to honor one another enough to argue and listen to others’ points of view; and to care for one another enough to help themselves – and each other – grow both personally and professionally.

To enter this covenant, students need to feel safe with – and trusting of – each other. This is, of course, nurtured during CPE Group sessions. When students serve at the same clinical site, it is additionally cultivated when they take patient-visiting breaks together.

Since 1999, most of my CPE students have served in different clinical sites with different clinical site mentors and institutional cultures. In general, the Group is strengthened by this variety and peers grow in significant ways. However, after my first year of supervising these scattered Groups, I felt that a connecting life-force was missing from each Group. I also felt the need to help them co-create the k’hila k’dosha that would further nurture their personal and professional evolvement.

Employing the “action - reflection - new action” clinical method of learning, I tried several interventions and assessed the results alone and with my peer supervision group. In the process, I was reminded of the Kabbalah teaching called tzimtzum. Prior to creation (pre-Genesis), God filled every place. To create the space to accommodate the finite world and its potential for growth, God voluntarily contracted. Next, Genesis teaches us about God who is active at first but then withdraws from active intervention to empower us to actualize what Martin Buber called our “unprecedented and never recurring possibilities.”

Judaism inspires us to be like God. It is also an action-based religion and so previously, when I thought about imitating God, I chose an action to accompany my thoughts. I had never before thought about emulating God by strategically not acting. Following God’s pattern of contracting, being active and then withdrawing, I began each Group session by contracting to allow students space to experience each other in student-centered conversations.

I contract out of their space for 18 minutes before joining them for the sacred work that we do together and finally, withdrawing for the evening.

Why 18 minutes?

Readers familiar with Hebrew know that alphabet letters are used to represent numbers. For example, the Hebrew letter chet = 8 and yud = 10. While representing numbers, these letters also spell out words. So, the letters chet-yud represent the number 18 and simultaneously, spell the Hebrew word for “life.”

I have engaged Groups this way for nearly five years. The infusion of spiritual “life” into each Group makes the difference between a Group whose peers gather only to advance their individualized learning and a k’hila k’dosha that results in both individual and communal transformation.

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