Imag­ine sit­ting in a beau­ti­ful gar­den in Jerusalem on a Sab­bath morn­ing. You and sev­er­al oth­ers seek­ing a per­son­al con­nec­tion with the Divine have gath­ered at the home of a beloved men­tor, who will share a spir­i­tu­al teach­ing on the week’s Torah por­tion, fol­lowed by a rich con­tem­pla­tive prac­tice. Those peo­ple lucky enough to attend the month­ly Sab­bath morn­ing gath­er­ings that Yisc­ah Smith has led in her gar­den over the last sev­er­al years have enjoyed this very expe­ri­ence. Now, thanks to Smith’s Plant­i­ng Seeds of the Divine: Torah Com­men­taries to Cul­ti­vate Your Spir­i­tu­al Prac­tice, read­ers can plant and nur­ture their own spir­i­tu­al gar­dens, no mat­ter where they live. 

Smith’s book comes at just the right time. Since Octo­ber 7, many Jews around the world have felt a strong desire to con­nect — or recon­nect — to their cul­tur­al and spir­i­tu­al roots and, in turn, to their authen­tic selves. Plant­i­ng Seeds of the Divine is the per­fect guide for that jour­ney. The book is divid­ed into five chap­ters, one for each of the Five Books of Moses, and con­sists of com­men­taries on forty-sev­en dif­fer­ent Torah por­tions. Smith, a teacher at Pardes Insti­tute of Jew­ish Stud­ies and Applied Jew­ish Spir­i­tu­al­i­ty, begins her com­men­taries with the name of the por­tion and the asso­ci­at­ed mid­dah, the char­ac­ter trait or action read­ers are encour­aged to ​“refine” dur­ing the week. Smith explains, ​“This book con­sid­ers mid­dot pri­mar­i­ly as resources in a person’s spir­i­tu­al tool­box … Each mid­dah teach­es us how to ​‘show up’ in the world with more sen­si­tiv­i­ty and inten­tion.” For exam­ple, the mid­dah coin­cid­ing with B’reshit, the first por­tion in Gen­e­sis, is ​“The Need to Con­nect with Oth­ers.” What fol­lows is a relat­ed verse from the Torah and then three addi­tion­al sec­tions: ​“Where We Are,” which places the por­tion in con­text, ​“At First Glance,” which pro­vides tra­di­tion­al com­men­taries, and ​“Deep­er Dive,” which delves into ​“deep­er, spir­i­tu­al dimen­sions.” One of the many strengths of Smith’s book is her abil­i­ty to inspire read­ers, through these deep­er dives, not only with her own teach­ings, but with the insights of Hasidic and New-Hasidic mas­ters. It is in the final sec­tion of each com­men­tary, ​“The Prac­tice,” that these teach­ings become expe­ri­en­tial. Through breath work and pow­er­ful guid­ed visu­al­iza­tions, spir­i­tu­al lessons of the ​“Deep Dive” become ground­ed in the reader’s body and con­scious­ness, as read­ers are invit­ed to engage with the week’s mid­dah and dis­cov­er their own ​“deep­er, God­ly selves.”

When one of Smith’s great spir­i­tu­al teach­ers, the renowned Piaseczn­er Rebbe, noticed that many Jews he lived among in the inter­war peri­od in Poland ​“prac­ticed Jew­ish obser­vance with devo­tion … and yet, seemed to lack aware­ness of the Divine Spir­it with­in them­selves,” he cen­tered his teach­ings on help­ing stu­dents gain a close and per­son­al con­nec­tion to God. It is no acci­dent that Smith, who has a sim­i­lar mis­sion, felt the call to write Plant­i­ng Seeds of the Divine while ​“stand­ing at the gravesites of the Piaseczn­er Rebbe’s moth­er, wife, and son at the War­saw Jew­ish ceme­tery.” Smith’s focus on the inter­nal expe­ri­ence of the Divine hon­ors her great teacher and car­ries for­ward his lega­cy. By offer­ing read­ers a prac­ti­cal and pow­er­ful path­way to cul­ti­vate the Divine spark with­in, Smith cre­ates a rich lega­cy of her own.