Can Intellectuals be Spiritual?

This questions came up at shul this past Shabbat.  Is it more difficult for intellectual people to daven?  Try and follow my argument:


My first assumption is that all of the readers of this blog are intellectuals.  By that I mean to cast intellectual in the broadest definition possible; people who extol higher learning and rational thinking.  To be more precise, I mean intellectual with a lower case i.  Perhaps we need to re-learn our own vocabulary to realize just how powerful these words are.  Similarly I would argue that we are all liberals (again with a lower case l, meaning liberalism) which reflects our Western democratic values (liberty, equal rights,. freedom of religion, open and free elections, etc).  While some readers might embrace a political agenda with a capital Liberal or Conservative, we, by virtue of our upbringing and societal influence, are indeed liberals.  Our educational upbringing are similar enough that signify a common direction and I think this reflects current attitutides to teaching tefilla.

With that in mind, I think it is a reasonable deduction that most of us are also intellectuals and thus have invested a great amount of our time in schooling, reading, and professional training that is more "white collar".  The trend for me that is instigating this specific blog post is that I observe a great dissatisfaction among some people in tefilla settings. Many of my co-participants bring books to read during shul, or open a Jewish text to pass the time, or just chit-chat with the person next to them on either a mundane or holy topic (I am not judging).  Further, the highlight of many shul-goers is the sermon/drasha where the attendees sit and receive the inspiration and digest the intellectual discourse.  Learning/reading is indeed easier than it is to daven, but have we detached ourselves from passion and emotion as well?

One final point for this esoteric post:  William Wordsworth wrote, "The world is too much with us" and I find this true today.  With the great competition for attention with information and technology, individuals have a more challenging time reflecting.  It seems that schools today generally succed in preparing our young people to be intellectuals; to read, write and think critically - but do not in helping them daven, why?