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Articles
by Rabbi Zalman Shacter-Shalomi
Answers
to Questions
By Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi
1.
The term "paradigm shift" is used to describe a
newly emerging way of looking at reality. When the patch jobs
on old reality maps, like the Ptolemean (ca 100 BCE) world
view (which saw Earth as the center of the Universe) no longer
works and it has become essential to design a new one, like
that of Copernicus, (that the Earth revolves around the sun,)
we have a paradigm shift. A mind-move of such proportions
has taken place that it represents not a mere adjustment of
the old paradigm, correcting a detail here and another there,
but rather a radically changed Weltanschauung. Our faith treasures
are independent of the reality maps with which they have become
combined. Even though a paradigm no longer works, many people
hold on with desperate tenacity to what has become obsolete.
A major shift of reality-view threatens to unbalance everything.
So much of our assumptions and behaviors depend on these paradigms.
But once we delaminate our faith-treasures from the earlier
maps, we can connect these treasures of tradition to new maps.
Judaism has undergone several such "paradigm shifts":
one with Abraham and the Patriarchs, Moses and the First Temple,
another after the destruction of the First Temple and and
an even greater one after the Churban of the Second Temple,
when all of our practice and belief had to be reframed. Auschwitz,
Hiroshima and the moon walk have instigated yet another such
shift and I write about that. In this book I offer the journey
of my own recontextualization of Judaism as helped by Jewish
Mysticism.
2.
Jewish Renewal, differs from Restoration, which seeks to hold
on to the last paradigm. People in Jewish Renewal do not want
to abandon sacred and cherished traditions to toss them out
along with outworn cosmologies. We are now privy to information
which floods us with wonder at the view of a wider and ever
more complex cosmos, and we don't want to put our minds in
pawn as the price of our staying wedded to our tradition.
Still, we look to fill our spiritual needs as experienced
in the present with a maximum of tradition. To make this happen
we have to retrofit our spiritual technology to the demands
of our era. We are sensitive to feminism, human potential,
ecology and Whole Earth thinking.
3.
Mostly about the issue "what right have you got to modify
a long standing and Divinely revealed tradition?". My
response is that revelation continues in the present. We are
as much at the service of Divine revelation as earlier generations
were. We have at this time an additional task, and furthermore,
we are aware that we have a task. So we feel our inadequacy
- after all, how can we undertake this "updating"?.
Yet those who may be better equipped don't perceive this as
a need - so it devolves upon us.
4.
There was no one pivotal moment with its special theophany.
The process was gradual. There was a long series of these
epiphanies, often unrelated to one another and the effect
was cumulative. And - this is crucial - making sense of these
"aha" moments. takes first of all an introspective
attitude as well as some meditative and contemplative training.
In this way I kept revising and readjusting my credo. I grew
through adolescence during the Holocaust years. In the midst
of hopelessness I saw glimses of the Presence to which I pledged
my life. This created a dynamic tension causing me to hold
fast to both doubt and faith. The process was amplified by
other experiences: by meeting great souls, by deep prayer
and by the struggle we call Godwrestling.
5.
Critics of Kabbalah will keep criticizing those who teach
it. Their criteria are largely ideological, intellectual and
rationalistic ones. In those circles, preoccupation with Kabbalah
is too reminiscent of the deranged Chanan of "The Dybbuk"
and was thought dangerous. Still smarting from the excesses
of the Sabbateans and the Frankists, followers of pseudo-messiahs,
they felt the need to defend themselves from an unstable,
reality-denying mysticism. Today our situation is different.
As one encounters souls in process, one marvels at the amount
of inner knowledge and sensitivity they possess. In my own
adolescent searches I was blessed to find those who listened
seriously to my questions, and encouraged me to reach for
answers that matched my inner learning, my in-tuition. So
I find that those who honor this direct knowing will not place
obstacles in the path of the seeker. The people I teach are
often of much greater soul sophistication than those who have
heaps of traditional book learning. The established institutions
of Jewish education did not know how to cope with the issues
that agitated many of the young of the post-Holocaust generation.
They went to look elsewhere for their spiritual nourishment,
and found in a variety of places e.g. Zen, Vedanta, psychedelics
etc.. Hungry to relate the reality of the experiences to their
ancestral tradition, they found very few who could honor their
questions and answer them. Most members of the established
leadership had not had these experiences and could not relate
to them. The exoteric-ideological stance of the establishment
repelled the seekers. Traditional esoteric teachers demanded
that the seekers relinquish and deny their sacred encounters
outside of the tradition and begin basic observances, first
acquire Hebrew and study the basic text and only after they
were sure of their loyaly to traditional Torah Hashkafah would
offer them a smidgin of our treasures. There is a concept
of T'shuvah, repentance, turning, that is from below to above,
and this is what the traditional teachers demanded from the
seekers. This is also how many of the returnees have made
their way back. There is, however, also the concept of the
T'shuvah from above. In that thrust one connects first the
higher centers of ones being and later, when one is in relationship
with God, one implements what one needs from the tradition
to round out ones life. There are now countless individuals
and families that have taken the second route and many of
these are the members of Havurot and connected with Jewish
Renewal.
6.
I don't want to answer the question as posed. In fact I find
it hard to see how anyone who longs to hasten the process
of redemption can answer the question as posed, since we know
that a prerequisite for the coming of Moshiach is the unity
of Klall Yisroel and the phrasing of such a question results
in divisiveness. In 1943 I experienced a surge of imminent
messianic expectation when the late Lubavitcher Rebbe, Rabbi
Yossef Yitzchak Schneersohn issued his apocalyptic broadsides.
Something messianic was indeed happening but it was not "The
Moshiach". I honor Lubavitch-Chabad as the wonderful
school from which I graduated and learned not only Davvenology
and mysticism but also the urge to work in outreach and the
training to do something about Jewish Renewal. This book is
about the coming to an end of one era and the dawning of the
new one , a paradigm shift.
7.
Any thinking Jew who reads the New York Times, listens to
N.P.R. or watches Carl Sagan's Cosmos or the McNeil - Lehrer
report and wants to keep their Jewish life up-to-date, who
has gained something from the Jewish Catalog and has looked
over the fence to other forms of spirituality. In all likelihod
the book will anger both those who think one must not change
anything as well as those who want to change everything.
8.
It was not my achievement that I have a foot in the past and
a foot in the future, it was my given. I was uniquely placed
to comprehend and bridge many worlds, both by historical events
ad by personal disposition. My real achievement was in that
I held fast to them both, often at great personal cost. This
put me in a position to understand the complex struggles of
the next generation and to teach them from an extraordinary
vantage point. So my greatest achievement stretches beyond
my person in the students who continue this work. A great
variety of students, from Chassidic- Orthodox to secular humanist,
have learned from me. I did not impose a mold on my students.
They all felt empowered to follow the inclination of their
own inner core and expressed what they had received and integrated
in various ways. The range from those who identified themselves
openly with Jewish Renewal to those who have quietly returned
to their conventional congregations and mainstreamed what
they learned, often without explicitely attributing the source.
Our contributions simply blended in to the acceptable scene
like the rainbow colored Tallit I designed. We created the
Havurah movement and the Jewish Catalog which was the growing
edge in the late 60's and 70's. Later in the 80's B'nai Or
- (then called P'nai Or and now - Aleph Alliance), offered
retreats, Kallot and institutes as well as Elat Hayyim, a
Jewish Center for Healing and Renewal, a work which continues.
The Wisdom School, which I conducted with my partner Eve Penner-Ilsen,
was an outstanding effort to hot-house the Jewish Spirit with
the emerging state of the art of contemporary psycho-technologies.
I trained and ordained Jewish Renewal rabbis, initiated of
the Eco-Kosher project, provided the stimulus for Shomrey
Adamah, (the guardians of the Earth). We reached out to the
disaffected and helped them to own their Judaism again. We
invited them to bring and share whatever of value they had
leaned to enrich our own traditional practice. All these are
component parts of my life's work.
Articles
by Rabbi Zalman Shacter-Shalomi
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