In the Wake of an Earthquake: An Interfaith Encounter

RRC student Leslie Hilgeman just published an op ed in the Philadelphia Jewish Exponent about a recent experience  reaching out to  staff members from Haiti at the Jewish senior residence where she serves as a student chaplain. You can read it here.

Hilgeman’s  piece tells a powerful story of  how caring human encounter can transcend the divisions of faith traditions.  She was hired to serve the Jewish residents; she wore a kippah and led Hebrew services; differences of class and race set her apart from the non Jewish staff. Both learned something new from this experience.  On her side, she writes, “I have advocated for building interfaith relationships because I believe in its political importance, but until that evening, I still had some doubts about the limits of such connectedness on a spiritual level.”  As for the non Jewish staff members, Hilgeman quotes a nurse saying, “We are all one. I wasn’t sure about this before, but now I know.”

Many of us have had similar experiences, often in the wake of tremendous upheavals that compel us to forge connections we might not have imagined.  How do we keep that energy fresh and vital in calmer times? What are its limits?

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The Muslim Call to Prayer at Harvard? A Jewish Response

Back in 2008, a controversy developed at Harvard University regarding the right of Muslims to sound the Arabic adhan(call to prayer) in a public space. Three graduate students published an op ed in the Harvard Crimson claiming that, unlike church bells or a menorah, these sounds  booming  forth in the center of the campus were inappropriate.  Such a display of Islamic faith , they argued,  “foisted religious beliefs on everyone.”

Many disagreed, and a fair account of the controversy (fair, according to the Harvard Muslim chaplain’s blog)  appeared in the New York Times.

I just obtained my copy of the 2010 edition of The Best Spiritual Writing. It carries a reprint of an article by Leon Wieseltier, a Jewish writer for The New Republic, that offers some wise ruminations on this issue. The essay uses the Harvard dispute as a jumping off point to explore  the wider question:  the challenges of the  cacophony created by a commitment to open civil spaces.  In earlier discussions of this debate, I did not find sufficient attention to the questions that Weiseltier raises: What are the pleasures, as well as the problems, of religious diversity? How can we relate positively  to the  “ravishments” of other traditions?

You can read Weiseltier’s piece here.

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The Radical Path of Nondual Judaism: Interfaith Implications

I took advantage of the blizzard(when “everything was snow”) to read Jay Michaelson’s new book, Everything is God: The Radical Path of Nondual Judaism, published last year by Shambala Press. Michaelson is completing a PhD in Jewish Thought at Hebrew University and has written extensively for The Forward, Huffington Post, Tikkun and many other publications.  His writing style is clear and compelling, filled with evocative stories and quotations, remarkably free of jargon and overwritten prose. He appears to follow Mark Twain’s excellent advice to an author, “When you catch an adjective, kill it.”

For Michaelson, Jewish nondualism is not better or worse than other nondual traditions, and he freely uses examples from other traditions: Zen, TibetanBuddhism, Vedanta. He does not make the mistake, however, of blending them  together as if to make them all say precisely the same thing. In fact, he does a nice job of showing how the Jewish tradition of nondualism is both similar and different from other traditions, and indeed, points outs some of the tensions between different Jewish versions of nondualism.  He also does a wonderful job of setting the Jewish tradition within the larger picture of Jewish religious thought, including its contemporary manifestations.

Of the many stories Michaelson tells, one of my favorites comes from the Sufi tradition:

There was once a prisoner who yearned for freedom. One day, the prophet Muhammad appeared to thim, gave him a set of keys to his cell, saying, “Allah has set you free.” The prisoner took the keys, mounted them on the wall, and prayed to them five times a day.

The book grapples with the question of what it means to share fundamental beliefs with other traditions and yet love ones own path. Even for nondualists,  particular communities and practices can be the triggers(Michaelson’s word) that “bring us closer to what matters most.”  He loves the Jewish path and the powerful ways it leads him in his spiritual life.  He says, “I don’t want to fetishize the trigger, but I do want to pull it.”

That said, our 21st century reality is that those pulling the trigger most passionately, at least in the Abrahamic  traditions often (although by no means always) are the ones most inclined to support pulling triggers of another kind as well. Michaelson grapples with this situation and with the increasingly complex identities, dual and even more,  that we find among seekers. Why is it so  important that insist on  our particularities, especially in light of their shadow side of ethnocentricity? Has the value of maintaining those boundaries run its course, and would not people who see ultimate reality as nondualist be among the first to advocate less divisions and more synergy?

I especially appreciated Michaelson’s pragmatist streak because it corresponds with my own. He believes, as I do, that  “by their fruits you shall know them.” And this is where I run into trouble with nondualism. He writes, “When the spiritual work is being done, the good heart emerges on its own,”  and “the contemplative practice of seeing clearly…leads effortlessly to more justice and more peace.”

That is, indeed, the final test of any religious system. In this case, I am more drawn to traditions within Judaism that speak to the power of the evil impulse; I read claims like those above with a jaundiced eye.  But I would be more than happy to be proved wrong. I do believe  Michaelson’s testimony that meditation and other practices of nondualist Judaism have led him to live, as he puts it “gently and justly.” This is a moving and powerful  personal testimony, as well as an excellent introduction to an important dimension of contemporary Jewish thought.

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