Peter Kohn.
IN a lyrical American accent shaded by the cadences of his European upbringing, the founder of Judaism’s Renewal movement, Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi, muses about his impending first visit Down Under.
Speaking to the AJN by phone from his home in Boulder, Colorado, the city where he held the Chair in World Wisdom at Naropa Buddhist University until 2004, Rabbi Schachter-Shalomi, 82, is enthusiastic about journeying to Australia.
He says he has many she’elot (questions) about the practice of Judaism, which is very seasonally orientated, in a hemisphere where the seasons are reversed.
“I’m looking forward to experiencing sitting in a Succah in the spring,” says this virtuoso of Judaism, who wonders out loud how Judaic traditions work in the antipodes. And with a hint of mischief, he adds: “I’ll ask people to bring some matzah to eat in the Succah.”
‘Reb Zalman’, as he is affectionately known, describes himself as “a pied piper” and likens his work to that of legendary American folklore figure Johnny Appleseed.
Yet for this remarkable modern sage, the seeds he plants near and far are those of Judaism, specifically his unique brand of it, which seeks tikkun halev (balance and wholeness) and tikkun olam (caring for life and the world).
Rabbi Schachter-Shalomi will be in Australia this month with his wife Rebbetzin Eve Ilsen to visit Renewal chavurot and to hold a series of workshops in Sydney and Melbourne on this intensely contemplative stream of Jewish tradition. He will also visit New Zealand.
At Sydney’s Shalom College, he will teach a workshop, Jewish With Feeling, which shares its title with one of the more than 150 books he has written, including First Steps for a New Jewish Spirit and Ageing and Sage-ing. He has also translated many kabbalistic texts.
In Melbourne, he will hold meditations and speak on “the need for elder wisdom”.
Born in what is now Ukraine, near Lvov, with its rich tradition of Chassidism, Rabbi Schachter-Shalomi grew up in Austria and at the age of 16 he and his parents fled the Nazis for the United States.
Yeshiva studies in New York were “a good foundation, but one from which I graduated,” he says. There were unconventional consequences, for, unlike some he studied with, including Australia’s most senior Orthodox rabbi, the Melbourne Yeshivah’s iconic Rabbi Yitzchok Dovid Groner, he immersed himself in a cosmopolitan mysticism that led to a life of concern for issues such as gender equality and the environment.
At the time he was given s’micha in 1947, Rabbi Schachter-Shalomi was already on a mission from the Lubavitcher Rebbe to help build Chabad in Connecticut, but he soon set his own course, inspired in part by a group of Chabad Chassidim who asked bold questions about theology in a way frowned on by the Chabad establishment.
Early in his rabbinical career, he embarked on a passionate embrace of kabbalah and the meditative traditions of Buddhists (a few days before our interview he held the latest of his dialogues with the Dalai Lama). He also studied the traditions of Sufists, Native Americans and Catholic monks.
A “spiritualised approach to Judaism” took him around North America’s campuses, often in the company of acclaimed chazan Shlomo Carlebach, and it was in Canada, while he was Hillel Foundation director at the University of Manitoba in Winnipeg, that he founded P’nai Or in 1962, which later became Aleph, the Alliance for Jewish Renewal.
Rabbi Schachter-Shalomi, who has taught mysticism and psychology at several North American universities, emphasises that Renewal is “not so much a denomination as a way of the heart, mind and spirit ... there are Renewal-ish aspects to praying in all Jewish traditions ... while many people pray with spiritual intimacy, they remain guarded ... in the Renewal tradition, there is much hugging and there is talk of inner spiritual issues.”
Today there are more than 100 Renewal chavurot in North America, as well as in Israel, the United Kingdom, Canada, Brazil, Argentina – and Australia (at Temple Emanuel Woollahra in Sydney).
Aleph is based in Boulder, which remains Rabbi Schachter-Shalomi’s home. Colorado is also the home of Rabbi David Cooper, a Renewalist who held workshops in Australia last year.
Rabbi Schachter-Shalomi will be in Sydney for teachings, services and Succah meals from October 8-16 and in Melbourne to pray and teach from October 21-24. For more information ring Edna Ross on 0408 627 017.
IN a lyrical American accent shaded by the cadences of his European upbringing, the founder of Judaism’s Renewal movement, Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi, muses about his impending first visit Down Under.
Speaking to the AJN by phone from his home in Boulder, Colorado, the city where he held the Chair in World Wisdom at Naropa Buddhist University until 2004, Rabbi Schachter-Shalomi, 82, is enthusiastic about journeying to Australia.
He says he has many she’elot (questions) about the practice of Judaism, which is very seasonally orientated, in a hemisphere where the seasons are reversed.
“I’m looking forward to experiencing sitting in a Succah in the spring,” says this virtuoso of Judaism, who wonders out loud how Judaic traditions work in the antipodes. And with a hint of mischief, he adds: “I’ll ask people to bring some matzah to eat in the Succah.”
‘Reb Zalman’, as he is affectionately known, describes himself as “a pied piper” and likens his work to that of legendary American folklore figure Johnny Appleseed.
Yet for this remarkable modern sage, the seeds he plants near and far are those of Judaism, specifically his unique brand of it, which seeks tikkun halev (balance and wholeness) and tikkun olam (caring for life and the world).
Rabbi Schachter-Shalomi will be in Australia this month with his wife Rebbetzin Eve Ilsen to visit Renewal chavurot and to hold a series of workshops in Sydney and Melbourne on this intensely contemplative stream of Jewish tradition. He will also visit New Zealand.
At Sydney’s Shalom College, he will teach a workshop, Jewish With Feeling, which shares its title with one of the more than 150 books he has written, including First Steps for a New Jewish Spirit and Ageing and Sage-ing. He has also translated many kabbalistic texts.
In Melbourne, he will hold meditations and speak on “the need for elder wisdom”.
Born in what is now Ukraine, near Lvov, with its rich tradition of Chassidism, Rabbi Schachter-Shalomi grew up in Austria and at the age of 16 he and his parents fled the Nazis for the United States.
Yeshiva studies in New York were “a good foundation, but one from which I graduated,” he says. There were unconventional consequences, for, unlike some he studied with, including Australia’s most senior Orthodox rabbi, the Melbourne Yeshivah’s iconic Rabbi Yitzchok Dovid Groner, he immersed himself in a cosmopolitan mysticism that led to a life of concern for issues such as gender equality and the environment.
At the time he was given s’micha in 1947, Rabbi Schachter-Shalomi was already on a mission from the Lubavitcher Rebbe to help build Chabad in Connecticut, but he soon set his own course, inspired in part by a group of Chabad Chassidim who asked bold questions about theology in a way frowned on by the Chabad establishment.
Early in his rabbinical career, he embarked on a passionate embrace of kabbalah and the meditative traditions of Buddhists (a few days before our interview he held the latest of his dialogues with the Dalai Lama). He also studied the traditions of Sufists, Native Americans and Catholic monks.
A “spiritualised approach to Judaism” took him around North America’s campuses, often in the company of acclaimed chazan Shlomo Carlebach, and it was in Canada, while he was Hillel Foundation director at the University of Manitoba in Winnipeg, that he founded P’nai Or in 1962, which later became Aleph, the Alliance for Jewish Renewal.
Rabbi Schachter-Shalomi, who has taught mysticism and psychology at several North American universities, emphasises that Renewal is “not so much a denomination as a way of the heart, mind and spirit ... there are Renewal-ish aspects to praying in all Jewish traditions ... while many people pray with spiritual intimacy, they remain guarded ... in the Renewal tradition, there is much hugging and there is talk of inner spiritual issues.”
Today there are more than 100 Renewal chavurot in North America, as well as in Israel, the United Kingdom, Canada, Brazil, Argentina – and Australia (at Temple Emanuel Woollahra in Sydney).
Aleph is based in Boulder, which remains Rabbi Schachter-Shalomi’s home. Colorado is also the home of Rabbi David Cooper, a Renewalist who held workshops in Australia last year.
Rabbi Schachter-Shalomi will be in Sydney for teachings, services and Succah meals from October 8-16 and in Melbourne to pray and teach from October 21-24. For more information ring Edna Ross on 0408 627 017.
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