blogs/brentspodek

When it comes to Judaism and Buddhism, there is a complicated story to tell, a story about post-war American Judaism's "lifeless devotion to external actions" and the generation of American Jewish seekers whose paths led to the east.

There is also a simple story to tell.

As a young adult looking for spiritual sustenance, I was carried away by the passion and energy of learning and praying praying Torah seriously in Jerusalem. I learned from people who had dedicated their lives to enlarging their connection with God and their passion was contagious. They believed they could connect to eternity through words and books, and as a young man, I believed in them, even if I wasn't sure that I believed what they believed.

I went to rabbinical school in New York where prayer was a decidely different experience. I worried about sitting and standing at the right time, about mispronouncing a word, about mangling the ancient melodies I was expected to carry forward. 

To what can this be compared? To having a torrid love affair with a beautiful lover in an exotic land and then, after committing to spend your life with this person, discovering that that you are standing under the wedding canopy with a lifeless, cardboard cut-out that vaguely resembles your lover.

Prayer, which had been a joy, became an obstacle.

Three years into rabbinical school, I went to a short retreat at Elat Chayyim, the Jewish meditation center (that was ultimately folded into the Isabella Freedman Retreat Center) hoping to reconnect with the part of my soul that I had discovered in Jerusalem. I sat and was essentially introduced to my own mind for the first time. I remember so clearly sitting in the forest there and chanting kiddush - the same one we blaze through now as children clamor for their grape juice - for hours on end. The verses of kiddush tell how after a week of creating, the Holy One rested, was still and connected with His own soul, and I hoped to do the same.

I learned there from my teachers, Rabbis Shelia Weinberg and Rachel Cowan practices that allowed me to find a path through which Judaism could nourish my own soul.

My Jewish life has been immeasurably enriched by the infusion of meditative practices, infused from the East and rediscovered in Judaism. I learned again that prayer is a practice with a purpose, a technology for the transformation of my own soul.

I am particularly delighted for two opportunities this weekend to engage in contemplative practice in a Jewish setting.

• On Friday night, we'll be having a very special Kabbalat Shabbat Service with Zoketsu Norman Fischer. This will be a service of chanting and silence, incorporating some aspects of a conventional Friday night service. Zoketsu Fischer is a long time teacher and former co-abbot at the San Francisco Zen Center, the oldest and largest of the new Buddhist organizations in the West. He is presently a Senior Dharma Teacher there, as well as the founder and spiritual director of the Everyday Zen Foundation. He is also the co-founder, with Rabbi Alan Lew of blessed memory of Makor Or, a Jewish meditation center in San Francisco. We are deeply honored that Zoketsu Fischer will be leading us on Friday night.
• On Saturday morning, both adults and children will have an opportunity for contemplative practice in the woods. I'll lead the adults and Helanna Bratman will lead the little ones as we use parts of the Shabbat morning liturgy as a map to guide us through the forest and through our own souls.

We all have souls and they all need tending, no less than our bodies or our minds. I invite you to join me in these Jewish practices that might yet nourish all souls of all backgrounds.