Tikkun Magazine, March/April 2008

Renewal For All 

by Zalman Schachter-Shalomi

SOME TIME AGO I WAS ASKED WHAT I AFFIRM ABOUT MY RELIGION. MY RESPONSE was that I adhere to empirical religion of the Jewish tradition. The questioner challenged me, saying that this was heresy because I did not state divine revelation as the basis for my commitment. What my challenger could not recognize from his perspective is that Divine Revelation is also empirical.

I had a conversation with his Holiness the Dalai Lama about his characterization of the way in which we need to live our ethics as secular. I tried to say that I would much rather call it an empirical ethics. My sense of the law of karma is that it is an empirical law that is discovered by being observed rather than legislated. As an observer of Jewish halachah, I feel the same about the word "observance"—that it has the meaning of watching, discerning, observing what works.

This is really what Jewish Renewal is about: what works. No wonder many people have abandoned "religion" that did not work for them. People are not interested in being subjected to boring aesthetics and vapid sermons, spending time merely spinning their wheels.

People often say that they like spirituality over religion and I take that to mean something that works for them. People would not continue to practice yoga, tai chi and various forms of meditation if they did not derive some benefit from it.

Life is difficult today. From the tasks that go into making a living, keeping a family together, or dealing with the cloud of depression that derives from an anxiety-producing political and social environment, people would love to find something that they could actually do that would connect them with the resources that we usually term "spiritual."

This commonsense approach concerned with tikkun olam, social equity, lucid awareness, emotional equanimity, and most of all with maintenance of kindness and relating to self and others, is very much rooted in Jewish Renewal.

When those of us in the Renewal Movement are in conversation with people who come from other religious or creedal backgrounds we often find that they experience an affinity with our grounded ethics and family values. Those we talk with are not necessarily interested in following our specifically Jewish rituals, praying in Hebrew, or celebrating our holy days but, and this is decisive, they are interested in what I call our weekday Judaism—that empirical religion that they observe us to live and may participate in when invited to a home or life cycle ritual with a Jewish family.

Without fully and ritually converting, many such people would like to have a social bond with us Renewal Jews. When they attend our worship services they often find welcome and inspiration. Experiencing satisfaction makes them wonder if there is a way for their informal affiliation to become more explicit.

It turns out that this is not a new phenomenon. Way back in the time of our prophets when the Syrian general came to the Jews for healing from his leprosy, he was ready to embrace the worship of God as Jews worshiped God. There were people in Rome who considered themselves God fearers. There are clear references in the Psalms to Jews inviting those who fear the Lord to celebrate and worship alongside the house of Aaron (Psalm 115; 11). Their sacrifices were offered on the altar in Jerusalem. Isaiah would tell us (Isaiah 67:18 to the end) that they would also be invited to minister as priests and acolytes in the house of prayer for all peoples.

The rabbis of the Talmud recognized such a category under the name the children of Noah, called the Seven Noachide Laws. There are several websites dedicated to these laws, which they list as:

1. Worship God: do not worship anything except God.

2. Respect God And Praise God: do not curse God or anyone in God's name.

3. Respect Human Life: do not commit murder, suicide, or abortion.

4. Respect The Family: do not participate in sexual immorality.

5. Respect Others' Rights And Property: do not steal, cheat, or kidnap.

6. Respect All Creatures: do not eat the flesh of any animal while it is still alive.

7. Pursue Justice: establish courts of law to enforce the Seven Noachide laws.

There are people who, as a result of their Bible reading, turn to the organizations of Noachides and are happy to receive guidance from Orthodox rabbis who interpret those seven laws according to the halachic traditions of the old paradigm. In Jewish Renewal, these seven rules serve in a way that is illustrative, not normative. We don't demand that the relationship to the higher power necessarily be couched in the parameters of rules one and two above. As regards rule four, we recognize and respect families of same gendered people who would like to sacramentalize their shared life. In our tradition, we expand rule six to include how we view ecology and health. We also do not demand that the courts of law enforce the seven Noachide laws to make people obedient as if it were a Shariya court; we accept legitimate legal judicial forms based on shared consent.

The way in which the Talmud dealt with Noah's children, and the form of affiliation they had with Judaism and the Jewish people, was to make a distinction between the full convert: Ger Tzedek, and the Sojourner: Ger Toshav—a category which, according to some Orthodox halachic authorities, fell into desuetude at this time in our history (the Talmudic books were written approximately between 200 and 500 CE). However, there were some very eminent authorities who sought to bring this category back into life, like Rabbi Elie Ben Amozegh of Livorno in Italy at the beginning of the twentieth century. He was visited by Aime Palliere, a man who grew up as a Roman Catholic and went on to embrace the way of the Salvation Army, until later feeling an attraction to Judaism. Rabbi Ben Amozegh, who was an eminent Kabbalist as well as a legalist, counseled Palliere not to take on the full Jewish halachic observance but to become an affiliate under the category of Ger Toshav. This is what he did and described in his book, published in translation as The Unknown Sanctuary.

I have encountered many people who would fit under the category of Ger Toshav. Dr. Jean Houston speaks of such people as psycho-Semitic souls. There are as many of them today as there were in the time when the apostle Paul traveled to invite them to join the nascent new branch arising out of Judaism.

When I wrote my book Jewish With Feeling (Riverhead Trade, 2006) I had a different working title: If You're So Universal Why Be Jewish? If I were to check on the basic reality map shared by progressives I'm sure I would find that many of them are in harmony with those who adhere to Jewish Renewal: We share the concern for the planet. We no longer see ourselves in a triumphalist vision. We recognize the impact of the spirit that rises from the earth and shapes the rituals and celebrations of different ethnic groups. We welcome them all as expressions of the Divine on the earth. Woman mind holds for us the hope for some answers to the problems man mind has created. Ecology is, for us, the major motivator for ethics and morality. We each seek an awareness that transcends the shopping mall mentality. Our theology is more earth-based than heaven-based.

In this way, we want to issue an open invitation to those who would like to be affiliated with us in the common religion that seeks to heal the planet. We'd like to share some of our spiritual and social tools for generating value experiences in the family. We want to make the rabbis and congregations of Jewish Renewal open to the participation of affiliates in such ways as will not disturb our own social community/immunity response.

Many churches have experienced a shift in their magisterium. Stewardship of the earth, greater emphasis on the teachings of the beatitudes and less emphasis on the medieval creeds has become the rule. No religion can manage to hold people if they insist that their creedal structure remain anchored to the paradigms of the past.

What is amazing is that the more one delves into the findings of the currently avant-garde cosmologists, the more one is in touch with the teachings of Jewish Kabbalists, Christian and Sufi mystics, and the deeper philosophical teachings of Buddhism. Underpinning much of the emerging theology is a sense of monistic pantheism, which is in close harmony with the biological matrix of Gaia and the findings of quantum physicists.

There still is the chthonic invitation rising from the spirit of Earth to celebrate the seasons. The transfer of values from generation to generation is most effectively done and celebrated through ritual. Where this is lacking, the mere assent to a high philosophy cannot inspire and enthuse. The great error of many philosophical and theological thinkers has been to address only the cortex of our brain. Religious celebrations demand that the reptilian brain feels itself in a safe sacred place. The limbic brain seeks rhythmic, aesthetic, social acting out.

Besides ignoring the reptilian and the limbic, theologians have not encouraged much contemplative awareness of the deep intuition. I like to spell this word in-tuition, the teaching that takes place in the deepest inside.

In Jewish Renewal we have fostered social settings that create a safe and sacred space, and allow for lively rhythmic chanting and speaking as well as for shared contemplative silence. We have also updated the liturgy. All of this makes for engaged participation and creates a context for development of conscience, which makes for better moral and ethical decisions. Unaffiliated people concerned about inculcating values to their children will find that the connection with the empirical religion as guided by Judaism will be accessible to them.

This then is an invitation to people who feel an affinity for the distinctive flavor of Jewish generic religion to affiliate with those congregations that will welcome them.

Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi, better known as "Reb Zalman," is the father of the Jewish Renewal and Spiritual Eldering movements, an active teacher of Hasidism and Jewish Mysticism, and a participant in ecumenical dialogues throughout the world.

Schachter-Shalomi, Zalman. 2008. Renewal for all. Tikkun 23(2):53-55.