Shalom! In this lecture by Reb Zalman on the subject of fundamentalism, he gives his insights regarding a fundamentalist mindset. He also identifies that our own views have something in common with the views of those we more typically think of as fundamentalist. And so it occurs to me that it may be useful to share this at this time so we can begin to heal from the division and divisiveness.
Dear Friends:
In case you haven’t yet viewed Reb Zalman’s recollections of his Holocaust years, here’s the video interview they recorded:
I have met many Jews in many kinds of shuls who wear a Tallit which was designed by Reb Zalman in the 1950’s. When I pointed this out, most of them didn’t know its background and history and so, I’ve decided to share it here. Much of what I wrote below is taken directly from an interview of Reb Zalman by Rabbi Yonassan Gershom from around forty years ago. Gabbai Seth Fishman
The B’nai Or Tallit Design
Dear Friends:
Music heals the heart.
Last night, I went to a Jewish Gathering called “Here O Israel, Songs in Solidarity.” At the end of the night, a video was shown with members of the IDF (Israel Defense Forces) singing Hatikvah. The video reminded me of a talk I gave for a gathering of Music Therapists about Hatikvah and the healing power of music which I share below.
The talk occurred (over Zoom) on May 17, 2021, during the Pandemic and it also coincided with a period in which there was an outbreak of violence in the Israeli-Hamas conflict. The gathering of Music Therapists was hosted by The Louis Armstrong Center for Music and Medicine at NYC’s Mount Sinai hospital. The main presenter was the great artist Jon Batiste. The topic of the event was: Social Music: Gathering Humanity Through Song & Sound. I had been invited by the Director of center, my dear friend Dr. Joanne Loewy, to talk about how the song Hatikvah has contributed to the healing from trauma of the Jewish people. (If you are interested, you can hear my talk in full at the bottom of this post.)
The flier stated: From the roots of slavery to current-day rallies, injustices have plagued ‘civilized’ communities since the beginning of time. Laments of rage have led to music that have fostered expressions of injustice, highlighting paths toward lasting legacies. Melodious jubilees and sorrow songs, formulate many of today’s familiar spirituals. From the underground to the picket line, from farce to parody, from rogue to rap, music harbors resilience.
Here’s what I said:
Shalom! In the first of his 1992 Germantown, PA lectures on Kabbalah, I asked the following question. Reb Zalman’s answer follows:
Seth: Dear Reb Zalman, in this lecture, I hear you mapping the tradition onto modern cosmology and coming up with very rich imagery. But where is Eyn Sof in space time as we imagine it? Before the Copernican revolution, or at some such time when we felt ourselves locked here on the earth and looking in the sky, we saw a kind of ceiling. Reading Bereishit, we could think that creation was light and water up there. Was the concept of Eyn Sof tied to the Copernican revolution? Did Eyn Od come in with the Kabbalists? Given our current model for the universe, Space/Time and Quantum physics, etc., as one sends one’s imagination to the ends of the universe, where is Eyn Sof?
Reb Zalman: Let me say this. I’m excited about the challenge of the update. I see in Kabbalah a software for god-ing, (if I were to use those terms).
I want to have some connection with God. If I treat if as the picture of the old guy sitting in the sky saying all those no-nos and punishing all the bad guys, etc., that’s shattered for us; Auschwitz shattered this once and for all.
So then the question is: “All right, then how do we continue to be Jews?” So, it is like needing an update on the software.
The University of Colorado Boulder hosts some wonderful oral histories which I’ve been going through and I’m sharing here a transcription excerpt from the interview with Avi Dolgin. You can listen to the whole interview by clicking here, then searching for the “Avi Dolgin Interview” and clicking the Access URL. Here’s what he says:
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I remember Zalman saying that he was a Jewish practitioner of the Universal Religion. The thing I came to really value and appreciate in my connection with Zalman was all the other spiritual paths that were around us.
He would bring into a course on Jewish thought, Buddhist teachings. He would talk about how we saw things one way, how Islam saw it in a parallel way, (although maybe Islam had a better take on it than we did). He certainly knew his Christianity well and one of the reasons I think Christians came and studied from him was that he was willing to learn from them. Elsewhere there are statements documenting his relationship with his Black Rebbe with whom he had studied much earlier, [Rev Howard Thurman obm].
So that was such a wonderful thing for me.
I was the guy who went to Hebrew School. I went to Jewish camps. I went to Camp Massad north of Winnipeg for a number of summers. I went to Camp Ramah down in Wisconsin for a number of summers. I was a Chazzan at the Junior Congregation. I had a good Conservative Jewish background, but through it all, … nobody else really looked at Judaism in a broader context of the world’s spiritual paths and religions.
Basically, insofar as Judaism was discussed with any others, it was from a chauvinist perspective of, “We are better!”
Here is my transcription of, and excerpt from, a 2003 video interview in which Reb Zalman z’l answers questions about prayer. The interviewer, Sarah Y. Goldfein, used some of the video interview with Reb Zalman in her DVD series called “WHO KNOWS ONE: Jewish Perspectives on God.” You can see the two-part video of her interview with Reb Zalman here: Part I and Part II and, you can see her DVD series trailer here. Gabbai Seth Fishman
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Sarah:
Why translate the Siddur? Why not just have people davven whatever is in their hearts and learn to talk to God on their own? What’s the advantage to having the translation?
Zalman:
Reb Nachman of Breslov teaches us that we should do hitbodedut, which is to speak from the heart, but my sense is that many people don’t have vocabulary to speak from the heart.
I’m going to read you a prayer here, the ahavat olam and you’ll see how this gives you an answer:
At the recent ALEPH: Alliance for Jewish Renewal event commemorating the eighth Yorzeit of Reb Zalman Schachter-Shalomi (a’h), Rabbi Yitz Greenberg delivered the following words regarding Reb Zalman’s legacy. I sent him an email asking if he would share the text and he sent the text below along with this reply:
Dear friend,
Thank you for asking for the text of my words about Reb Zalman. I wanted to honor his memory as I believe that he was one of the religious greats in my/his generation. Therefore, I am grateful that you will distribute these words more widely. Yitz Greenberg
Here’s what he said:
The Talmud says:
Tzaddikim – great religious figures – loom greater after death than in their lifetime.
[NOTE: cf., Talmud Bavli Chullin 7b:10]
I think the Talmud means that with the death of the great ones, all the trivia falls away – the personal limitations, the competitors, the confusion around their most original approaches which people did not understand, the failures. What remains and stands out is the light they shed, their originality and greatness.
That is how I feel about Zalman Schachter-Shalomi.
At a recent Aleph (Alliance for Jewish Renewal) gathering in commemoration of Reb Zalman’s eighth Yorzeit, I shared a few words based on a public talk Reb Zalman gave titled: Reb Zalman on Psycho-Halakhah (March 13, 2005). Barukh Hashem, the talk and many more of his shmoozes were recorded by Michael Kosakoff, (a’h) and are available on the Yesod Foundation’s Youtube site. Gabbai Seth Fishman
Halachah refers to Jewish law and it has been something to guide the day-to-day life of a Jew.
The Halachic basis that we inherit from the past took its underpinnings from the book of Deuteronomy. Moses gave us the law the second time, sending, at the same time, a message:
You shmegegs! You backsliders! I’ve had tsures for so many years shlepping you around! I’m telling you: Don’t you move to the right; don’t move to the left; it has to be exactly as I tell you. Don’t mess with it.
But just a little bit later, with King Solomon we find something more dynamic:
A time for everything! A time to do! A time to not do! A time to do this! A time to not do that!
Things shift and change, no longer absolute.
So we were dealing with one kind of a frame in the book of Deuteronomy and, later on, a different frame when King Solomon said in Proverbs 1:8:
שְׁמַע בְּנִי מוּסַר אָבִיךָ וְאַל־תִּטֹּשׁ תּוֹרַת אִמֶּֽךָ / Listen, my child to the reproof of your father and do not forsake the Torah (teaching) of your mother.
So the same Torah will appear to some people as mussar avicha / reproof of your father, (i.e., you must always do like Deuteronomy says), but sometimes, it will appear like Torat imecha / teaching of your mother which wants, (again, Solomon speaking in Proverbs 3:17), dracheha darchey no’am / the Torah’s ways are ways of pleasantness. E.g., so many things in the Torah have to do with Shalom Ba’yit / peace of the home and all the books in the Bible speak about taking care of the poor. So one gets a different attitude from looking at mussar avicha than looking at Torat imecha, the mother teaching.
From Reb Zalman’s 2004 lecture given at Elat Hayyim and published by Spirit of the Desert Productions, R Sarah Leah Grafstein, may she be blessed!
Samachti B’omrim Li Beit Hashem Nelech. I was so happy to come to Shul today because there was a resurrection of a part of the Davvenen that, by and large hasn’t been happening anymore in the way in which one finds it in the average synagogue.
How so? Because when you’d come in to shul on Shabbos morning, first there are [only] a couple of old-timers there. [Then,] they send an old-timer over to the Amud and he buzzes through Pesukei D’Zimra.
So the worlds of Assiyah and Yetzirah [where one is to get in touch with] the action directives where Torah flows into our lives and the places where we get excited over God, that was sort of [glossed over]…
Finally, the Cantor would get up and sing, “Shokhen Ad Marom“, etc. and then it would begin, (as far as the “service” is concerned).
Barukh Hashem we are resurrecting the body in Birkhot Hashachar. And it’s so beautiful to see how people get into their bodies and dedicate the sight of the eyes [with] Pokeach Ivrim, Zokef K’fufim / the stretch and everything else; and we are in the body.
And then, for all the times that it says, “Praise God with a drum and with a dance,” and people were saying that [buzzing through quickly], what was happening [in the text], i.e., a drum or a dance or something like this, wasn’t happening in shul.
So for this, I’m very very grateful: Shehechiyanu v’Kiy’manu v’Higianu Laz’man Hazeh that I lived to see this being resurrected and brought back to people in davvening.
There is another area which needs some great, great work. And I feel like Jacob on that night he had to go across the river and pick up the last bits that he had left there. So before I can go on up with the ladder and deal with things that come at the end of life, I feel that the Pachim K’tanim [that] there a few containers, small containers that haven’t been recovered yet.