Part 3 (1/2)
Then Blu Greenberg raised a more basic matter of protocol: how to address the Dalai Lama. Michael Sautman suggested sticking to the conventional, ”His Holiness.” But to Orthodox ears that sounded problematic. Blu Greenberg commented later that although all human beings are holy in relation to G.o.d, because we are created in the image of G.o.d, ”that's different from saying there's an ent.i.ty of holiness that's independent of a monotheistic G.o.d.” She saw a potential problem in ”ascribing too much power, too much infallibility or eternality to a human being. There's holiness and there's finiteness of human beings.”
”Maybe it was a fearful exercise,” she admitted much later. Marc and Michael ”were very generous-spirited through the whole thing, but in a way they took this as a bit of an insult. But I wanted to make sure, I wanted to satisfy myself about being halakhically correct.”
This discussion was temporarily interrupted by the arrival of Karma Gelek, the Secretary of Cultural and Religious Affairs, who had taken charge of all the arrangements for our visit from the Dalai Lama's end.
We moved outside to meet with him, sitting on lawn chairs or along the garden wall. The late October sun was brilliant and warm, jungle crows made a racket in the trees, and dogs barked throughout the valley. Karma Gelek, who was very soft-spoken, could barely be heard, but his dry wit sometimes came through in the subtlest curl of his lip.
In greeting us formally, he expressed regret for our difficult journey. ”Most of our foreign guests say that from Delhi to Dharamsala is much harder than from the United States to Delhi.” His English was British, his manner very low affect and low-key. Perhaps partly because of the accent, I thought of him as Jonathan's spiritual cousin. Very quickly, the Jewish delegates invited him into the rough and tumble of their discussion. (In talking about cultural cues in dialogue, Joy Levitt had joked earlier, ”Jews have a signal when they want to speak-they interrupt.”) In answer to Blu's question, the monk explained that there were thirty different t.i.tles with which to address the Dalai Lama, but ”if you could say His Holiness, that would be the usual way.” He said this so matterof-factly I couldn't gauge how strongly he felt about the issue. Soon he, Nathan Katz, and Michael Sautman began searching for more answers to this unique Tibetan Jewish crossword puzzle.
Kap gun was batted around, but turned out to mean ”refuge” or ”saving leader” or even ”Savior,” which rang funny in Jewish ears. was batted around, but turned out to mean ”refuge” or ”saving leader” or even ”Savior,” which rang funny in Jewish ears.
I was interested in how much the discussion with Karma Gelek had to do with translation. Robert Frost defined poetry as what gets lost in translation, but I'd go further: culture is what gets lost in translation.
It wasn't so much words as their historical resonances. How could Karma Gelek ever understand how Jews felt about ”His Holiness,” or the a.s.sociation Jews would make immediately with the pope and from there to the long history of persecution, proselytization, inquisition, and martyrdom? How to explain the peculiar tang of a t.i.tle like kap gun kap gun once it got translated to ”saving leader”? When Zalman heard it, he immediately asked, ”Are there other forms, not weighted with salvation?” To a Jew living in a Christian world, this was a perfectly understandable reference, but in the ears of a Buddhist monk, Zalman's question must have sounded puzzling. once it got translated to ”saving leader”? When Zalman heard it, he immediately asked, ”Are there other forms, not weighted with salvation?” To a Jew living in a Christian world, this was a perfectly understandable reference, but in the ears of a Buddhist monk, Zalman's question must have sounded puzzling.
However, Karma Gelek did notice the various reactions and retreated on the ”His Holiness” front, observing quietly, ”If you would say rinpoche rinpoche, nothing's wrong.” (Rinpoche, which means precious one, is a general honorific for tulkus tulkus.) But it was too late. Now Zalman Schachter was hot on the case, taking up Blu's cause as his own-driven too by his curiosity and loving to explain Jews, Judaism, and himself to Karma Gelek, ”We would like to say a word in honor-it's not that we don't want to honor-it's like saying we understand, we honor you as a source of teaching and blessing for your adherents. Could we say, great teacher?”
By now, Karma Gelek had become totally flexible. ”Yes, yes,” he said, barely audibly.
But Lieberman and Sautman objected. ”That's too low.” So Zalman raised the ante, ”How about ill.u.s.trious teacher?”
Unfortunately, ”ill.u.s.trious teacher” was not a traditional Tibetan phrase. ”Jewel of wisdom” was offered by Michael Sautman, but finally Karma Gelek ended the discussion when he observed that all such names were very formal and that ”His Holiness usually doesn't like formal things.”
I took a walk with Yitz Greenberg after the meeting with Karma Gelek broke. We walked for a while in silence. Something about the whole focus on this tiny point bothered me. It reminded me very strongly of what I didn't much like about religious Judaism, an obsessive, niggling quality. Or as a young woman learning about Jewish culture had told me once, to her, Judaism is an old man saying no. With Jews so divided into factions, and some of the factions so self-preoccupied and self-obsessed with tiny points of practice and law, how could we reach out to other groups?
I knew that in some ways that same intensity about language was also what I relished and delighted in, in both Jewish religion and the Jewish mind. It had delighted me that morning with Moshe's and Zalman's midrash. But when the guidance system failed, Jewish verbal intensity seemed to nosedive, spiraling down into smaller and smaller circles.
I ventured to Yitz that maybe the discussion was really about how Jews could hold a dialogue with Buddhists while maintaining their authenticity. I thought this talk had to be about something more than an honorific.
He agreed, adding that, speaking for his group, ”most Orthodox Jews feel religious dialogue is not possible. The number of Orthodox Jews involved in dialogue is not a minyan minyan. But after twenty-five years-the more involved I am, the more comfortable I feel.”
Yitz drew the line in quite another place, which explained why he'd been so quiet after Zalman davened in a Sikh temple. Dialogue was distinct from joint prayers or meditations. ”Unlike Zalman, I see liturgy as an affirmation of being a member.” He spoke of his teacher, Rabbi Joseph Soloveitchik, a distinguished professor at Yes.h.i.+va University and one of the foremost contemporary philosophers of halakhah halakhah.
”Rabbi Soloveitchik made the distinction: on social justice we have a universal language, but theology is a more intimate language. Liturgy conveys an affirmation that I'm in this system, so I would feel uncomfortable, for instance, in a Buddhist meditation.” Or praying in a Sikh temple, no doubt.
On the other hand, there was no question in his mind that Judaism takes place in real history and that Jews had to learn from other cultures. ”If you play in the minor leagues, you have minor league cultures. If you play in the major leagues, you have a major league culture.” Rabbi Greenberg was particularly concerned that Orthodox Jewish culture had withdrawn into itself, shunning contact with the challenge of pluralism.
”The Orthodox Jewish community is third world in theology and philosophy. Having a political state of Israel now, I'm convinced the great religious challenge is going to be the pluralist issue. Each culture can no longer present itself as self-evident.” Though he found this challenging, he also thought pluralism was positive. ”First,” he said, ”because I think it is the will of G.o.d. The big question on the religious agenda is how are people rooted in their own religion able to respond to others. We must learn to affirm our truth while doing true justice to the other.”
An open encounter with pluralism prevented any religious person from thinking he or she possessed exclusive claim to the truth. In dialogue, ”you meet these people with tremendous force and openness, and they're not preselected, they're not prefiltered, or loaded in your favor.”
I wondered if this was a risky game, particularly for people of faith. Pluralism can quickly lead to relativism and even nihilism. Because if there are so many different truths in the world, and each one is worthy of respect, why go through all the trouble of preserving any particular tradition. Why continue as Jews?
But for Rabbi Greenberg, ”G.o.d's will is for us to learn how to affirm our full truth doing full justice to the other, not partial justice or twisted justice or a secondhand treatment.”
With that challenge in the air, he left me to my walk. A Tibetan peasant woman, probably in her late sixties but with long black hair s.h.i.+ning in braids, pa.s.sed me on the gravel path. I smiled and said, ”Tashe delek,” joining my palms in the traditional greeting Michael Sautman had taught us that morning. She smiled and said, ”Tashe delek,” with a great deal of warmth, but didn't look directly at me, being a little shy.
When Karma Gelek had mentioned that this gesture of bringing the hands to the forehead was a sign of prostration, Blu had joked, ”Let's not go into any meanings of it,” to which Marc had added, kidding around, ”The less we know, the better off we are. We didn't come all the way here to realize we can't say h.e.l.lo.”
Yet the Tibetan woman and I had communicated, if only for a moment in pa.s.sing. We didn't have the burden of representing any tradition or anyone but ourselves. Tashe delek. Shalom aleikhem Tashe delek. Shalom aleikhem. Peace.
Surprisingly, given their constant disagreements, it was Zalman Schachter who deepened my appreciation for Yitz and Blu Greenberg's need to preserve tradition even down to the finest points of speech and gesture. Perhaps as someone who himself has been mercilessly criticized in the mainstream Jewish world, Zalman well understood the kind of pressures the Greenbergs faced.
”How many people do you see,” he asked me one night, ”when you see Yitz and Blu? You see two people. Right? They are not two people. They are several thousand. That is the inner weight of who they are. So with such a const.i.tuency, how you act here becomes really important. He is bridging more tensions than any Jew I know at this point. Can you imagine how he gets scrutinized at every step? Because he certainly isn't Orthodox in terms of doctrine. So the orthopraxis of his life is very important: one step over the line and his credibility is lost.”
The sympathy Zalman had for Yitz underlined the parallels in their lives. Rabbi Greenberg had received a secular education at Yes.h.i.+va University and been exposed to Rabbi Soloveitchik's brand of Modern Orthodoxy as well. His theology was one of the more original to come out of recent Orthodoxy, a reinterpretation of the covenant in response to the Holocaust and the establishment of Israel. To Rabbi Greenberg, both events meant that the human partner in the covenant had to take more responsibility for historic decisions. From this sense of human responsibility also came his opposition to separatism and his interest in dialogue, an interest that put him on the extreme edge of his group.
Zalman had gone over the edge. But he came out of Lubavitch Hasidism and spiritually I think he still belongs to it. Although ultraOrthodox in practice, the Lubavitchers are rather unique, because they practice Jewish outreach, for mystical reasons. They basically view every Jew, regardless of denomination, as a potential Lubavitcher. By prac ticing mitzvot mitzvot, one by one, the non-Lubavitchers could be brought along. Hence, young Lubavitcher Hasidim can be found in airports, or in the streets, in their vans known as ”mitzvah mobiles,” encouraging men to don tefillin and daven and encouraging women to light Shabbat candles. In deep Lubavitch thought, every Jew was redeemable, because every Jew had a pintele yid pintele yid, a Jewish point in the soul. And I think some of their teachers really know how to touch that point.
I remember an encounter while in college with the singer Rabbi Shlomo Carlebach. He had come very late, and we'd been standing around waiting. But instead of beginning the concert, he came up to each of us individually and introduced himself, smiling and looking into our faces. It was a surprising gesture, a recognition that we weren't just a ma.s.s, that each of us was important. Yet the effect was to bring us all together with a certain warmth. Something Shlomo said-in the middle of a song yet-has always remained with me. I didn't even know precisely what it meant, but I've often thought about it. He said, ”The whole world is waiting for Jews to be Jews.”
Like Rabbi Carlebach, Zalman Schachter had begun as an outreach man for Lubavitch, shortly after World War II. He'd been a legendary recruiter for Chabad, helping to establish many centers and visiting college campuses, encouraging Jews to be more observant.
At the same time, like Rabbi Greenberg, Zalman had sought a secular education. The Lubavitcher Rebbe himself had studied engineering at the Sorbonne. Zalman received an M.A. in the psychology of religion from Boston University and a Doctor of Hebrew Letters from Hebrew Union College.
In the 1960s, Zalman separated from the Lubavitcher movement. His energy was probably just too much to stay confined within an ultraOrthodox community such as the Lubavitchers, which is very intent on social conformity.
What he did retain was the ability to reach out to others, to Jews, but not just to Jews. And this he shared with Yitz Greenberg, who was himself on the edge of the Modern Orthodox movement and in danger of being pulled away.
So Zalman understood Yitz's situation very well. And from his explanation, I was gaining a tremendous admiration for Yitz's essential aloneness-what Blu, in a different context, called their ”isolation.” For his willingness to dialogue, he risked condemnation, even expulsion, from the Orthodox community where his heart and family was. (Not long after our return Yitz faced a threat of cherem cherem, or excommunication, from the Orthodox rabbinic a.s.sociation, the RCA, though fortunately it was forestalled.) None of the other delegates faced such risks.
After lunch, Yitz and Blu would enter the Tsuglakhang, the Dalai Lama's main temple, a place most Orthodox Jews would view as a disgusting haven of idolatry. It was a place full of huge golden statues in gla.s.s cases before which Tibetans prostrated themselves. Could an Orthodox Jew justify being there?
The Greenbergs would make their own judgments, I was sure, with as much integrity and attention to detail as they had shown so far. The overriding issue for them was not the external appearances, but the Dalai Lama's own behavior. In his own setting, would he act like a G.o.d, or a man?
We arrived shortly after lunch at the opening ceremony of the All Himalayan Conference on the Five Traditional Buddhist Sciences. It was exciting that our visit coincided with this event, which drew on Buddhist monastics and teachers from all parts of Asia.
I had a hard time, actually, finding out, even from many Tibetans, what these five traditional ”sciences” were. Evidently they were a decidedly medieval curriculum and included what we would call arts and crafts, such as making traditional Tibetan silk paintings of Buddhist religious figures, known as thangkas thangkas. Other sciences included astromedicine, or medical astrology, the science of healing related to the movements of the stars. All of these sciences-which we would probably call traditional learning-were ways to better understand and express Buddha's teachings, or the dharma.
The important thing was that we were finally entering fully into an entirely Buddhist world. After removing our shoes, we were ushered by some monks into the Tsuglakhang. From the outside I saw the clean lines of a Greek temple in its porches and pillars. But once inside, I felt the strange and colorful intensity of the surroundings. The walls were painted bright mustard, in glossy enamel. In a gla.s.s case behind the Dalai Lama's throne was the torso of a life-sized golden Buddha draped with a red robe and framed by jewel-encrusted gold and silver foil. If these jewels were real, and represented wisdom, then the Dalai Lama was very wise, for they were bigger than hen eggs. The throne was draped in golden orange silk brocade-the steps leading up to it framed with an inlay of golden lotus.
Our seating was less elaborate. In kind consideration of our Western spines, we were lined along the south wall on metal folding chairs. On the floor of the temple, about one hundred and fifty Asian scholars, monks, and abbots, mostly from the Himalayan regions of India, from Nepal, Bhutan, and from the exiled Tibetan community sat in neat rows cross-legged on woven mats. In the temple courtyard, a hundred more devotees, mostly young monks in maroon robes, listened in to the proceedings.
But ordinary Tibetan refugees, in simple wool chubas chubas, also crowded in through the open windows just above our heads, simply to catch a glimpse of the Dalai Lama. You could tell by their faces he was indubitably, to them, His Holiness.
While we waited, a young woman and her mother, Tibetan peasant women, prostrated themselves before the throne, patting dust from the floor onto their foreheads. They bowed and prostrated before various images, which included Avalokiteshvara, a thousand-armed Buddha of compa.s.sion, Padmasambahva, who first brought Buddhism to Tibet, and Tsong Khapa, the Great Reformer of Tibetan Buddhism and founder of the gelukpa gelukpa school, from which the inst.i.tution of the Dalai Lama grew. school, from which the inst.i.tution of the Dalai Lama grew.
I looked down our row and saw Yitz Greenberg in his black knit skullcap. Blu sat beside him and I caught her watching the young woman and her mother intently. She told me later she felt ”by the way they responded, they weren't in awe. This might be very offensive to someone else, but to me, their act was like kissing a mezuzah. It was like a formula. It wasn't that there was the essence of a G.o.d in those images, those things.”
Marc Lieberman and Rabbi Jonathan Omer-Man both wore similar pillbox caps that could have been Guatemalan, Tibetan, or Indian. Next to me sat Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi, in a black kappoteh kappoteh and a wonderful silver, tailored black and a wonderful silver, tailored black kippah kippah, and beside him, Richard Gere. I'd seen Gere before lunch. He had added an ironic perspective on that morning's lengthy discussion when he referred casually to the Dalai Lama as ”HH.”
Then the Buddhist leader strode in, casting a special smile our way. Some monks bowed their heads, others remained seated upright. Blu Greenberg said this helped to convince her that not all his followers viewed him as a G.o.d. He sat in a lotus position on a red cus.h.i.+on in front of his throne.
Monks served us gla.s.ses of hot b.u.t.tered tea and paper plates of sweet rice and raisins, traditional for the opening of Buddhist study-like the honey and apples given to me as a child at the Jewish New Year, a reminder that all learning should be sweet.
As we munched, the welcoming speeches began. Buddhists were not sparing of eloquence and the translation from Hindi to Tibetan added to the length. The Dalai Lama looked calm and benevolent, taking it all in, sometimes closing his eyes and swaying his body back and forth in a meditation posture Marc Lieberman described to me in a whisper as ”a tree swaying in the wind.” I wondered where his mind went, if and when it wandered. How boring to be a target of veneration, a vector of ceremony.