Part 5 (2/2)

”When I first met with Geshe w.a.n.gyal in America,” Zalman continued, ”he asked me, is reincarnation only human or also in animals? I used to be a shokhet shokhet. It's one who kills the animals that are kosher. Before I would kill the animals I would send all the people out of the room. I would say to the animals, 'I don't mean to harm you, I mean to give you an opportunity to raise you up. When people eat you with mindfulness and they will open their hearts and their minds to G.o.d to pray, you will be able to experience human consciousness and move up on the level of incarnations.' That was part of the task.”

The Dalai Lama did not linger over the image, but it made me smile-Zalman talking gilgul gilgul to poultry. I had to wonder how the chicken felt about the opportunity. to poultry. I had to wonder how the chicken felt about the opportunity.

The Buddhist leader wanted to know how rebirth worked in Jewish doctrine. ”What determines whether an angel in the next rebirth will be a bird or an animal? What is the main factor? Buddhists call it karma.”

The term karma karma has entered popular American culture as a fuzzy synonym for fate. But serious Buddhists consider the theory of karma a science. Beginning with the simple idea of cause and effect; that is, every action produces a consequence, teachings about karma confirm that there is an ultimate overall economy of actions. In the long run, good actions will produce good consequences for those who do them, and likewise bad actions will produce bad consequences. Since this is not immediately obvious in the world we live in, karma in Buddhist thought presupposes rebirth. The long run includes life after life in various bodily frames, not only human, but also as animals, h.e.l.l creatures, and has entered popular American culture as a fuzzy synonym for fate. But serious Buddhists consider the theory of karma a science. Beginning with the simple idea of cause and effect; that is, every action produces a consequence, teachings about karma confirm that there is an ultimate overall economy of actions. In the long run, good actions will produce good consequences for those who do them, and likewise bad actions will produce bad consequences. Since this is not immediately obvious in the world we live in, karma in Buddhist thought presupposes rebirth. The long run includes life after life in various bodily frames, not only human, but also as animals, h.e.l.l creatures, and devas devas. Rebirth is the Buddhist explanation of why bad things happen to good people. Our actions in one life plant seeds that may not flower or bear fruit until future lives.

For the Buddhist the goal of purification practices, such as prostrations and reciting of mantras, is to release one from the negative effects of previous actions, to purify bad karma. Unfinished karma provides energy for another birth, it keeps the wheel of rebirth spinning. The ultimate goal-known as nirvana-is getting off of the wheel. Now the Dalai Lama asked about the goal of the Jewish system.

”If an angel takes rebirth in animal form, is it due to the creator, or is it fate? How much is due to one's own behavior? How much is in G.o.d's hand?”

Rabbi Omer-Man spoke up. ”Perhaps, I can give an image we use. Each soul has to create a garment. And each incarnation, each remanifestation, we make a little more or we undo a little more. Ultimately the goal is to complete the garment, which is a garment of light when it is finished. And some incarnations, we do more damage, we pull more threads out, in other incarnations we put more threads in. So how we are remanifest depends on what we have done in the past.”

The Dalai Lama took this in and asked Jonathan, ”The next reincarnation, what kind of reincarnation will take place, is that mainly due to the previous life's behavior?”

”Yes.”

Now he appeared satisfied. This sounded very much like karma. The two mystical systems of rebirth appeared to have remarkable degrees of similarity.

Some monks came in with pots of tea, kneeling before us individually. I noticed we were being served by Karma Gelek and some of the other high officials, high lamas and sages, which was typical Tibetan Buddhist behavior-an effortless humility. For now, the dialogue at the mystical level was over. But it would be resumed in the next few days, and at the second session Jonathan Omer-Man would make an extraordinary presentation on Jewish meditation. A connection of surprising force had been made between the two traditions. I was now much more receptive to Nathan Katz's suggestion that they had somehow met before.

Yet Rabbi Schachter had gone very far in reaching out to Buddhism to make that connection. After all, mysticism is the front door of Tibetan Buddhism, but a very hidden back door of contemporary Judaism. I had no doubt that Zalman's presentation was well grounded in the Jewish mystical tradition. What I wondered, though, was how it connected to the Jewish present.

One part of me kept saying, Does he really believe all this stuff? Does a twentieth-century man with a computerized wrist.w.a.tch believe in angels? Clearly not in the same way some of the Tibetan refugees in chubas chubas believed in believed in devas devas. I a.s.sumed their beliefs were premodern, Zalman's postmodern. The Tibetan agony is, in part, that of a medieval culture pa.s.sing violently into the modern world. Jews have been wrestling with modernity ever since the Enlightenment, producing, among other things, the Haskalah movement, Zionism, and Reform Judaism. For most American Jews, very few of the old traditions have survived intact.

In its early triumphant phase, American Reform Judaism was particularly scathing, abolis.h.i.+ng every thing from yarmulkes to bar mitzvahs. Even in these more observant days, if a Reform rabbi announced that he believed in angels, would the board renew his contract? To meet the Tibetans halfway, Zalman was doing a lot of translating, a lot of updating, a lot of psychologizing-he was pedaling pretty hard. But was the bike moving? Or was it all an exercise? There is a difference between understanding how a system works, or might have worked for certain Jews in previous centuries-and the next step, which would be living that life today. Zalman had kept saying, ”That's in our tradition.” Yes, but where? And who has access to it now?

These are hard questions, not only for one who has stayed within Judaism, but maybe more for those who have left it. I was curious to hear from the JUBUs what they made of the angels.

For me, as for Rabbi Levitt, much of Zalman's presentation was news. But it was very good news. I decided to suspend disbelief and trust in the world of intuition what I could not yet confirm with my intellect. I stayed with my delight. After all, I had heard the Angel of the Jews speaking to the Angel of Tibet.

8.

Always Remind.

THURSDAY, OCTOBER 25, DHARAMSALA.

Rabbi Irving Greenberg's presentation would take us away from the supernal realms of ain sof ain sof to a much more familiar deity, a G.o.d who acts in Jewish history. to a much more familiar deity, a G.o.d who acts in Jewish history.

Less theatrical than Zalman, Rabbi Greenberg brought just as much pa.s.sion to his presentation. Teaching Jewish history to the Tibetans, he believed, was a religious obligation, one that could be found in the Torah pa.s.sage of the week, Lekh Lekha Lekh Lekha (Gen. 12:1-17:27). (It was getting to be a very rich and useful (Gen. 12:1-17:27). (It was getting to be a very rich and useful parasha parasha.) Because when making a covenant with Abraham, G.o.d promises that the Jews will be a blessing to other nations.

So Rabbi Greenberg spoke with great warmth to the Tibetan leader: ”All of us came here with a sense of wanting to learn from you, but also with a feeling of love. The love is identification, for we have suffered some of the tragedies you have suffered, and we would like to help in some way. So we asked what learning might be helpful.”

Yitz was keenly aware that the Tibetans faced a crisis that could mean their end as a people as well as the end of their religion. Jews have faced similar crises, not only during the time of the Holocaust but also two thousand years earlier.

Actually, we Jews have a rich menu of crises to choose from. The expulsion from Spain in 1492, the Inquisition, and the Crusades were all terrible disasters. And the Babylonian captivity provides fascinating parallels to Tibetan history. But all of us were thinking most about the Holocaust. Seeing photographs of the Chinese destruction of Tibetan Buddhist monasteries, temples, and libraries, I recalled the systematic n.a.z.i destruction of synagogues. When I read about celibate Tibetan nuns and monks being humiliated and tortured, I remember the SS forcing rabbis to spit on the Torah before shooting them. And the death of more than a million Tibetans as a result of the occupation brought up the inevitable charge of genocide. As Rabbi Lawrence Kushner had told the Dalai Lama when they met in New Jersey, ”The Chinese came to your people as the Germans came to mine.”

The parallels are not exact-how could they be? The Holocaust took place quickly, and extermination was the conscious goal of the n.a.z.is. The Chinese are not seeking a ”final solution,” though by favoring Han, or ethnic Chinese, over Tibetans, a strong element of chauvinism is playing itself out. Their princ.i.p.al aim is to dominate and exploit the Tibetan territory, to make Tibet part of China by eliminating any vestiges of Tibetan resistance. But the result of their suppressing Tibetan nationality, culture, and language through decades of brutally repressive rule may well be a genocide played out in slow motion.

One-third of the Jewish people were murdered while the world stood by. Much the same is happening right now to the Tibetans, and not a single nation is protesting with any force. Though many Jews wish to reserve the Holocaust as a unique historical event and object to its use as an a.n.a.logy for other people's suffering, that doesn't trouble me so much. My problem is, the a.n.a.logy offers the Tibetans too little in the way of hope.

Perhaps Yitz might have chosen to discuss the Babylonian captivity instead. At about the time of the Buddha, in 586 B.C.E. B.C.E., the Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar had sacked Jerusalem, destroyed the Temple, and led fifteen thousand Jews into captivity in Babylon. The intellectual leaders.h.i.+p of priests and scribes left the country while the poor Jews remained on the land. This resembles in some ways the Tibetan case. In exile, the educated Jews carefully compiled their sacred writings-as the Tibetans are doing today at the Library of Tibetan Works and Archives in Dharamsala. Jews kept their religious teachings alive and, within a generation (by 516 B.C.E. B.C.E.), were able to return to the land and, ultimately, rebuild Jerusalem and its Temple. Upon their return, they reformed their religion and democratized it further, much as the Dalai Lama is attempting to adapt his religion to contemporary circ.u.mstances.

Obviously the Babylonian story offers much more hope. But I knew why Yitz chose instead to make a parallel with events surrounding the Roman destruction. The Tibetans might well be facing a long exile. And not far from his mind also was the Holocaust and the theological questions it raises.

I would put these questions simply. How can Jews affirm faith in G.o.d and his covenant with the chosen people after Auschwitz? The question is settled for most secular and liberal Jews-they can't. Obviously such a position is unacceptable to an Orthodox Jew. While some simply drew inward and clung to a reactionary faith, Rabbi Greenberg had seen that new answers were demanded.

Perhaps it is true, as Jewish sociologist Arnold Eisen has noted, ”that not much creative work has been forthcoming over the last two decades” in Jewish theology. In part, as Eisen explains, Jewish theology demands a unique combination of skills: someone deeply committed to Judaism but with a secular education. Among the most important postwar thinkers have been Rabbi Abraham Heschel and Rabbi Joseph Soloveitchik, Rabbi Greenberg's mentor. Heschel, for Hasidim, and Soloveitchik, for Talmudic Judaism, each represent in their thinking an encounter between Jewish tradition and modern philosophical thought.

In contemporary Orthodox Jewish theology, Rabbi Greenberg's own substantial contribution has been the concept of the ”voluntary covenant.” According to Eisen, ”The word 'voluntary' is crucial to Greenberg. It emphasizes that the initiative-now, more than ever-is on the human side rather than on G.o.d's. It suggests that we will be faithful, we will uphold the covenant, even if G.o.d in the Holocaust did not.”

Therefore, Rabbi Greenberg told the Dalai Lama that the covenant is ”the most seminal idea” in Judaism. The covenant that began with Abraham has not been abrogated-even at Auschwitz. Instead, he affirmed to the Buddhist leader his own faith: ”The creator G.o.d seeds the universe with life. Humanity can become a partner with the divine in making the world better or perfect.”

What has changed is the human role in the partners.h.i.+p. And that happened, not in recent times, but ”about nineteen hundred years ago, halfway in the history of the religion. The Jewish people in Judea were conquered by the Romans and their Temple destroyed by the Roman empire. It was devastating.” Rabbi Greenberg explained that Jews could no longer make pilgrimages to Jerusalem, offer sacrifices, or receive divine messages through the priestly oracle. They were cut off from direct access to G.o.d.

”Then within a century or two the people lost the land altogether. So it was a major crisis. We lost many great teachers and important religious figures.”

In the first century, many interpreted the Roman destruction as abandonment by G.o.d, the end of the covenant. ”And since the whole Jewish idea of covenant is that the world can be made better, this would be such a victory for evil that many Jews simply gave up. They a.s.similated and joined the very dynamic culture around them, h.e.l.lenism. Another large group, the Zealots, put all of their energy to recapturing and rebuilding the Temple. They reconquered Jerusalem for two years, but then they were crushed again.” The final revolt against the Romans ended in the ma.s.s suicide of the Zealots at Masada in 73 C.E. C.E.

The Romans not only destroyed Jerusalem, they renamed the capital and drove her people into exile. More than one million Jews died at that time, and Jews did not regain sovereignty in the land until 1948. But Judaism did not die. The religion was saved by the first-century sages, known today as the rabbis, the teachers.

Yitz explained, ”There was one great rabbi of the time, Rabbi Yochanan ben Zakkai. The Talmud says, when the Romans had Jerusalem surrounded and were about to destroy it, he was able to break through to the Roman emperor and was given one wish. He said, 'Give me Yavneh and its scholars. I want to set up an academy there.'” There he told his students they would outlast the exile by teaching, interpreting, and preserving the tradition.

”Yochanan ben Zakkai basically said, 'If we don't have our Temple, but we have our learning, our texts-our Bible with us, we have the power by learning to create the equivalent of the Temple. It's a portable homeland.'

”It's not enough to preserve. His power was to say that as partners in the covenant, fallible humans have the authority to add new insights, so that their activity was the equivalent of a renewal of the convenant. Their courage to renew preserved the past.”

After Jerusalem was laid waste, the rabbis found a home in Yavneh, a tiny town near Ashdod. There, in a vineyard, their leader, Rabbi Yochanan ben Zakkai, declared the academy of rabbis successors to the Sanhedrin.

As Yitz told the story of the first-century sages, I felt the power of our being there, as Jews. Dharamsala, as much as one can argue by a.n.a.logy, is surely the Tibetan Yavneh. In this small Indian town, with no more than five thousand souls, lies the main hope for the survival of Tibetan Buddhism. And I could see-with a little squinting-the Dalai Lama and his leading abbots and monks as the Buddhist equivalent of Yochanan ben Zakkai and his sages.

The Dalai Lama interrupted Yitz's history lesson to ask the inevitable question about the covenant, ”The concept of the chosen people, is it right there from the beginning, or later developed?”

Rabbi Greenberg answered that it was relatively early-and begins with the first Jew, Abraham. ”Chosenness means a unique relations.h.i.+p of love. But G.o.d can choose others as well and give a unique calling to each group. Each has to understand its own destiny and can see its own tragedy not simply as a setback but as an opportunity.”

”Certainly,” Yitz added, ”I never thought I would learn from a Buddhist monk until you came to the world. In the same way, the Jewish people in their tragedy had an opportunity to be a model of how one persists, how one takes suffering and enn.o.bles it. In essence, this was the challenge they faced in the first century.”

Yitz returned to his topic. He said the strength of the first-century rabbis came from their basic a.n.a.lysis. They did not choose to believe that G.o.d had abandoned them, and they insisted that the Torah was still fully binding and valid. They interpreted G.o.d's nonintervention with the Roman destruction as a sign that, henceforth in history, the human partner in covenant must take more responsibility for the outcome. In the past G.o.d might have parted seas, rained down manna, performed signs and wonders to save the Jewish people. But G.o.d was no longer going to step in and do the miracles for his human partners.

Listening to Yitz, I had to reflect that the first-century rabbinic remaking of Judaism was an extraordinary feat. For six hundred years, after the return from Babylonian captivity, the Temple in Jerusalem, the site of pilgrimage and sacrifices, had served as the mainstay of religious life. Then, in one blow, Temple, Jerusalem, and priests were gone. Along with them went all the magic and grandeur of ritual-the incense and sacrifices, the awe of the High Priest entering in the Holy of Holies. In their place, the rabbis evolved the text of laws and the stories and debates known eventually as the Talmud.

The memory of the Temple was never lost-but it was turned into literature. More than two-thirds of the Talmud is devoted to descriptions of Temple rituals and implements. In that sense the Talmud is much more an imaginative literary text than a collection of laws. The rabbis declared that reading about the Temple laws was now the equivalent of Temple service. And this sort of sleight of hand, though brilliant, is a step back from the immediacy of ritual, what we'd seen, for instance, the day before in the Dalai Lama's temple, with its rich incense, colorful banners, and deep throat chanting.

More-the magical side of religion, especially the yearning for a messiah-was subdued, if not basically suppressed, by the rabbinic sages. And this became a dominant cautionary note in rabbinic thought for centuries to come, extended not just to messianism but to mysticism in general. It is still dominant in Judaism today, in all of its branches. Reason became the keynote of Jewish religion, and though some of the rabbinic sages were themselves mystical pract.i.tioners, the Talmud certainly expresses strong cautions against too much interest in mystical topics.

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