What's Wrong with Judaism?


	One year, Mrs. Goldberg changed her vacation plans. Instead of forsaking wintry Flatbush for the suite that Morris, may he rest in peace, left her at the Fountainbleu, she called her travel agent to book a trip to Nepal. “But Sadie,” the agent objects, “you always go to Miami! What will a Jewish widow do in Nepal, a mah jong tournament?” “I have my reasons!” says Mrs. Goldberg. “Book me!” Upon arrival Mrs. Goldberg hires a native guide and shows him a map: “I must speak to the Guru at the top of this mountain!” “The Guru!” gasps the guide. “But very few see the Guru. The way is long and dangerous, and even those who survive the snowy peaks may speak only 5 words to the Guru. Why must you go there?” “I have my reasons,” replies Mrs. Goldberg. After many adventurous days, Mrs. Goldberg and her guide arrive exhausted to the mountain. Dismounting their yaks, Mrs. Goldberg announces to the Tibetan monk who greets them: “Tell the Guru I’m coming!” “But, Mrs.,” replies the monk aghast, “No one sees the Guru unless he invites them. And even then they may speak only 5 words. These are sacred protocols!” “Protocols Shmotocols!” sniffs Mrs. Goldberg. “Just tell Bigshot Guru that Sadie Goldberg is here to see him!” The monk dashes off to the Guru and returns in 10 minutes. “Mrs.! The Guru consented to grant you an audience. But you may speak only 5 words.” “Fine,” says Mrs. Goldberg. “Five words.” The monk leads Mrs. Goldberg to the Guru’s abode, pulls aside the silk curtain disclosing the Guru meditating on his mat, surrounded by golden mandalas and clouds of thick incense. The monk whispers: “Mrs.! Now you may speak your five words.” Mrs. Goldberg stamps her foot and shouts: “Sheldon! Enough already! Come home!”

The tale has a grain of truth. I first encountered it in the 60s, when Dr. Richard Alpert changed his name to Baba Ram Dass and made a fortune with his book, Be Here Now! And Alpert was only the tip of the iceberg. On my college campus every second Hare Krishna chanter had endured a suburban bar mitzvah on his spiritual path that led to the drum and saffron robe. A skeleton crew of die-hards may have made a spare Shabbos minyan; but the Sunday bagel brunch was packed with disciples of Maharishi Mahesh Yogi grabbing a quick fix of culinary Judaism on their way to Transcendental Meditation.

At the university where I held my first position, the Buddhist Studies program ran a veritable Buddhist yeshiva. People named Klein, Aronson, and Levinson sat at the feet of the Tibetan monastic philosopher, Geshe Thupten, who was, unlike Sheldon, the genuine Tibetan article.

Since Roger Kamenetz’s best seller, The Jew in the Lotus, Jewish Buddhism has become entrenched on the American Jewish landscape. Once, my lecture on Kabbalah at a shul went head to head with lessons in Buddhist meditation down the hall. And I lost!

Maybe I’m bitter. But the question shrieks out: What is it with American Jews and Asian wisdom!? Actually, it’s all happened before—in pre-WW I Germany; among young German Jews who forsook their parents’ organized Judaism, and sought spiritual nourishment in Eastern religions.

Most think of the German-Jewish philosopher Martin Buber as the aged sage peering out the cover of his book, I and Thou. But he started out as a spiritual Pied Piper among German Jewish youth, lecturing on Zionism and Jewish spirituality. It was for them that he popularized Hasidic wisdom, translating the Tales of Rebbe Nahman of Bratzlav into German in 1906. He saw Zionism as the secular heir of the Jewish spirituality pioneered in Hasidism.

Buber argued that Hasidic spirituality was the Jewish expression of what he called an “Oriental Spirit of Unity”—a spirituality that linked the Jewish soul to Asian religions. Buber thought that transplanted to the dry soil of liberal German Judaism, the Asian roots of Jewish spirituality were seeking waters from the East.

I don’t buy Buber’s “Oriental Jewish Consciousness,” but his insight is relevant today. Like their German predecessors, American Jewish experiments in Asian spirituality are reactions against the suffocating banality of institutionalized Judaism. A Judaism that transforms few souls into servants of the Creator; a Judaism of benign self-absorption almost unaware that Jewish tradition is grounded in commandments, not life-style choices or private insights; a religion of ethnicity devoid of a transcendent moral vision.

Given the shape of organized American Judaism, is it any wonder that the most spiritually alert among our youth drink from foreign streams?

By some miracle American Judaism is experiencing a modest resurgence. Remarkable rates of conversion to Judaism replenish shuls left empty by those whose parents built them. We treasure everyone who finds their way to Jewish soul through Chabad and other redeemers of fallen Jewish sparks. But until our mainstream Rabbis realize that “Shabbats for Tots” are useless without a message that can challenge an adult’s intelligence and life experience—until then, miracles are all we can rely on. And I doubt that, while we’re waiting, Sheldon will pay much attention to Sadie.