Pages in which I made changes:

11-14, 20-21, 49-54

1

Introduction:

There are a number of reasons I am studying the

interaction between Jews and Buddhism in the United States.

One of these reasons is that I was raised in a liberal

Jewish household and began studying and practicing Buddhism

in my teens, only later becoming interested in my Jewish

heritage. My desire to study this subject grew as I found

out that there are other people who have been through

similar experiences.

The other causes of my interest in this subject are

related to this personal motivation, but are more objective.

The disproportionate amount of Jews involved in Buddhism is

a well-documented phenomenon, and there are a number of

questions surrounding this issue, which I feel deserve

attention. One of the primary questions is simply: Why are

there so many Jews practicing Buddhism, and what kind of

explanations can we offer for this phenomenon? Another

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important question is: What are these people’s orientations

towards their Jewishness? It has been my experience that

very few Jews who practice Buddhism completely abandon their

Jewish identity or the Jewish religion. What is the nature

of the complex relationship these people have towards the

religion of their birth?

Even more complex issues arise when looking at the

intermingling of the two religions that Jews are carrying

out in America. Many approaches to religion that could be

accurately described as syncretistic have been developed in

America. One example of this is the so-called “Jewish

meditation movement,” a surge of interest in meditation

techniques amongst Jewish communities. Some of these

communities practice techniques that originate in Buddhism.

Another objective of this thesis is to investigate what

these approaches to religion are.

There is a surprisingly large body of information on

this subject. In the last ten years several books on the

interaction of Judaism and Buddhism has appeared. Jews who

either currently practice Buddhism or have done so in the

3

past have written most of these volumes. Most of these

books are quite personal and idiosyncratic in nature. This

is fitting as no predictable formula on how to be a Jew

practicing Buddhism has been developed. Jews, like other

Westerners who engage in the study and practice of Buddhism,

do so in a very decentralized, individualistic way. Almost

all the books on this subject are essentially

autobiographies of the author’s religious life. Many books

fit under this category, which includes Alan Lew’s One God

Clapping and Sylvia Boorstein’s That’s Funny, You Don’t Look

Buddhist among others.

One exception to this formula is the book The Jew in

the Lotus by Roger Kamenetz. This book is a memoir of the

author’s trip with a group of prominent Jews to Dharamsala,

India, to meet with the Dalai Lama. As such, it is more a

piece of journalism rather than a spiritual memoir. In

addition, it contains a smattering of information about the

religious life of the author and that of his colleagues and

contemporaries. Another exception is the book Letters to a

Buddhist Jew, which is a dialogue between Akiva Tatz, an

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Orthodox Rabbi from South Africa, and David Gottleib, an

American Jew practicing Buddhism. This volume is not a

spiritual autobiography, but is a personal and doctrinal

discussion between the two men.

My goal in this thesis is related to, yet different

from, the existing literature in this field. I am not

providing an in-depth autobiographical account of my own

spiritual journey. I am trying, as best I can, to summarize

and explain the phenomenon of Jews practicing Buddhism. My

work will be similar to The Jew in the Lotus in that it will

be an eclectic exploration of the phenomenon done through

research and interviews. However, my work will differ in a

number of ways. Firstly, The Jew in the Lotus was the book

that sparked the slew of publications on the interaction of

Buddhism and Jews. The vast majority of the available

literature followed this book. Therefore, I have a

significantly larger pool of resources to draw from than did

Kamenetz when he wrote his book. Secondly, my work will be

much more of an academic overview of the issue than The Jew

in the Lotus, as Kamenetz’s book is mostly a memoir of his

5

trip to India. My work, on the other hand, is not centered

around one particular event or experience of the Buddhist-

Jewish interaction, but is a fairly broad overview

incorporating many written sources and a few interviews.

This thesis will not encapsulate the entire phenomenon

of Jews practicing Buddhism worldwide, but will almost

exclusively deal with American Jews. Though the topic of

Jews practicing Buddhism would seem to be a fairly narrow

area of study, there is more than enough literature dealing

solely with the subject of American Jews practicing

Buddhism. Also, there is little literature (at least in

English) on Israeli practitioners of Buddhism, making it

difficult for me to pursue this course of study.

The terminology in this thesis may appear confusing,

mostly due to the words “Jew,” “Jewish,” “Judaism,” “Jewish

Identity,” “Jewishness” “Buddhist,” and “Buddhism” occurring

in close proximity on nearly every page. A quick briefing

on how exactly I am using these words might be in order.

The word “Jew” will be used in the broadest sense possible,

to denote anyone of Jewish ancestry. Thus we have the term

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“Buddhist Jew,” which refers to someone who is Jewish by

ancestry but who practices the religion of Buddhism.

Sometimes, however, the word “Jew” will be used more

narrowly to refer to an adherent of the Jewish religion

(which almost always means that such a person is of Jewish

ancestry). This distinction will usually be clear, as when

the term “Jew” is used in a religious sense, qualifiers such

as “religious,” or “religiously committed” will precede it.

Other times more specific terms, used to demarcate between

various Jewish denominations (Orthodox, Conservative, etc.),

will be used. The term “Jewish” will be used in a similar

way to “Jew” (albeit in an adjectival sense, of course),

sometimes having an ethnic connotation and sometimes a

religious one. Thus, the term “Jewish Buddhist,” will, like

the term “Buddhist Jew,” be used to denote someone who is

ethnically Jewish (and here I am using “ancestry” and

“ethnicity” as close synonyms) but practices the Jewish

religion. When the two terms “Buddhist” and “Jew” are

combined into one term in this manner, I am always referring

to people of Jewish ancestry who began to practice Buddhism,

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and never to people of Buddhist heritage who began to

practice Judaism. The former are the main topic of this

thesis, whereas the latter are virtually non-existent.

“Judaism” will denote the religion, whereas

“Jewishness” will refer to the state or condition of being

Jewish in a broad sense of the word. “Jewish Identity” will

also refer to the state or condition of being Jewish in any

sense, but will usually be used in a more personal sense,

identified with the life of a specific person.

The Buddhist terms are equally ambiguous. “Buddhism”

will be used straightforwardly to denote the religion, in

any and all of its incarnations. More problematic is the

term “Buddhist.” The central issue is that we are not

strictly dealing with people who have formally converted to

Buddhism or who would necessarily label themselves Buddhist.

Due to the wide dissemination in recent history of Buddhism

in the west, and its decidedly noncommittal nature, many

people can be said to be “involved” in Buddhism, or even

“practicing” Buddhism but cannot necessarily be labeled

“Buddhists”. Many of the people delineated in this thesis

8

fall into this category. Therefore, to label them “Buddhist

Jews” or “Jewish Buddhists” would be slightly misleading, as

these people are not necessarily technically Buddhists.

Instead, I have most often used the more accurate, yet

clumsy phrase “Jewish practitioners of Buddhism.” On the

whole, however, due to these difficulties I have not been

entirely consistent with these terms. The general meaning

is clear, even if utter precision is not always possible.

This thesis will have two main sections. The first

chapter will look at what the phenomenon of Jews practicing

Buddhism in America tells us about American Jewish Identity

and American Judaism. Despite the fact that Jewish

practitioners of Buddhism, having “left the fold,” might

seem distant from Jewish identity and from Judaism they

often tell us a great deal about these things. Studying the

various angles of the phenomenon of Jews practicing Buddhism

in America illuminates several pressing issues of American

Jewish Identity and American Judaism. When we look at the

modern occurrence of American Jews practicing Buddhism, we

see that both American Jewish identity and American Judaism

9

are nebulous, flexible and porous things that are extremely

difficult to pin down. My first chapter will discuss how

the occurrence of Jews practicing Buddhism in America shows

us this nebulosity.

In the second chapter I will discuss what this

phenomenon tells us about American Buddhist Identity and

American Buddhism. After reviewing the literature on this

subject and trying to figure out why so many Jews are drawn

to Buddhism, I reached a surprising conclusion: American

Buddhism largely defines itself in opposition to Judaism and

other western religions. All over western Buddhist

literature, including the portion of it authored by or

discussing Jews, we see a superior attitude in which

Buddhism is depicted as having a number of “advantages” over

Judaism and other western religions. Almost invariably,

when a Jew or other Westerner is asked why they practice

Buddhism, their answer comes in the form of a list of

grievances against western religion and a list of the ways

that Buddhism overcomes these problems.

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Finally, I will sum up my findings in a concluding

chapter and then discuss possibilities for further study.

Thank you for embarking on this journey with me.

Chapter 1: Who are America’s Jews? Answers from an Unlikely

Source: Buddhism.

11

Issues in American Jewish Identity: An Overview

In this chapter I will discuss how the phenomenon of

Jews practicing Buddhism is relevant to American Jewish

Identity. In order to discuss this, it is necessary to gain

some background in the issues surrounding American Jewish

Identity.

There is a vast body of literature on the subject of

American Jewish Identity. This thesis will not contain a

comprehensive overview of this body of literature, but will

instead merely cover that which is necessary to frame the

topic at hand. The aspect of Jewish Identity that is most

relevant to this thesis is the interplay between the notions

“Jewishness” and “Judaism.” Let us examine what these

notions meant in Europe, which is the ancestral home of the

vast majority of American Jews.

Jews in pre-modern Europe had very different notions of

Jewish Identity than we have today. Before the Haskalah

(Jewish Enlightenment) and the emancipation of the Jews of

12

Europe (two events that will be examined further on), the

religion of Judaism was not separable from Jewish life in

general. In his book The New Jewish Identity in America,

Stuart E. Rosenburg quotes Mark Zborowski and Elizabeth

Herzog, who address the mindset of the average Eastern

European Jew:

To the man of the Shtetl [Jewish village of Eastern Europe], “Jewishness” is “my way of life,”in which religion, values, social structure, individual behavior are inextricably blended. It means the way of life as a lived among “us,” and “us” means the shtetl. There is no conscious rigidity or purism in this, it is merely taken forgranted. We are “the” Jews, our way of life is “the” Jewishness, and word for it is Yiddishkayt. (Rosenburg 56)

While the above passage refers only to the Jews of pre-

modern Eastern Europe, the same could apply to much of the

pre-modern Jewish world. The primary reason for this notion

of a Jewish Identity that included all aspects of life was

Jewish law, or Halakhah. As Paul Mendes-Flohr and Jehuda

Reinharz write in their The Jew in the Modern World:

13

The ritual practices of traditional Judaism are comprehensive, and, as is often said, they involve the whole life of the Jew. These practices are supported by unique customs, language, memories, hopes and, until the modern period, legal autonomy. Jewry thus enjoyed a distinctive way of life. Theologically, the divine authority sanctioning this way of life was derived from the Oral Torah (Torah shebeal peh) givento Moses along with the written Torah. The Oral Law provided the hermeneutics to interpret God’s Word, both ritual and juridical, as found in the written Torah and thus served to guide Jewry in its observance of the divine Will in the ever protean situations and circumstances of life. TheOral Law was eventually recorded in the second century C.E. in the Mishnah and then later elaborated upon in the Gemara (Talmud) and in ongoing commentaries: the consensus regarding the norms of Jewish behavior that emerge from the OralLaw and the commentaries is known as the halakhah. Sociologically, the way of life of halakhic Judaism vouchsafed Jewry to an unambiguously distinct, ethnic, indeed national, identity—an identity that was a source of profounddiscomfort to those Jews who sought cultural, social and political integration in the Gentile community in which they lived. (Mendes-Flohr-Reinharz 156)

It is evident from the above two quotes that, in the

pre-modern period, it does not make sense to differentiate

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Jewish religion from culture, ethnicity or nationhood; all

were bound together. Jews were a separate nation living

amongst host nations, with a distinct community that ensured

a separate ethnicity, living a distinct cultural lifestyle,

which was inextricably bound up with their religious beliefs

and practices. It was thus not possible to distinguish

between Jewishness and Judaism during this period.

What changed that allowed for the distinction between

Jewishness and Judaism to develop? The major force behind

this was the Enlightenment in Europe, which spawned two

interrelated movements in the Jewish world: The political

emancipation of much of Western Europe’s Jewry and the

Haskalah (Jewish Enlightenment).

Even without an in-depth examination of Enlightenment

political philosophy and practice, we can discuss the

ramifications it had for the Jews of Europe. Mendes-Flohr

and Reinharz sum up the European emancipation of the Jews:

Emancipation, or at least the promise of emancipation, stimulated a process of acculturation among the Jews. Emancipation

15

implied the breakdown of the Jews’ millennial social and cultural isolation; indeed, this was often the explicit expectation of the Gentile advocates of Jewish emancipation. Traditionally, the adoption of non-Jewish culture was frowned upon by Jews as a dangerous act, necessarily involving, especially in the Christian world, religious apostasy. But the “Gentile” culture sponsored by the liberal votaries of the Enlightenment was presumably different. This culture, it was emphasized, was predicated on a resolve to create both a universe of discourse anda structure of social bonds and were open to all persons regardless of class, national origin, or religious affiliation. It was said that for the first time in European history the Jews could participate in non-Jewish culture without the stigma of apostasy. (Ibid. 155)

As is stated above, legal and political emancipation

were intertwined with a process of acculturation to the

values of the Enlightenment. This adoption of Enlightenment

values by Jews was called the Haskalah in Hebrew, roughly

meaning “Intellectualization.” Proponents of this stance

were known as Maskilim. This is essentially what led people to

be able to distinguish between Jewishness and Judaism. The

Haskalah view of Jewish life led people to initially desire

16

to have Judaism without Jewishness, and then later to desire

Jewishness without Judaism.

The increased amount of assimilation to the supposedly

free and open societies of Western Europe made many Jews

want to drop any aspect of their culture that inhibited full

participation in the broader society. This led to a series

of religious reformers who, to various degrees, desired to

make Judaism as externally similar to Christianity as

possible.

The early German Reform Movement is the foremost

example of this strain of Jewish thought. The German

Reformers thought that all ethnic, national, and ritual

elements of Judaism should be excised, and they sought to

make synagogue services more decorous and becoming, like

Christian services. (Ibid. 156-157)

The Positive-historical school of thought and the Neo-

Orthodox school of thought are two examples of less extreme

attempts to make Judaism “adapt to the times.” The

Positive-historical school favored giving some credence to

traditional Halakhah, but conceived of Halakhah “not as law

17

but as an intrinsic part of the people’s evolving historical

experience.” (Ibid. 159) That is, traditional law should

neither be abandoned or strictly followed, but should be

adapted to the times. Neo-orthodoxy (as opposed to ultra-

orthodoxy, which favored extreme differentiation from non-

Jews) opposed any changes to traditional Jewish Law, but

favored changing Jewish practice aesthetically, to fit in

more with the spirit of the times. (Ibid. 159)

One major goal of such reforms was to reinforce the

notion that Jews did not differ from their fellow countrymen

in nationality, only in religion. Thus, any distinctive

nationalistic or cultural elements in Jewish life were

downplayed, and in the case of extreme Reform Judaism,

Judaism was reframed solely as a religious philosophy, without

any national, ethnic, legalistic, or even ritual elements.

Other schools of thought that were influenced by

Enlightenment values, such as the Neo-Orthodoxy and the

Positive-historical school, allowed for adapting Jewish

culture to suit the general culture, but did not do away

with the ethnic, national, legal, and ritual aspects of

18

Judaism (although they did reinterpret some of these aspects

of Judaism in order to fit into the broader culture to a

greater extent). (Ibid. 155-160)

Not only were there attempts to a have Judaism without

Jewishness, but there were also attempts to have Jewishness

without Judaism. Starting in the 19th century, in both

Eastern and Western Europe, Jews under the influence of

European nationalism and romanticism reconceived Jewishness

as primarily a national identity and desired to do away with

religion. This school of thought would go on to become

quite influential in the Zionist movement. The Zionist

thought of Ahad Haam is the principal articulation of this

viewpoint. (Ibid. 529)

Another variety of Jewishness without Judaism arose

that was more distinctive to Eastern Europe. Whereas in

Western Europe in the 18th and 19th centuries secularization

for Jews often meant an abandonment of Jewish culture but a

retaining of some form of religion, in Eastern Europe Jews

often abandoned religion but still lived a “ghetto-style”

existence. They were denied political rights, they

19

associated primarily with other Jews, and they still

participated in Jewish folkways. (Ibid. 530) In this way,

the “secularized” Jews of Western Europe were the opposite

of the “secularized” Jews of Eastern Europe. The former had

Judaism without Jewishness, whereas the latter had

Jewishness without Judaism. These two groups ultimately

formed the major body of American Jewish immigrants.

Aside from negligible numbers of Dutch and Portuguese

Jewish immigrants who were present in North America from

early colonial days, the first major wave of Jewish

immigration to the United States came from middle and upper-

class German Jews. Most of these Jews were proponents of

the various Enlightenment-influenced Jewish denominations

that were becoming popular in Germany at the time. In

general, they favored the same approach that they had taken

in Germany: assimilation into the general culture while

differentiating themselves primarily in the area of

religion. (Ibid. 449-450)

The second major wave of Jewish immigration to America

was decidedly different. It consisted mostly of Eastern

20

European Jews, who arrived between 1880 and the outbreak of

World War I in 1914. They were, on the whole, far poorer

than he Jews of German descent. Indeed, they mostly saw the

move to America as a means of gaining prosperity; they

referred to America as a goldene medine (a land of gold) in

Yiddish. They were also far more “ethnic” in nature. That

is, in comparison to the Germans, they were far less

assimilated in their home country, and less intent on

becoming so in America. They also were free of the Jewish

denominationalism of Western European Jews. The Jews of

Eastern Europe did not divide into ideologically disparate

denominations, as did the Jews of Western Europe. In

general, Eastern European Jews varied in their levels of

religiosity, but they did not form separate sects based on

their varying levels of religiosity. Once in America

though, they were influenced by, and eventually assimilated

into the Jewish denominations brought to America by German

Jews. They also, brought with them various secular

ideologies, such as Zionism and Socialism, which influenced

Jewish life in America. (ibid. 450)

21

As mentioned earlier, many Eastern European Jews

desired to go to America for economic reasons. These were

mostly poorer, less religiously educated, less observant

Jews. More religious Jews, who tended to have more social

standing in the Eastern European Jewish community, tended to

be more skeptical about America, which they referred to as a

trefe medinah in Yiddish, an unkosher land. (Kamenetz 21)

Despite these hesitations, some Eastern European Jews with

religious commitments did make the journey to America, and

formed a contingent of Orthodox Jews. These Jews, however,

were not Orthodox in the same sense that Western European

Jews were Orthodox, as there were no liberal denominations

of Judaism in Eastern Europe with which to contrast them.

They were simply traditional Jews for whom a high level of

observance was the norm.

In some ways, the Jewish journey to America was novel.

However, Jews encountered some of the same problems in

America that they have encountered throughout their entire

history. In his book Where are We? The Inner Life of

America’s Jews, Leonard Fein articulates one of the central

22

issues surrounding American Jewish Identity, while

demonstrating how the issue is not unique to American Jewry:

The truth is that the dilemma with which America confronted the Jew—to be “more” Jewish or “less” Jewish, to be more concerned with Jewish continuity or more concerned with American integration, to be more connected to the part or more connected to the whole—was hardly new in the Jewish experience. The Jews are, after all, the tribe that discovered the universal god—but insisted on staying a tribe. Jewish history can easily be read as the story of a people trying (and sometimes succeeding to keep its balance at the unstable place where the particular and the universal intersect. (Fein 8)

While, as Fein notes, the Jewish issue of the

particular versus the universal has been around as long as

Jews themselves, America raised it in a particularly acute

way. Fein continues:

The special quality of the Jewish “American dilemma” as it unfolded over time lay in the ease with which one could here move back and forth frompart to whole, the permeability of America’s social boundaries, the consonance of American symbols and rhetoric with Jewish symbols and

23

rhetoric. In earlier times and places, much of the Jewish concern with boundaries was entirely a theoretical exercise: whatever the Jews might conclude, others would decide just where the boundaries lay and how permeable they might be. In America, the responsibility shifted: the Jews were invited to draw their own boundaries. (Fein 9)

Fein is referring to two interrelated phenomena here.

The latter part of the paragraph refers to the fact that, in

America, being Jewish was a matter of self-definition. In

former times (in fact, in any place other than Western

Europe in the 19th and early 20th centuries), the distinction

between being Jewish and being non-Jewish was made as much

by members of the Jewish community as it was by members of

the non-Jewish community. Guilt over abandoning one’s

heritage was not the only thing barring a Jew from

assimilation. There were equally strong barriers on the non-

Jewish side. In America, however, there was very little in

the way of an outside group defining Jews as Jews.

Remaining Jewish in America was primarily a matter of

internal definition.

24

The former part of the paragraph refers to a complex

phenomenon that Jews encountered in America that made the

issue of Jewish Identity quite fuzzy. Fein refers to “the

ease with which one could here move back and forth from part

to whole, the permeability of America’s social boundaries,

the consonance of American symbols and rhetoric with Jewish

symbols and rhetoric.” In some ways the Jews saw this

phenomenon as a blessing, and in some ways it made Jewish

identity extremely unclear. As mentioned, in America, there

was no one dominant group that kept the Jews separate.

Jews, like many other American sub-groups, were encouraged

to take part in mainstream American rhetoric. One aspect of

this was a general religious sensibility. If one wanted to

define oneself as a Jew religiously, one could

wholeheartedly participate in mainstream American religious

rhetoric without feeling as though one were betraying one’s

roots. As Fein states: “Mean by ‘God’ whatever you choose

to mean when you sing ‘God Bless America,’ when you say, ‘in

God we trust’ or ‘so help me God,’ this one nation, this

25

nation that is about making one out of many, this nation

lives under God, God sheds His light on it.” (Fein 7)

Fein goes on to show how the Holiday of Thanksgiving

was so amenable to the American Jews.

…the most religious of America’s new holidayswas perfectly, exquisitely in tune with the Jewishexperience and the Jewish sensibility. Bless thishouse, O Lord (not O Christ), we pray, for we gather here together, our family, at home, to eat turkey and ask the Lord’s blessing. A new nation invents a new holiday and that holiday is entirelyaccessible to the Jew, as a Jew. And not because the nation sets out to make an inclusive holiday, nor, on the other hand, by accident; instead, because the central metaphors of the nation and ofthe Jew are so kindred. (Fein 7)

Jews could participate fully in American public life.

As Fein states: “Unless you had a pressing need to join,

say, the New York Athletic Club, or to vacation where

neither Jews not dogs were allowed, you could be a complete

American as a Jew.” (Fein 7)

Though this was greeted as utter liberation by many, it

created ambiguity as to what being Jewish really meant, and

ultimately, what it was good for. These problems set the

26

stage for the general drift away from religiosity and

tradition among American Jews, and ultimately, some Jews’

adoption of Buddhism.

What Do the Terms “Jew” and “ Buddhist” Mean?

One thing that the phenomenon of Jews practicing

Buddhism in America reveals is the amorphous and boundary-

crossing nature of American Jewish identity. On a basic

level, just the phrase “Jews practicing Buddhism” raises a

number of issues about American Jewish identity.

In order to delve into this, first we must ask: what do

the terms “Buddhist” and “Jew” mean? The term “Buddhist” is

generally a religious appellation. While a full definition

of the term “religion” is beyond the scope of this thesis,

we can say that a Buddhist is someone who subscribes to the

tenets of and practices some of the characteristic practices

of the religion that has its origin in the historical

personage of Shakyamuni Buddha, who lived in northern India

in the 5th century BCE.

27

The term “Jew,” on the other hand, is much more

complex. It can be a religious appellation just as the term

Buddhist can be a religious appellation. A Jew in this

sense means a follower of Judaism, the religion that,

roughly speaking, has its roots in the Hebrew Scriptures and

the rabbinic tradition that followed it.

However, the term “Jew” can, and usually does, mean

much more than this. There is a vast body of literature

devoted to the topic of Jewish Identity. One thing that the

term “Jew” can denote is a cultural identity. In this sense

of the word “Jew,” we are referring to someone who

identifies as having his or her cultural background in

Jewish culture; for most Americans this means Ashkenazi

Jewish culture, the Jewish culture of most of Europe. One

problem that arises here is that the religion of Judaism and

Jewish culture are extremely interrelated. This is one of

the major topics of discussion in the Jewish Identity

literature. It is not that the elements that define a

cultural Jew are completely different than those that define

a religious Jew; indeed, there is much overlap. The

28

difference is that while a religious Jew in America would

identify with a broad range of elements in Jewish culture,

including religion, a cultural Jew may identify with

elements other than religion, such as language, music, and

food, while perhaps eschewing the religious elements of

Jewish culture.

However, the term “Jew” can be defined in even more

ways then this. There also exists the notion of an “ethnic

Jew.” This refers to someone who is Jewish not by virtue of

their religious practices or beliefs, nor by the elements in

their culture, but simply by their bloodline. Since Jews

stayed in somewhat isolated communities in Europe, there is

such a thing as a distinct Ashkenazi Jewish ethnicity.

There are many Jewish ethnicities that developed in various

parts of the world that Jews settled in. Most of these

ethnicities are represented in the American Jewish populace.

However, Ashkenazi Jews are far more numerous in America

than any other Jewish ethnic group, and it is mostly with

them that this thesis deals.

29

Finally, the term “Jew” can be a national appellation.

Jews have their origin in the ancient nation of Israel.

Based on this, some Jews today, both secular and religious,

consider the Jews of the world to be a nation, with a

homeland roughly where ancient Israel stood. Zionism is the

expression of this notion of Jewish identity.

These various ways of defining Jewish identity are not

completely discrete. It is not as if a person would

consider themselves completely under the rubric of one of

the above categories and completely not under the rubric of

the others. In fact, for most Jews, all four of the above

categories have some relevance to their Jewish identity.

However, some might place an emphasis on one or more of the

above categories and de-emphasize other categories. For

example, one might define oneself as culturally and

ethnically Jewish while claiming to not be religiously

Jewish or Zionistic. Or, one might define oneself as a

secular Zionist, thus being culturally, ethnically, and

nationalistically Jewish, but completely unreligious.

However, it is difficult for an individual to completely

30

deny or ignore any of the above categories when defining his

or her Jewish identity. These categories are quite

interrelated and have been throughout all Jewish history.

Therefore, it is difficult for Jews to identify with only

one of them. For example, one may experience one’s Jewish

identity primarily through food. However, most Jewish

cuisine is structured around the Jewish dietary laws, and

many of the dishes are associated with certain holidays.

Therefore in participating in Jewish culture, one would also

be participating, perhaps unknowingly and in a small degree,

in Jewish religion.

Is a Jew who Practices Buddhism Still a Jew?

The above shows how the term “Buddhist” and the term

“Jew” are not parallel terms. While “Buddhist” denotes a

religious identity, “Jew” can denote a whole range of

identities. Thus, the phenomenon of Jews practicing

Buddhism is not so simple a matter as the members of one

religion converting to another religion, since Jewish

31

identity is a much broader category of identity than just

religious identity. This raises a number of questions

surrounding the phenomenon of Jews practicing Buddhism. For

example, we can ask: since Jewish identity is broader than

just religious identity, is a Jew who adopts Buddhism still

a Jew, and in what sense are they a Jew? Also, does the

answer to this question depend on how this person previously

defined their Jewish identity (religiously, ethnically,

culturally, etc.)?

First, let us look at the issue from the perspective of

Jews who have either formally converted to or have at least

some experience of Buddhism. Overall, we find that most of

these people continue to define themselves as Jews in some

sense. The most common form this takes is that while such

people are critical of the Jewish religion and find Buddhism

a better alternative, they continue to identify as a Jew in

an ethnic, cultural, or even tribal sense. Let us look at

some examples. In his book The Jew in the Lotus, Roger

Kamenetz interviews several Jews who have turned towards

Buddhism. In almost every interview, he asks the

32

interviewee whether he or she is still a Jew. Each answer

is unique, but most have certain elements in common. To the

question, “Are you still a Jew?” David Rome, the former

personal secretary for Chogyam Trungpa, the famed teacher of

Tibetan Buddhism in the West, answers:

Judaism is certainly a large part of my identity, as is Buddhism. My practice is as a Buddhist, nota Jew. But it’s almost as if they represent different aspects of oneself. Judaism is my family, my background, and I feel strongly for Jewish history,’ especially the holocaust. ‘Buddhism is more of the spiritual side, the practice, of how do you experience life from moment to moment, how do you work with your mind and with other people…I do feel special as a Jew…at the same time, I don’t think any people are more special than any other people. (Kamenetz 260-261)

We see from this that while David Rome does not

consider himself a Jew in the religious sense, he identifies

himself as a Jew in an ethnic, cultural, and historical

sense. Let us look at other examples. In discussing her

Jewish identity after meeting a group of observant Jews,

33

Thubten Chodron, a Buddhist nun with a Jewish background,

states:

…For me, watching my mind and my reactions, Ifelt I had really come to terms with coming from aJewish background and feeling comfortable with that, not feeling rebellious or hostile, but also knowing very clearly that I am not a Jew. I come from a Jewish background, and I understand these people, I live in a Tibetan culture and I understand them, I live in a Chinese culture and Iunderstand them, but I’m not any of them. (Kamenetz 145)

What we are seeing here is that Chodron considers herself

more distant from her Jewish roots than David Rome. While

both identify as followers of Buddhism, Rome explicitly

characterizes himself as a Jew whereas Chodron describes

herself as “from a Jewish background,” but “not a Jew.” Her

statement is confusing, as both seem to be equally committed

to Buddhism, but Rome calls himself a Jew and Chodron does

not.

What can we make of this? It seems that Chodron is

using the term Jew in a religious sense whereas Rome is

using it in more of a cultural or ethnic sense. The term

34

“Jew” is unavoidably ambiguous. The way people use it often

depends on the context in which they are speaking. Above,

Rome was talking about his Buddhist religious practice, and

then in this context referred to himself as having a Jewish

family background. We can infer from this that he meant it

in an ethnic and religious sense. Chodron’s use of the term

happened in the context of her meeting a group of observant

Jews. In this scenario she referred to herself as “not a

Jew.” Earlier in the same passage she says she is from a

Jewish family background, so there seems to be a blatant

contradiction here. The resolution to this apparent

contradiction is that context is very important in

determining what is being meant by the term “Jew.” Usually,

one can resolve the ambiguity by looking that the “other”

with which the term “Jew” is being contrasted. David Rome

said he was a Buddhist in practice, but still a Jew in a

familial and historical sense. Thubten Chodron said that,

in comparison to the religious Jews she met, she was “from a

Jewish background,” but “not a Jew.” We see here that the

35

meaning of the term Jew changes depending on with what it is

being compared.

Though he is not primarily famous for his religiosity,

Allen Ginsburg might be the world’s most famous Jewish

Buddhist. In Kamenetz’s interviews with him, he is quite

critical of Judaism in a variety of ways. However, he still

defines himself as an ethnic Jew and a “delicatessen

intellectual,” presumably a reference to his roots in the

secular, intellectual Jewish culture of New York. He

states:

“’I haven’t left being a Jew. I’m there. But I don’t feel I left anything because I didn’t have anything to begin with, religiously.’” (Kamenetz 151, 155)

Here is another example of someone who does not

identify religiously at all with being a Jew, yet still

defines his identity as being Jewish. All of these examples

affirm the amorphous way that Jewish identity can be

defined, and how this shows up when Jewish Buddhists try to

define or deny their Jewish identity.

36

There is ambiguity in American Jewish Identity from

another angle, too. What is the Jewish identity of these

people from the standpoint of the religion of Judaism? In

this context, “the religion of Judaism” means “orthodox

Judaism”. While I do not mean to claim that this is the

definitive view of religious Judaism, the standpoint of the

more liberal branches of Judaism is not as relevant for the

point we are trying to discover. The liberal branches tend

to be more inclusive than the orthodox sects, and would

probably, on the whole, not consider a Jew who was involved

with Buddhism to have “left the fold.” The reason for this

is that Jews who affiliate with the more liberal

denominations tend to have a fairly open-ended intellectual

life, and more often than not, Judaism is not their primary

philosophical commitment. Thus, a liberal Jew who has a

philosophical interest or involvement with Buddhism may not

be seen as any more unusual than a Jew who has a strong

commitment to science. Liberal denominations of Judaism

tend to be fairly relaxed when it comes to issues of dogma,

even tolerating some forms of atheism. The orthodox

37

branches of Judaism, are, however, on the whole less

inclusive and less tolerant of what is perceived as outside

influence on the intellectual life of their members.

Jews who convert to other religions have been

traditionally known as heretics and apostates, and have been

excluded from the Jewish community. In this sense, they are

no longer Jews. However, according to traditional Jewish

law, anyone whose mother is Jewish is a Jew, and remains a

Jew for life, regardless of religious observance or

affiliation, Jewish or otherwise. If such a person gave up

their heretical beliefs, they would be welcomed back into

the Jewish community without having to undergo the formal

conversion that a non-Jew would have to undergo (Werblosky-

Wigoder 57, 522). Thus, Jews who convert to Buddhism would

not be considered Jews in one sense, but would be considered

Jews in another sense. In this way, the phenomenon of Jews

practicing Buddhism reveals a deep ambiguity in the question

“Who is a Jew?” even from an orthodox religious perspective.

This not only reveals the nebulous and difficult to define

nature of American Jewish identity in the present day, but

38

also of Jewish identity in general throughout the world

throughout all of history, as there have always been Jews

who have forsaken Judaism in favor of other religions and

philosophies.

Leaving Judaism and then Returning: The Lives of Alan

Lew and Norman Fischer

There are more ways that the phenomenon of Jews

practicing Buddhism reveals the amorphous and boundary-

crossing nature of American Jewish identity. Many American

Jews begin their involvement with Buddhism in their youth.

It is quite common that when these people are young, they

either reject their Jewish identity and the religion of

Judaism, or are completely ignorant of them. Many of these

people, after years of practicing Buddhism, then begin to

return to Judaism to a greater or lesser degree. Some drop

Buddhism entirely and adopt Judaism as their primary

religion, and also feel more connected to other aspects of

Jewish identity. Others, while remaining Buddhist, learn to

39

appreciate the wisdom and beauty of the Jewish religion and

feel more of a connection with other aspects of Jewish

identity. This is another side of the fluidity of American

Jewish identity. A person can be born Jewish, but reject

that identity, and then later accept it.

However, it is not so simple a matter as a rejection of

one’s Jewish identity, and then a return to that same

identity. Usually, a person will have a certain kind of

Jewish identity in his or her youth (usually a middling,

mostly secular type of Jewish identity), and then will

reject that. However, when they do return to Judaism, it is

very rarely to the same type of Jewish identity they grew up

with. It is almost invariably to a more spiritual,

intellectual, traditional, or observant form of Judaism.

Americans Jews are able to shift between various forms of

Judaism in this way.

Alan Lew fits this model quite nicely. His book, One

God Clapping: The Spiritual Path of a Zen Rabbi, gives a

thorough overview of his life. He speaks of his early

childhood:

40

The world I had become part of was completelyJewish. This was Brooklyn in the forties and everyone spoke Yiddish; there were pickle barrels out on the streets and candy stores full of penny candy on every corner. My father’s father, Zayde Isaac, came to our house one day to see me. He was a rabbi, like I am now, and though he may havebeen no older than I am now, he was a little old man. He had thin white hair and a round white face. He was carrying a satchel…He put the satchel on the table. It looked like a doctor’s bag, and I came closer to see what was in it. ‘These are Hebrew letters,’ he said, opening the bag just a little. I peered inside. They were large and beautiful, and they seemed to be moving in rows. I stood back as he took them out.

Zayde Isaac put some raisins in my hand. Theletters seemed to be dancing. “Yes, they are alive,” he said.

This was how I was introduced to the aleph bes, the Hebrew alphabet.

I did not know Zayde Isaac very well; I did not see him very often. He came only one other time to show me the contents of his wonderful satchel. Only years later did I realize-this was not education; it was initiation. (Lew, One God Clapping 6-7)

He gives further examples, showing the interplay

between his ethnic, cultural, social, and national Jewish

identity, and his relationship with God. Speaking of the

41

frequent surgeries that his father had when Alan Lew was a

child, he states:

Each time he went under the knife I was terrified, and I prayed to God to spare him.

I prayed all the time as a child, and I always felt there was some response to my prayers,even when I didn’t get exactly what I prayed for. When it was raining, I would pray that someone would pick me up when I was walking into town, andsomeone usually did, even though sometimes people would pass me by screaming ‘Jewboy!’ out of the windows of their cars. When we went to temple I prayed for girlfriends. These prayers however, were never answered.

But it was in nature that I always had my strongest spiritual feelings. I felt God’s presence in the woods and the swamp. I made a circle of stones in the swamp, and I went there often, alone, to feel the beauty of the universe.

My mother never asked me what I did when I was out in the woods or sitting in the swamp. Shewas too busy raising money for Israel to pay attention to me. I was familiar with God, but I had no idea what Judaism was all about. Outside of Hanukah parties and Pesach [Passover] Seders, there was no Jewish observance in our house. My mother never once lit candles for Shabbat. Jewishritual was scorned, especially by my father. It was discounted as irrational superstition. Nonetheless, when my father got really sick, rabbis appeared in his hospital room. They came to change his name so that if the Angel of Death came asking for Isaiah, it could be truthfully said that there was no one named Isaiah there, only Alter-Isaiah.

42

The morning of my bar mitzvah, while everyonewas dressing up to go to the service, I sat alone in my room playing ‘Somebody Up There Likes Me’ and ‘I Believe’ on my record player. My father had been extremely sick for most of the year, but now he was better. My rabbi had helped me write my bar mitzvah speech about this. This speech said something about a mountain and a lot about the fact that my father had almost died. I felt like a phony later when I read it in front of the congregation. There wasn’t a dry eye in the house.

I delivered this speech after reading a portion from the Torah, as custom demanded. I hadpracticed my Torah portion over and over with my father during the summer up at Cape Cod. My father told me reading Torah was a skill I had to master. He did not tell me that the Torah was divine because it wasn’t, in his opinion.

One day up on the Cape my father took me out in a little sailboat. He had never learned how tosail, but how hard could it be? The wind died andcurrent began to carry us away. My father pulled on the ropes and moved the boom back and forth. We were drifting out to sea. We were never going to see my mother, my brother, my sister, or our dog, Falla, again. The shore disappeared and the sky grew dark. My father tried different things with the ropes. I turned toward the last bit of light in the west and asked God to save us.

A little fishing boat appeared on the Horizon. (Ibid. 16-18)

Lew shares with us his average, even stereotypical,

American Jewish upbringing. His family was strongly Jewish

in a cultural, ethnic, and national sense, which we can see

43

in his mother’s raising money for the then-young state of

Israel. However, his family’s religious observances appear

to be somewhat cursory. They also seem to serve more as

social and cultural functions for members of the ethnically-

defined Jewish community rather than as a form of

spirituality. Lew’s mention of his family’s sparse,

perfunctory observance of religious holidays shows us this.

He even admits to feeling that his own bar mitzvah was

somewhat of a sham. His family fits the model of the

typical American Jewish family in other ways too. While

they participated to a certain degree in Judaism, Lew’s

father openly ridiculed Jewish ritual. This, a modicum of

religious observance coupled with a skeptical view of such

observance, is common in middle-class Jewish families, and

in general among many secular-oriented families of all

backgrounds that still retain some vestige of religious

observance: A modicum of religious observance is coupled

with a mostly skeptical view of such observance. Another

archetypal element in Lew’s family is his grandfather, Zayde

Isaac, a more learned Jew from an older generation, who

44

still bears with him traditional knowledge, even as his

children and children’s children abandon tradition in

exchange for a higher level of assimilation into mainstream

American life.

From observing Lew’s early life, there is no reason to

designate him as other than Jewish, even if we would

classify him as a mostly secular Jew. In college in the

early 1960’s he continued along the predictable path of a

young upper-middle class Jewish boy, joining a Jewish

fraternity at the University of Pennsylvania. Afterwards,

however, his identity began to shift. Even in his

childhood, Lew was quite spiritual-minded, feeling God’s

presence in the woods and praying often. This set the stage

for how he would change during his young adulthood. Lew was

quite active in the cultural movements of the 1960’s and

70’s, and it is mostly during this time that his identity

began to deviate from his secular Jewish roots. During this

section of his autobiography, he makes reference to his

Jewishness, but it is clear that he is moving away from the

culture of his upbringing. During a stint as an unemployed

45

writer trying to get accepted to the University of Iowa’s

writing program, he drives to Miami in order to get some

inspiration for a short story:

To research it, I drove down to Miami myself and got a room at the seediest motel on the strip.The hotel was small and extremely run-down. As I was standing in the hallway trying to get the doorto my room open, one of my old fraternity brothersstepped out of the elevator with his new wife. Hewas there because he had won an all-expenses-paid vacation at this hotel for selling a certain amount of furniture in his family’s furniture business. Most of my fraternity brothers had goneinto their fathers’ businesses. He couldn’t figure out what I was doing there. (Ibid. 37)

We see here that while many of his peers chose to

continue the status quo of middle-class American Jewish

life, Lew was gravitating towards a more bohemian kind of

lifestyle. We see in this not so much a rejection of his

Jewishness per se, but a rejection of the totality of his

upbringing, including his parents’ brand of Jewish identity.

This rejection would take a further step when Lew moved

to Northern California and began to explore the various

Asian religious paths that were becoming popular at that

46

time. Lew was a typically eclectic Northern California

Seeker. He practiced Yoga. (Ibid. 50-51) He once spent a

month living in a tent in the woods, fasting and reading

Thoreau, Jung, Buber, and Yogananda. (Ibid. 57) He

describes how he settled on Zen Buddhism as a spiritual

path:

I looked around the simple, beautiful Buddha hall, at the single flower in a vase, at every onesitting in black robes on black cushions, balancedbetween relaxation and tension. Everything was clean, clear and uncluttered. After having considered a dozen other paths, I had finally found the spiritual discipline that I would follow. A few nights later, I was walking home and saw a mass of people standing in the street, looking up into the sky, their faces filled with innocent wonder. A plastics factory was on fire, and it was filling the sky with gorgeous multicolored flames.

At that moment it really did seem to me that this was where I was supposed to be. I had just gone south, then north, and then south again, until I had come to rest in the geographical center of my journey. I had been circling, zeroing in on the place where I would feel centered, grounded, where I might find myself. (Ibid. 61)

47

Over the next several years, Lew became more and more

serious about his Zen practice. This indicates another

shift in his identity. He went from a sprawling, unfocused

spiritual endeavor to a much more disciplined, narrow Zen

practice. This shows a further distancing from the identity

of his youth and the formation of a new identity. Most

American Jews would know nothing of a rigorous spiritual

discipline like Zen. As mentioned earlier, the intellectual

and spiritual life of most liberal, secular- leaning

American Jews consists of a vast, diverse palette, but

fairly little in the way of rigorous discipline. Alan Lew

was quite a serious Zen practitioner. He practiced zazen

(seated meditation) daily for 10 years, also attended

several sesshins (multi-day silent retreats) and a year-long

intensive practice period at Tassajara monastery in inland

California during this time. He considered himself a

Buddhist and was quite prominent in the Northern California

Zen community, even becoming the director of the Berkeley

Zen Center. Zen essentially became the primary focus of his

life. The sort of identity that is formed with this kind of

48

activity is quite outside of the mainstream of American

Jewish life, and is indeed far from mainstream American life

in general. Though Buddhism is widely known and rising in

popularity in America, it is rare to find a person seriously

committed to a disciplined Buddhist practice. In doing so,

Alan Lew formed a radical new identity for himself.

Furthermore, Zen became the sole focus of his spiritual

life. He was no longer aimlessly eclectic. He was aware of

other religious paths, but decided that Zen was superior to

them. He recounts a difficult time in his life in which he

has a conversation with an influential Hindu teacher named

Michael who was his brother, Jason Lew’s, guru:

He sat in his room playing computer games allday. I had never seen computer games before. He challenged me to play with him, and as he was beating me, he told me that it was his meditation practice that allowed him to win all the time. Hesaid if I did his meditation I would learn to function at a much higher level.

Meanwhile, Steve [Lew’s son] curled up behindthe sofa in Jason’s room and wouldn’t come out. He wouldn’t talk to anyone. “Your son’s soul has been scarred,” Michael told me. “Can’t you see howscrewed up you are? You’re in a dead marriage, your life is a mess, and I don’t know what you’re

49

doing in that zendo. You need to come here and join my ashram. I’m the only one who can help you.”

I could see that Michael was good. He was plucking on all my raw guilt nerves, hitting on all my weak spots--my marriage, my guilt about Steve, my doubts about my Zen practice--all the things I felt most anxious about, but he was beinga little too obvious. Of course, I could see verywell that everything his people did turned to gold. They had beautiful, thriving restaurants and bakeries making money hand over fist. All hisstudents were getting into medical school and law school. I could even accept that there was something about their practice that made them all so effective, and it really didn’t matter if it was just group hypnosis. But my meditation practice, Zen, as I saw it, was not about materialsuccess. It was about existential truth. (Ibid. 92)

Such a level of commitment to a specific eastern

spiritual practice is a radical departure from average

middle-class Jewish American identity. What makes it such a

radical departure is that not only did Lew become interested

in Asian religions in general, as do many people, but he

became devoted to one specific spiritual path.

What can be said of his Jewish identity? He makes

several references to his Jewishness at this time. Having

come from a Jewish family, he was obviously still a Jew in

50

an ethnic, biological sense. Was there more to it than

that? In his autobiography, he reminisces about incidents

during his Zen period in which he is keenly aware of his

Jewishness. Some of these are incidents in which he notices

how many Jews there are practicing Eastern religions in

Northern California. He speaks of his friend, Norman

Fischer inviting him to hear a lecture:

One day he invited me to come with him to theSan Francisco Zen Center to hear a famous JapaneseZen master talk. At least half the people at the Zen Center were Jewish, but the Japanese Zen master, thinking that since he was in America everyone was Christian, based his lecture on a text from the Gospel: ‘Unless ye be as little children you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. (Ibid. 60)

He makes a similar observation when speaking of

mornings at the Berkeley Zen Center:

There was not a huge crowd at 5:00 A.M. We would sit for forty minutes, followed by ten minutes of walking meditation. The second sittingwas at 5:50. There were usually only about four to six people present at any session. Sometimes we would joke about how there weren’t enough for a

51

minyan [a quorum of ten Jews required for certain religious functions in Judaism], realizing most ofus were Jews-Mel [Weitsman], his wife, Liz Horowitz, Norman, another man named Ron Nester, and me. (Ibid 63)

It seems that throughout his career as a Buddhist, Lew

became more and more aware of the extent to which he felt

himself to be Jewish. This reached a head during his year-

long experience at Tassajara monastery:

They asked me to sew my raksu, the garment you wear at lay ordination, but I procrastinated. When we were all supposed to be doing it together,I simply didn’t do it…. I wrote a long monologue in voice of my grandmother, Bubbe Ida, trying to capture her breath. I did everything but sew. Why? I didn’t know. Then one day sitting zazen it was clear. With every stitch of the raksu I was supposed to say, ‘I take refuge in the Buddha.’ It was something we had said after lectures, about once a week, but now, saying it with each stitch, I realized how uncomfortable I had always felt when I said it, and how uncomfortable I felt now, saying it over and over for hours. Saying these words as part of our preparation for ordination as a Buddhist was suddenly very serious. I couldn’t say that I tookrefuge in the Buddha anymore--I couldn’t say it because I was a Jew.

The problem wasn’t that I felt I was betraying God. In fact, when I was sitting in zazen, I often felt more in contact with God than

52

I ever had before. But I felt I was betraying my soul. Mine was a Jewish soul. I was betraying myself.

Zen meditation, which focused on the present moment, had given me a wide, vibrant view of the world. It laid reality bare. It allowed me to overhear the constant arguments going on in my head. Now I heard something else, underneath, after all the veils were drawn back. I confrontedmy essence, and my essence was Jewish. (Ibid. 119-120)

I find this to be a fairly common phenomenon. Many

Jews who have practiced Buddhism find that intensive

meditation practice [which is the primary practice of most

forms of American Buddhism] allows them to discover the

extent that they truly feel themselves to be Jewish. David

Gottleib reports this same phenomenon in the book Letters to

a Buddhist Jew: “Ironically, while I studied Zen

meditation, the gentle pursuit of seeing the truth helped me

see that my true nature is that of a Jew.” [(Gottleib-Tatz

31)]

It is during this period that Lew’s identity began to

change yet again. He began to identify less and less as a

Buddhist. He became disillusioned with Richard Baker, the

Zen master at Tassajara, while concurrently he started

53

feeling that deep down he was a Jew. Thus, he began to

become more interested in his own Jewish identity and in

Judaism. Other events in his life during this time

contributed to this, such as his marriage to a Jewish woman

and the contact with a rabbi that was necessary for his

wedding to occur. However, as stated above, this was not a

reclamation of the secular Jewish identity of his youth.

Due to the fact that Lew was always a spiritually-minded

person, his interest in his Jewishness had a profoundly

spiritual bent to it. Under the tutelage of a rabbi, he

began praying and donning tefillin (phylacteries) daily. He

studied the weekly portion of the Torah and all the relevant

commentaries. Eventually, he decided to move to New York

and attend the rabbinical school of the Jewish Theological

Seminary. The version of Judaism that he adopted put

religion first. This was a far cry from his parents’

Judaism: They seemed to consider religious observance an

afterthought and sometimes even ridiculed it. Indeed, his

father’s hatred of religion was so strong that when Lew was

54

in rabbinical school, his own father taunted him. Lew

recounts:

He never missed an opportunity to explain to me that I was basing my life on a fairy tale. There obviously was no God, and even if there were, He obviously couldn’t care less what people did. (Lew, One God Clapping 170-171)

Lew had distanced himself from the highly secular

Jewish culture of his father during his time in Northern

California. When he began to rediscover his Jewishness, he

did so through the culture he had adopted: the culture of

spiritual seeking. This was a very different sort of Jewish

identity than his father’s.

By cataloguing the identity shifts that occurred in the

life of Alan Lew, we reveal the amorphous nature of American

Jewish identity. In this example, there are two sides to

this amorphousness.

The first is simply that American Jews, throughout the

course of their lives, tend to move towards and away from

their Jewish identity at various times. This refers not

55

only to the amorphous nature of American Jewish identity in

general, but to the flexible nature of the Jewish identity

of individual American Jews throughout their lives.

The second side is that the various kinds of Jewish

identities that Jews adopt can change. We find this in Alan

Lew. He began his life as a mostly secular Jew, and then

later adopted a Jewish identity that was more focused on

spirituality and observance. What we see here is not only

that Jews adopt and drop Jewish identity at various times

throughout their life, but that they also adopt and drop

various kinds of Jewish identity throughout their life. All

this shows the nebulosity of American Jewish identity.

One might ask: Does this one case represent the

phenomenon as a whole? How common is this sort of thing?

While Alan Lew’s case is exceptional, in that he eventually

became a rabbi, his pattern as a whole is not entirely

unusual. Many Jews begin their spiritual life in Buddhism

only to end up, either entirely or partially, in Judaism.

We see a similar story in the life of Norman Fischer.

Norman Fischer is a friend of Alan Lew’s. They met at the

56

University of Iowa’s writer’s workshop in the late 1960’s.

Fischer’s upbringing was similar to Lew’s, although due to

the fact that Fischer has not written a detailed

autobiography like Lew’s, there is less information about

it. We can piece together some bits of the life of Norman

Fischer from his books, and also from the information about

Fischer that Lew recounts in One God Clapping.

Fischer was certainly aware of his Jewish identity

growing up. He recounts in Jerusalem Moonlight: An American

Zen Teacher walks the paths of his ancestors:

From my earliest childhood Jewishness and theweight of meaning it bore was clear to me, and even though I resisted the chumminess of Jews, thesense of clubbiness and superiority I often sensedamong the upper-middle-class Jews my lower-middle-class parents encouraged me to cultivate, I never doubted my own blood membership in the lineage, ashanded down to me personally as it were from the beginning of historical time. (Fischer, Jerusalem Moonlight 7)

Both Jerusalem Moonlight and One God Clapping tell us

about Norman Fischer’s commitment to Judaism early in life.

Alan Lew recounts an episode during his rabbinical studies:

57

JTS required rabbinical students to spend oneyear in Israel, and we decided to go the followingfall. One day, shortly before we left, Norman wasin New York for a visit and decided to come to a minyan at the seminary with me. He had often toldme about the intensely Jewish life he had led as aboy. He had been his rabbi’s favorite and had prayed and studied with him every day. When he was eleven years old he had vowed to himself that he would always remain faithful to Judaism, and, as far as he was concerned, he had never broken that vow. (Lew-One God Clapping 202)

Fischer is apparently referring to the same event when

in Jerusalem Moonlight he talks about “…that time when I was

a boy at Sunday school vowing never to give God up…”

(Fischer, Jerusalem Moonlight 8)

However, in other accounts of Fischer’s childhood, we

find him more critical of Judaism. Sometimes his feelings

towards Judaism seem to be completely contradictory.

Consider the following account from Fischer’s Taking Our

Places: The Buddhist Path to Truly Growing Up, in which he

recounts his childhood search for answers to life’s

problems:

58

Although I now participate in and have great respect for the Jewish tradition in which I was raised, at the time it never occurred to me that religion had any answers for me. Judaism, as I saw it then, was just something Jewish people did as a matter of course. If anything, it seemed only to contribute to the dullness of the adult world. (Fischer, Taking Our Places 18)

Fischer seems to feel a strong, almost unshakable sense

of Jewish identity, but does not necessary feel inspired by

the Jewish religion. This incongruent overlap between

“having a strong sense of Jewish identity” and “a strong

sense of adherence to the Jewish religion” is a major issue

in American Jewish Identity. This is a point of extreme

ambiguity. Judging from the story about the incident in

which he vowed to never give up on God, it seems that some

of Fischer’s spiritual drive was directed at the religion of

Judaism. However, it is unclear whether this vow to his

rabbi was inspired by fervor over a strong sense of personal

Jewish identity, or by fervor over the Jewish religion per

se. From Fischer’s own accounts of his childhood it seems

that he felt his Jewish identity to be ever-present and

real, yet he felt the Jewish religion was not particularly

59

relevant or profound. Therefore, it seems that his vow to

his rabbi to never give up on God or Judaism was more

inspired by his personal sense of Jewish identity rather

than by the Jewish religion itself. This is a point that we

see over and over again in the literature on this topic.

Many Jews seem unable to completely distinguish between

their deeply-felt convictions about their Jewish identity

and a feeling of devotion to the Jewish religion. In a

sense, this can be seen as a holdover from pre-modern

Judaism, an era in which Jewishness and Judaism were far

less divorceable than they are now.

Fischer’s search for answers led him to explore Asian

religions during his young adulthood. Lew and Fischer were

quite similar during this phase of their lives; indeed, they

left Iowa together for Northern California and spent a

considerable amount of time together once there. Fischer

sampled from the spiritual buffet that was available there

at the time, in a similar way to Lew. Lew and Fischer

practiced together, experimenting with Yoga and Zen

meditation. Like Lew, Fischer eventually became focused on

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Zen and rose to a high-ranking position within the San

Francisco Zen Center community, eventually becoming co-abbot

of the main city center. However, after this point, Lew and

Fischer’s paths diverged. While Lew drifted away from

Buddhism, Fischer became more and more involved with it.

Lew recounts: “Norman had been rising in the ranks at Zen

Center. He had gone to Japan to receive transmission. He

was now a Zen master, and I would soon be a rabbi. We were

each other’s path not taken.” (Lew-One God Clapping 203)

Unlike Lew, Fischer never had an “awakening” in which

he felt that his Buddhist commitments were somehow a

betrayal of his Jewish identity. Lew talks about this

difference between Fischer and himself. Even as a Zen

master:

He never missed High Holiday services, and itwas only because of him that I had begun to celebrate Passover seders again. He had never felt alienated from Judaism, and he did not see his involvement with Buddhism as posing a conflictto his Jewish identity. In fact, in a way that was often difficult for me to understand, he saw his Buddhist practice as the fulfillment of his Jewishness. (Lew, One God Clapping 203)

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Lew’s account of Fischer’s relationship with his Jewish

identity shows us the ambiguous relationship between Jewish

identity and Judaism. Judging from Fischer’s statements

about his sentiments towards Judaism, Lew’s statement that

“he never felt alienated from Judaism” seems to be simply

untrue. Lew is probably alluding to the fact that Fischer

never doubted his Jewish identity. This would seem to accord

better with Fischer’s statements about his life. Again,

that Lew refers to Fischer’s feelings of strong Jewish

identity as an allegiance to Judaism shows us that for most

Jews, there is some gray area between these two sentiments.

Fischer’s level of Jewish involvement differed

throughout the various eras of his life, so in some ways we

learn some of the same lessons about the flexibility of

American Jewish identity from him that we learn from the

life of Alan Lew. However, the main lesson we learn from

the life of Norman Fischer about the imprecise nature of

American Jewish identity relates to the lack of a clear

distinction between “a strong sense of Jewish identity” and

“allegiance to the religion of Judaism.” While in theory

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these are two discrete sentiments, in the mental life of

actual Jews, they tend to blur considerably.

Buddhism’s influence on American Judaism

Yet another way that the phenomenon of Jews practicing

Buddhism shows us the fluid nature of American Jewish

identity is in the effect this phenomenon has had on

American Judaism. Due to the way that many Jews tend to

vacillate between Buddhism and Judaism, these two religious

communities are far less isolated than one would imagine.

Buddhism has affected American Judaism to a surprisingly

large degree. In this tendency in American Judaism to

borrow and interact, one can see the flexible nature of

American Judaism.

One way that Buddhism has influenced American Judaism

is that it has caused many Jews to become involved in

Judaism in a way they probably otherwise would not have. We

discussed some elements of this earlier when we looked at

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the life of Alan Lew. He recounts a very telling

conversation between Norman Fischer and himself:

In the fifteen years that Norman and I had been close friends, I had never been in a synagogue with him, and I was shocked when he walked into the minyan and threw on a set of tefillin [phylacteries] as if he’d never missed a day in his life. He picked up a siddur [prayerbook] and began to daven [pray] with a great fluency and passion shukkling [swaying] mightily backward and forward. After the service was over, there was a radiance on his face I had never seen before, not even after a sesshin in Tassajara. ‘Now that I’ve done Zen meditation,’ he said, ‘I could do this for the rest of my life and it would be enough. I wouldn’t have to do anything more. But if I’d never done Zen meditation, I wouldn’t know what this is,’ he said. I knew exactly what he was talking about. I had felt exactly this way so often in my own prayer life, as if Zen meditation had opened me tothe great richness of ordinary Jewish prayer, a richness that was no longer apparent to most Jews.(Lew, One God Clapping 203)

Not only does Buddhist practice awaken some Jews to

their Jewish identity, as we saw with Alan Lew and David

Gottleib, but it often awakens them to the religious

practices of Judaism. Both Alan Lew and Norman Fischer only

really began to take Jewish prayer seriously as a spiritual

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practice after they had both practiced Zen meditation

intensely. This led both of them, in differing degrees,

back to Judaism and Jewish practice. Buddhism not only

influences Judaism in that it often results in Jews taking

up Jewish spiritual practices, but it often influences the

approach that such Jews have towards Jewish spiritual

practices. We find an example in Alan Lew’s account of

prayer.

Real prayer is a fundamental mindfulness activity. The basic thing you’re trying to do is concentrate on the text of the prayer service, butinevitably, your mind is carried off by other thoughts or distractions, and when you become aware that you are distracted, you gently bring your mind back. (Lew, One God Clapping 205)

Lew’s depiction of Jewish prayer is obviously

influenced by his experience with Buddhism. The above

paragraph is quite similar to the instructions for

meditation that Buddhists write. Though Lew is certainly

not the only Jew to recognize this aspect of Jewish prayer,

he definitely emphasizes it more than others, and this is no

doubt due to his experience with Buddhist meditation. He

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speaks more openly about his Buddhist-influenced orientation

towards Judaism:

“Zen, or at least the Zen that I followed, wasn’t a theology…and it certainly wasn’t spiritual consumerism. It didn’t promise great visions or spiritual epiphanies. It was a practice characterized by rigorous discipline, by what we did and how regularly we did it. So perhaps it’s not surprising that when I returned to Judaism, some ten years later, I saw it primarily as practice, a spiritual practice of great depth and integrity-daily prayer, Shabbat, kashrut [the dietary laws] the yearly cycle of holidays-the lineaments of an ancient and disciplined practice.” (Lew, One God Clapping 303)

The influence that Buddhism has had on American

Judaism, or at least Alan Lew’s version of it, is apparent.

While one could write off Alan Lew as a marginal figure in

American Judaism and conclude that Buddhism does not have an

influence on mainstream American Judaism, this would appear

to not be the case. Before his retirement, Lew was the

rabbi of a large, conservative congregation in San

Francisco, so it seems that he was definitely working within

the mainstream of American Judaism.

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There are others who found their way to Judaism through

Buddhism. Professor Nathan Katz is an example. Roger

Kamenetz recounts a conversation with Katz:

He explained that in the seventies he had studied Buddhism with Trungpa at the Naropa Institute and had taken bodhisattva vows, as well as receiving a number of tantric initiations. Yetin the end, Trungpa encouraged Nathan to explore Judaism more deeply. Following his teacher’s advice, he had eventually made his way back to Jewish life and for many years now has been a verycommitted Conservative Jew in his own personal practice. (Kamenetz 141)

Katz’s teacher Trungpa explicitly told him to study the

religion of his birth, Judaism, which eventually led him to

become a practicing Jew. Although this is not an influence

on the content of the Jewish religion per se, it is an

influence on the demographics of American Judaism, in that

some Jews’ experience with Buddhism led them to reaffiliate

with Judaism. Another aspect of the Jewish-Buddhist

phenomenon shows us the flexibility of American Judaism.

There is a tendency among Jews who are heavily involved with

Buddhism to essentially claim that: “Practicing Buddhism

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makes me more of a Jew.” We see that for many Jews,

practicing Buddhism awakens their sense of Jewish identity

and/or an interest in the spiritual practices of Judaism.

For some, this leads to a sense that Buddhism is not the

correct path for them and that the practices of Judaism

would be more satisfying and authentic. Some, however,

continue practicing Buddhism, and furthermore claim that

practicing Buddhism enhances their Jewish identity rather

than diminishes it. Some of this was apparent above when

Lew said that Norman Fischer saw his Buddhist practice as

the fulfillment of his Jewishness. Kamenetz’s conversation

with Isaac Bentwich in shows us more of this:

Friday night I’d met Isaac Bentwich, a twenty-nine-year-old Israeli and a recent graduatefrom the medical school at the University of Beersheva. He insisted that studying and practicing Buddhism ‘does not diminish my Jewishness. I’m much more Jewish than I was before.’…He finds that studying Buddhist practiceshelped him ‘to understand better hidden and dormant parts of my religion. For example, the philosophy of Maimonides is extremely similar to Buddhist philosophy [A reference to the concept of“the middle path.”]. (Kamenetz 139-140)

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This phenomenon of Jews feeling that Buddhist practice

increases their Jewishness shows us the expandable nature of

modern Judaism. Judaism for these people is not so much a

specific religion but a more abstracted universal set of

values or philosophies. This view is not only present in

American Judaism, because Bentwich, an Israeli, is an

adherent of it. It does, however, sound very similar to the

Reform movement of Judaism, which holds that Judaism is

reducible to its universal moral dictums and ethical view of

life and that Jewish ritual and a closed Jewish community

are expendable aspects of Judaism.

It is not only the Jewish practitioners of Buddhism

that consider themselves in tune with Judaism. We also find

that some Jews who practice Judaism see the Jewish Buddhists

the same way. Rabbi Joy Levitt speaks about the issue of

“losing” Jews to Buddhism:

The Jewish problem is not that a few people find Buddhism attractive. The Jewish problem is that most people don’t find anything attractive…Ishe [Jewish Buddhist Alex Berzin] a loss to the Jewish community? Sure. But when you put the

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Jewish commitment in the context of the repair of the world, tikkun olam, he’s participating and lots of others aren’t. (Kamenetz 140-141)

This speaks even more to the expandability of modern

American Judaism. Before the modern era, it would be

difficult to find a practicing Jew who openly approved of a

fellow Jew practicing a foreign religion. But this is

precisely what Rabbi Joy Levitt says. She does not consider

Alex Berzin, a Jewish convert to Buddhism, a traitor to his

people or a failure as a Jew. She considers him a “success”

in that his career as a Buddhist is beneficial to the world.

In fact, she considers him more “successful” than Jews who

nominally remain within the fold of Judaism but are not

particularly spiritually inspired or inspiring. Admittedly,

Levitt is a liberal rabbi and more orthodox Jews might not

share her tolerant, inclusive outlook. Still, we see that

the phenomenon of Jews practicing Buddhism has made the

scope of American Judaism broader in the sense that many

people, both practicing Jews and practicing Buddhists, see a

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Jew who practices Buddhism as being perfectly harmonious

with Judaism.

This phenomenon of Jews practicing Buddhism has led to

other instances in which various aspects of Buddhism have

been brought into the fold of normative Judaism, thus

showing the plasticity of American Judaism.

The foremost example of this is the nascent Jewish

meditation movement. The explosion of interest in Asian

religions, including Buddhism, has led to the practice of

meditation becoming extremely widespread in America. The

so-called Jewish meditation movement is one of the results

of this phenomenon wherein people have attempted to forge a

religious practice that harmonizes Judaism with the

meditation-heavy approach that we find in American Buddhism.

Between June and August of 2007, I researched the topic

of Jewish meditation in San Francisco. I researched the

meditation center known as Makor Or, which means “Source of

Light” in Hebrew. Makor Or was founded by Alan Lew and

Norman Fischer, whom we have encountered already in this

thesis. As stated previously, both have a background in Zen

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meditation. Lew, however, diverged from this path and

became ordained as a rabbi, whereas Fischer continued along

this path and became a Zen master. The two both spend most

of their time in San Francisco, and began collaborating on

combinations of Judaism and Buddhism about twelve years ago.

This collaboration evolved into Makor Or, a meditation

center that involves the practice of zazen in a Jewish

context.

Makor Or used to be located adjacent to San Francisco’s

Congregation Beth Shalom, but, when I visited, the Beth

Shalom building was under construction and Makor Or was

being held in the San Francisco Jewish Community Center.

What is the nature of Makor Or’s combination on Zen and

Judaism? What does this say about the flexibility of

American Judaism? These are the questions I sought to

answer when I visited the center.

I employed several methods in this investigation. In

addition to attending morning meditation at Makor Or, I

attended evening meditation at the San Francisco Zen Center

in order to see the ways in which they were similar and

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different. I also wanted to see to what extent Makor Or was

distinctly Jewish and differed from the Zen Center which

formed the inspiration of its central practice.

The meditation session at Makor Or was less formal than

at the San Francisco Zen Center. Participating in the

meditation session at Makor Or consisted of showing up to an

empty room at the San Francisco JCC, taking a meditation

cushion out of the closet, waiting for Alan Lew to ring a

bell, sitting still for 45 minutes, getting up when Alan Lew

rang a bell again, putting one’s meditation cushion away,

and leaving. The meditation session at the San Francisco

Zen Center was far more formal, organized and regimented

than the one at Makor Or. The San Francisco Zen Center, in

fact, involved the most organized form of Buddhism that I

have, personally, experienced in the United States. There

was a highly ritualized procedure involving lining up,

walking single file into the meditation hall, bowing in

unison, chanting, and dedicating the merit generated by the

service to the deceased members of the Zen Center community

and to benefactors of the Zen Center. In this sense, the

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Zen Center’s meditation service was far more “religious”

than that of Makor Or. The main similarities between Makor

Or and the Zen Center were the use of the bell and the

seated meditation itself. Other than that, Makor Or was a

far more simplified version of a meditation practice. In

fact, Makor Or not only stripped away Buddhist elements from

the practice of zazen. Though it claimed to be a center for

Jewish meditation, there were no expressions of Judaism in

the meditation practice itself, either. It appeared to be

the practice of zazen, only stripped of any reference to

Buddhism, led by a rabbi and held in a Jewish Community

Center.

Interviewing Alan Lew shed more light on the conceptual

underpinnings of Makor Or, and how it relates to Judaism and

to Buddhism. I asked him what role exactly Buddhism played

in Makor Or. He replied that Makor Or’s use of Zen

meditation was simply a matter of borrowing a technique and

that Makor Or was not Buddhism. He said that the primary

practice is Judaism, and that the Zen meditation merely

nurtures this practice of Judaism. Though I did not

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directly experience much, if any, Judaism at all in my time

sitting at Makor Or, the meditation is scheduled so as to

precede morning prayers at the JCC. Alan Lew and Norman

Fischer also host meditation retreats through Makor Or in

which they teach the practice of Shabbat and the study of

Torah. Lew claimed that the practice of zazen deepens these

more traditional Jewish practices. He said that, at first,

he was interested in how the practice of Zen meditation

changed the practice of Judaism. Then after practicing in

this way for a while, he became equally interested in how

Judaism changed the practice of meditation. His claim was

that his meditation center could be said to be practicing

“Jewish meditation” since by practicing Zen meditation in a

Jewish context, the meditation had been changed into

something different than what it is in a Buddhist context.

In both my interview and in his writings, Lew appeals

to Jewish tradition as a justification for incorporating a

“foreign” element into Jewish practice. He makes the very

valid claim that many elements in Judaism that are seen as

central in fact were borrowed from other peoples. He gave

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numerous examples in our interviews. He reminded me that

the Passover Seder is borrowed from the Greek symposium and

that the Talmud finds its inspiration in Greek hermeneutic

argumentation. He also told me that Kabbalah owes much of

its content to Sufism. Even elements as ancient as

sacrifice and the story of Noah’s flood were taken from

other cultures, he claimed. In his book Be Still and Get

Going: A Jewish Meditation Practice for Real Life, he uses a

related argument to justify his use of zazen in Jewish

practice. While quite abstract, it explains many elements

of Judaism that might otherwise seem unjustifiable. (Lew, Be

Still 227)

Lew begins by discussing the rabbinic phenomenon of

imputing religious observance onto biblical characters that

predate the institution of said religious observances. For

example, medieval commentator Rashi tries to explain that

Abraham, who in one passage clearly serves his guests milk

and meat together, actually separated the milk and meat

before serving them to his guests. The problem is the

Torah, in which the basis for the Talmudic prohibition of

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simultaneous consumption of milk and meat appears, wasn’t

given until five hundred years after the time of Abraham.

Yet Rashi superimposes these rabbinic injunctions, which

come centuries upon centuries after Abraham, onto him.

Rashi also ascribes to Abraham the observance of the

rabbinically decreed morning prayers, credits Isaac with the

performance of the afternoon prayers, and Jacob the evening

prayers. All of this is a blatant contradiction of Jewish

history, a Jewish history of which Rashi was well aware. So

what, Lew asks, is the point Rashi is trying to make with

this retrograde projection of rabbinic Judaism onto the

biblical patriarchs?

Lew says that the answer to this conundrum came to him

while he was on his way to a conference on Jewish meditation

at which the following issues were going to be discussed:

What was Jewish meditation? Was there reallya tradition of meditation in Judaism, and if not, was there really anything particularly Jewish about meditation itself?...the answer…came to me in flash. Suddenly I realized that when you trulyentered the great stream of spiritual consciousness from which the Jewish people had been addressing God for the past several thousand

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years, time ceased to flow in only one way. Everypoint in that stream was connected to every other point and partook of it. So that when the rabbis of the Middle Ages began to prescribe the morning prayer service, Abraham, who was in their blood and DNA, but more significantly in this stream with them, also prayed the morning service and hadalways done so. And Issac davened mincha-prayed the prescribed service of the afternoon-because hewas also in the stream with them, and prayed when they prayed. And so on. Time flows in every direction in this great stream. Those who enter it do what those who were already there did, and those who were there from the beginning take on the practices of those who came after them.

So it was, I explained to the conference later that morning in Los Angeles, that when I assumed the lotus position to meditate every day, Abraham also crossed his legs. But only to the degree that I was in the stream; only to the degree that I had given myself over to Jewish spiritual consciousness; only to the degree that Ipracticed it every day…On the deepest level, I explained, this was how meditation became Jewish meditation. (Lew, Be Still 228-229)

Lew’s argument might not seem to be very substantive or

plausible, but it tells us some important things about Makor

Or and about American Judaism in general. It sheds light on

how meditation can become “Jewish.” According to Lew’s way

of thinking, nearly anything can become authentically

Jewish, so long as he who practices it conceives himself to

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be committed to what could be called the Jewish tradition as

a whole, the amorphous yet powerful entity Lew calls “Jewish

spiritual consciousness.” He points out those seemingly

fundamental aspects of Judaism, aspects that everyone today

sees as distinctly, essentially Jewish practices, were in

fact incorporated into the tradition somewhere along the

line and then were retroactively superimposed on the

tradition that preceded it. By pointing this out he

prevents Judaism from becoming too rigid to accept new

practices such as Zen meditation.

What does this teach us about American Judaism? We

certainly learn that it is prone to borrowing from other

traditions. Yet we also learn that it must in the end view

itself as essentially Jewish. However, rather than sticking

to a rigid formula of what can be considered fundamental in

Judaism, American Jews have been quite fluid and creative in

their definitions of what can be considered essential

Judaism.

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Chapter 2: Why Buddhism is the Superior Choice When it

comes to Religious Paths.

The phenomenon of Jews practicing Buddhism not only

reveals things about American Jewish identity and American

Judaism, but also about American Buddhist identity and

American Buddhism. Before delving into the relationship

between Jews and American Buddhism, let us first look at

American Buddhist Identity in general. Rather than being a

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completely distinct field of study, the topic of Jews

practicing Buddhism is more of a sub-topic of the study of

Buddhism in America.

Background on American Buddhism

There are many forms of American Buddhism, and also a

variety of ways that scholars categorize the various forms

of American Buddhism. One is a two-part system: American

Buddhism can be divided into Asian-American Buddhism and

Euro-American Buddhism. The former is also sometimes

described as “Ethnic Buddhism” and the latter is sometimes

known as “White Buddhism.” Not only are the demographics of

each group different, the forms of Buddhism that each

practices is also different. Ethnic Buddhism would fit

under Ernest Troeltsch’s classification of a “church” or a

“sect,” whereas White Buddhism fits more under the rubric of

a “mysticism” or “religious individualism.” (Prebish-Tanaka

169) The difference between these two categories is that a

church or a sect focuses primarily on communal religious

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life: life cycle events, cultural preservation, communal

worship, community gatherings, and so forth. Religious

individualism focuses more on inward belief and experience

and less on outer, communal forms of religious worship and

ritual.

While this two-part classification is useful, it does

not consider the entire spectrum of Buddhist experience in

America. As Jan Natter points out: “How would one classify,

for example, a Chinese American who meditates with a

predominantly Caucasian group, or a Latino adherent of the

Soka Gakkai?” (Ibid. 188) In the first example we see

someone who is Asian, but practices a “white” form of

Buddhism. The second example is someone who is not Asian

(but not quite white) practicing a non-native form of

Buddhism (Soka Gakkai, a Japanese Buddhist sect that

proselytizes to foreigners). However, Soka Gakkai differs

from other non-native forms of Buddhism in that it does not

have the philosophical, meditation-heavy approach of most

non-native forms of Buddhism, but instead resembles a

traditional church or sect, with an emphasis on communal

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worship. So, the distinction between “white” and “ethnic”

Buddhism does not fully describe the actual situation in

America.

There are other ways of dividing up the Buddhist

landscape in America that may be more fitting. One is a

three-part scheme: Buddhism in America can be divided into

“Import,” “Export” and “Baggage.”

Jan Nattier describes this tripartite division of

Buddhism:

Religions—not just Buddhism—travel to new places in three ways: as import, export, and baggage. “Import” in this case refers to what might be described “demand-driven” transmission (to pursue the economic metaphor): here Buddhism is actively sought out by the recipient. The initial familiarity with Buddhism is can come about in a variety of ways—through travel, meetinga visitor from Asia, or (most commonly) through reading—but it is the future convert who takes theinitiative to pursue this topic further. What is distinctive about this category is that, to importa form of Buddhism from Asia successfully, one must have two items in sufficient quantity: money and leisure time. For many people, even buying a book on Buddhism is an undreamed-of luxury; a tripto Japan for several years of Buddhist practice would be out of the question. Once such a group has been founded, it is not surprising that like

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attracts like, and most members of Buddhist groupsin this category are of middle-class background orabove. In addition they are overwhelmingly (though not exclusively) of European ancestry, andtheir religious interests are focused on meditation. This is, in sum, a Buddhism of the privileged, attracting those who have the time, the inclination, and the economic opportunity to devote themselves to strenuous (and sometimes expensive) meditation training. In North America Buddhist groups of this type have a variety of sectarian connections, but most are affiliated with a form of Tibetan Buddhism, Vipassana, or Zen. Because the primary common feature of this group is not its ethnicity or sectarian affiliation but its class background, this type can be described as Elite Buddhism.

“Export” Buddhists, by contrast, have come into contact with Buddhism not through active seeking on their part, but through “selling” by a Buddhist missionary. The group that best fits this profile in North America is the Soka Gakkai, which through active proselytizing in a wide rangeof settings has attracted an ethnically and economically diverse membership. Advertising worldly benefits as well as “spiritual” ones as among the results of Buddhist practice, the Soka Gakkai has appealed to groups for whom the meditative Buddhism of the Elite type has little or no appeal. In every respect, therefore-ethnicity, socioeconomic level, style of practice,and basic concerns—“Export” Buddhism represents a distinct category. Since missionary activity is not only what brought most Buddhists to this group, but is expected as a part of their ongoing practice as well, this category is aptly titled Evangelical Buddhism.

“Baggage” Buddhism, as the name suggests, is the religion of those who came to North America as

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immigrants, but who did not (unlike the missionaries of Evangelical Buddhism) travel for religious reasons. Rather, these are the vast majority of Asian immigrants who came to North America in search of jobs, new opportunities, and a better future for their families, simply bringing their religion along. In a new and oftenhostile environment, religious centers built by recent immigrants serve a number of functions, notonly in transmitting specifically religious ideas and practices but in helping to preserve a sense of cultural identity as well. As a result, Buddhist communities of this type are almost always deliberately mono-ethnic at the outset, though outsiders may eventually be brought in through intermarriage or other means. Because Buddhist associations in this category are definedprimarily by their ethnicity, I have labeled this group Ethnic Buddhism.

Space does not permit a more extended discussion of this typology here, but it is particularly important to note that apparent sectarian identity often masks radical differencesof thought and practice, while great affinities can be observed within each of the above categories even across sectarian and national-origin lines. Thus while “dharma exchanges” are not at al uncommon between Zen and Tibetan Buddhist groups (whose members seem to have a great many attitudes and values in common), some Buddhist organizations that would seem to fall within a single category—for example, the Soto ZenMission in Honolulu and the Diamond Sangha (likewise a Zen group of Japanese lineage) in the same city–have virtually no common features, and indeed many of the members of the two groups seem blissfully unaware of one another’s existence. (Ibid. 189-190)

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This three-part model for describing Buddhism in

America is probably the best categorization available. It

is also important for the specific group of Buddhists we are

studying, those of a Jewish ancestry. Jewish Buddhists fit

squarely into the “Import” or “Elite” category of Buddhism.

The nature of Jews’ relationship with Buddhism is largely

defined by this fact. Most Elite Buddhists, including Jews,

came to Buddhism looking for something extremely different

from the religions they were familiar with. Thus, most do

not practice the type of Buddhism that smacks of a “church”

or a “sect.” Rick Fields speaks about the differences

between Elite and Ethnic Buddhists:

“Even when English is used at ethnic Buddhisttemples, many white Buddhists are reminded of the empty and yet required religious rituals of their childhood, just what they fled from into Buddhism.“It’s just like church” is a common reply when white Buddhists are asked why they don’t have morecontact with their fellow Asian American Buddhists. (Ibid. 203)

Rather, most Elite Buddhists would be proponents of

the oft-repeated phrase, “Buddhism is more of a philosophy

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than a religion.” Indeed, this is how many Jews (and other

Elite Buddhists) treat Buddhism: As a combination of a

philosophy and a self-help therapy. This recasting of

Buddhism as primarily a path leading towards psychological

health is one factor that distinguishes Elite Buddhism from

the other types.

This is particularly evident in the American Vipassana

movement. In short, the American Vipassana movement

extracts the Theravada Buddhist practice of Vipassana

(usually translated as “insight”) meditation from its

traditional context and makes it available to the general

public. In the modern Theravada countries of Southeast

Asia, both monastics and the general public practice

Vipassana meditation, but in a broader context that includes

other aspects of Theravada Buddhism. The American Vipassana

movement is distinguished by its offering of Vipassana

meditation in isolation. Both Southeast Asian and American

Vipassana speak of some kind of “freedom” or “liberation,”

but what each group means by these terms is different. Gil

Fronsdal writes:

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In defining freedom in terms relevant to anyone’s life, the American teachers make virtually no reference to Buddhist doctrines that would be foreign and unacceptable to most Americans. While the practice’s potential for ending one’s involvement with the cycles of rebirth underlies the teachings of Asian teachers,the vipassana teachings in the West are not predicated on the traditional belief of rebirth. Other traditional teachings on realms of existence, merit-making, the four stages of enlightenment, and monastic renunciation are virtually absent as well. Without the traditionalTheravada doctrinal framework and goals motivatingpractice, American vipassana students are given pragmatic and experimental goals. In this light the practice is offered as a form of therapy from which practitioner can benefit in their current lives. (Ibid. 172)

This also has bearing on the phenomenon of Jews

practicing Buddhism. While Jews are involved in not only

Vipassana practice, but in a variety of Buddhist practice

settings, Jewish involvement in American Buddhism almost

nearly always fits this model of secularized, rationalized,

psychologized Buddhism. We shall see more of this in our

discussion of what Jewish interest in Buddhism tells us

about American Buddhism.

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One of the primary things that this phenomenon

demonstrates about American Buddhism and American Buddhist

identity is that American Buddhists largely define

themselves in opposition to western religions such as

Judaism. The reasons that Americans give for their interest

in practicing Buddhism often take the form of complaints

against a western religion followed by claims of Buddhism’s

superiority. Jewish Buddhists frequently complain about

Judaism in this manner.

Universalism vs. Exclusivity

One major advantage that Jews who are involved with

Buddhism see in Buddhism is its universality. This is

especially poignant to people from a Jewish background, and

might also apply to people from a Christian background.

Buddhism, especially in its Western forms, does not make a

distinction analogous to the distinction between Jews and

non-Jews that one might find in Judaism, nor does it make a

hard distinction between Believers and Heretics that one

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might find in a more orthodox Jewish or Christian community.

In reality, many of these schismatic tendencies do in exist

in Buddhism, both in its Eastern and Western forms.

However, many people in the West associate Western religion

primarily with this schismatic mentality, and associate

Buddhism with the idealized, universal version that is

preached in the West. Many see Buddhism, as a supposedly

universally applicable philosophy and practice, superior to

the narrow particularism of Judaism.

Some claim that it would be impossible to extricate

from Judaism its exclusive, particularistic outlook. In an

interview with Kamenetz, Joseph Golstein states:

One reason I don’t feel so connected, and this may be a totally exoteric dimension of Judaism, but I was never comfortable with its nonuniversal aspect. It seemed separatist to me. The whole notion of the chosen people. This is true of all western religions. They are not so much talking about the universal nature of the mind, but rather a belief system. If you believe,you are part of a certain group. If you don’t, you’re outside of that. (Kamenetz 150-151)

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Goldstein is complaining about the religious roots of

Jewish exclusivity, namely, the concept of chosenness. Many

find it difficult to accept Judaism since this notion of

chosenness is so central to the religion as a whole.

However, this is just one facet of the way Jewish Buddhists

find Jewish particularism intolerable. Thubten Chodron, a

Buddhist nun with a Jewish background, complains about

another aspect of Jewish exclusivity:

…There was so much emphasis on Jewish suffering. First our group, then others. The Jews are living well in America. What about the suffering of the blacks, the Mexican Americans? Iwanted to reach past Jewish suffering…I felt very uncomfortable when I got to high school with Jewish paranoia. This whole feeling of unrelatedness to the rest of humanity because you’re Jewish.

I grew up in the time of the Watts riots withblack people saying they wanted equal rights. So were women and Chicanos. That made a lot more sense to me than this Jewish protectorate. I moved into the sphere of social action, taking what I learned about suffering from my Jewish background but going well beyond the narrow Jewishlimit to which it applied. (Kamenetz 136, 151)

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Here Chodron refers to the tendency among some American

Jews to see themselves as threatened by persecution and

assimilation, and their subsequent desire to isolate

themselves. She is not referring so much to the religious

concept of chosenness, but to a paranoid, isolationist

social outlook that some Jews tend to have that she claims

inhibits them from acting compassionately in society as a

whole. This isolationist attitude may have its roots in the

religious doctrine of chosenness, but one also finds it

among Jews that are not religious. David Gottleib makes a

similar complaint to Chodron’s in Letters to a Buddhist Jew

when he states:

Buddhists in the west are compassionate and caring, socially active and humble people. It maybe an over generalization bordering on anti-Semitism, but some Buddhists who are Jews might say that they are turned away from Judaism in no small measure by the way they see Jews living: in self-selected enclaves of, largely, wealth and privilege. (Tatz-Gottleib 161)

Chodron and Gottleib are emphasizing the aspects of

exclusivity that have to do with lack of social conscience

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among many Jews. There are other facets to the exclusivity

that many Jews see in Judaism. Some approach the issue from

a nearly ontological perspective.

In Letters to a Buddhist Jew, David Gottleib takes this

perspective. He claims that Judaism’s focus on Jews as the

chosen people conflicts with Buddhist notions of the

ultimate interrelatedness of all things. In the end, Akiva

Tatz, his correspondent, refutes his argument, but it is

worth noting Gottleib’s complaint due to the sway it holds

over some Jews practicing Buddhism:

Buddhism recognizes and focuses on the interconnectedness of all things and beings. In fact, in meditation one can concretely experience this, and it is extremely liberating. Contrast this with the concept of chosenness, which is a fundamental cause of the Jewish people’s deliberate separation from the rest of society…To be practicing Jew, you really have to believe thatyou are part of a covenant in which you have been selected for a special task or role in life. Thisfundamentally sets you apart, and obstructs you from experiencing the true nature of the Universe.(Tatz-Gottleib 91)

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We saw something similar mentioned earlier in Chodron’s

statement that she didn’t connect with the sentiment that as

a Jew, you were totally unrelated to the rest of humanity.

Gottleib takes this a step further and claims that Jews’

social isolation prevents them from experiencing some kind of

ontologically true interrelatedness.

Zionism

Another association prominent in the minds of modern

Jews is that of Judaism with the State of Israel.

Notwithstanding the small portion of orthodox anti-Zionists,

being an active, passionate, observant Jew is strongly

associated with being pro-Israeli. This drives many Jews

with liberal or universalist leanings away from Judaism.

This association of the religion with a particular nation-

state also makes the religion much more tied to worldly

conflicts. Compare this with Buddhism: if one is a

Buddhist, one is not generally associated with the agenda of

a particular nation. An American can practice the

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Buddhadharma without being expected to be pro-Thai, pro-

Japanese, or anything else (though many do identify with the

cause for Tibet). They also do not antagonize anyone

politically. To a person for whom spirituality is more

important than politics, nationalism, or ethnic pride,

Buddhism may seem more appealing than Judaism.

Zionism is a favorite target among the Jewish

Buddhists. Allen Ginsburg said he agreed with the former

United Nations resolution stating that Zionism is racism.

(Kamenetz 151) David Gottleib complains that Zionism is a

result of Jews clinging too strongly to specific forms of

identity (something that a Buddhist would supposedly not

do), and challenges Akiva Tatz to show him “a country torn

apart by Buddhist strife.” (Tatz-Gottleib 17)

In these complaints against Zionism, we see not only

that Jewish Buddhists feel that Jewish particularism leads

to Jews that are indifferent to broader social issues, but

that Jewish particularism, primarily in the form of Zionism,

actively inflicts suffering in the world. Thubten Pemo

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proclaims Buddhism’s superiority in this area over Judaism

in this way:

Buddhism includes all living beings. Any person can come to my teacher. He has compassion for all of them. In Judaism, I’ll help you because you are the same as me. As long as we have a discriminating mind, we are going to harm each other. (Kamenetz 140)

Buddhist Ecumenicism

There are other areas in which Jewish Buddhists affirm

the superiority of Buddhism over Judaism. One example is

the ecumenical, tolerant nature of American Buddhism.

American Buddhism, because it is so new and relatively

unorganized, tends to be fairly ecumenical, tolerant, and

non-parochial. It is not very established in America and

therefore does not have the power and organization that more

longstanding American religions have. Being so new and not

having fallen into a predictable, expectable routine,

American Buddhism tends to have a relaxed, easygoing,

flexible manner. Indeed, American Buddhism has many of its

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roots in various American counter-cultural movements that

espoused such an attitude towards life, so it is not

surprising that many American Buddhists epitomize such a

temperament. American Buddhism’s way of relating to other

religious traditions reflects this sensibility, and many

Jews see this as a major point of appeal of Buddhism. This

is evident in the way that American Buddhist leaders relate

to other religious traditions.

Many, if not most, of the major American Buddhist

teachers of Jewish ancestry participate in Judaism in some

way. This, in itself, speaks to the ecumenical, tolerant

nature of American Buddhism. In comparison to the number of

Jewish Buddhists that are involved with Judaism, far fewer

religious Jews are involved with religions other than

Judaism. This seems to indicate that there is a certain

ecumenicity that is widespread in American Buddhism.

This is not to say, however, that Buddhism as a whole

is more tolerant than Judaism or other western religions.

There are specific reasons that American Buddhism emphasizes

tolerance more strongly than most Asian forms of Buddhism.

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One, mentioned above, is the cultural milieu in which

American Buddhism arose. Another is simply the fact that

Buddhism is such a recent addition to the American religious

landscape. American Buddhists of Jewish ancestry (and many

American Buddhists of Christian ancestry, for that matter)

are involved with these Western religions not because of the

inherent tolerance of Buddhism, but rather because they must

explore these Western religions in order to grapple with

their own identities and the identities of those around

them. Buddhism in America is far too new for a deep sense

of American Buddhist identity to have developed. Non-Asian

American Buddhists are still deeply rooted in Western

civilization, including religion, and this is part of the

reason so many of them wrestle with or continue to

participate in the religion of their upbringing.

Buddhism’s status as a minority religion in America

also influences American Buddhism’s unique ecumenicity.

Buddhism, unlike American religions with more adherents,

cannot afford to take for granted that people will respect

its authority or veracity. Therefore, its ecumenical nature

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is partly due to the simple need to accommodate to the

existing religious milieu in the United States. Despite the

fact that American Buddhism in particular, and not Buddhism

as a whole, exhibits such tolerance, this tolerance appears

as a major advantage of Buddhism over Western religions such

as Judiasm.

David Rome reflects on this difference between Buddhism

and Western Religions:

…Buddhism, being non-theistic and nondogmatic, manages to avoid a whole huge realm of problems of who’s better than who, and who’s got the truth and who doesn’t have the truth, and all of those kind of issues. Jews on the whole dobetter than Christians in that regard, but there’sstill a fair amount of that in Judaism. And so inthat sense the Buddhist sensibility is more ecumenical, more universal. That’s precisely the appeal to Westerners. They’re not just willing togo along any more with anybody who says, I am the best, I’ve got the answers. (Kamenetz 258)

Lack of Dogma

David Rome touches not only on the way that westerners

see Buddhism’s universalism as appealing, but another major

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appeal as well: nondogmatism. This is one of the most

alluring features of Buddhism to Westerners such as American

Jews.

Buddhism is often explained in the west as a system

that does not rely on belief of any kind. David Gottleib

explains this component of Buddhism, and complains that

Judaism is unpalatable due to its relatively heavy reliance

on belief:

…If we’re talking here about Buddhism in its sparest and most common Western form--specifically, Soto Zen--then one of its great strengths would be that you don’t have to believe.You experience for yourself. This is what made Shakyamuni Buddha such a revolutionary spiritual leader. He saw belief systems as forms of enslavement, either to political systems or to mirages that inflamed suffering. In Zen, you simply experience. Belief is a kind of smokescreen that obscures reality. (Tatz-Gottleib 15)

The principal object of belief that many Jewish

converts to Buddhism complain about is God. David Gottleib

expresses this point of view in his correspondence with

Rabbi Akiva Tatz:

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Although Zen Buddhism does not deny the existence of a Divine force at work in the Universe, it does not focus on a God who must be obeyed or, more importantly, believed in. Buddhism focuses on what can be experienced, and although many believe they can experience God…can they, really? (Tatz-Gottleib 13)

It seems that many prefer Buddhism due to the way it

circumvents the problems of belief in God that one would

find in Judaism or Christianity. The claim here is that

Buddhism provides all the desirable components of religion-

personal growth, moral guidance, community--without the

central need for belief in God.

The second, related object of belief that many Jewish

Buddhists find contention with is belief in the veracity of

scripture. As mentioned, many find quite appealing the

supposed focus in Buddhism on direct experience rather than

the experience of someone else. Joseph Goldstein tackles

this issue:

A year or two into my [Buddhist] practice I came back to the States and met with the rabbi who

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had bar mitzvahed me. He was very upset that I was leaving the Jewish fold, which is how he saw it. For me the real difference was that insofar as I understood it, the path of Judaism involved following the vision, the law, of someone else’s experience. I used the Old Testament prophets as an example. I told him I was interested in havingthat experience. I wasn’t interested in taking iton faith and trying to live up to it. (Kamenetz 149)

David Gottleib questions the value of Jewish scripture

not only on the basis that it is based on someone else’s

experience, but on the grounds that he believes it to be a

human-written document, as opposed to Akiva Tatz, who

believes it to be divinely authored. While they argue about

the merits of each side of this argument, in the end David

Gottleib points out what many other Buddhists already have,

namely, that Buddhism does not really depend on divine

revelation, but is simply the teaching of the Buddha--

someone who did not claim to be more than a human. (Tatz-

Gottleib 139)

When Hasidic Jew David Blank tried to bring Jewish Zen

Master David Radin back into the Jewish fold, the same issue

was raised. (Kamenetz 271-272) Blank kept trying to

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convince Radin that Judaism contains insights that are as

profound as those found in Zen Buddhism. Radin conceded

that the insights that Blank presented are indeed deep and

profound, and that in many ways they correspond to insights

he experienced during Zen meditation. However, in the end,

Radin rejects Blank’s invitation to study in a Yeshiva. The

reason he gives is that, while much of the wisdom of the two

traditions corresponds, the method of apprehension of the

wisdom differs. Blank was reporting insights that he had

learned from the texts of Jewish masters. During the course

of their conversations, it became clear that Radin had

reached many of the same insights. Only, he reached them

without the study of texts, but rather, from his own

experience in meditation. In Radin’s final refusal to study

in a Hasidic Yeshiva, he says to Blank:

I’m getting it from my Zen meditation. I really haven’t studied these works; I’m getting these insights from my meditation alone….You’re just reporting it from other people. (Kamenetz 272)

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The above complaint about Judaism being too reliant on

the reports of others, as opposed to Buddhism’s reliance

primarily on one’s personal experience, is one heard often

from Jewish converts to Buddhism. Similarly, they complain

about Judaism not being focused enough on personal

spirituality.

Buddhism as a Path rather than a Religion

Americans tend to see Buddhism as primarily a spiritual

path, a sort of personal mysticism, as opposed to a

religious identity that is tied to community or ancestry.

Buddhism is seen in a very individualistic light, as a

method for personal growth and attaining peace of mind.

This is highly appealing to people coming from a Jewish

background. Judaism, in addition to other western

religions, often tends to place a higher importance on

simply keeping people in the fold rather than on any form of

personal spirituality. In many Jewish and Christian

communities, attendance to services and a high level of

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activity in the community are seen as ends in themselves.

American Buddhists, however, tend to view “the spiritual

path” as primary. The underlying ideal behind most forms of

organized American Buddhism is that the organization only

exists to serve the spiritual paths of the individuals. In

American Judaism, it is often the opposite: the individuals

serve to keep the organized religion healthy and vibrant.

Some question the viability of the possibility of there

being a “Jewish path” at all. Roger Kamenetz recalls a

conversation between Conservative Jew Nathan Katz and

Buddhist nun Thubten Chodron (who, we remember, came from a

Jewish background) in which Chodron drills Katz with

questions as to the viability of a Jewish path. He explains

that Judaism, though not normally seen that way, can be

framed as a path that transforms the mind. However, when

she claims that Judaism fails to explain the arising and

cessation of suffering as the Buddha did, Katz concedes

that, yes, Buddhism does indeed address that problem in a

way that Judaism does not. (Kamenetz 142-143)

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David Gottleib also talks about the nearly inherent

spiritual vacuity of Judaism:

The preservation of arcane traditions, and the inability of Judaism to adapt itself to the different times and cultures in which Jews have found themselves can account for a lot of Jewish seeking, and finding, in Buddhism. How can a spiritual tradition, with a close connection to a vibrant, present One God maintain that connection in the mind-numbing tracts of legislation and commentary through which Jews approach their relationship with God?

Many see Judaism as so engulfed in procedure and law that it, and its adherents, are utterly lacking in spiritual identity. A Buddhist almost invariably puts openness and awareness and compassion front and center, and is a spiritually enlivened being. Many Jews seem utterly unconcerned with spiritual life and development, but are still proud to call themselves Jews, and it is the sons and daughters of these people who join other religions, or fall away from all spiritual practice, who intermarry, who lose any connection to Jewish identity. (Tatz-Gottleib 153)

Many who attempt to approach Jewish material find it to

be profoundly unspiritual in nature. The legalistic,

pedantic arguing that makes up much of the Talmud is a turn

off for many spiritually-minded Jews. American Buddhism, on

the other hand, often exudes an attitude of aloofness over

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the trivial, everyday matters that form the substance of

much of the Talmud.

Accessibility

Gottleib here touches on another aspect of Judaism that

many Jews find unappealing: inaccessibility. Though many

Jews long for a closer connection to Judaism, many see

authentic Judaism as primarily characterized by the “mind-

numbing tracts of legislation and commentary” that Gottleib

mentions. Most see this material as highly unapproachable.

The image that most American Jews would have of such

material is that it is inaccessibile to all but the most

learned orthodox rabbi. Again, Gottleib compares Judaism

with Buddhism:

Although Buddhism can get very ornate and very intricate, its basic tenets are extremely simple, and it is therefore not only extremely accessible, it’s also portable…After all, I’m merely cultivating mindfulness, watching my breath, realizing the interconnectedness of all

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things and beings, and striving to recognize and uproot the causes of suffering.

Judaism, on the other hand, is confoundingly inaccessible, and the deeper one tries to go, the denser the thicket of laws, and texts, and beliefs, and practices gets. (Tatz-Gottleib 73)

The “basic tenets” that Gottleib is referring to are

probably ideas like the Four Noble Truths, the doctrine of

no-self, and instructions for basic forms of meditation.

These ideas are widely publicized in American Buddhism; they

are the main reason Americans get involved with Buddhism in

the first place. Jews do not experience Judaism in this

way, reduced to a few essential aphorisms and instructions.

Most of the bearers of the spiritual wisdom of Judaism

are indeed quite different from typical American Jews. To

begin with, most are more religiously committed than the

average American Jew. Most also have mastery of Hebrew,

which is an invaluable tool for studying Jewish texts.

Again, we find a similar arithmetic here as in the

argument over belief in God. The Jewish practitioners of

Buddhism claim that they receive all that they need to from

the Buddhist tradition without having to put as much in.

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For example, they receive all the benefits of a religious

practice without having to believe in God. Similarly, they

receive the benefits of taking part in an ancient and

profound spiritual tradition without having to “put in” as

much effort: learning an ancient language, mastering arcane

texts, and so forth.

This is a theme that reoccurs throughout The Jew in the

Lotus. Religiously committed Jews portrayed in the book are

constantly trying to convince Jewish adherents of Buddhism

that Judaism has just as much deep and profound material in

it as Buddhism does. The Jewish adherents to Buddhism

respond that yes, Judaism may have deep profundities in it,

but communities that study and practice those aspects of

Judaism are either extinct or are hidden in isolated,

xenophobic enclaves. Contrarily, Buddhist profundities are

as close as your closest Barnes and Noble bookshelf and

local meditation class.

Zalman Schacter Salomi was the main exponent of Jewish

mysticism portrayed in The Jew in the Lotus. This mystical

element of Judaism is often thought to be the aspect of

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Judaism that most closely resembles Buddhism. Indeed, many

chapters of the books referenced here are devoted to

exploring these similarities. However, Kabbalah has

historically been relevant to only a small portion of Jews,

and only during certain epochs in history. While the

argument can be made that Judaism can be a valid vessel for

the mystical wisdom that many Jewish adherents of Buddhism

are seeking, finding a teacher or community that can

effectively and authentically impart that wisdom is a

serious challenge to someone who wishes to go that route.

Allen Ginsburg makes this complaint. When Roger

Kamenetz mentions the Kabbalistic doctrine of Ain Sof (which

some have compared to the Buddhist doctrine of sunyata) to

Ginsburg, Ginsburg asks:

“What specific group with a lineage teaches that and has practices that lead to the understanding of that, the absorption of that? Who would be the contemporary teacher representingthat tradition? What’s available for students?” They were questions I could not easily answer…suchteachings have not generally been of easy access--especially compared to the very public

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dissemination of Buddhism in the past twenty years. (Kamenetz 148)

We can see here how many western Buddhists, including

Jews, define their Buddhist identity in opposition to

Buddhism and other western religions.

Conclusion:

In this thesis I have shown what the phenomenon of Jews

practicing Buddhism tells us about American Jewish Identity

and American Buddhist Identity. There were many reasons I

thought that this was a valuable topic. As stated in the

introduction, there were personal reasons for this line of

research. However, those were not the only reasons I chose

to explore these issues. Studying this topic sheds light on

three areas: Jewish Identity/Judaism, Buddhist

Identity/Buddhism, and American Identity.

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We saw how the phenomenon of Jews practicing Buddhism

reveals to us the amorphous, flexible nature of American

Jewish identity. More broadly, this elucidates the nature

of not only American Jewish identity, but also Jewish

identity as a whole. Throughout history, Jews have lived

amongst various host cultures and have interacted with those

cultures in a variety of ways. Jews practicing Buddhism by

way of American culture is one manifestation of this

pattern. One possible option for further research in this

field is to look at similar examples throughout Jewish

history. With modern scholarship, Jews are only now coming

to terms with the fact that their tradition has not been

isolated and “pure” throughout history, but has been

permeable, acquiring aspects of the various cultures it has

interacted with. Looking at the ways in which Buddhism has

affected Judaism might shed light on exchanges that have

happened throughout history in which Jews have borrowed from

surrounding cultures.

The section of this thesis that addresses Buddhism is

also relevant to the study of Jewish history. The second

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chapter of this thesis discusses with the way many Jews find

Buddhism to be far more appealing than Judaism. Buddhism is

only the latest of multitudes of doctrines that have

competed with Judaism throughout history. It would be an

interesting exercise to compare the instance of Buddhism

with other philosophies and religions that have drawn

adherents from Judaism from other epochs in history (the

Hellenistic period, the Middle Ages, and the Enlightenment

are three possible periods that one might investigate).

Seeing if there are any reoccurring reasons that Judaism has

lost adherents throughout history might illuminate some of

the persistent “shortcomings” of Judaism for Jews.

The chapter of this thesis that deals with Buddhism is

also relevant for the study of Buddhist history. Since the

beginning of Buddhism, many different cultures have hosted

the religion. American culture is the latest in a long line

of Buddhist host cultures, and Jews are only the most recent

in a long line of converts to Buddhism. However, there are

myriad reasons that various peoples have converted to

Buddhism in the past. The reasons listed here for some Jews’

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conversion to Buddhism may have some overlap, but also may

have some divergence, with the reasons other peoples have

converted to Buddhism throughout history. It would be an

extremely interesting exercise to compare modern Jews’

attraction to Buddhism with the attraction to Buddhism that

people from other cultures and civilizations have had

throughout history. It would be especially interesting to

compare modern Jews’ attraction to Buddhism with the

attraction Buddhism has held for others from other highly

developed, civilized cultures, such as China. Long-standing

traditions of philosophy and “high” religion are common to

both ancient China and the modern West, but Buddhism was

still able to gain a foothold in both. It would be a

stimulating exercise to compare Buddhism’s impact on these

two cultures, because it would shed light on how exactly

Buddhism enriches a civilization that already has a highly

developed intellectual culture. It would seem that Buddhism

has made some unique contributions to world philosophy,

because it elicits attraction from civilizations that

already have highly developed and long standing

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philosophical traditions. Looking at the nature of

civilized world’s attraction to Buddhism might reveal what

was “lacking” in the philosophical and religious life of

such cultures and what such cultures needed that Buddhism

provided. It might be that the needs of each civilization

were totally unique, or it may be that there are certain

aspects of Buddhism that routinely fill a gap in a culture.

Perhaps most of all, the study of American Jews

practicing Buddhism sheds light on American identity. The

mere fact that such an unusual hybrid such as “Buddhist Jew”

exists tells us a great deal about the formation of American

identity. One thing that it tells us about American culture

is the American penchant for uncompromising self-definition.

Identity construction in America frequently follows this

pattern: One is provided with a palette that includes

elements of all the world’s cultures, and also a blank

canvas on which one can combine them as one pleases. This

allows the individual (which is held in high esteem in

American society) to draw on any influence one desires and

to construct an identity that fits oneself as precisely as

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possible. American Jews, as we have seen here, do not feel

pressured to restrict themselves to one category or another;

they do not feel the need to define themselves strictly as

Jews or strictly as Buddhists. Just the fact that the world

“pigeonhole” has such a negative connotation in our society

reveals much about the American preference for uniquely

personalized identities. The meeting of various cultures in

America is a hackneyed topic, but studying the endless

hybrids and permutations that arise here is fascinating.

Another possibility for further research might be a study of

another American group that has taken on a religion with

which it has not been historically associated.

In the introduction to this thesis we posed a basic

question: Why are there so many Jews practicing Buddhism?

While we have touched on several aspects of this question

throughout this paper, we have not addressed it directly.

The fact that so many Jews are practicing Buddhism is

not explainable by one fact alone. As Ram Dass (a.k.a.

Richard Alpert, Jewish convert to Hinduism) says in The Jew

in the Lotus, “I can give you nine explanations that are

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glib, but I don’t think I can get a hold of it.” (Kamenetz

9)

One element of the explanation relies merely on

demographic data. American Jews have a reputation for

inhabiting the educated, liberal, middle-to-upper-class

segments of society. Since this is the demographic group

that is most involved with Buddhism (at least Elite

Buddhism), it makes sense that Jews would be

disproportionately represented in Buddhist circles.

The above explanation is helpful, but it does not

present any particularly Jewish reason for Jews being

involved in Buddhism, merely an economic or sociological

one. Are there any particularly Jewish reasons for Jews

practicing Buddhism? One possible answer is that, yes, the

intellectual milieu of American Judaism set the stage for

Jews practicing Buddhism. Earlier, we discussed Reform

Judaism’s focus on the universal aspects of Judaism and its

downplaying of the particularistic elements. This author

believes that this stream in Jewish thought, which affects

not only the Reform movement but other movements as well, is

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partially responsible for Jews’ turn towards Buddhism. This

ideology, along with the assimilationist attitude that went

along with it, broadened the Jew in terms of both his

religious outlook and his social opportunities. Jews could

now see that Judaism, as a spiritual and ethical ideology

separable from the supposedly arbitrary traditionalism of

Jewishness, had much in common with other spiritual and

ethical traditions. This view, coupled with social

intermixing between Jews and non-Jews, may have contributed

to exposure to foreign religions like Buddhism and their

eventual adoption.

This begs the question: why would Jews adopt Buddhism

rather than a religion like Christianity or Islam, religions

that have far more in common with Judaism and therefore

might be more doctrinally familiar? The answer is that many

Jews have extremely negative associations with other western

religions such as Christianity and Islam. Though the Jews’

respective relationships with Christianity and Islam are

unique and distinct, a history of violence, doctrinal

controversy and mutual mistrust shapes much of the Jewish

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attitude towards both Christians and Muslims. Kamenetz

recounts a conversation with Moshe Waldocks:

…to Moshe Waldocks, who’d met with the Cardinal of Krakow, there was always baggage in dialogue with Christians, namely the “overhanging history of anti-Semitism and supercessionist theory”—the belief that Christianity had superceded Judaism. “Yes, they’re very kind to Jews now, but it’s hard to forget the past.” (Kamenetz 26)

Due to this background, many Jews have an instinctive

reaction against these religions. Buddhism, on the other

hand, carries with it no negative baggage from the past.

Jews and Buddhists have not been in contact throughout

history; therefore there has been little opportunity for ill

will to develop between the two groups. Jews in America

were able to look at Buddhism with completely fresh eyes,

thus adding to the appeal.

Again, Kamenetz sheds light on this, quoting

Reconstructionist Rabbi Joy Levitt:

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In another conversation, in another car, Rabbi Joy Levitt, also active in interfaith dialogue, used the same metaphor, with a new twist. “We don’t have any baggage with the Buddhists. We can meet them with open arms.” (Kamenetz 26)

Given the overall goodwill that exists between Jews and

Buddhists, we can ask the question: why are there so many

Jews practicing Buddhism, but almost no Buddhists who

convert to Judaism? We made mention of this fact earlier in

this thesis, and this author believes that this issue tells

us something valuable about the interaction between these

two traditions.

The answer to this question lies in an examination of

the differences between modern American culture and the

cultures in which Buddhism is the ancestral religion.

Modern American culture is an extremely fertile ground for

Buddhism to take hold. One major factor is that it seems

that American culture has an orientation towards the new,

exotic, and the rebellious. Americans, both Buddhist and

non-Buddhist, perceive Buddhism to be exotic,

groundbreaking, and iconoclastic, and the Buddhists see

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Buddhism’s innovations as the solution to many problems in

American culture. Early American Buddhist Paul Carus called

the Buddha, “the first radical freethinker.” (Prebish-Tanaka

215)

There is no comparable receptivity for Judaism in

Buddhist cultures. While Christianity has a foothold in

several Asian countries, Judaism, being non-missionary, does

not have any impetus to implant itself in Asian culture.

Judaism is not one of the aspects of Western Civilization

that proven popular in Asia. Asian Buddhists are simply not

at a point in history in which Judaism is appealing.

Therefore, as narcissistic and self-focused as American

Buddhism is, it is rather a reflection of American culture

as such. The phenomenon of American Jews practicing

Buddhism is not an exception, but is rather a natural

progression in Jewish history.

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Bibliography

Books

Boorstein, Sylvia. That’s Funny, You Don’t Look Buddhist: OnBeing a Faithful Jew and a Passionate Buddhist. New York: HarperCollins; 1997

Fein, Leonard. Where are We? The Inner Life of America’s Jews. New York: Harper and Row Publishers; 1988

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Fischer, Norman. Jerusalem Moonlight: An American Zen teacher walks the path of his ancestors. San Francisco: Clear Glass Press; 1995

Fischer, Norman. Taking Our Places: The Buddhist Path to Truly Growing up. New York: HarperCollins, 2003.

Kamenetz, Rodger. The Jew in the Lotus. New York: HarperCollins, 1994.

Lew, Alan. One God Clapping: The Spiritual Path of a Zen Rabbi. Woodstock, VT: Jewish Lights, 2001.

Lew, Alan. Be Still and Get Going: A Jewish Meditation Practice for Real Life. New York: Little, Brown, and Company, 2005.

Mendes-Flohr, Paul and Reinharz Jehuda. The Jew in the Modern World. New York and Oxford; Oxford University Press; 1995

Tatz, Akiva and David Gottleib. Letters to a Buddhist Jew. Southfield, MI: Targum Press, 2004.

Werblowsky. R.J. and Wigoder, Geoffry. The Oxford Dictionaryof the Jewish Religion.  New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press; 1997 

Prebish, Charles S. and Tanaka, Kenneth K., ed. The Faces ofBuddhism in America. Berkeley and Los Angeles, California: University of California Press; 1998.

Rosenburg, Stuart E. The New Jewish Identity in America. NewYork: Hippocrene Books: 1984

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Websites

Lama Surya Das. “The Jew and the Lotus: Tibet and Jerusalem

Meet in America-Ten Reasons for the Burgeoning Jewish-

Buddhist Movement in America Today. ” Weekly Words of Wisdom

Chosen by Lama Surya Das for Dzogchen Center. 2000.

Dzogchen Foundation. 25 Sept. 2007. <

http://www.dzogchen.org/teachings/www/20001112.htm>

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