Finding Our Way To Sinai

Rabbi's Notes - June 2000

by Rabbi Margaret Holub

There I was the other day, ordering a big stack of books and tapes from the Breslov Research Institute off their webpage, when I had a little revelation. The Breslov Research Institute, with offices in Mea Shaarim in Jerusalem, and in ultra "black" (as in "-coated") Monsey, New York, promulgates the teachings of Rabbi Nachman of Breslov (aka Bratzlav) and his followers. They're just one of a host of places where you can get wonderful glossy books and study aids from the heart of the traditional world: you could also be checking out the webpage of the Mesorah Publishing Company, which puts out the venerable Artscroll line of traditional texts ("mesorah" means "tradition" in Hebrew) in cheesily illustrated bilingual volumes with great hard-to-find commentaries, or you could be shopping the catalogues of the Jason Aronson Publishing Company, or the folks at Feldheim Publishers or Moznaim Press, who offer previously obscure sources (like my dear Bachya) in paperback. And that's not even to mention the good folks at Jewish Lights in Vermont, with their wonderful catalogue of sources for modern mystics and more.

My little mini-revelation was that even a decade ago, hardly any of this existed. And also a decade ago I would very commonly hear people say, "Well, culturally I'm Jewish, but spiritually I'm Buddhist/Pagan/Taoist/Native American/Trappist..." About five years ago I remember hearing a Jew-by-birth, Buddhist devotee by practice, say ruefully, "Judaism just didn't get me in time..." Not that some of you reading this this very day wouldn't say the same. But I realized while I was making my book order that ten or fifteen years ago, unless you were in pretty rarified enclaves in the traditional Jewish world, the resources for developing a spiritual life as a Jew simply weren't very available.

Not that it's all about books by any means. But I just read the devastating statistic-within-a-statistic that during the holocaust, while a third of the Jewish people was destroyed, eighty percent of the world's Hasidim were killed. And not just the traditional Jews who followed the hasidic teachers were destroyed in these numbers, but large percentages of the ultra-religious world of Europe was wiped out. With all the human suffering that this speaks of, it may seem banal to think about books and their translators, teachers and authors. But a lot of this treasure was lost as well.

And of course in this country the Jews were hit by the multiple waves of post-holocaust trauma and the counterforce of American success, and the generation on this side of the ocean that might once have been interested in publishing a bilingual Bachya was for the most part decidedly distracted.

So when I was growing up on the periphery of a suburban congregation in the sixties, I had never heard of Rabbi Nachman, or of Bachya, or of kabbalah and any of its specific books. I might possibly have heard of Maimonides -- probably of his ladder of tzedaka -- but I certainly didn't hear of the Baal Shem Tov or Rabbi Moshe Chaim Luzzatto, of the Hafetz Hayim or Rav Kook. Even in rabbinical school in the earlier eighties I never studied a one of these writers except Maimonides. The great scholar (and teacher and heart) Martin Buber began his project of collecting hasidic tales back in the 1920's, and some of this was being published in English in the sixties and seventies. Our beloved Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel -- who also bridges, in some measure, the gulf between the Hasidim of Europe and our own times -- was writing at this same time, drawing on his affection for the Kotzker rebbe and others as well as his own great soul. Even these lovely books were often published with scholarly introductions, as though to "legitimize" them in the college classroom -- which is certainly where I saw them first. Not in the synagogue or on the bookshelves of anyone I knew at home.

But even if I did know those names then, to find the sources that I now flip though every day, that have moulded my consciousness in recent years, I would have had to make my way to some orthodox neighborhood to a seller of "sforim." There I would have had to get past the unnerved look when a woman asks to buy a traditional text -- and of course would have had to learn to read unvocalized medieval Hebrew in Rashi script. I remember a few years ago going into such a bookseller's dusty shop -- in Brooklyn, I think -- and asking for a copy of the Ma'avar Yavok, the traditional source for many of the customs (and their kabbalistic underpinnings) observed by our hevra kadisha when we take care of the body of someone who has died. I put on a long-sleeved dress and went to the store. The proprietor wouldn't look at me, and, when he returned from the back with this dusty book, he put it down on the counter without saying a word. I did the same with my money. It had the proverbial "chilling effect." More importantly, even my pretty good rabbinic Hebrew isn't good enough to sit down and read the book. I can labor through a paragraph or two at a time. But I still can't access the kabbalistic underpinnings of the ritual washing. And I'd like to. I hope that one of these hot traditional presses puts out a Maavar Yavok one of these days with English on one side and vocalized Hebrew on the other. Commentaries and illustrations wouldn't be bad either.

Besides missing out on a lot of good Jewish arcana from centuries past, we truly have not had at our fingertips, until recently, the teachings of our own tradition for how to pursue the life of the spirit. So that if you were, like I was, like so many of us were, a spiritually hungry and curious young person, maybe a little bit repulsed by the materialism of contemporary culture, where would you go? You'd go to Thich Nat Hanh, to the various goddess sources that were being unearthed with the women's movement, to Don Juan and his shamanic practices, to the Redwoods Monastery, to the New Age/ Native American amalgam that was being widely practiced in this country. And there you would find great wisdom, moving and beautiful practices. And maybe at some point one of these teachers would say something to you like: "Go home and explore the spiritual riches of your own tradition." And maybe you would contact a rabbi or visit a synagogue or take a class or look at the Judaica section in a bookstore. And what would you have found to guide you?

Maybe you would have stumbled on something that really moved you. Maybe you were one of the lucky folks that Rabbi Hanan Sills found and introduced to "the Joys of Jewishing." Maybe you were part of the Table Mountain seders. Maybe you heard the heavenly voice of Rabbi Shlomo Carlebach of blessed memory or went to a service with the venerable Aquarian Minyan. Maybe you got hold of the very-seventies "do-it-yourself" Jewish Catalogues and made yourself a tallit and tried to davven at home. Or maybe you found other teachers and community and practices around you that you connected with. Lots of us did. I did. Maybe you're even one of those folks who "never lost it." Or conversely maybe even now you have delved into the much greater array of texts and teachers and retreats and camps and renewal centers and kallot and on-line Torah commentaries and "virutal hevruta" and everything else that's around now and they still don't grab you. I think we have to admit that, if we are glad that there are people not born Jewish who are moved to choose Judaism, we must also honor the paths of people born Jewish who are moved to choose another tradition. There's more to it all than good books.

But while I was on the -net, ordering books from the Bratzlavers which will enable us to resurrect a mystical ten-psalm "tikkun" of Rabbi Nachman, which he designed in the seventeenth century as a cure for despair, I realized that even a decade ago these keys would have been a lot harder to find. There's more to it all than good books, yes -- but the Bratzlavers on-line and all the other folks today who are bringing those traditional sources to the New World and new media and new formats really are orchestrating a revelation -- they are assisting our souls in the very mysterious process of finding our way to Sinai. Happy Shavuot!

Copyright 2000 Rabbi Margaret Holub

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