Ten Questions
I invite you to send me questions on spiritual topics that I might use in my Roadside Assistance for the Spiritual Traveler column for Spirituality and Health magazine. Sometimes the questions are too personal, and of no interest to the magazine. A number of these have been piling up lately, and I thought I would answer some of them here.
- Why did you become a rabbi? Why did you quit?
I became a rabbi because I couldn’t find the Judaism I wanted and decided to create it for myself. I never quit; I shifted from a dues paying congregation to a book buying one.
- Why do you write? When did you want to be a writer? When did you become one?
I write for three reasons: 1) to think through and test my ideas, 2) to expand and maintain my congregation of readers, and 3) for fame and money. The first is satisfying, the second is humbling, and the third is astonishing.
I’ve wanted to be a writer since the seventh grade when I discovered I could make people laugh by writing funny sentences for the week’s vocabulary words. I wrote for both my high school and local Jewish newspapers, and won my first national writing award in eleventh grade. I edited the English language supplement to the Tel Aviv University student newspaper, and published my first article in a professional journal in the late 70’s. I knew I was a writer the day I cashed my first check from Bell Tower/Random House in the 1980’s. Thank you, Toinette Lippe!
- Why do you stay Jewish?
That’s like asking an African American why she stays black. I was born Jewish. If you mean why I continue to study and practice Judaism the answer is that I find Jews and Judaism infinitely fascinating, frustrating, and compelling.
- How do you understand your experiences with the Divine Mother? What was the most important thing She told you?
I believe humans operate on at least five dimensions: physical, emotional, intellectual, archetypal, and spiritual. In the archetypal dimension we encounter figures like the Shaman, the Fool, and the Divine Mother: She who is Chochmah, Shechinah, Matronit, Mishnah, the Virgin Mary, Kali, Kwan Yin, Tao, etc. She is a way I experience the spiritual dimension without the loss of self common to direct fifth dimensional spiritual events.
Her most important teaching to me is, “I will burn away your every idea, hideout, and fear until you are ‘naked and unashamed’ (Genesis 2:25) and awake to the infinite Reality of which all life is a part.” This promise is a work in progress.
- Why don’t you admit to being a rebbe and take students?
Reb Zalman gave me that title, but it really should come from one’s hasidim, ones disciples, rather than one’s Teacher. The reason I don’t take hasidim is that I don’t want to be responsible to or for them. I am not a role model, and I don’t pretend to be.
- What is your greatest regret?
Regret implies things could have played out differently then they did. My sense it is that whatever happens, happens because, given the conditions of the moment, nothing else can happen. I experience real pain over the suffering I’ve caused, but not regret.
- What single piece of advice regarding Judaism would you offer to new rabbis?
We made it up. Make it up better.
- If you survived the apocalypse with only four books, what would they be and why? What if you could only have one?
Besides How to Thrive in the Post Apocalyptic World Without Becoming Mad Max, I would choose the complete Oxford Annotated NRSV Bible—Jewish Scriptures, Apocrypha, and New Testament, the complete works of Shakespeare, the Tao te Ching, and the Constitution of the United States of America. Properly understood (understood the way I understand them) these works could form the foundation of a brilliant, just, and compassionate civilization. If I could only have one it would be How to Thrive in the Post Apocalyptic World Without Becoming Mad Max.
- What is your favorite book of the Jewish Bible? Christian Bible?
I have two from Jewish Scripture: Job and Ecclesiastes. Job because he reveals God/Reality as wild, amoral, and untamable; and Ecclesiastes because he tells us how to live wisely in a wild, amoral, and untamable world.
And two from Christian Scripture: the Gospel of John and the Gospel of Thomas (I know Thomas isn’t in the Canon, but it should be). John because his Jesus shows us what it is to be awake to the nonduality of God/Reality, and Thomas because his Jesus provides us with the koan through which we can awaken ourselves.
- If you were to ask one question of yourself, what would it be?
What’s next?