CyberGroup Discussion - Spiritual Innovators

	Each of the ClickToSee websites below opens in a new window. When done, close new window to return to this page.
	"In the Middle East we are living in an experiment that cannot be called off. We ultimately must and will find a way to live in mutual support and harmony with one another. The rest of the world and its future depends on our working it out. It is one of the most critical elements in the current state of evolution of our planet." ... And God Tested the Children of Abraham
	Fear, Courage & Sage-ing. An Interview with Rabbi Zalman M. Schachter-Shalomi. By Mary NurrieStearns. A particularly excellent sample of his wisdom, his current perspectives. It well demonstrates the reason he has been a bridge between Jewish tradition and the modern malaise.
	A 1994 article "Saging - Not Aging - Are you saved yet?" where he advices people to face their mortality and plan accordingly. He is the founder of Spiritual Eldering Institute, which teachs elders how to expand their lives and consciousnesses to meet their extended life span. By "are you saved yet?" he means have you "uploaded your ROM" for others by mentoring and writing.
	The Spiritual Eldering Institute. The term "spiritual eldering", was coined by Reb Zalman to provide a moniker for the potential and process that is open to adults in the context of growing older. It is the path of possibility that lies within the aging process, a pilgrimage of sorts toward finding meaning, purpose and wisdom in our years.
	Don't Leave God Out of It. An Interview with Rabbi Zalman. Schachter-Shalomi. by Amy Edelstei. Subject is sexuality.
	Excerpt from Some Dawn Thoughts on the Shoah by Rabbi Zalman M. Hiyyah Schachter-Shalomi. Two Jewish Holocaust reincarnation cases. first published in Tikkun magazine, Vol 2, #1 (1987)
	Aleph: Alliance for Jewish Renewal is an organization of those who are dedicated to reclaiming the Jewish people's sacred purpose of partnership with the Divine in the inseparable tasks of healing the world (tikkun olam) and healing our hearts (tikkun halev). ALEPH organizes and nurtures communities, develops leadership, creates new liturgy and other resources, and works for social and environmental justice.

Quotations

"There are contemplative tools available from all the mystical traditions that help tremendously with this process. These tools have one thing in common: you work with your spirit, with your inner awareness, with your intuition. There's a certain guidance that people feel comes to them from beyond their own personal selves. ... Spiritual eldering carries with it special opportunities; it means acting as guide, mentor, and agent of healing and reconciliation on behalf of the planet, nation, tribe, clan, and family. We become wisdom keepers." Saging not Aging

"Courage is when you feel that the right action or the thing that you are about to do is more important than the lack of safety you feel in the presence of the threat."

"The contribution people make to planetocide is the worst defamation of God's name there can be. Judaism as a whole faces that challenge. I think of Jews as the white corpuscles of humanity. Wherever there is infection, we go there."

" Renewal is costly. Resisting it can be even more costly. Change and renewal, however must not take place at the expense of Tradition. It is Tradition which provides the traction needed for mobilizing these shifts, and without it, the wheels of change will only be spinning on ice and taking us nowhere."

"The myth that sustained us throughout our Diaspora was that of the return. Now that we have returned and have a sovereign country, we have little to propel us into the future. We are scared--mythless. It will take poets, dreamers, and mystics to reach into a yet unrealized future to dream the next story of our people. Without an active myth, a dynamic transpersonal story, Israel will be bereft of the invisible means of sustenance and support." ... Entering Israel's Second Yovel 1998

Introductory Notes - Jock McTavish

Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi holds the World Wisdom Chair at The Naropa Institute. In 1989 he founded the trans-denominational Spiritual Eldering Institute and is professor emeritus at Temple University. An eminent rabbi and professor, he is a major figure in the Jewish spiritual renewal movement. He is the author of over 150 articles and monographs on Jewish spiritual life and has translated many Hassidic and Kabbalistic texts. His most recent books include Spiritual Intimacy, Gate To the Heart, Spiritual Elder and From Age-ing To Sage-ing.

Reb Zalman is an energy that was introduced to me first in Rodger Kamenetz's "Stalking Elijah - Adventures with Today's Jewish Mystical Masters". This remarkable book came about because Rodger was one of a number of Jews invited to Dharamsala, India in 1990 at the request of the Delai Lama to advise him on the issues of maintaining one's culture and religion while in exile. But in considering the Delai Lama's question, he found his own need to ground himself spiritually. Kamenetz began a pilgrimage of searching for these answers across his own United States, and did in fact return in 1996.

Of course Reb Zalman was also in Dharamsala. So it is interesting that Kramenetz began the search for his own spiritual path there with the counsel of Reb Zalman. The Meditation on the Name of God we considered in the early part of this course was given to Rodger by Reb Zalman at JFK between airplanes on the way home from India. It is an exquisite example of Reb Zalman's work. In this meditation he has embraced a most ancient Jewish tradition, added a broad inter-spiritual mysticism, and created a tool of insight most suitable to the modern soul. Let's take a review of that meditation.

Reb Zalman was born in Poland and as a teenager escaped Holocaust by internment in a French camp. His family came to the US in 1940 and he was ordained a Rabbi in 1947. He was professor and department head of Jewish Studies at the University of Manitoba in the mid 50's. He got into trouble with the orthodox establishment in the '60's because he felt the drug experimentation was a spiritual searching. He was one of a few that realized the Kabbala provided a connection to this modern searching. He found the mystery and practice of Kabbala was alive and well in the ultra-conservative Jewish community of Hassidim.

The Kabbala is a topic simply not able to be made sense of on a first introduction. It is a great complexity and a living mythos whose elements are the deepest sort of archtypes, yet whose entire vocabulary is unfamiliar. To the general modern mind it will appear superstitious and irrelevant. It is neither of these. Respect and understanding begin to grow only after many months. If your interests are to pursue the mystical aspects of the spiritual equation, and further study the light other's have seen, you will want to learn about "sparks of light" and the "10 holy sefirot".

Reb Zalman's new work began then to integrate feminism, ecology, egalitarianism and progressive politics - a mix that became the Jewish Renewal Movement. Kamenetz again:

"Reb Zalman helped inhibited, frozen Jews warm up their hearts. In one powerful exercise, I recited a psalm line by line, back and forth with a partner, addressing the words addressed to God to the You sitting in front of me. The words gained a tremendous presence and depth they'd never found for me in a group recitation. By the end of the psalm, our eyes were brimming with tears."

The themes of the 75 Innovators are most well represented by Zalman Schachter-Shalomi. Let's close with his words on revelation and tradition.

"Trying to give finite form to the Revelation of the Infinite is dangerous. You can't drive forward while looking through the rear-view mirror. The Revelation of Torah, for example, has no one single finite form. The Revelation might remain the same, but the form which mortals give it changes. Tradition, therefore, is a marker we leave behind us in previous life cycles so that when we come back we have some notion of where we left off. We need to look at tradition, therefore, not as a relic of the past but as a catalyst for the future."

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