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Stalking Elijah: Adventures with Today's Jewish Mystical Masters
Rodger Kamenetz, HarperCollins.
Review
Jewish spirituality is "in", no doubt about that. Local bookstores
are filled with quick-and-easy spirituality guides as well as
serious explorations of Jewish spirituality. Stalking Elijah is Rodger Kamentez's attempt to synthesize his own spiritual
journey since his fateful trip to see the Dalai Lama in Dharamsala.
That trip resulted in his book The Jew in the Lotus in which he presented -- for many for the first time -- the spiritual
wanderings of Jewish Buddhists, and what being among them taught
him as a Jew struggling to reconnect with his Judaism.
In Stalking Elijah he is already a more comfortable Jew. Rather than trying to find
his way in, he seems to be trying to find a deeper way in, and
he does so by interviewing what he calls "Today's Jewish mystical
masters." Some of the names were familiar to me, like Rabbi Zalman
Schachter-Shalomi, Rabbi Jonathan Omer-Man, and Rabbi Lynn Gottlieb.
But he has left many "masters" out: Rabbi Lawrence Kushner and
Yitzchak Buxbaum, for example, and one wonders why. Perhaps they
are too associated with "mainstream" movements and Kamenetz seems
almost driven in this book to publicize and glorify the Jewish
Renewal Movement and its rabbis. At some points he seems to aggrandize
these local rabbis whom he finds enlightening as well as his own
spiritual insights gleaned from them, and offers only Jewish Renewal
as the great hope of the Jewish future. At other times he is fair
and points out their humanity and humility as well, and the down
sides of Renewal events he attends.
Kamentez's personal spiritual angst will move many readers to
reconsider their own, and find their spiritual voices. To others,
it may just seem whiny and self-centred. Either way, the book
is well worth reading, and offers a glimpse into the new and unique,
and ever expanding world of Diaspora Jewish mystical yearnings.
Rabbi Elyse Goldstein |
