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Shalom, Uv'racha. Welcome and blessings to you.
I had the great fortune of studying with Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi and participating in the Philadelphia P'nai Or community when Reb Zalman lived in Philadelphia.
Reb Zalman has deeply touched my life as he has touched the lives of many others. Reb Zalman is a godol /
a great one, a tzaddik / a righteous one, a chochom / a wise one, a Rebbe. His legacy bears witness
to his genius. (For more on Reb Zalman's legacy, visit the Reb Zalman legacy project site.)
Some of Reb Zalman's accomplishments:
- He has brought our attention to the significance of Paradigm Shift and its impact, and he has shown us Renewal's
necessity in light of this Shift.
- He has guided us to redefine our Judaism in light of Paradigm Shift so that there remains continuity with the
past.
- He has aligned Jewish observance with present-day understandings of God and connections to God.
- He has helped reestablish our deep appreciation and understanding of Halachah / Jewish
practice through Psycho-Halachah, (i.e., four-worlds halachah; embodied, engaged, ensouled.)
- He has enhanced the effectiveness of prayer and helped us move toward a more meaningful avodah / worship.
The message he brings is strongly needed and powerful. He helps us regain parts of our Yiddishkeit lost
or damaged in the Holocaust.
He restores the hope that we may one day, once again, arrive at a place of becoming a nation of priests,
an am kadosh / holy nation, and a light to the nations, (Ken y'hi ratzon, bimhera v'yameinu /
May it speedily come to pass.)
About Me
As best as I can tell, my ancestors were all practicing Jews before they came to America. But it seems that since
our arrival in America in the early part of the 20th Century, our Jewish observance, by and large, became less and less. We
became secular and non-observant.
In the 1960's, when I was attending cheder / Hebrew school, I came to think that God wanted me to
be a good person, but that God didn't care any more about whether I was observant, because the old ways had become out-moded,
had lost relevance. So I felt that God was with me on this, and the synagogues were lacking. And I bought
into a secular Jewish world view. I was a universalist. I saw Jewish particularism as negative, as a path
to be avoided since it led to chauvinism, and ultimately to racism. At the same time, however, I wasn't really
comfortable with my Jewish ethnicity or religion and I was looking for a path.
I meet Reb Zalman
Having come out of my youth with these questions, I continued my search for answers with a longing to spread
my wings. While I found lots of very helpful things in Philosophy, in Art, in Music and in Literature, I was still without
a solid foundation. I didn't really find a respite from my longing and searching until I met my beloved Rebbe in
1988 and began a new period of study and service.
Reb Zalman was able to show me that I could be a practicing Jew without having to give up root metaphors
which had been developed throughout my life as a secular jew and a non-believer, root metaphors, such as Jung's theory
of the collective unconscious, the idea that human progress, or human evolution equated to intellectual history, that
going from Newton to Einstein, Wagner to Schoenberg, etc., that these changes were on a scale greater than the normal
change from generation to generation, that we were on the level of Paradigm Shift.
He showed me I could grow without having to change the parts that were already inside of me and established. I could
connect to my heritage while retaining my beliefs. I could add on new parts, without leaving behind the old ones.
There are so many treasures in Judaism, and I've now come to dedicating a lot of my time to helping make his teachings
accessible to others. I have learned how to grow my soul; and I have learned how to find support, strength and
inspiration from my Jewish heritage and the gift of Judaism which is to be in the presence of God.
For You
Please take a look at the next tab, called My Reb Zalman projects to get an overview of what I've done for him. It also contains some information about some resources that might be useful
if you are trying to learn more about Reb Zalman and his legacy..
This is a brief sharing with you of my history with Reb Zalman. My hope is that I can give back to
others something of what he has given to me. Blessings to you. Thanks for stopping by.
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