Zen Lady at the Holocaust Dinner

Went to the Holocaust Memorial Foundation of Illinois dinner last night. It was the usual thing, only slightly bigger and more impressive: 1,100 people in attendance (all looking like Jewish country club extras in a Neil Simon play); over $1 million raised; Bill Kurtis interviewing a very old but lucid and funny Walter Cronkite about his memories of seeing concentration camps shortly after liberation, and covering the Nuremburg Trials; and an update on ambitious plans for Chicago's own large Holocaust Museum, for which ground will be broken next year.

The most interesting part of the dinner came, for me, beforehand, during the reception. I'd known for some time that the father of a good friend of mine is married to a woman who has thrown over Judaism for Zen. People keep thrusting copies of my book at her, and telling me I must speak with her, as if the book or I have some magic that could convert her back to having beliefs that will make everyone feel more comfortable. Her husband is among these people. Swirling among the clusters of schmoozers, I suddenly found myself face to face with her.

She is small and fashionable and intense, with bright blue eyes partly obscured by large tortoise-shell frames and feathered, streaked hair.

"We have to talk," she said. "People keep giving me your book. And I really don't want to read it."

"That's OK," I said.

"And I have no intention of going back [to Judaism]", she said.

"That's OK, too," I said.

We discussed our Zen backgrounds and our teachers. I had studied Emptiness; she studies koans. She wanted to know why I had left active Zen practice. I told her that, one morning, a few years ago, seated in meditation at the Zen center I went to, I had this forceful realization that I have a Jewish essence that I needed to acknowledge and explore. I told her, too, that the slow but radical awakening I experienced had showed me the obscuring nature of attachments -- to things, ideas, identities or viewpoints: I cannot be "attached" to Zen because it is "right" and Judaism is "wrong." Zen showed me a stratum of my own reality that beckoned me to dig deeper. Zen is profound and awakening and all those wonderful things. Judaism is part of who I am.

"But," she said, "Judaism is so full of fanciful stories, so glorifying of violence, so rife with delusion."

"On the surface, that's certainly true," I said. "But it doesn't make me any less Jewish. In fact, it challenges me to be more Jewish, because I have to examine those stories and those commandments and those strictures. There's meaning in them for anyone who's Jewish."

"I don't know," she said.

"They're koans," I said. "They're the Jewish version of koans! You don't look at a koan and say, 'this is weird. I don't get it. I give up.' You have to meditate on it. You have to examine it, then let it rest." 

She disagreed. She feels that the Bible virtually requires people to delude themselves, then put peer pressure on others to join in collective delusion. This collective delusion spreads conflagrations of profound misunderstanding that threaten to destroy the world, over and over again.

On the other hand, I said, some of these ideas and stories had been seminal in the creation of political and moral ideals that made modern democracy possible and feasible, that made personal freedoms central -- that, one could even say, made her personal adoption of Zen over Judaism possible (although, back in the day, she probably would have been stoned to death for making such a choice).

But we were digressing. So I also told her that I am not about converting people. I feel like people have different spiritual identities, as unique as their irises or their DNA. You can't tell someone to go restructure their DNA: why would you try to force them to change their spiritual orientation? Deepening spiritual knowledge is one thing. Forcing conversion is something else again.

The dinner itself had the hollow, sonorous, self-congratulatory tone that these enormous endeavors require. But it was also very Jewish in one very positive respect: it looked to the past for lessons and roadmaps about the future. It did not enshrine victimization: it honored the few remaining Holocaust survivors in attendance. It did not dwell on horrors: it focused on the momentous urge for post-Holocaust justice that created Nuremburg, Israel and the UN. And it looked forward to creating a vibrant home for memory -- memory not for memory's sake, but for the sake of educating future generations about the need to vigorously oppose genocide in all its guises and all its locales.

I couldn't stop thinking about the Zen lady. She was there in attendance, because her husband wished her to be, but she had moved beyond what she saw to be another exercise in cultic myth-making. She was beyond us. She had discovered truth. She was free. She was gone.

--T.A.

Comments

[Richard Lawrence Cohen]

"I cannot be 'attached' to Zen because it is 'right' and Judaism is 'wrong.'"

A pregnant sentence. And a consummately Zen sentence. But what if it's wrong? What if it really is right to be attached to what's right?

[david]

Richard: If it is right to be attached to what's right, then I am, as they say in Zen parlance, screwed.

It's the attachment that's a problem: correctness, like all other states, is more fluid than we'd like to think. What's right in one moment or situation may not be in right in others. Even the Buddhist precepts seem phrased in such a way as to permit exceptions in all types of action -- it's causing or perpetuating suffering that can't be allowed. When we get attached, we suffer and we cause others to do so.

It's not wrong to adhere to that. To be attached to it may mean something else -- may be the leading edge of a kind of fascist correctness, I don't really know...

But to pursue what's right is different than being attached to it. What's right is fluid, and so attachment is actually delusional. I guess.

[amba]

Heavy.

[satyaman]

A very good post. I like your responses to the Zen lady--very mature. What is her background? Orthodox?, Conservative?

Its funny that although I agree with much of what she says, her comments still annoy me. I don’t know why. Maybe she is a mirror to my own inner conflict on the issue. Nonetheless, and please correct me if I am off base, it is noteworthy that:

1.her attitude seems indignant and defensive--not the picture of egoless detachment I would expect from a serious Zen practitioner.

2.although her comment “"Judaism is so full of fanciful stories, so glorifying of violence, so rife with delusion." is to some extent true, especially as it is understood in the fundamentalist sector of Judaism; it is also just as true that Judaism is full of chesed, opportunities to refine one’s character, develop selflessness, build a connection to G,d, etc. And these positive aspects are actualized not just at the individual level but in the broader context of family, community and national life. It is also true, as you point out, that if you go deeper the stories are not fanciful, rife with delusion or glorifying of violence. Instead, they are full of rich, profound and subtle depth that capture the essence of the human condition. The problems arise when one views the stories on their literal level.

>>>>She feels that the Bible virtually requires people to delude themselves, then put peer pressure on others to join in collective delusion.>>>

I think this is true of certain fundamentalist conceptions of the bible, but if one considers the original intent of the Bible as an anti Pagan polemic, i.e. something discussed by scholars like Umberto Cassutto- then she would be completely off base. One can still be Orthodox--albeit from the left spectrum of the Modern Orthodox--and still accept Cassutto’s thesis.

[Yehoshua]

Your conversation with the Zen lady is precious. There is so much there.

Its funny that we can be so involved in the 'stuff' of our lives, even at an event inspired by the Holocaust.

[Danny]

Fascinating post. While I obviously think the Zen woman should follow any path she likes, her rationale for moving away from Judaism annoyed me too. If she really left because "Judaism is so full of fanciful stories, so glorifying of violence, so rife with delusion," then I hope she DOES read your book and spend some time with Rabbi Tatz. I'd love to hear his response to that assessment of Judaism (although yours was excellent too!).

[JewishAtheist]

Great blog, I'm definitely going to be reading more. :)

[JewishAtheist]

I'm interested in your idea of Jewish koans. What exactly do you mean by that? It seems that Zen koans are designed to be koans, i.e. designed to stimulate thinking rather than directly pointing towards a truth, while the originators of what you call Jewish koans meant them literally.

[david]

Welcome! And welcome to my blog roll.

To answer your question: I think part of the brilliance of Torah is that it's prismatic: a focused beam of light enters it and comes out in myriad colors, and never the same way twice.

So that "literal" truths contained in Torah always seem -- sometimes even beyond the intent of its human redactors -- to point to other, more central, more elusive truths.

For example,the Binding of Isaac. Literal, historical fact? Just for the sake of argument, let's say yes. But beyond the literal, "factual" event, a coherent world composed of paradox: faithfulness to God, but beyond all reason; the "evolution" from human sacrifice, which has myriad resonances and allusions of its own, toward Oneness with a purposeful and moral Higher Nature; and the incomrehensible, grasped as one, which is so koan-like, so **essentially human,** in the best sense: an ephemeral moment encapsulating an eternal truth; a moment of brutality as the seminal event in a movement back toward our higher nature; the incomprehensible as a signpost toward enlightenment.

To me, the literal "truths" of Jewish history portrayed in Torah all are there because they are pointing us to larger, more difficult truths about ourselves and our existence.

Make any sense at all . . . ?

[Seth Chalmer]

The originators of the Jewish koans meant them literally? That's quite an assumption of intent, JA! And I disagree with it.

They certainly meant them no LESS than literally. But I like A.J. Heschel's insistence that they are (and have always been) more than literal. Higher than literal. More true than we can comprehend.

Also, David, I can't help pointing out that of course you're not about converting people to Judaism. If you were, you'd be in explicit violation of Jewish law, which is clear as day that being Jewish isn't the only path to God.

I, too, love your metaphor of Torah as koans. Would stories about the Hebrew priests be called Kohein koans? Or Kohanim koanim?

[JewishAtheist]

The originators of the Jewish koans meant them literally? That's quite an assumption of intent, JA! And I disagree with it.

You're absolutely right. I misspoke. (Mistyped?) I just spend so much time debating with right-wing Orthodox people, sometimes I forget my own beliefs. :)

David, it sounds like your idea of the Torah being koans could apply to any work of literature. Do you believe that the Torah is uniquely sublime in that respect, or can all great works of art be used as koans in the same way?

[JewishAtheist]

(Oops, that first paragraph was a quote.)