Some Notes and a Summary of Rabbi James Jacobson-Maisels “Non-dual Judaism” PART TWO

Rabbi James Jacobson Maisels would like us to cherish “our present existence as an encounter with divinity,” so we can “let go of excessive rumination on the past or future, worries, mistakes, and even opportunities, and be liberated in the present moment.”

In other words, a certain attitude toward experience becomes the divine, or God, if we are properly attuned.  He calls this “radical acceptance” and cites the Maggid of Mezerich who believed that even in prayer, when one’s thoughts should be on God, there is room for negative feelings like “pride, desire, anger, or hatred.”  We should be open to them fully, and integrate them into the divine.

Such a theology of radical acceptance leads to a liberation from suffering.  We are told, as the Baal Shem Tov describes it, “our resistance to the difficulties of life merely multiplies our suffering.”  Pain may be inevitable, but suffering is not.

Except for the citations of Jewish sources, most of this sounds like Buddhism in one form or another.  Rabbi Jacobson Maisels then comes to one of the central problems with this view: if everything is God, then why do we need the particular manifestation of Judaism, and it’s even more localized element, the Torah and the mitzvot (the commandments).  

Strictly speaking, he tells us, the Torah we have is for the world of yesh, this material world of distinctions.  There is yet another Torah, or many Torahs, that are hinted at in midrashic and kabbalistic sources; it may be a missing book of the Torah, a re-punctuation of the Torah, a rearrangement of its letters, or a new Torah that will emerge in the eschaton, the end of days.  This is the Torah of ayin, of nothingness; and even though it is hidden, we can still get glimpses of it in the Torah of yesh.  

The Torah we encounter, Rabbi Jacobson Maisels explains, has its source in ayin but is always “transformed into a particular yesh through human beings trapped in their own time, culture and personalities.”

So far so good, but once again, the specter of antinomianism is here.  Why follow any rule or law, if all is just yesh, time bound, human bound, culture bound?  And why Judaism?  Next, he examines the mitzvoth as a type of training for a life of ayin, trying to give relevance to the most elemental portion of Jewish life.

Some Notes and a Summary of Rabbi James Jacobson-Maisels “Non-dual Judaism” PART ONE

Rabbi James Jacobson-Maisels has an interesting article in the collection Jewish Theology in Our Time, called “Non-dual Judaism.”  It presents, in a clear way, some of the basic tenants of non-duality as expressed through Judaism, and maybe bolstered by  some eastern religious traditions.

He begins with the famous, and oft repeated story in non-dual Jewish circles, from the Baal Shem Tov of the king, his walls, partitions, and treasures.  Some stop at one wall for the treasure, others another wall.  Very few proceed on, moving beyond the walls and partitions to the king himself.  But once in the royal presence, a veil is lifted from one's eyes, and one sees that all the walls and barriers were just extensions of the king, presenting an illusion of separation.  The king, of course, is God.  The barriers, the world as we see it.

Rabbi Jacobson-Maisels gives us the take away from this story: “The fundamental insight it calls on us to strive and integrate is the divinity we encounter, the reality that there is ultimately nothing but God.” During the daily prayer Aleinu, these words are recited: “Hashem is God, in the heavens above and on the earth below, there is no other.”  For non-dualist Jews, these words are not just a denial of other gods beside Hashem, but a denial that anything exists other than God.  Non-dual Judaism is not a relation to some deity, “but one of awareness, connection, and relation to the divine nature of experience.”

When we learn to eliminate barriers between ourselves, others and the world “we find God as a quiet space within, the boundless loving presence, the falling away of fear, and the delight of wonder and joy.”  In short, we become aware of our own nothingness.  “We touch ayin (nothingness), to emerge from non-being into new being without the prison of self”

Of course, living with this awareness is impossible all the time, and Jacobson-Maisels writes about the early Kabbalist's flirtation with the concepts of yesh and ayin, being and nothingness, as a constant interchange.  Rabbi Jacobson-Maisels tells us that Rabbi Azriel of Gerona saw faith as the meeting point between yesh and ayin.  In fact, faith is living in the world of yesh while having the consciousness of ayin.  

But this mystical perspective goes even further. Rabbi Menachem Nahum of Chernobyl thought that if one does not see the Divine in every aspect of the world is guilty of heresy.  It is, simply, idolatry widely defined; “this mystical perspective sees idolatry as the affirmation of any other at all.”

The next step: how do we find this vision, this view of non-duality?  How do we get out of the rut of the self?  And just how “Jewish” is this quest at all?