Reb Zalmen and Howard Thurman
Peter Eisenstadt

My dear friend, the late Aaron Braveman, who spent over half a century in Jewish education, used to complain to me, “nowadays, the only thing people want from Judaism is spirituality, spirituality, and spirituality.” Aaron was a fervent believer in Judaism, but like so many in his generation, it did not involve personal encounters with God. If Judaism has changed in this regard, it is due in large measure to the influence of Zalmen Schachter-Shalomi, or Reb Zalmen, who combined Hasidic piety with an exuberant counter-cultural sensibility that knew few bounds. After a long, remarkable, and sometimes messy life, Reb Zalmen passed away this week at age 89.

Zalmen Schachter-Shalomi was born Zalmen Schachter (he added the Shalomi in the 1970s) in Vienna in the early 1920s, and managed to escape the Holocaust by a hairbreadth, emigrating to the United States in 1940 from southern France, on one of the last boats available to refugees. He was raised orthodox , and when he arrived in the United States he went to Brooklyn and received his semeikah from the Lubavitchers in the late 1940s. But he chafed at the narrowness of his training, and sought to explore and study other religious traditions and approaches, starting at Boston University in the mid-1950s, and strayed further and further from orthodox Hasidism, and by the late 1960s was living in San Francisco, with a new wife (he eventually would have four—not at the same time–along with numerous girlfriends), with an interest in psychedelic and kindred substances. (He once held a Seder which substituted four puffs on a joint for the four glasses of wine.) And in this heady atmosphere, when where TM, Zen Buddhism, yoga, sweat lodges, Thomas Merton, Martin Buber were combined in a spiritual mélange, Schachter-Shalomi became the chief founder of the Jewish Renewal or havurah movement, which claimed that Judaism, properly understood, could be as spiritually potent, as karmic, as any of these religious alternatives, and that while Judaism had its rules and rituals, these were subordinate pathways to the classic Hasidic goal of devekuth or communion with God.

Arguably (perhaps along with Chabad) the Havurah movement has been America’s most important contribution to world Judaism over the past half century, with its impact felt in every variety of Judaism. In his many books Schachter-Shalomi created a unique vision of Judaism, with a metaphysical, speculative structure, rooted in the Zohar, perhaps, as has been suggested, the most comprehensive American philosophy and theology of Judaism since that of Mordecai Emanuel Kaplan.

And make no mistake about it, there was something profoundly American about Reb Zalmen, one of a long line of spiritual seekers in this country; some born in the United States, like Walt Whitman or Ralph Waldo Emerson, some born elsewhere, like Madame Blavatsky, Khalil Gibran, Aldous Huxley, and Reb Zalmen. Or like that unique African American mystic and civil rights activist, Howard Thurman, who was one of Reb Zalmen’s mentors.

As a historian I have been working on the life and career of Howard Thurman for many years. About two years I had a phone conversation with Reb Zalmen about his time with Thurman. He told me a story that he had told many times before.

It was 1955, and Zalmen Schachter was rabbi to a Chabad congregation in Falls River, about two hours from Boston. He decided to enroll in a program in religious psychology at Boston University. But he had to leave his home too early for his morning prayers, and when he arrived at Boston University there was no open place for his prayers, except the university chapel. But all of the rooms in the chapel had crosses and other Christian symbols, and Reb Zalmen couldn’t find anyplace to pray that was comfortable except for a storage closet. A middle aged black man, whom Zalmen thought was the janitor came by, asked him what was wrong, and before he could answer—he didn’t want to offend the janitor—the black man said, when you come tomorrow, come down to the downstairs chapel. When Reb Zalmen did, he found the cross had been removed from the altar, other Christian symbols covered up, and the bible on the lectern opened to Psalm 139.

A few weeks later, Reb Zalmen wanted to meet with Howard Thurman. He had signed up to take one of his courses, Spiritual Resources and Disciplines, but he was having cold feet. How could he study something so private, so specific to Judaism, as spiritual resources, with a Christian? When he entered Thurman’s office, he was surprised to see that Thurman, the dean of the chapel, was the same black man he encountered a few weeks earlier. He explained his perplexity to Thurman. Thurman listened, and considered the point. He got up and put on a phonograph record, of Max Bruch’s setting of the Nol Kidre prayer. He looked at Zalmen and said, “don’t you trust the Ruach Ha-Kodesh (holy spirit?) Zalmen told himself to relax; the course was going to be fine. It was. It was the beginning of his exploration of other religions and spiritual traditions. And many of the spiritual exercises and meditations Thurman used in his class were later incorporated by Reb Zalmen into his own work with Jewish renewal.

There is much more to be said about Reb Zalmen and Howard Thurman, but let me leave it here. In recent years he was much worried about his declining health, and his most recent book, The December Project, is a spiritual autobiography (even though it was written by someone else—Reb Zalmen was never particular about such things—and a prolonged meditation on dying. (The most interesting tidbit for me in the book was that a few years Reb Zalmen went through a service of a chevre kadisha (burial society), having his naked body washed, placed in a pine coffin, because he wanted to have the experience.

Let me give Reb Zalmen the last word, on last things. He does not believe that the resurrection of the dead, that “crypts will open in cemeteries and corpses will crawl out of them.” Instead, “I believe that the resurrection occurs when dead matter proceeds to become a conscious, living thing. This resurrection is happening to the planet, right now, at this very moment, being raised from dead matter to become conscious, aware, alive. As human beings we are becoming part of the planet’s consciousness. As we begin to awaken and hear this message, we begin to collaborate with the earth’s awakening and healing. As we gain connection with the planet mind, we will be augmented in consciousness and enriched by all other conscious beings.” I hope he’s right, and amen.