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children sit together on three sides of
the Holy Ark.
Rabbi Levi Weiman-Kelman sits
with them. He is dressed in a white,
loose-fitting shirt and slacks. He
wears a kippah and sandals. Over his
shoulders hangs a tallit emblazoned
with the colors of the rainbow.
Before the first prayer is offered,
the rabbi asks each congregant to
review his week. So, eyes closed,
everyone spends a moment medi-
tating on the progression of time from
last Shabbat to this.
"The last week now belongs to the
past;' Rabbi Weiman-Kelman says
finally. Sitting in their physical sanc-
tuary, the gathering enters Shabbat,
which philosopher Abraham Joshua
Heschel called a sanctuary in time.
Now the rabbi asks his congrega-
tion to take a deep breath. All breathe
together. That is the literal meaning
of Kol Haneshamah.
A rabbi who dresses like a 16th-
century Jewish mystic and leads his
congregation in deep-breathing exer-
cises like a yoga teacher. "Lecha
Dodi" sung to the tune of a Hopi In-
dian chant. Other standard prayers
sung to melodies from Hindu, Bud-
dhist and Chassidic sources, as well
as from the Conservative movement's
Camp Ramah and Reform's North
American Federation of Temple
Youth. This is what can happen when
Judaism meets the New Age and
travels to Israel.
Members of the 4-year-old con-
gregation are businessmen and pro-
fessionals. They, and some academics
and religious leaders like Rabbi
Weiman-Kelman, compose a small
knot of American-born Israelis who
have brought the spirit of the 1960s
counterculture grown up to the Israeli
landscape. They affirm the counter-
culture's two main pillars: a belief in
social justice and egalitarianism —
usually translating into leftist politics
— and an attempt to spiritualize their
religious experience through the use
of elements of Eastern philosophies
and practices and the Kabbalah, the
Jewish mystical tradition.
Thirty-five-year-old Rabbi
Weiman-Kelman, a 14th-generation
rabbi, says he is a product of the
1960s. His synagogue is affiliated
with the Progressive movement, the
Israeli equivalent to the Reform
movement, although he was ordain-
ed at the Conservative Jewish
Theological Seminary. Kol
Haneshamah, he says, is a direct
descendant of the most successful '60s
Jewish innovation — the chavurah.
Dr. Barry Holtz was one of the
founders in 1968 of the first chavurah,
Boston's Chavurat Shalom. Now the
co-director of JTS's Melton Research
Center, Holtz, 42, is spending the year
in Israel, teaching and writing.
He says members of his chavurah,
and others like the Farbrengen in
Washington, D.C., and the New York

28 FRIDAY, OCTOBER 27, 1989

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or
111

Americans are bringing
the Jewish counterculture
of the 1960s to Israel.

DAVID HOLZEL

Special to The Jewish News

Chavurah, had three main things in
mind in those days. One was a criti-
que of Jewish life in the United
States, particularly of what they con-
sidered the shallowness of the subur-
ban synagogue.
Then there was the activist
dimension, an outgrowth of the anti-
Viet Nam War movement. Says Holtz:
"We used to say that there are dif-
ferent ways of protest, and one is to
create a new vision!" The chavurah
was to be "not only a davening place,
but a real alternative community?'
The third influence came through
the search for alternative ways of
thinking and expression. Central to
the '60s experience was the explora-
tion of Eastern philosophies.
Members of the chavurah movement
"were trying to take seriously the
Jewish spiritual tradition and com-
bine it with what we thought we were
learning of Eastern religions," Holtz
says.
Growing up in New York, Rabbi
Weiman-Kelman embraced the in-
novation of his slightly older contem-
poraries. Then he went a step further:
He took it to Israel.
"In our service there are elements
that someone who spent time in an
ashram, a chavurah or who grew up
in a straight synagogue would feel
comfortable with," he says.
Rabbi Weiman-Kelman and
others who came to Israel diverged
with the chavurahs on the question
of Zionism. "The chavurah was in-
tensely American and was am-
bivalent about Israel and the whole
military thine the rabbi says.
"Most felt Jerusalam was Somer-
ville," a college town near Boston, ac-
cording to Dr. George Savran, a
former member of Chavurat Shalom
who made aliyah in 1982.
Rabbi Weiman-Kelman says his
move to Israel 10 years ago removed
for him the chavurah's main paradox:
its members' interest in an all-
encompassing community, while
prefering to live in America.
"Those of us most interested in
community are acting out that part
of it here. If Judaism has any mean-
ing, it's here. Either Judaism is a way
of life that teaches how to run a school
system, collect garbage and treat a
minority populaton, or it's in-
complete?'

N

eo-Kabbalah is the term
Rabbi Moshe Silberschein
uses to describe the blending
of the 1960s and New Age search for
spirituality with Jewish mysticism.
Religion is basically a metaphor
for the meaning of life, says the
Detroit-born Conservative rabbi.
"Neo-Kabbalah doesn't take (the
mystical tradition) as holy writ but as
a poetic metaphor for the workings of
the universe."
George
Savran
agrees.

