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On a Yoga Chai
At the crossroads of philosophy and religion,
seeking harmony where physicality, meditation and Judaism converge.
By Gabriella Burman
yogi asks the ultimate question to
his pupil: "Do you understand that
you don't really exist?" The pupil
responds, "To whom are you
speaking?"
Beyond its system of bodily
poses for optimizing physi-
cal prowess, it is the spiritual aspect of yoga
that makes one question whether this an-
cient practice and Judaism (another ancient
practice) complement — or conflict — with
one another.
The intersection of the two belief systems
may, in fact, be sui generic. With no short-
age of Jewish adherents or practitioners in
the Detroit area, and its popularity always
on the rise, yoga seemingly has become a
unique quasi-religion itself.
For some, yoga is strictly a way to
strengthen their bodies. Others seek its
salve-like ability to calm frayed nerves. How,
then, can a practicing Jew be sure the
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chanting, meditating and existential thought
of yoga doesn't run afoul of Torah law?
"It is absolutely godly," says Rabbi
Elimelech Goldberg, rabbi emeritus of Young
Israel of Southfield and the founder of Kids
Kicking Cancer, a local nonprofit that en-
courages pediatric cancer patients to use the
mind-body techniques from the martial arts
to help them through treatments.
"The key to spirituality is to
allow something to interrupt the
flow of negative messages that
come from the body because
of the traumas we experience
in life, and to respond with
the soul," Goldberg says.
Yoga was first intro-
duced to Americans at a
congress on religion held
in Chicago in 1893 yet
didn't permeate popular
culture for another seven
decades, when Maharishi Mahesh Yogi,
guru to the Beatles, brought transcendental
meditation to the West.
Other swamis followed. Yoga — as
spiritual practice — became pervasive
among Jews around the same time,
dramatically increasing with the publica-
tion of Rabbi Aryeh Kaplan's book Jewish
Meditation in 1985.
In that seminal text, Kaplan
distilled the various meditation
techniques — for use by Jews in
modern daily practice — that
were hinted at in the Bible and
expanded upon in other Jewish
texts. Far from a New Age
"repackaging" of Judaism, the
rabbi argued, it was the "New
Agers" who had rediscovered
meditation techniques that Jews
had employed for thousands of
years.
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