92 | SEPTEMBER 26 • 2024
J
N
W
hen I was a student at uni-
versity in the late 1960s —
the era of student protests,
psychedelic drugs and the Beatles
meditating with the Maharishi
Mahesh Yogi — a story went the
rounds. An American Jewish woman
in her 60s traveled to north India to
see a celebrated guru. There were
huge crowds waiting to
see the holy man, but
she pushed through,
saying that she needed
to see him urgently.
Eventually, after
weaving through the
swaying crowds, she
entered the tent and
stood in the presence of the master
himself. What she said that day has
entered the realm of legend. She
said, “Marvin, listen to your mother.
Enough already. Come home.”
Starting in the 1960s, Jews made
their way into many religions and
cultures with one notable exception:
their own. Yet Judaism has histori-
cally had its mystics and meditators,
its poets and philosophers, its holy
men and women, its visionaries and
prophets. It has often seemed as if
the longing we have for spiritual
enlightenment is in direct proportion
to its distance, its foreignness, its
unfamiliarity. We prefer the far to the
near.
Moses already foresaw this possi-
bility: “Now what I am commanding
you today is not too difficult for you
or beyond your reach. It is not in
heaven, so that you have to ask, ‘Who
will ascend into heaven to get it and
proclaim it to us so we may obey it?’
Nor is it beyond the sea, so that you
have to ask, ‘Who will cross the sea
to get it and proclaim it to us so we
may obey it?’ No, the word is very
near you; it is in your mouth and in
your heart so you may obey it.” Deut.
30:11–14
Moses sensed prophetically that
in the future Jews would say that to
find inspiration we have to ascend
to heaven or cross the sea. It is any-
where but here. So it was for much of
Israel’s history during the First and
Second Temple periods. First came
the era in which the people were
tempted by the gods of the people
around them: the Canaanite Baal, the
Moabite Chemosh, or Marduk and
Astarte in Babylon. Later, in Second
Temple times, they were attracted
to Hellenism in its Greek or Roman
forms. It is a strange phenomenon,
best expressed in the memorable line
of Groucho Marx: “I don’t want to
belong to any club that would have
me as a member.” Jews have long had
a tendency to fall in love with people
who do not love them and pursue
almost any spiritual path so long as it
is not their own. But it is very debil-
itating.
When great minds leave Judaism,
Judaism loses great minds. When
those in search of spirituality go
elsewhere, Jewish spirituality suf-
fers. And this tends to happen
in precisely the paradoxical way
that Moses describes several times
in Deuteronomy. It occurs in ages
of affluence, not poverty, in eras of
freedom, not slavery. When we seem
to have little to thank God for, we
thank God. When we have much to
be grateful for, we forget.
The eras in which Jews worshipped
idols or became Hellenized were
Temple times when Jews lived in
their land, enjoying either sovereign-
ty or autonomy. The age in which, in
Europe, they abandoned Judaism was
the period of Emancipation, from the
late 18th to the early 20th centuries,
when for the first time they enjoyed
civil rights.
The surrounding culture in most
of these cases was hostile to Jews and
Judaism. Yet Jews often preferred to
adopt the culture that rejected them
rather than embrace the one that
was theirs by birth and inheritance,
where they had the chance of feel-
ing at home. The results were often
tragic.
Becoming Baal worshippers did
not lead to Israelites being wel-
comed by the Canaanites. Becoming
Hellenized did not endear Jews to
either the Greeks or the Romans.
Abandoning Judaism in the 19th
century did not end antisemitism;
it inflamed it. Hence the power of
Moses’ insistence: to find truth, beau-
ty and spirituality, you do not have to
go elsewhere. “The word is very near
you; it is in your mouth and in your
heart so you may obey it.”
The result was that Jews enriched
other cultures more than their own.
Part of Mahler’s Eighth Symphony is
a Catholic mass. Irving Berlin, son of
a chazzan, wrote “White Christmas.”
Felix Mendelssohn, grandson of
one of the first “enlightened” Jews,
Moses Mendelssohn, composed
church music and rehabilitated
Bach’s long-neglected St. Matthew
Passion. Simone Weil, one of the
deepest Christian thinkers of the
20th century — described by Albert
Camus as “the only great spirit of our
times” — was born to Jewish parents.
So was Edith Stein, celebrated by
the Catholic Church as a saint and
martyr, but murdered in Auschwitz
because to the Nazis she was a Jew.
And so on.
Was it the failure of Europe to
accept the Jewishness of Jews and
Judaism? Was it Judaism’s failure to
confront the challenge? The phenom-
enon is so complex it defies any sim-
ple explanation. But, in the process,
we lost great art, great intellect, great
spirits and minds.
GOD IS NEAR
To some extent, the situation has
changed both in Israel and in the
Diaspora. There has been much new
Jewish music and a revival of Jewish
mysticism. There have been import-
ant Jewish writers and thinkers. But
we still spiritually underachieve. The
deepest roots of spirituality come
Not Beyond
SPIRIT
A WORD OF TORAH
Rabbi Lord
Jonathan
Sacks
the Sea