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

