Perennial Wisdom

Open Secrets: The Letters of Reb Yerachmiel ben Yisrael by Rami M. Shapiro.  Monkfish. 128 pp.  $13.36  *****

Rabbi Rami Shapiro is one of the great reconcilers of spiritual traditions in the world today.  In books like Judaism Without Tribalism, Perennial Wisdom for the Spiritually Independent, and Minyan: Ten Principles for Living a Life of Integrity, he sees similarities where everyone else sees differences, and argues that the basic spiritual truths are the same everywhere, for mystics of every persuasion.  In his early years he told his mentor that he wanted to be “the Jewish Alan Watts,” and that’s a great description of the man he has become.  He’s fluent as both a speaker and writer.

Open Secrets wasn’t intended as a book.  Shapiro created it as a handout for a seminar he conducted in the early nineties, and it circulated in various editions until it found a home at the Human Kindness Foundation with Bo and Sita Lozoff, where prisoners from a variety of institutions found it inspiring.  Another early enthusiast was Father Thomas Keating, the Catholic promoter of Centering Prayer, to whom this edition is dedicated.  Finally, in 2006, it came out as a book between covers for Monkfish Publishing, who will publish Shapiro’s book Zen Mind, Jewish Mind next year.

Shapiro wrote the fictional text—letters from a Hasidic Reb in Israel to his nephew, who had just moved to America—at a time when his son had just had his first Bar Mitzvah.  These were the teachings he wanted his son to have as he began his life as a Jew.  They have that feeling, as the wisdom of a man who is passing something precious along to his son.

Sometimes, despite all the serious work writers do—the elaborate studies, works of scholarship—they do their most important work when they are being more casual.  Creating a handout for a workshop.  The truths Shapiro writes about in Open Secrets are hard-earned truths, worked out over years of study and contemplation.  But he presents them lightly.  It’s the presentation that is special about this book.

The Chapter titles alone are compelling.  God.  Creation.  Evil.  Why Be Jewish?  Are All Religions True?  Jesus.  Death.  I would recommend these letters to the practitioners of any religion, also those who haven’t found one.  Shapiro has created a universal religion that anyone can practice.  It is perennial wisdom distilled.

Let’s take the famous definition of Judaism by Hillel, who was asked by a Gentile to teach all of Torah while standing on one foot.  He replied, “Do not do to others what you would not want done to yourself.  That is the whole of Torah.  The rest is commentary.  Now go and study it.”  Reb Yerachmiel ben Ysrael—the fictional author of these letters—elaborates on that slightly, but still offers a simple definition: “Judaism is the Jewish people’s ancient and, God willing, ongoing effort to make tikkun and teshuvah.”

The Reb goes on to explain.  “Tikkun means repair . . .  the process of putting things back together again. . .  . There are two kinds: tikkun hanefesh, repairing the soul . . .  tikkun haolam, repairing the world.  Both must occur if we are to set things right.

“We make tikkun hanefesh when we end the delusion of separation that deeps us feeling alienated from God and salvation . . . awakening to the fact that you and I and all things are one in, with, and as God.

“Teshuvah—the other element—is returning the mind to the present, to God, for God is the eternal present; tikkun returns us to godliness, engaging each moment with the utmost respect and care.”

The problem with writing about a book like this is that I want to quote the whole thing.  I’m reminded, though, that W.H. Auden said that the best review of a book of poetry would just be to quote selected passages from the poems, with no commentary at all.  Spiritual truths are a kind of poetry.  I’ll try to restrain myself.  But it seems like a shame to paraphrase a man who says things so clearly.

Shapiro spent some years as a Zen student,[1] and meditation is a major part of his spiritual teaching, the primary way in which people repair themselves (though throughout his writing he is not persnickety about methods of meditation, and recommends various things).  In his chapter on Soul, the Reb tells us that “God is both Yesh and Ayn, the transient and the timeless.  Only the former imagines separate selves or souls. . . . Ayn, that aspect of reality that is empty of self and separateness, is deathless, birthless, selfless, and timeless.  And we humans are no less Ayn than Yesh.”  The means to contact Ayn is through meditation, which the Reb calls Walking Inward.  He gives instruction in a chapter entitled To Listen and to Love.

In Faith and Reason, the Reb lists a number of teachings of the revered teacher Maimonides, and gently offers his alternatives.  In every case, I thought his alternative was brilliant, and more correct.

“Maimonides: I believe with perfect faith that the Creator, Blessed be His Name, creates and guides all creatures, and that he along made, makes, and will make everything.”

The Reb’s alternative: “I humbly believe that God is the Source and Substance of all Reality.”

“Maimonides: I believe with perfect faith that the Torah will not be exchanged nor will there be another Torah from the Creator, Blessed is His Name.”

The Reb: “I humbly believe that revelation is never-ending, and that Torah is one of many sacred texts created by prophets who have opened themselves to God and godliness.”

And speaking of that, the Reb includes a letter about Jesus, “the most famous Jew in all the world.”  In contrast to various opinions about Jesus—that he is the Son of God, that he was a prophet, a rabbi, or a revolutionary fighting Rome—the Reb sees him as “a great soul whose Neshamah (“the egoic or self-aware level of consciousness) was open to the highest levels of Yechidah (“that level of consciousness where all things are seen as one”). . . . All of his sayings should be read as an attempt to articulate the absolute unity of all things in, with, and as God.”

He goes on.  “Is Jesus a traitor to the Jews?  I do not think so.  What was his message? . . . Love God and love your neighbor.  Is there anything more Jewish than this?”  He also says, “Could it be that Jesus was more open to Yechidah consciousness than most of his contemporaries?  Yes.  I believe he was.  But he is one of many such people throughout time and across every culture. . . . But do not imagine that such people are different from you.  You have the same capacity to see the world from the perspective of Yechidah.”

Shapiro has written a book that somehow manages to be iconoclastic, profound, touching, and lighthearted, all at once.  I expect that—like the man who received these letters—I will be reading them for the rest of my life.

[1] With the notorious teacher Josho Sasaki, of all people, the man who lived to be 107 but was disgraced at the end of life because of his sexual transgressions.  He also taught another famous Jew, who stayed with him longer than Shapiro.  Leonard Cohen.