Rabbi David Zeller
Ray: What does Judaism have to teach first and foremost? What is its most basic spiritual lesson? And what are its core ideas?
David: Well, I remember my teacher Rabbi Shlomo Carlebach once said, “You know, our goal is not to make the whole world Jewish. Our goal is to let the whole world know there really is one God.”
So, it comes back to this idea that there is an over-all, unifying consciousness-being-loving-intention in the universe. I would say that is one of the primary special things about Judaism.
Like many other people, we are not missionary. Our self-esteem isn’t based on whether we can convince everybody to be like us. We just want to serve God in the way that we were put here to serve God.
You know, I learned that from American Indians. I have learned that from many people who have said, “We have our particular path.”
I also think that in Judaism, in particular, we are the guardians of sacred time. It is our particular commandment, which is a bad translation of the word mitzvah, which really means “that which joins you to.” It’s like these are actions we do that make us one with God.
There are people all over the world who meditate. I wish Jews would meditate more! Yet we have a particular, actual mitzvah, saying, “I enjoin you, I command you, you must take time out.”
I think that puts us in a special relationship with how to negotiate between temporal day-to-day life and that spiritual, eternal dimension. It’s our Chronicles of Narnia. How do you negotiate beyond the limitations of this world of time and space and discover there is this whole other realm? I think that’s very much one of our contributions.
The essence, in a way? I always like to tell people — Jews, even more so than non-Jews, because we forget ourselves, or never knew, what the roots of some of our tradition are — I always say that our first label was with Abraham 4,000 years ago. He was called a Hebrew, and in Hebrew the word really means, “He was crossing over.”
Not just that he crossed over the river from one place to another, but he saw that in life we have to go beyond where we are. We have to see beyond the outer appearance of things. Things look separate, outer, superficial, material, but there is a unifying, Godly life force that unites, that gives existence to everything.
What it really means to be a Hebrew is to be someone committed to this constant journey to keep crossing over.
Then later on, we became called Jews from Abraham’s great-grandchildren. One of them carried the name Jehuda. Of all the tribes, that was the one that in the long run became the identity for all of the Hebrew people, all the children of Israel.
The name Jehuda, why we’re called Jews, means to give thanks. I think that’s one of the real core essences of being a Jew.
I’m an observant Jew, so I keep as many of the commandments as I can, but to me the essence is to be a Jehudi. The name Jehuda means to give thanks, and we carry this name which means to give thanks.
What does it mean to give thanks? It means I have to be conscious about and I have to acknowledge that there is someone to thank. Whether that is my friend, my spouse, my partner, my child, my parent; whether it is God; whether it is the beauty of the tree that I am sitting under or walking by, it means to have an attitude that reminds me I am not the center of the universe. There are others around me, and there is the all-encompassing one.
Constantly lifting my awareness to really have the highest attitude of thanksgiving and of gratitude is a real essential thing.
The other thing very deep in Judaism is really seeing God in everyone and everything always. It is a primary verse from Psalms: “I see God before me always.”
That is understood in the mystical tradition to mean not just, “I’m thinking of God all the time. I’m so holy that I have God in my mind and God is in front of me always,” but, no, “I see God equally in everyone and in every thing that is before me, that even is opposite me, that even is against me in a way.”
Can I see God equally in everything? I feel that is a major challenge and an ideal that Judaism strives for, because that is the gateway to compassion — to caring deeply and passionately for all life. Caring not just for Jews, not just for people, not just for this or that, but caring for all of life throughout the whole universe.
The Psalms reflect praise of the sun and the moon and the stars, and we really extend out as far as our mind allows us to.
I guess you’re discovering that I answer questions way too long. (Laughs.) Sorry to put you through my meanderings and wanderings as I try and answer these questions as much in the present as I can.
*Read more about the late Rabbi David Zeller, author of The Soul of the Story, on his website DavidZeller.org, and read more of my interviews at Hemachandra.com. I did this interview for New Age Retailer magazine.
