In Search of the Jewish Soul

As he waits for Friday evening’s sundown and the start of Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement that ends the holiest season of the Jewish year, Rodger Kamenetz asks himself what it means to be Jewish. Since he is the director of Jewish studies at Louisiana State University, it seems fair to expect he already knows, but Kamenetz considers himself a work in progress, an “under constructionist” Jew.

Not to be confused with the Reconstructionist, Orthodox, Conservative or Reform groups, celebrating this year’s high holidays at odds with one another over what some see as the questions at the center of Jewish life--about who qualifies to be a Jew, whether or not converts ought to be encouraged, and how to survive as a community when a steady rise in interfaith marriages is chipping away Judaism’s core.

In his new book, “Stalking Elijah” (Harper & Row), Kamenetz says the real trouble is that everybody is asking the wrong questions. At 47, and after more than a decade of looking for answers about his faith, he has narrowed his own list down to one: “Given that I am Jewish, what am I going to do about it?”

To expand the options, Kamenetz traveled to Los Angeles from his home in New Orleans and studied with a group of rabbis and teachers who are renewing the faith by blending Jewish tradition with aspects of the human potential movement. He sees their approach--part religious orthodoxy, part popular psychology, part body awareness training--as the new Jewish mysticism. He considers Elijah, the biblical prophet who rose to heaven without dying--and thus is still alive--as their spiritual mentor.

“If Elijah is still alive, to me it means he is all around us,” Kamenetz says. “But I’ve learned that we can’t go looking for him, we can’t ‘stalk’ him. He has to come to us. All we can do is get ready to receive him.”

For the scholarly Kamenetz, being ready includes remaining open to new ways of understanding what it means to be Jewish.

He spent most of his time on the West Coast with Rabbi Jonathan Omer-Man, director of the Metivta Center in Los Angeles. He went to the rabbi hoping to learn religious practices that he could fit into everyday life. Omer-Man taught him to meditate and to visualize scenes from the Torah, the essential Jewish Scriptures and laws of the faith.

Omer-Man also suggested the blessing path, the Jewish practice of wishing others well throughout the day. Orthodox Jews say 100 daily blessings for everything from the bread on their table to the strangers they meet as a way of sanctifying the moment. It is a discipline that moves a person’s attention beyond one’s self toward the spark of divinity found in ordinary things.

Omer-Man, trained in Orthodox Judaism but ordained independent of any congregation, also made a surprise suggestion to Kamenetz--shop Fairfax Avenue in Los Angeles. Hanging around the Jewish neighborhood with its bakeries and butcher shops helps a person get back a sense of what it means to be Jewish and to love his people, the rabbi tells students.

Kamenetz sees the visits to Fairfax and time to practice the blessing path as out-of-mind adventures that put real life ahead of books and religious rules. “We’re talking about mysticism, the inner language of the Jewish soul,” he explains. “It is a first-person experience.”

In previous wanderings, the author traveled to Tibet and adapted Zen to Jewish meditation by adding Hebrew mantras. He describes the odyssey in “The Jew in the Lotus” (Harper San Francisco, 1995), one of seven books he has written that explore his religious and cultural roots.

*

Unconventional as Kamenetz’s spiritual wanderings may appear, he finds that Orthodox Jews are his best audience.

“The real point of Jewish renewal is to keep the practices, not give any of them up,” he explains. “I think they see I am doing that.”

Reform Judaism, the most liberal branch, supplies his toughest critics. “For Reform Jews, steeped in German romanticism, dancing, singing or moving your body in prayer goes against decorum,” he says.

A member of a Reform Jewish synagogue in Louisiana, Kamenetz also attends services at Conservative and Orthodox synagogues, which is not unusual among modern Jews.

“It’s a phenomenon of our time that people are spiritual but they don’t want to be affiliated with any synagogue or church,” Kamenetz says. “The fastest-growing group in Judaism is unaffiliated.”

His eclectic spiritual habits steer him away from the leading debates about Judaism and into his own daily practice. “We have to identify personally with our faith if it is going to mean anything to us,” he says.

During the high holidays, which began Oct. 1 with Rosh Hashana, the Jewish new year, and continue until Saturday, Kamenetz says he goes to the synagogue with family and friends and looks back over the year to see what to change and what to preserve.

The holidays are also a “time to return,” he says. “That can mean return to the synagogue or to my family or to being a Jew.

“At the deepest level, it is the moment of creation that we return to. There is a sense that the world is fresh and new.”

Kamenetz says he would not want to be a rabbi.

“I am a rank amateur Jew and I want my amateur status,” he says. “To me, that means I can love Judaism for its own sake.”

Kamenetz will read from “Stalking Elijah” at the Barnes & Noble bookstore in Encino at 7:30 p.m. on Nov. 6.