BY NATHAN KATZ
The 10 days of repentance between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur are a time for Jews to go inward, to realign themselves with G-d and to make amends with their family and neighbors. This process of “returning” to G-d is known as teshuva, repentance.
It might seem inappropriate that I spent several of these 10 days with the Dalai Lama, but no one has ever taught me more about “returning” than he — returning to the religion of my birth, Judaism, a religion that I have come to understand as perfectly attuned to my soul. Let me explain.
We all know that what we do is more important than what we say. But a new lesson has been impressed on me: that what we are may be even more important than what we do.
I was one of the eight delegates to the historic Tibetan-Jewish dialogue hosted by the Dalai Lama in 1990, popularized in Rodger Kamenetz’s fine book, The Jew in the Lotus, which was then made into a movie.
When the movie was released, I was invited to a discussion following the film screening at The Temple, Atlanta’s leading Reform synagogue. This invitation was unlike all the others: I was to engage in a public Tibetan-Jewish dialogue with my good friend of many years, Ven. Dr. Geshe Lobsang Tendzin Negi. Geshe-la, as he is respectfully known, has attained the pinnacle of Tibetan monastic education, the esteemed geshe lharampa degree, as well as a Ph.D. in psychology from Emory University.
Geshe-la and I talked about similarities between Judaism and Tibetan Buddhism, the esoteric threads of Kabbalah and Tantra in particular. We discussed the difficult topic of Jews who forsake the way of their ancestors to follow Tibetan teachings as well as the Tibetan people’s heroic struggle to preserve their culture in exile, having been forced to abandon their majestic homeland due to the ruthless Chinese occupation more than 40 years ago.
Hearing about the heartless silence of the United Nations to the Tibetan plight, one man in the audience rose to his feet, red-eyed, pained. He asked Geshe-la, “What can we Jews do to help you Tibetans? Should we try to lobby the U.N. to take up your cause? Ought we to work through the U.S. Congress?” He reminded Geshe-la about American Jewry’s political strength, suggesting that we commence a lobbying effort on behalf of the Tibetans. “Just tell us what we can do to help,” he implored.
Geshe-la’s response was immediate. “Nothing,” he said. “You don’t have to do anything. Just be who you are, just be Jews. You cannot imagine how much encouragement we take from you, just for being who you are. The fact that you are still here, the fact that you still worship in your way — this means more to us than anything you could possibly do. You are a great source of strength to us, and we are grateful to you.”
Just like that, Geshe-la revealed our own wisdom to us.
Our sages teach that there are two kinds of mitzvot or commandments. There are those that establish the vertical connection between humans and G-d, and there are those that establish the horizontal connections among people. The former are such ritual mitzvot as prayer, laying tefillin, keeping kosher and others that link us to the transcendent. The latter are ethical mitzvot: the thou-shalts and shalt-nots, the laws of marriage and those laws that make for a peaceful and just society. The sacred task of “mending the world” or tikkun olam is seen as tied to these ethical mitzvot only, while ritual mitzvot have been relegated to the socially meaningless category of “spirituality.”
Genuine spirituality such as Geshe-la’s knows that we can never effect our ceaseless task of mending if we look only to externals, that mending is much deeper than social policy, and that authentic spirituality transforms not merely the individual but, in truth, has the power to transform the very world. And that is tikkun olam.
The sixth century BCE Chinese sage Lao Tzu said it with an exquisite economy of verbiage: “The way to do is to be.”
Nathan Katz is professor of religious studies at Florida International University.
