inter-religious

Meadle East Beyond National States?

A new vision for the M.E Beyind National States \ Rabbi Ohad Ezrahi

An article responding to the latest events in the Middle East (Feb 2011)

The Arab world is going through great upheavals these days. Suddenly, as if from nowhere, the cry of the masses demanding a different life is erupting.

To my eyes it seems the problem lies with the fact that the Middle East has no vision or inspiring horizon to move towards. This does not exist in the Arab countries and neither do we in Israel have one. The sense is that indeed we built a state—but now what?

We need a new vision

If I have dreams of a different future, I am not dreaming them just for Israel but for the entire area. The old dream which nourished Hertzel’s imagination, the dream of the nation state, has ended its function and at the moment is at death’s door. The new vision must be one that includes all habitants of a region, in our case it is the Middle East.

The land promised in the biblical stories to Abraham and his descendents, both the Hebrew ones and the Arab ones, extends from Iraq to Lebanon and Israel of today. In this broad area live numerous people who all see themselves as descendents of the common father “Abraham”, and yet they live with hatred, and especially with fear of each other.

A new vision for the Middle East would include the ability of different ethnic groups to live peacefully with each other under the same comprehensive political framework, with no nation state. This political framework would serve the entirety of its citizens, enabling them together to preserve the ecosystems of the environment within which they live.

Can we today allow ourselves to dream of unifying the Middle East, A Middle East without the borders of nation states, similar in some ways to the European Union model? A dream like this naturally scares and threatens many of us in Israel. But we must understand that we are a collective who is still in the throes of post traumatic panic, and we are reacting to reality seen through these wounded eyes.

To enable this model of unity to manifest, Israel must go through a collective process of healing her post traumatic state. And starting a treatment process requires first the patient’s acknowledgement of his or her condition.  We must acknowledge the fact that perhaps we are not seeing reality as is, but are coloring it in colors unconsciously intended to replay our collective trauma of discrimination and eradication attempts.

As the common joke says, indeed “the fact that I am a paranoid does not mean I am not persecuted” but still, we should do our best to heal our collective paranoia because it demands a staggering price of us, which we will be able to estimate only upon awakening from it.

I’m no expert on trauma healing but there are people and institutions in this world that treat traumas, including the collective traumas of groups, tribes, and nations. I think we, as a collective, should reach out for healing.

At the same time, in order for this new vision to be considered seriously, the Arab societies must also undergo a great social transformation and deep cultural revolution which mainly includes developing awareness to the sovereignty of the individual. This awareness will be expressed in the granting of rights and liberties to the individual, the citizen; granting rights to minorities, to women and to homosexuals.

This revolution is mainly a revolution of consciousness. It has already been happening in the west for hundreds of years. It is a revolution– from collective national perception to a deep acknowledgement of the individual’s right to choose his or her own destiny, faith, and life style. There must be a complete reversal of the macho patriarchal patterns that today govern the Arab world. Upon the awakening of this new consciousness more and more individuals start to understand that these patterns do not serve them anymore — then they can become obsolete.

The first signs of this revolution are now murmuring and moving under our wondering eyes. Some time ago, the idea of something like this occurring in the Arab countries, seemed like a faraway dream. But today, with the upheavals in Egypt and the start of unrest in Syria—the possibility the Arab world undergo surprising processes sooner then we think, is higher than usual.

In Israel as well the ruling elite that hold more than 80% of the countries riches will not be able to hang on forever. Yet, here we are required a different mental courage than that which sent the Egyptians out on the streets. Here we are challenged with healing the national myth which many of us still think gives us so much: the myth that says that all the other nations are against us, and for sure wanting us to be gone from the face of Earth. Those myths create and recreate the fear of the other in us, this fear which entrenches us behind the defensive fortress of the post-traumatic “Security” culture we have built here in our “promised land of milk and honey”, and which amply supports the architects of our culture of fear, institutionalized religion and war.

If lovers of life we be—we must answer the great call of history. We must become new “Hertzels”, daring to dream big time, daring to move towards the dream.

And if this we want and thus we act— dreams can become reality.

Translated by Ellaya Ayal Mor

inter-religious

The Hebraic Path Vrs Old Way Judaism

The Hebraic Path is Judaism and Kabbala which is reconnected to nature spirituality, to femininity and to all nations.

Making the efforts to survive in hard times Judaism had created itself over hundreds of years as a insular and “safe” religion, by disconnecting its followers from those three aspects of the Divine (Nature, Femininity & all Nations).  Most of the Jewish Law (Halacha) and many components of Jewish Spirituality (Kabbala) were developed and written as part of this long lived survival effort.

Those three cut-offs had grown and become, with the centuries, into the three chronic illnesses of contemporary Judaism: fear and racism towards the nations, repression of the feminine and alienation from nature.

The Hebraic Path is a path of healing. It is a Neo-Ancient path:  It’s rooted deeply in the indigenous roots of Pre-Rabbinical Judaism. From the rabbinical period it’s embracing and collecting the gifts of divine wisdom (clean from the rubbish of fear, racism and repression) and aiming towards a future of enlightened humanity living in peace on a green healthy planet.

Understanding that a neo-indigenous spiritual path does not require fixed dogma nor does it need a rigid religious authority – we take the passion of the heart from tradition and the freedom of thought from science; including biblical studies that show the variety of theological sources edited into the Torah.

The Hebraic Path we renew is a way of life, and being such it has many levels and layers that can allow every human being to find his or her part in it: children and adults, men and women, lay people, clergies, activists, seekers of enlightenment and lovers of God.

As Rabbi Nachman of BresLove used to say: “Just give me your hearts and I will lead you in a new path, a path that was taken by our ancestors Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, and yet – it is a new path”

inter-religious

Inter-religious Bearing Witness Retreat in Auschwitz

Rabbi Ohad is among the clergy officiating this year at the Zen Peacemakers  Bearing Witness retreat in Auschwitz,Poland, with Roshi Bernie Glassman, along with religious leaders from all faiths.    This will be Ohad’s 7th year  joining  this very powerful retreat to bear witness to the pain and atrocities that took place there.

Bernie visited the camps on his own some 15 years ago. After witnessing the  pain that people had upon seeing the camps on  their  first encounter, he saw that there was no outlet for the devastation which the people were experiencing when they visited. They would go in and have a tremendous rush of  feelings and despair, and leave. After viewing this Bernie vowed to bring a group back to bear witness. The next year he took 150 people, and for the past 15 years there have been bearing witness retreats following that first one.

There are three tenents of the Socialy Engaged Buddhism of which this work is a part of.

The first is not knowing,

the second is Bearing Witness,

the third is loving Action.

During the retreat we first have a tour of the Jewish ghetto in Krakow. Then the next day we go to Oschwintzen, known by the Germans as Auscwitz. We stay in simple lodgings in a hostel near by the camps. we start the day with a tour of the camps. in general the days are broken down into morning  council sharing groups, where you might be with a polle, a german, children of perpetrators, and victims together. It is a very necessary and important component of the retreat. Here we have time to sort out our mixture of feelings, and share in one another’s feelings,and listen from the heart..

Later in the days we go to the camps and sit in one of the camp sites, barracks or yards for meditation sessions. The never ending reading of names of those perished in the camp is the mantra for all meditation sessions.

Every day there are also rituals taking place, of all the religions and paths present in the retreat – Christian, Buddhist and Jewish. R. Ohad is holding the Jewish ritual, accompanying it with his guitar and praying with old and new Hasidic tunes of Dvekut (= devotion, surrender).

Dawn is also coming this year for her second time to the retreat, with an intention to serve the retreat.

One thing is important to know: Auschwits is not over. it is not merely a historical site. It is a testimony to what humanity can cause to itself.

R. Ohad is planning to take part in the spiritual holding of the next retreat, coming on Nov 2010. For more info about the bearing Witness retreat and Socialy Engaged Buddhism visit the international Zen Peacemakers family website