Jew in the Lotus Part 3

Then Blu Greenberg raised a more basic matter of protocol: how to address the Dalai Lama. Michael Sautman suggested sticking to the conventional, "His Holiness." But to Orthodox ears that sounded problematic. Blu Greenberg commented later that although all human beings are holy in relation to G.o.d, because we are created in the image of G.o.d, "that's different from saying there's an ent.i.ty of holiness that's independent of a monotheistic G.o.d." She saw a potential problem in "ascribing too much power, too much infallibility or eternality to a human being. There's holiness and there's finiteness of human beings."

"Maybe it was a fearful exercise," she admitted much later. Marc and Michael "were very generous-spirited through the whole thing, but in a way they took this as a bit of an insult. But I wanted to make sure, I wanted to satisfy myself about being halakhically correct."

This discussion was temporarily interrupted by the arrival of Karma Gelek, the Secretary of Cultural and Religious Affairs, who had taken charge of all the arrangements for our visit from the Dalai Lama's end.

We moved outside to meet with him, sitting on lawn chairs or along the garden wall. The late October sun was brilliant and warm, jungle crows made a racket in the trees, and dogs barked throughout the valley. Karma Gelek, who was very soft-spoken, could barely be heard, but his dry wit sometimes came through in the subtlest curl of his lip.

In greeting us formally, he expressed regret for our difficult journey. "Most of our foreign guests say that from Delhi to Dharamsala is much harder than from the United States to Delhi." His English was British, his manner very low affect and low-key. Perhaps partly because of the accent, I thought of him as Jonathan's spiritual cousin. Very quickly, the Jewish delegates invited him into the rough and tumble of their discussion. (In talking about cultural cues in dialogue, Joy Levitt had joked earlier, "Jews have a signal when they want to speak-they interrupt.") In answer to Blu's question, the monk explained that there were thirty different t.i.tles with which to address the Dalai Lama, but "if you could say His Holiness, that would be the usual way." He said this so matterof-factly I couldn't gauge how strongly he felt about the issue. Soon he, Nathan Katz, and Michael Sautman began searching for more answers to this unique Tibetan Jewish crossword puzzle.

Kap gun was batted around, but turned out to mean "refuge" or "saving leader" or even "Savior," which rang funny in Jewish ears. was batted around, but turned out to mean "refuge" or "saving leader" or even "Savior," which rang funny in Jewish ears.

I was interested in how much the discussion with Karma Gelek had to do with translation. Robert Frost defined poetry as what gets lost in translation, but I'd go further: culture is what gets lost in translation.

It wasn't so much words as their historical resonances. How could Karma Gelek ever understand how Jews felt about "His Holiness," or the a.s.sociation Jews would make immediately with the pope and from there to the long history of persecution, proselytization, inquisition, and martyrdom? How to explain the peculiar tang of a t.i.tle like kap gun kap gun once it got translated to "saving leader"? When Zalman heard it, he immediately asked, "Are there other forms, not weighted with salvation?" To a Jew living in a Christian world, this was a perfectly understandable reference, but in the ears of a Buddhist monk, Zalman's question must have sounded puzzling. once it got translated to "saving leader"? When Zalman heard it, he immediately asked, "Are there other forms, not weighted with salvation?" To a Jew living in a Christian world, this was a perfectly understandable reference, but in the ears of a Buddhist monk, Zalman's question must have sounded puzzling.

However, Karma Gelek did notice the various reactions and retreated on the "His Holiness" front, observing quietly, "If you would say rinpoche rinpoche, nothing's wrong." (Rinpoche, which means precious one, is a general honorific for tulkus tulkus.) But it was too late. Now Zalman Schachter was hot on the case, taking up Blu's cause as his own-driven too by his curiosity and loving to explain Jews, Judaism, and himself to Karma Gelek, "We would like to say a word in honor-it's not that we don't want to honor-it's like saying we understand, we honor you as a source of teaching and blessing for your adherents. Could we say, great teacher?"

By now, Karma Gelek had become totally flexible. "Yes, yes," he said, barely audibly.

But Lieberman and Sautman objected. "That's too low." So Zalman raised the ante, "How about ill.u.s.trious teacher?"

Unfortunately, "ill.u.s.trious teacher" was not a traditional Tibetan phrase. "Jewel of wisdom" was offered by Michael Sautman, but finally Karma Gelek ended the discussion when he observed that all such names were very formal and that "His Holiness usually doesn't like formal things."

I took a walk with Yitz Greenberg after the meeting with Karma Gelek broke. We walked for a while in silence. Something about the whole focus on this tiny point bothered me. It reminded me very strongly of what I didn't much like about religious Judaism, an obsessive, niggling quality. Or as a young woman learning about Jewish culture had told me once, to her, Judaism is an old man saying no. With Jews so divided into factions, and some of the factions so self-preoccupied and self-obsessed with tiny points of practice and law, how could we reach out to other groups?

I knew that in some ways that same intensity about language was also what I relished and delighted in, in both Jewish religion and the Jewish mind. It had delighted me that morning with Moshe's and Zalman's midrash. But when the guidance system failed, Jewish verbal intensity seemed to nosedive, spiraling down into smaller and smaller circles.

I ventured to Yitz that maybe the discussion was really about how Jews could hold a dialogue with Buddhists while maintaining their authenticity. I thought this talk had to be about something more than an honorific.

He agreed, adding that, speaking for his group, "most Orthodox Jews feel religious dialogue is not possible. The number of Orthodox Jews involved in dialogue is not a minyan minyan. But after twenty-five years-the more involved I am, the more comfortable I feel."

Yitz drew the line in quite another place, which explained why he'd been so quiet after Zalman davened in a Sikh temple. Dialogue was distinct from joint prayers or meditations. "Unlike Zalman, I see liturgy as an affirmation of being a member." He spoke of his teacher, Rabbi Joseph Soloveitchik, a distinguished professor at Yes.h.i.+va University and one of the foremost contemporary philosophers of halakhah halakhah.

"Rabbi Soloveitchik made the distinction: on social justice we have a universal language, but theology is a more intimate language. Liturgy conveys an affirmation that I'm in this system, so I would feel uncomfortable, for instance, in a Buddhist meditation." Or praying in a Sikh temple, no doubt.

On the other hand, there was no question in his mind that Judaism takes place in real history and that Jews had to learn from other cultures. "If you play in the minor leagues, you have minor league cultures. If you play in the major leagues, you have a major league culture." Rabbi Greenberg was particularly concerned that Orthodox Jewish culture had withdrawn into itself, shunning contact with the challenge of pluralism.

"The Orthodox Jewish community is third world in theology and philosophy. Having a political state of Israel now, I'm convinced the great religious challenge is going to be the pluralist issue. Each culture can no longer present itself as self-evident." Though he found this challenging, he also thought pluralism was positive. "First," he said, "because I think it is the will of G.o.d. The big question on the religious agenda is how are people rooted in their own religion able to respond to others. We must learn to affirm our truth while doing true justice to the other."

An open encounter with pluralism prevented any religious person from thinking he or she possessed exclusive claim to the truth. In dialogue, "you meet these people with tremendous force and openness, and they're not preselected, they're not prefiltered, or loaded in your favor."

I wondered if this was a risky game, particularly for people of faith. Pluralism can quickly lead to relativism and even nihilism. Because if there are so many different truths in the world, and each one is worthy of respect, why go through all the trouble of preserving any particular tradition. Why continue as Jews?

But for Rabbi Greenberg, "G.o.d's will is for us to learn how to affirm our full truth doing full justice to the other, not partial justice or twisted justice or a secondhand treatment."

With that challenge in the air, he left me to my walk. A Tibetan peasant woman, probably in her late sixties but with long black hair s.h.i.+ning in braids, pa.s.sed me on the gravel path. I smiled and said, "Tashe delek," joining my palms in the traditional greeting Michael Sautman had taught us that morning. She smiled and said, "Tashe delek," with a great deal of warmth, but didn't look directly at me, being a little shy.

When Karma Gelek had mentioned that this gesture of bringing the hands to the forehead was a sign of prostration, Blu had joked, "Let's not go into any meanings of it," to which Marc had added, kidding around, "The less we know, the better off we are. We didn't come all the way here to realize we can't say h.e.l.lo."

Yet the Tibetan woman and I had communicated, if only for a moment in pa.s.sing. We didn't have the burden of representing any tradition or anyone but ourselves. Tashe delek. Shalom aleikhem Tashe delek. Shalom aleikhem. Peace.

Surprisingly, given their constant disagreements, it was Zalman Schachter who deepened my appreciation for Yitz and Blu Greenberg's need to preserve tradition even down to the finest points of speech and gesture. Perhaps as someone who himself has been mercilessly criticized in the mainstream Jewish world, Zalman well understood the kind of pressures the Greenbergs faced.

"How many people do you see," he asked me one night, "when you see Yitz and Blu? You see two people. Right? They are not two people. They are several thousand. That is the inner weight of who they are. So with such a const.i.tuency, how you act here becomes really important. He is bridging more tensions than any Jew I know at this point. Can you imagine how he gets scrutinized at every step? Because he certainly isn't Orthodox in terms of doctrine. So the orthopraxis of his life is very important: one step over the line and his credibility is lost."

The sympathy Zalman had for Yitz underlined the parallels in their lives. Rabbi Greenberg had received a secular education at Yes.h.i.+va University and been exposed to Rabbi Soloveitchik's brand of Modern Orthodoxy as well. His theology was one of the more original to come out of recent Orthodoxy, a reinterpretation of the covenant in response to the Holocaust and the establishment of Israel. To Rabbi Greenberg, both events meant that the human partner in the covenant had to take more responsibility for historic decisions. From this sense of human responsibility also came his opposition to separatism and his interest in dialogue, an interest that put him on the extreme edge of his group.

Zalman had gone over the edge. But he came out of Lubavitch Hasidism and spiritually I think he still belongs to it. Although ultraOrthodox in practice, the Lubavitchers are rather unique, because they practice Jewish outreach, for mystical reasons. They basically view every Jew, regardless of denomination, as a potential Lubavitcher. By prac ticing mitzvot mitzvot, one by one, the non-Lubavitchers could be brought along. Hence, young Lubavitcher Hasidim can be found in airports, or in the streets, in their vans known as "mitzvah mobiles," encouraging men to don tefillin and daven and encouraging women to light Shabbat candles. In deep Lubavitch thought, every Jew was redeemable, because every Jew had a pintele yid pintele yid, a Jewish point in the soul. And I think some of their teachers really know how to touch that point.

I remember an encounter while in college with the singer Rabbi Shlomo Carlebach. He had come very late, and we'd been standing around waiting. But instead of beginning the concert, he came up to each of us individually and introduced himself, smiling and looking into our faces. It was a surprising gesture, a recognition that we weren't just a ma.s.s, that each of us was important. Yet the effect was to bring us all together with a certain warmth. Something Shlomo said-in the middle of a song yet-has always remained with me. I didn't even know precisely what it meant, but I've often thought about it. He said, "The whole world is waiting for Jews to be Jews."

Like Rabbi Carlebach, Zalman Schachter had begun as an outreach man for Lubavitch, shortly after World War II. He'd been a legendary recruiter for Chabad, helping to establish many centers and visiting college campuses, encouraging Jews to be more observant.

At the same time, like Rabbi Greenberg, Zalman had sought a secular education. The Lubavitcher Rebbe himself had studied engineering at the Sorbonne. Zalman received an M.A. in the psychology of religion from Boston University and a Doctor of Hebrew Letters from Hebrew Union College.

In the 1960s, Zalman separated from the Lubavitcher movement. His energy was probably just too much to stay confined within an ultraOrthodox community such as the Lubavitchers, which is very intent on social conformity.

What he did retain was the ability to reach out to others, to Jews, but not just to Jews. And this he shared with Yitz Greenberg, who was himself on the edge of the Modern Orthodox movement and in danger of being pulled away.

So Zalman understood Yitz's situation very well. And from his explanation, I was gaining a tremendous admiration for Yitz's essential aloneness-what Blu, in a different context, called their "isolation." For his willingness to dialogue, he risked condemnation, even expulsion, from the Orthodox community where his heart and family was. (Not long after our return Yitz faced a threat of cherem cherem, or excommunication, from the Orthodox rabbinic a.s.sociation, the RCA, though fortunately it was forestalled.) None of the other delegates faced such risks.

After lunch, Yitz and Blu would enter the Tsuglakhang, the Dalai Lama's main temple, a place most Orthodox Jews would view as a disgusting haven of idolatry. It was a place full of huge golden statues in gla.s.s cases before which Tibetans prostrated themselves. Could an Orthodox Jew justify being there?

The Greenbergs would make their own judgments, I was sure, with as much integrity and attention to detail as they had shown so far. The overriding issue for them was not the external appearances, but the Dalai Lama's own behavior. In his own setting, would he act like a G.o.d, or a man?

We arrived shortly after lunch at the opening ceremony of the All Himalayan Conference on the Five Traditional Buddhist Sciences. It was exciting that our visit coincided with this event, which drew on Buddhist monastics and teachers from all parts of Asia.

I had a hard time, actually, finding out, even from many Tibetans, what these five traditional "sciences" were. Evidently they were a decidedly medieval curriculum and included what we would call arts and crafts, such as making traditional Tibetan silk paintings of Buddhist religious figures, known as thangkas thangkas. Other sciences included astromedicine, or medical astrology, the science of healing related to the movements of the stars. All of these sciences-which we would probably call traditional learning-were ways to better understand and express Buddha's teachings, or the dharma.

The important thing was that we were finally entering fully into an entirely Buddhist world. After removing our shoes, we were ushered by some monks into the Tsuglakhang. From the outside I saw the clean lines of a Greek temple in its porches and pillars. But once inside, I felt the strange and colorful intensity of the surroundings. The walls were painted bright mustard, in glossy enamel. In a gla.s.s case behind the Dalai Lama's throne was the torso of a life-sized golden Buddha draped with a red robe and framed by jewel-encrusted gold and silver foil. If these jewels were real, and represented wisdom, then the Dalai Lama was very wise, for they were bigger than hen eggs. The throne was draped in golden orange silk brocade-the steps leading up to it framed with an inlay of golden lotus.

Our seating was less elaborate. In kind consideration of our Western spines, we were lined along the south wall on metal folding chairs. On the floor of the temple, about one hundred and fifty Asian scholars, monks, and abbots, mostly from the Himalayan regions of India, from Nepal, Bhutan, and from the exiled Tibetan community sat in neat rows cross-legged on woven mats. In the temple courtyard, a hundred more devotees, mostly young monks in maroon robes, listened in to the proceedings.

But ordinary Tibetan refugees, in simple wool chubas chubas, also crowded in through the open windows just above our heads, simply to catch a glimpse of the Dalai Lama. You could tell by their faces he was indubitably, to them, His Holiness.

While we waited, a young woman and her mother, Tibetan peasant women, prostrated themselves before the throne, patting dust from the floor onto their foreheads. They bowed and prostrated before various images, which included Avalokiteshvara, a thousand-armed Buddha of compa.s.sion, Padmasambahva, who first brought Buddhism to Tibet, and Tsong Khapa, the Great Reformer of Tibetan Buddhism and founder of the gelukpa gelukpa school, from which the inst.i.tution of the Dalai Lama grew. school, from which the inst.i.tution of the Dalai Lama grew.

I looked down our row and saw Yitz Greenberg in his black knit skullcap. Blu sat beside him and I caught her watching the young woman and her mother intently. She told me later she felt "by the way they responded, they weren't in awe. This might be very offensive to someone else, but to me, their act was like kissing a mezuzah. It was like a formula. It wasn't that there was the essence of a G.o.d in those images, those things."

Marc Lieberman and Rabbi Jonathan Omer-Man both wore similar pillbox caps that could have been Guatemalan, Tibetan, or Indian. Next to me sat Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi, in a black kappoteh kappoteh and a wonderful silver, tailored black and a wonderful silver, tailored black kippah kippah, and beside him, Richard Gere. I'd seen Gere before lunch. He had added an ironic perspective on that morning's lengthy discussion when he referred casually to the Dalai Lama as "HH."

Then the Buddhist leader strode in, casting a special smile our way. Some monks bowed their heads, others remained seated upright. Blu Greenberg said this helped to convince her that not all his followers viewed him as a G.o.d. He sat in a lotus position on a red cus.h.i.+on in front of his throne.

Monks served us gla.s.ses of hot b.u.t.tered tea and paper plates of sweet rice and raisins, traditional for the opening of Buddhist study-like the honey and apples given to me as a child at the Jewish New Year, a reminder that all learning should be sweet.

As we munched, the welcoming speeches began. Buddhists were not sparing of eloquence and the translation from Hindi to Tibetan added to the length. The Dalai Lama looked calm and benevolent, taking it all in, sometimes closing his eyes and swaying his body back and forth in a meditation posture Marc Lieberman described to me in a whisper as "a tree swaying in the wind." I wondered where his mind went, if and when it wandered. How boring to be a target of veneration, a vector of ceremony.

I was beginning to feel quite uncomfortable myself sitting through the barrage of incomprehensible language. I looked his way and our eyes met. Just a glance and a playful smile as if for a moment the whole scene, the afternoon's fading light, the hundred and fifty Asian scholars and monks, the speech, the plates of rice and raisins, the Buddha with a thousand arms had all come down lightly to rest and we were the only two in the room, sharing a private joke.

It was a simple human moment. He read my discomfort. Then, by a barely perceptible motion of his hand, he dispatched monks among us. They stooped in the aisle and translated the speeches in low whispers. That's where we first met Laktor, who would serve us as translator during our visit.

After a final formal greeting to the Dalai Lama, three Tibetan monks chanted with deep dignity. I closed my eyes and imagined ancient caverns, shadowed forests, yet within the notes was also a plaintive call, a longing for peace. Plangent chords filled the room-h.e.l.l on the throat tendons. Occasionally one heard scattered coughs floating above like ghost birds. They finished abruptly in a kind of "talking blues" effect-the rapid recitation of a dedication prayer. The silence that followed seemed purified.

The Dalai Lama spoke, his voice also deep. Laktor explained that he was welcoming the Buddhist scholars from all over Asia who'd come in spite of the civic unrest. Then in the stream of Tibetan I heard the word "Jewish." I didn't have to wait for the translation. All eyes fell upon us. I was fighting tears. For the first time in history, a group of religiously minded Jews had come to the heart of the Buddhist world to teach and to learn.

5.

Blessings.

WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 24, DHARAMSALA.

Each morning before breakfast, the Jewish group a.s.sembled outside Kashmir Cottage for shakharit davening shakharit davening-morning prayers. The men strapped leather tefillin tefillin on the left arm and just above the third eye. In our brightly colored tallises and our headgear, which ranged from knit on the left arm and just above the third eye. In our brightly colored tallises and our headgear, which ranged from knit kippahs kippahs to sateen to sateen yarmulkes yarmulkes to Blu Greenberg's gray silk scarf to my own neo-Hasidic Indiana Jones fedora, we were quite a sight to the Tibetan kitchen workers, who always managed to break away for a glimpse. The davening was delightful: vigorous, l.u.s.ty, witty and raucous, quiet and joyful. to Blu Greenberg's gray silk scarf to my own neo-Hasidic Indiana Jones fedora, we were quite a sight to the Tibetan kitchen workers, who always managed to break away for a glimpse. The davening was delightful: vigorous, l.u.s.ty, witty and raucous, quiet and joyful.

This was all new to me. On any free a.s.sociation test, I'm sure after prayer prayer, I would have checked boring boring. As a boy I'd served time in Orthodox shuls, where the Hebrew was babbled at supersonic rates, and I spent most of my time trying to figure out what page we were on or when it was okay to sit down. Of course, this was all my own ignorance. I'd been raised primarily as a liberal Reform Jew and had learned only a handful of prayers. My family belonged to a giant cruise s.h.i.+p of a synagogue, with comfortable wooden pews and lofty architecture. Huge concrete Jewish stars framed the windows and a lovely north light filtered through them down to the cool gray carpet. I used to watch the dust motes suspended in the air instead of following the prayers. The cantor and choir sang beautifully while the congregation sat in silence, like an audience at a concert. This is where Reform Judaism had gotten off the track in the fifties. It felt like our employees were praying for us.

My father's father, an immigrant from the Russian Pale, was, nominally at least, Orthodox. At family gatherings, he mocked our synagogue, which he called a church. But my father was the first in his family with a college degree, and the handsome and affluent Reform synagogue fit his sense of his place in the world. I'd been bar mitzvahed there, a terrifying and elaborate social event that most resembled marrying my mother in public-but one devoid of large religious significance. Our cantor worked hard with us, but the pressure on him was enormous: two bar mitzvahs a week. The extent of my Hebrew scholars.h.i.+p at that time was memorization of syllables whose exact meaning remained obscure.

In short, I'd grown up the typical liberal American Jew, loyal to his tribe and family, and very proud of the ethical heritage of the Jewish people. My Jewish ident.i.ty was like a strongbox, very well protected, but what was inside it?

The interior meaning of being a Jew was indistinct, smuggled, inchoate-much like the Hebrew letters I could p.r.o.nounce but not truly read.

The irony is, I had to travel halfway around the world to Dharamsala to discover the utility of Jewish prayer. Our davening brought us together and changed the environment around us, transforming Kashmir Cottage, a Buddhist guest house, into Beth Kangra, the open-air synagogue of the Himalayas.

Maybe Jews ought to pray outdoors more often. Our morning blessings echoed down and around the Kangra valley and were answered back by the call of barking dogs, the cackling of jungle crows, and the sweet chirping of sparrows in the cedars. Often eagles attended, floating overhead-soaring down from the great sparkling granite peaks of the Himalayas to the east as Moshe Waldoks chanted, "Hallelujah, Praise the Lord, praise the Lord from the heavens, praise him in the heights.... Mountains and all hills, fruitful trees and all cedars. Beasts and all cattle, crawling things and winged fowl. Kings of the earth and all governments, princes and all judges on earth. Young men and also maidens, old men together with youths. Let them praise the name of the Lord..." We became the prayer we recited.

Another great help to me was that Waldoks prayed with a running commentary, teaching and chanting in a baritone, sometimes bursting into aria for major prayers and other times transitioning with a peppery recitative, "We're moving now from verses of praise to Shema Shema and its and its brakhot brakhot and some-would-say and some-would-saykaddish-here-if-they-had-aminyan-but-wedon't-have-aminyan-so-we're-not-going-to-saykaddish-here-but-Iwanted-to-bring-it-up-anyway-and-invite-everyone-who-is-along-tocome-along-because-" and then he chanted-"Blessed is the Lord, King of the universe, who forms light and creates darkness."

To Moshe Waldoks, who travels the country trying to enliven Jewish prayer, "The shul in Dharamsala was unique and shows how Jewishly sophisticated people could take advantage of being six thousand miles from Jewish politics and learn how to be human beings and Jews together." Each shaliakh tzibbur shaliakh tzibbur-prayer leader-brought a different style. Rabbi Joy Levitt favored us with quite beautiful singing whereas Jonathan Omer-Man, the mystic, conducted his service entirely in silence.

Zalman Schachter-Shalomi brought his unique combination of Hasidic energy and existential confrontation. The morning he led the davening, he came up to me during the last part of the Shema Shema, touched me on the shoulder, looked straight into my eyes, and said, "Your G.o.d is a true G.o.d." I found that a powerful challenge.

I usually felt as I prayed in a group that I was a.s.senting to ideas and images that were very foreign to me or that I didn't have time to check out. Zalman's gesture had cut through that in a very personal way. Something about his statement struck me in the heart as true, even with my intellect marshaling a thousand reasons why it couldn't be. My G.o.d is a true G.o.d? Which G.o.d was he talking about? Long white beard, old Daddy in the sky? Autocrat, general, father, king? Master of the Universe, doyen of regulations and punishments? These were the images that made me reject the very idea of G.o.d.

But in a funny mental jujitsu, the more I struggled with these images, the more what Zalman said came through. "Your G.o.d is a true G.o.d" meant to me that the images and the language weren't going to be supplied in advance. I would have to find them for myself out of my own experience, and in my own language I wasn't the only one taken aback. Moshe Waldoks, an all-star veteran of Jewish prayer, was also moved by Zalman's direct challenge. He told me it was his peak moment Jewishly in Dharamsala.

"We always say it at the end of the Shema Shema, but I understood it for the first time: that I ultimately will find the G.o.d that will work for me and it will be the true G.o.d. That was a tremendously potent moment. It gave me a lot of energy that I still carry with me. My eyes filled with tears. It was a loving act of support and affirmation that we live our lives and all we can do is help our people-all people-find what their G.o.d is and help them be true to it, live with a certain truth in their lives."

For Waldoks, that truth in his life was evident in the energy he brought to his prayers. But his chanted reference that Wednesday morning to not having a minyan minyan touched on a sore point. Ten Jews, the required quorum, were present, but only if Jewish women counted. However, for Yitz Greenberg, the women did not count because the Talmud defines a touched on a sore point. Ten Jews, the required quorum, were present, but only if Jewish women counted. However, for Yitz Greenberg, the women did not count because the Talmud defines a minyan minyan as ten Jewish males. as ten Jewish males.

Moreover, he could not partic.i.p.ate when Rabbi Levitt's turn came to lead the service.

I expected Rabbi Levitt to be upset. In fact, I expected her to come out fighting. After all, a prayer-illiterate like myself counted for the minyan minyan, while she, who sang the prayers so lovingly, didn't. But she didn't see it as a civil rights issue. In fact, she asked not to be included in the rotation of prayer leaders, hoping to spare Yitz the embarra.s.sment of being unable to join her. As she put it to me, "It's not a personal decision on his part, so there's no reason to blame him. He's following halakhah halakhah as he understands it, so I'm not personally offended." as he understands it, so I'm not personally offended."

The group rejected her request. Instead, on the morning she led the service, Rabbi Greenberg came a little late and stood a little apart.

It was an irony that for the Orthodox, interfaith work meant praying with Reform or Reconstructionist Jews. Another irony was that Yitz was the holdout at Beth Kangra, since no one in Orthodoxy had done more to promote Jewish unity than Yitz Greenberg's organization, the Jewish Center for Learning and Leaders.h.i.+p. Its acronym, CLAL, recalled the ideal that all Jews belong to clal yisrael clal yisrael, the congregation of Israel. Yet clal yisrael clal yisrael often faded from sight, especially in recent years as a resurgent Orthodox movement challenged the legitimacy of more liberal Jews. There was no peace for a peacemaker among warring Jews. (Moshe Waldoks joked that a great benefit of the Dharamsala group was that "it gave Yitz a chance to be on the right for a change. He's constantly being battered by the right wing of his own group and seen as a traitor to his fundamentalist faith. Here was a chance for him to be the most conservative person vis-a-vis ritual and theology.") often faded from sight, especially in recent years as a resurgent Orthodox movement challenged the legitimacy of more liberal Jews. There was no peace for a peacemaker among warring Jews. (Moshe Waldoks joked that a great benefit of the Dharamsala group was that "it gave Yitz a chance to be on the right for a change. He's constantly being battered by the right wing of his own group and seen as a traitor to his fundamentalist faith. Here was a chance for him to be the most conservative person vis-a-vis ritual and theology.") That conservativism emerged again only hours before our first meeting with the Dalai Lama. Marc Lieberman, our reluctant leader, was anxious to tighten up the agenda, but that was not to be.

In the Talmudic tradition, young students often matched wits over theoretical fine points, arguments twisted like peppers, called pilpul pilpul. Example: If a child is born with two heads, which one wears the yarmulke? Long debate: some say the right head, some say the left. All quote Torah.

Now we were faced with a new age pilpul pilpul: what brakha brakha do you make for a Dalai Lama? do you make for a Dalai Lama?

True to form, Zalman had composed a brand new Hebrew prayer for the occasion, and Nathan Katz had prepared a Tibetan translation. But there were questions and objections. Rabbi Omer-Man wanted to know "the inner ch.o.r.eography" of the event, who we were saying the brakha brakha to and what it meant. Rabbi Levitt thought the prayer too original, that it risked being "disembodied" from tradition. Blu Greenberg also disliked creating new to and what it meant. Rabbi Levitt thought the prayer too original, that it risked being "disembodied" from tradition. Blu Greenberg also disliked creating new brakhot brakhot, if traditional ones could be used. As the discussion dragged on, Marc Lieberman, obviously frustrated, broke in. "Folks, I think we're drifting into some real minutiae, and I'm not getting the big picture."

"This is not minutiae for us," Yitz told Marc firmly. "Deal with us two minutes. We're negotiating now with true respect for Buddhism that doesn't violate anyone's integrity."

Negotiating was an interesting word. I settled in for another long discussion. Zalman's prayer was attacked from right and left-perhaps logical, since he considered himself postdenominational. But Zalman, in turn, could quibble and quarrel with the best of them. Maybe this was the real secret of Jewish survival. We'd last forever because there wasn't time in the universe to finish our arguments. I felt like a kid in shul sitting on shpilkes shpilkes. My deepest prayer was to go outside and play. The weather was perfect, and I wanted to hike the mountain paths winding up to Thekchen Choeling, the Temple mount of Tibetan Buddhism. It was a religious obligation to make solemn perambulations around the Dalai Lama's residence there, on a special path known as the lingkhor lingkhor. From what I'd seen the day before, the paths would be full of Tibetan pilgrims, holy men, and beggars, whirling small Buddhist prayer wheels of wood and silver.

But my impatience partly abated as I came to understand the issues. It seems our encounter with the Dalai Lama presented a unique challenge in the long history of Jewish blessings. Their delightful variety covered almost every situation. There is a blessing on seeing a rainbow or an extraordinarily beautiful person. On seeing fruit trees in bloom or for an a.s.sembly of more than six hundred thousand Jews. There is a blessing on seeing the ocean and on seeing a mountain.

The Jewish tradition can stretch to accommodate new situations for blessing, but only by extension of old ones. There is probably no extant blessing for a computer chip, but there is a blessing for a pizza, fas.h.i.+oned from a blessing for bread.

In the case of the Dalai Lama, he could be blessed two ways, as a political or as a religious leader. There is a Jewish blessing upon seeing a Gentile king. There is another on seeing a Gentile sage or wise man. But instead of using one of them, Zalman proposed an entirely new brakha brakha. He wanted to specially honor the Dalai Lama by blessing him as the equivalent of a Jewish Jewish sage. sage.

The traditional prayer for a Jewish chokham chokham, a wise Torah scholar, ends, "Who has apportioned of his wisdom to those who fear him." For the last part, Zalman subst.i.tuted: "to those who honor his name." I did wonder how the Dalai Lama, who did not believe in a creator deity, nevertheless could be said to honor his name. But Zalman's point was that for the first time Jews would create a prayer to recognize the sacred in other religions.

He answered the objections about being too original by citing his source for the language, chanting the Hebrew from memory in an enchanting way. He claimed that the prophet Malachi had chartered a dialogue of spiritual equals when he wrote, "Then they that feared the Lord/Spoke one with another;/And the Lord hearkened, and heard. /And a book of remembrance was written before Him./For they that feared the Lord, and that thought upon his name." (Malachi 3:16) Rabbi Greenberg delighted in the quotation. I could see that despite his differences with Zalman, he was closer to him in his thinking-at least about this issue-than I might have thought. Yitz felt the Dalai Lama, though his tradition has "direct cognitive dissonance with ours, is nevertheless thinking about G.o.d-as we see it."

But Blu, who tended to work these things out through her gut feelings, still objected, and she eventually turned the tide. Now Joy Levitt declared that the situation was already radical, "so the liturgy doesn't have to be." Zalman was caught in a pincer movement-right and left, Orthodox and Reconstructionist.

So they came back to the traditional blessing of a Gentile sage. But Zalman objected that this blessing was a put-down, because it ended with the phrase bsar vdam bsar vdam, flesh and blood. The implication was that a Gentile, however wise, is only a creature of flesh and blood.

Yitz replied, "That he's human is not a put-down. First, because I don't believe he's a G.o.d. The fact that his own people do, I'm happy to dialogue with them, but I want to make clear where I stand on that." Yitz felt the Dalai Lama himself had removed such claims in his latest autobiography by describing himself as "a simple Buddhist monk."

In the end, Zalman agreed to recite the traditional prayer in Hebrew and his more innovative prayer in Tibetan. G.o.d presumably would handle the simultaneous translation with an appropriate sense of irony. The Tibetans would feel respected, the Jews uncompromised, and the dialogue could begin.

Unfortunately for Marc Lieberman's agenda, Yitz Greenberg's two minutes had stretched to a half hour and there was little time left for other discussion before lunch.

I understood Marc's frustrations. The Dalai Lama pilpul pilpul seemed a paradigm for the problems Judaism faces today. Yes, there are always dangers of becoming disconnected from the tradition. But there is an equally grave danger in ignoring contemporary realities. seemed a paradigm for the problems Judaism faces today. Yes, there are always dangers of becoming disconnected from the tradition. But there is an equally grave danger in ignoring contemporary realities.

For instance, the question of the minyan minyan. Although I respected the difficulty of Rabbi Greenberg's position and admired the deftness of his maneuvers, I feel that to have to worry so late in the twentieth century about whether a woman's prayers count in the eyes of G.o.d is silly. Nor do I buy the explanation the Orthodox offer that somehow a woman praying with men is a distraction.

In fact, as the rabbis debated, I wondered if the Dalai Lama wasn't ahead of the game in facing up to contemporary realities. The previous afternoon, when he spoke at the All Himalayan Conference, the Buddhist leader had stressed that Buddhism had to find "a synthesis between modern science and traditional teachings."

His audience included rather conservative monks and abbots, who'd come to talk about traditional sciences. Yet he boldly counseled them to "find new ideas in Buddhism." Interestingly, the suggested method amounted to Buddhist midrash. Words "not fitting with reality if taken literally, should be interpreted."

The Tibetan people are in an entirely critical situation. The millions left behind to Chinese rule have lost their chief spiritual leader. Their monasteries and temples lie in heaps of rubble, their libraries and precious religious objects are destroyed. The Chinese are devastating a country that has been isolated geographically and politically and thereby, up until now, has preserved intact a tremendous treasure of ancient wisdom. Now that the great spiritual bank of Tibetan Buddhism has been broken open, its wealth threatens to be scattered and lost.

In this crisis, the burden of preservation falls heavily on the religious leaders.h.i.+p in exile, and particularly to the Dalai Lama and his fellow monks and abbots living in Dharamsala.

One could imagine in this situation the Dalai Lama being a rather conservative restorationist, such as those ultra-Orthodox Jews Moshe Waldoks had referred to, who are busy reconstructing the shtetl shtetl in Israel and Brooklyn. Yet instead, he has become a Buddhist reformer. He has stated many times that if science can disprove a Buddhist doctrine-such as rebirth for instance-then the doctrine should be put aside. Modern science and Buddhism cannot contradict, because Buddhism is based on reality. in Israel and Brooklyn. Yet instead, he has become a Buddhist reformer. He has stated many times that if science can disprove a Buddhist doctrine-such as rebirth for instance-then the doctrine should be put aside. Modern science and Buddhism cannot contradict, because Buddhism is based on reality.

In some ways, the Dalai Lama enjoys a greater freedom to innovate than the rabbis. First, he is the undisputed leader of Tibetan Buddhism, a position no rabbi, not even the Chief Rabbi of Israel, could ever claim. There is no pope in Judaism. At a more subtle level, it appears that Jews and Buddhists have strikingly different att.i.tudes toward language. In Judaism there is a profound reverence for the written word-and a profound literalism. For instance, the Orthodox believe it is better to pray in Hebrew without understanding than to pray in one's own language. Even Zalman, at his most innovative, felt compelled to tie his prayer to a specific verse in Malachi. I thought again of the Frankfurt airport, how we'd been drawn to that Torah. I should think that anyone visiting a synagogue and seeing Jews revering and kissing their Torahs would think we wors.h.i.+ped our scrolls. Certainly my experience of Judaism was an experience with language-my quarrels, a quarrel with language.