Embracing Oneness: Jewish Mysticism in Practice – Lex Rofeberg

Episode 95.  

What comes to mind when you hear the term mysticism? Perhaps you imagine a yogi sitting cross legged in meditation, or people sitting in a circle chanting. Several religions have mystical practices, Sufism in Islam, and Zen Buddhism, for instance. Whatever the particulars, they generally share a desire to become one with the Divine and valueing of spiritual rather than intellectual understanding. Today, my guest, Lex Rofeberg, has joined me to talk about Jewish mysticism, its history, core books, challenging concepts and risks to followers. As a rabbi ordained in the Jewish Renewal movement, he is both a practitioner and critic of Jewish mysticism. Lex is co-host of the Judaism Unbound podcast and the Un-Yeshiva – a link is in the show notes. He is also an active proponent of learning from other faith traditions. In this, he shares my philosophy that learning about other paths is beneficial and does not pose a risk to your beliefs or practice. 

Bio:  

Lex Rofeberg (he/him) serves as senior Jewish educator for Judaism Unbound, a digital-first Jewish organization. He co-hosts and produces its weekly podcast, facilitates many of its digital rituals and events, and oversees the UnYeshiva: a digital center for Jewish learning and unlearning. He graduated from Brown University with a degree in Judaic Studies, and was ordained as a rabbi by ALEPH: Alliance for Jewish Renewal. A native of Milwaukee, Wisconsin, Lex lived for two years in Jackson, Mississippi -- working for the Institute of Southern Jewish Life -- and he currently lives in Providence, Rhode Island with his wife.

Highlights: 

• Embracing Jewish pop culture. 
• Pantheism, panentheism and monotheism.
• Embodied worship and pantheism. 
• Oneness and separation of the sacred and the profane.
• Hasidism, neo-Hasidism, and Chabad.
• The Zohar and Kabbalah. 
• Reckoning with harm in by charismatic leaders.

Social Media links for Lex: 

• Website – JudaismUnbound.com
• Bluesky – @lexaphus.bsky.social

References:

• Living Our Beliefs – Yusef Hayes episode on Sufism
• Living Our Beliefs – David Green on the Tanya and Chabad

Transcript on Buzzsprout

Social Media links for Méli:

• Website – the Talking with God Project
• Meli’s email
• LinkedIn – Meli Solomon
• Facebook – Meli Solomon

Follow the podcast!

The Living Our Beliefs podcast is part of the Talking with God Project.

Transcript

Lex Rofeberg transcript

Embracing Oneness: Jewish Mysticism in Practice

Méli Solomon [00:00:05]:

Hello, and welcome to Living Our Beliefs, a home for open conversations with fellow Christians, Jews, and Muslims. Through personal stories and reflection, we explore how our religious traditions show up in daily life. I am your host, Meili Solomon. So glad you could join us. This podcast is part of my Talking with God Project. To learn more, check out the link in the show notes. What comes to mind when you hear the word mysticism? Perhaps you imagine a yogi sitting cross legged in meditation or people sitting in a circle chanting. Several religions have mystical practices, Sufism in Islam and Zen Buddhism, for instance.

Méli Solomon [00:00:56]:

Whatever the particulars, they generally share a desire to become one with the divine and a valuing of spiritual rather than intellectual understanding. Today, my guest Lex Rofeberg has joined me to talk about Jewish mysticism, its history, core books, challenging concepts and risks to followers. As a rabbi ordained in the Jewish renewal movement, he is both a practitioner and critic of Jewish mysticism. Lex is cohost of the Judaism Unbound podcast and the UnYeshiva. A link is in the show notes. He is also an active proponent of learning from other faith traditions. In this, he shares my philosophy that learning about other paths is beneficial and does not pose a risk to your beliefs or practice. He has much knowledge and experience to share. Let's take a listen. 

Hello, Lex. Welcome to my Living Our Beliefs podcast. I'm really pleased to have you on today.

Lex Rofeberg [00:02:04]:

And I'm so excited to be here. Thanks for having me.

Méli Solomon [00:02:07]:

So before we dive into this, large and perhaps unwieldy question of Jewish mysticism, I just wanna set the stage a bit and make sure I understand your background. You are an ordained rabbi and a Jewish educator, co-leading the Judaism Unbound podcast and attendant activities. Have you always been so deeply engaged, or is this kind of a a later activity?

Lex Rofeberg [00:02:36]:

Yes. I have definitely always been deeply connected to Jewish practice. That said, what it has looked like at different points in my life has taken a lot of different forms. And what I'd say is, growing up, I I always loved being Jewish. I was in Milwaukee and going to a school where I was one of the only Jews, and I always kinda liked being different in that way. It it didn't bother me. When I say I was highly engaged or highly connected to my Jewish practice, I don't wanna suggest that I've always been deeply knowledgeable or deeply embedded in particulars of Jewish prayer or in, like, the Jewish calendrical cycle. But I was part of what a lot of Jews think of or talk about as, like, cultural Jewish practice in most ways.

Lex Rofeberg [00:03:32]:

Like, we had framed photographs on my wall growing up of, like, Barbra Streisand and Gene Wilder. Like, truly, I could, like, show you pictures of my house, and you would know we were Jewish. That was my Judaism more than, like, knowing anything about Jewish connections to God or prayer. We did go to services probably once every month and a half on Shabbat, but then it was really college. And then after college, when I started working in Jewish life, that other elements of Jewish practice that are more what we think of as religious opened up for me. Now I would now argue that the stuff I experienced growing up, all that cultural stuff, actually does have some religiousness to it, but we can go into that more later.

Méli Solomon [00:04:20]:

Interesting how the the cultural connection led into or ended up being connected to the religious. Although now you you are clearly very involved with the religious end and with the educational end of Jewish practice, I'm guessing you still connect to the cultural aspects as well.

Lex Rofeberg [00:04:43]:

If anything, I take them even more seriously now. Like, when there's a new TV show with Jewish themes or something, I actually see it as almost my responsibility or obligation to watch. Even in, like, a synagogue space where the people are are going there to have some kind of religious experience, I can connect to that room more quickly if I have a relationship to the corpus of Jewish pop culture than if I have something interesting to say about the Shema prayer. These things are deep. They're not just sort of side hustles for our lives. And I actually see it as as not separate from all the other pieces, and it relates actually to my my understanding of the divine of God, which gets to mysticism. Like, I see God as the sum total of all existence. I'm a I'm a pantheist, a a Jewish pantheist.

Lex Rofeberg [00:05:38]:

But my Jewish pantheism basically supposes that all matter, all existence is one. It's all interconnected, and it is divine. It is something that we should strive to elevate and be as holy as possible. And so if I think that, then I have to think that all sorts of run of the mill everyday things in our lives, like TV shows, are actually part of what God is. They're not separate. It's not that God lives in stained glass windows and synagogues and elevated beautiful harmonies in songs and sunsets. Even, like, things that aren't fun or good, I have to reckon with how that might be part of God too. So I think that it's absolutely stayed part of who I am.

Méli Solomon [00:06:27]:

What we then are talking about is a spectrum of God's presence in our lives from the mundane to the sacred to what we're here to talk about today of mysticism. Right?

Lex Rofeberg [00:06:43]:

That's absolutely right. Yeah.

Méli Solomon [00:06:45]:

But I think it is quite common to to stratify these things, To say something like mysticism, kind of quite abstract, perhaps esoteric way of thinking about the divine is beyond daily existence or is unknowable. I'm not quite sure. We'll we'll get into that in a minute. And then the sacred is what we try to lift ourselves up to. You know, in prayer, when we say kadosh kadosh kadosh holy holy holy, we actually rise up on our toes to to try to

Lex Rofeberg [00:07:24]:

I don'ts, by the way. I can say why.

Méli Solomon [00:07:26]:

Interesting. Okay. I do, and I really like that. Not that the everyday doesn't have aspects, but this distinction between the mundane and the holy is a valuable thing. We mark time between Shabbat and the rest of the week at the beginning and at the end. We hope to bleed that holiness, that sacred time into the rest of the week. But these demarcations are important in Jewish practice, in Jewish theology, and yet we're also acknowledging that there is a value in not making a distinction and not making a demarcation.

Lex Rofeberg [00:08:10]:

That's a really profound question. You understand me very well. I say these things to people sometimes, and I think that my theological approach is sometimes, like, confusing. What you just asked shows that you very much heard me. So I'll start with the kadosh kadosh kadosh thing, the tippy toes. What's funny, I said I don't go on my tippy toes. I was wrong. What I do is there's you say kadosh kadosh kadosh.

Lex Rofeberg [00:08:34]:

You say it three times. And what I realized when I was in college is it did not make sense to me that if the goal of those three words, holy, holy, holy, is to embody a connection to holiness. That's why the tiptoes historically like, you're going on your tiptoes to get closer to that which is elevated, that which is divine. If that's the goal, I can't with my theology only go upward. I don't think God is only upward. So me going on my tippy toes three times doesn't achieve the goal. I think God is the sum total of everything. So what I do is I go on my tippy toes once, then I sort of bow, like, downward.

Lex Rofeberg [00:09:13]:

And then the last thing I do is I, like, swivel my body in 360 degrees directions to try to cover, like, upward direction, downward direction, and the fullness of the horizontal axis around me to get at everything. Like, that's what I do at the kadosh kadosh kadosh because that's what I think is closer to true in terms of if I'm striving to be close to God, how I would do that with my body. Now the the funny story is I think I and the person next to me and the chair between us, like, I think all of those are part of God. So even my attempt to do it differently is insufficient, but it is closer. So that's the kadosh kadosh kadosh thing. And then the other thing you said, you brought up the distinctions between Shabbat and the rest of the week. You're right to ask it. That's a challenge to pantheists, especially Jewish pantheists.

Lex Rofeberg [00:10:05]:

Like, my theology is one of interconnectedness of deconstructing the separations we have. The idea that I, Lex, and any other person are separate. Like, I don't really think that, and so my goal is often to eliminate distinctions. And yet, Havdalah, the the ritual you're describing that separates Shabbat from the rest of the week at the end of Shabbat is actually my favorite service. It's my favorite Jewish service of any of them. I think it's the most effective. It's very short. It sort of does its job in a in a compact way.

Lex Rofeberg [00:10:39]:

It's a very sensory service. You're lighting fire. You're smelling spices. You're drinking wine. You're even dipping the fire into the wine to symbolize or to manifest the collision between Shabbat, which is the wine. Wine is sort of a code word for sanctified time in Judaism. And you're colliding it with the fire, which is specifically not Shabbat because you're not allowed to light fires on Shabbat. So you collide the wine and the fire to manifest the moment of separation between Shabbat and the rest of the week, the collision.

Lex Rofeberg [00:11:13]:

I love it. It's so sensory, and you're right. I don't really, at the end of the day, believe that it is helpful to us to dwell in distinctions. There's a there's a liturgy at the end of it that says, you know, blessed is God who distinguishes between light and darkness and between sacred and profane. And and it also says between the six days of the week, which are mundane, and the seventh day, which is Shabbat. I say it, and I like it, and I I can hold to ideas of separation, but they're not kind of metaphysically true to me. What I'm praying for is that I can sort of find meaning and connection to forms of mundaneness and forms of elevatedness, and that that can allow me to function in the world in a meaningful way even as I don't think that there is a a deep elevated holiness to certain people or certain places over others that I I do find myself skeptical and dubious of a lot of kinds of theological distinctions. But it's a great question because for pantheists of any kind, we have to reckon with the fact that, like, okay.

Lex Rofeberg [00:12:21]:

We're all one. We're all connect but there are still cars driving around. I'm quoting a teacher of mine, Jay Michaelson. You can't just presume, well, I and the car are one, and so I don't have to look both ways before I cross the street. Like, that doesn't operate well. And so we have to find ways to hold to our notions of theology while still, like, function in the world where we have this illusion at least of a kind of separateness.

Méli Solomon [00:12:47]:

A related thought is if we don't make a distinction, then nothing is special. If you treat every day like your birthday, then it's kind of meaningless. That seems to be a risk of the everything is one or everything is connected. I maybe I'm a little confused about what You're not gonna mean. Okay.

Lex Rofeberg [00:13:16]:

You're you're you're right. In the landscape of debates between pantheists or panentheists, there's different ways people language it. But but between folks who think that everything is God or everything is in God versus those who say, no. Lex, you have to believe that God is separate from you. You have to believe that there is something transcendent, not just imminent. I'm using a lot of, like, religious studies words. The challenge you're bringing up is absolutely a core challenge that pantheists need to reckon with. I think it is practically good to treat Shabbat as an elevated special time over the rest of the week.

Lex Rofeberg [00:13:57]:

I gain meaning out of that. It affects how I live the rest of my week. And so people could push on me and say, like, Lex, you're just equalizing everything. You're homogenizing everything, and that takes out the specialness of all of all of our lives. And they could even say, you know, well, Lex, you you think every person in the world or every being in the world is good, but, like, surely, you have family members, you have close loved ones in your life that you care about more. On some level, my answer would be, yes. I do. And in a metaphysical kind of sense, I still do believe that my wife and my parents and my closest people in my life are not separate from the random stranger on the street corner.

Lex Rofeberg [00:14:42]:

And I would argue that the result of pantheism, of thinking that every human being of any demographic is connected to me, is part of me, I would argue that there is more to gain from that than there is to lose. Because when I see a stranger on a street corner, my presumption is that they are part of me and that I am part of them. And so it becomes incumbent upon me to care about them and their well-being in the same way that my right ring finger doesn't know my left toe or my liver, but all of them are part of one body, and so they matter to one another. Right? They are part of a broader whole that is my human body that hopefully on most days functions pretty well. And that's my perception of the stranger on the street corner. And I actually have a spiritual practice that is deeply important to me that helps me remember that, which is that every sixteen weeks, I give a double red blood donation. This is my most central spiritual practice, and I would argue going to the mysticism piece that this is a mystical practice. Because Jewish mysticism, it's not most of the time about deep transcendence and connection to something other than me.

Lex Rofeberg [00:15:57]:

It's it's about finding the holiness in everything. The the famous aphorism, there is nothing other than God. That is sort of a core mystical teaching that becomes important to Kabbalists and to later to Hasidic folks and then to folks like me who might be called neo-Hasidic. We can go into all that in a second. But, like, all of those Jewish mystic groups are premised on the idea that there is nothing other than God. And so it becomes important for us to care about everything and everyone. It's just as easy to criticize it and say, well, you could just not care about the person on the street corner. You could not care about even yourself.

Lex Rofeberg [00:16:37]:

You could say, like, there is no self at all. There which is something I kind of believe. And so we can just sort of float around and be whatever quality human beings we are and none of it matters. That is a danger, but I I don't find that people who are holding theologies like mine tend to go down that route. It tends to be that we find holiness in others, and the blood donation thing is, like, I, every sixteen weeks, have part of my body, a pint of blood, literally go out of me, and then I get a text three days later that it's in somebody else's body. I actually have little bits of me that I know are floating around in other people. And and that's true in other ways too. It's not just blood donation.

Lex Rofeberg [00:17:26]:

Like, all of our cells become not us after seven years or whatever that famous teaching is. They, they're all replaced. And so I use that practice to remind myself of my interconnectedness with all people and the probability that at some point in my life, I might be the one that needs blood. That's an empowering way to look at the world because it means that every person out there, every being out there, I have the potential to be in deep conversation connection with.

Méli Solomon [00:17:59]:

Yeah. Absolutely. I think a distinction that Merit's making here, Lex, is between saying everything is connected and everything is the same.

Lex Rofeberg [00:18:13]:

Yeah. Yeah.

Méli Solomon [00:18:15]:

I I think that might help us parse this between saying

Lex Rofeberg [00:18:19]:

That's right.

Méli Solomon [00:18:20]:

You know, a spark of God is in each one of us, and the god in me sees the god in you.

Lex Rofeberg [00:18:27]:

Yeah. When, like, a university or some big organization says, like, we're one community here. I mean, sometimes they say that and it's disingenuous. But, like, when it's done and it's meaningful, of course, that doesn't mean that there aren't individual constituent parts of that broader whole. When when a university president gets up on the stand and says, like, we're one university here and we should have each other's backs and blah, blah, blah, blah, that is a statement of connection. Going to my body metaphor, the fact that my body is one whole, w h, doesn't mean that a finger is the same as a nose. It like, that that's just self-evident to us. And so I find those criticisms of the idea of everything is God to be a little bit halfhearted.

Lex Rofeberg [00:19:12]:

I feel like they haven't thought it all the way through.

Méli Solomon [00:19:15]:

Yeah. Okay. So digging a little deeper, how would you define Jewish mysticism?

Lex Rofeberg [00:19:23]:

Cool. The unhelpful answer I would give is at any given time, what the set of people who call themselves Jewish and mystics are doing. That's a circular definition. That doesn't help anything. So I'll I'll expand. But, like, I'm very opposed to essentialism. I wouldn't say that there is, like, a really clean, clear definition that goes across history and works. I do think there are some common characteristics that have been the case so far in in Jewish mystic circles.

Lex Rofeberg [00:19:55]:

So like I said, I think that a core piece of Jewish mysticism is a prioritization of God's imminence, God's sort of closeness to us, presence with us over and above God's transcendence. So God's separateness from us, God as sort of that which created us. If you're a pantheist, it's hard to reckon with God as creator. And, look, Jewish mysticism historically has tried to square that circle. Like, I might be outside the box. I think a lot of Jewish mystics try to say that that, like, everything is is God. There is nothing else. And also god created us, which is a funny thing to say simultaneously.

Lex Rofeberg [00:20:42]:

There's texts upon texts that try to make those not contradict one another. I'm a little different in that I'm fine with those contradicting each other, and I just think that everything is god, and there there's not really much transcendence that I'm focused on. Let's go example based and not just abstract. Like, there are different groups that have called themselves Jewish mystics at different times. We could start this story as long as a couple thousand years ago. There are groups that many see as sort of precursors to what would become Jewish mystics. I'm not gonna go into details about those. Often, the the beginning of the story of Jewish mysticism in many ways is a text called the Zohar. So the Zohar is written, what, like, I think eight hundred years ago. I I apologize if I'm getting the precise century wrong.

Méli Solomon [00:21:30]:

What I saw was thirteenth century founded by Isaac Luria.

Lex Rofeberg [00:21:35]:

So Isaac Luria is yeah. He's a founding figure of Kabbalah. If you ask people, like, what word in Hebrew means mysticism, they will often say Kabbalah. Isaac Luria is a key figure. The Zohar is written by a fellow named Moshe de Leon. What's interesting is the Zohar, it's written by a guy named Moshe de Leon, but he claims that he's not the author. He's kind of channeling it from a figure named Shimon bar Yochai from eleven hundred years prior. So Moshe de Leon is not alone in this, but he writes the Zohar, which creates or at least helps to create a lot of new ways of understanding Judaism.

Lex Rofeberg [00:22:13]:

There's a love of of language and the the literal letters of the Hebrew aleph bet. And there's a sense that they are basically substance. They're not like, words are not just what they mean. They are made up of particular parts. And so if a word has five letters and you can scramble them and make something else, that's actually like a deep metaphysical teaching about the nature of the universe if you can scramble into some new word. There's numerical values that tie to these words. The Zohar doesn't create these, but it kinda runs wild with them. It begins by saying that the beginning of Genesis, which in Hebrew is it says, in the beginning of God's creating the heaven and the earth.

Lex Rofeberg [00:22:57]:

That's kind of how I would translate it. But it makes a radical move, and it says, don't read, in the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. Read it as Bereshit, the word, which in Hebrew means in the beginning of, but the word Bereshit, Bara Elohim. The word Bereshit created Elohim. Elohim is one of the name is one of the names of God. So the Zohar kicks off by saying that God was actually created by something else. That's like a radical heretical kind of take, and there's plenty of people who at the time did not like the Zohar. And it's kind of funny that it became canonical in many ways because it was seen as this way off the beaten path document.

Lex Rofeberg [00:23:46]:

But it does interpretation and after interpretation like that, it gives almost agency and personifies the letters and words that we have. It ties them to all sorts of different attributes of God. It creates a whole tree, the Kabbalistic tree. It and some other early Kabbalists create this tree that shows God's divine emanations and how there's kind of this connection between God elevated on high and then God immanent and connected to us through something called Shechinah or Malchut. I mean, all of this is wandering around in the Zohar, and then people take that and sort of veer it off into different paths, the most well-known becomes what we now think of as Hasidism. So when I talk about Jewish mysticism, Hasidism is the most common clearest cut version of it that operates today. When you walk by folks in Brooklyn or wherever that have side curls, pay us, a lot of those folks are mystics. They would cosign many of the things that I'm saying.

Lex Rofeberg [00:24:49]:

I'm not a Hasid in that sense. I'm very much on the left politically. They are very much on the right politically. They have a lot of ways they practice Judaism that don't square with mine. But I am a neo-Hasid, and what neo Hasidic kind of refers to is groups that have taken elements of Hasidism, of mysticism, of prioritizing the imminence of God over the transcendence, of connecting to the holiness in everything, like I was talking about, who have taken bits of that from Hasidism, but sort of combined it with progressivism politically. And if people are curious to learn more, like, the the clearest example of this is the Jewish renewal movement, which is the movement that ordained me and its founder, Zalman Schechter Shalomi, who grew up in Chabad in a very large Hasidic sect and left that sect when he started talking about the sanctity of LSD and why everybody should try it, while he was still in Chabad. That didn't make them very happy, and there was kind of a mutual parting of voice. But he never felt like he left.

Lex Rofeberg [00:25:52]:

He actually felt like he still held to some of their premises. It's just his politics changed drastically. And so that was a very, very long answer, but I'd say Jewish mysticism has this really interesting lineage, and it's actually more central to groups that people see as, like, traditionalist than a lot of folks realize.

Méli Solomon [00:26:14]:

We have this this core message that there is only one. This is one of the things that Arthur Green talks about.

Lex Rofeberg [00:26:25]:

Mhmm.

Méli Solomon [00:26:25]:

And this mixing of very traditional practice, but pulling out a mystical sense and then blending it with quite liberal views if you if you're looking at the Neo-Hasidics. This is quite a multidimensional, structure that you're outlining. Am I tracking properly?

Lex Rofeberg [00:26:54]:

Yeah. I mean, Art Green is another figure who is a Neo Hasidic figure. I will note that he is a figure who, in recent years, has come under a lot of fire for some of his actions, and his teachings have had an important influence on many people. And so that's all there. But, yeah, Art Green is another prominent neo-Hasid. He and Zalman actually had many converse I mean, they were close, and they had Zalman being the guy who founded Jewish Renewal that I mentioned. They had many conversations, including some publicly. And when I mentioned that, you know, I'm a pantheist and there are people who call themselves panentheist, Art Green is probably, to my knowledge, the most prominent person in Jewish life who talks about himself as a panentheist.

Lex Rofeberg [00:27:39]:

And so the n, the difference between pantheist and panentheist is that pantheist really means, like, all is God. Panentheist is God is in all or all is in God. And that's a subtly different thing where the where you still sort of believe that there is something separate from all of us that we could call God that almost embeds itself in all matter. And so Art Green and Zalman had many back-and-forths about this, but you're right. They're they're both Jewish mystics. They both compared to somebody who would just be kind of straightforwardly a monotheist, as opposed to a pantheist or panentheist who sees God as separate from us. We pray to that god, that God created us. There's not really a complication of us being part of God.

Lex Rofeberg [00:28:25]:

Like, that that's not what a lot of monotheisms hold by. But, yeah, Art Green is another piece of that. And sort of when you map out Jewish mysticisms today that are not orthodox, Zalman and his followers, Art Green and his followers are two of the key groups that you'd wanna sort of fit into that constellation. There's there's others as well. And I also think that we we do a poor job of highlighting those who aren't men who have been at the forefront of this movement. I see Shefa Gold, who is a student of Reb Zalman's, but is also in her own right, a really powerful channel of mysticism Jewishly in the world. I see her as having had a profound influence to a similar degree as those folks. She's seen as a musician or somebody who does chant, but it's much more than that.

Lex Rofeberg [00:29:19]:

She she has a a form of orienting to prayer and to communal chant and basically singing, but she would want to use more elevated language than that. That pushes us to see those actions very nontrivially as really deep forms of connection to the divine. And it's very mystical, and she's got a lot of followers too. So we could we I could go down other lists too, but, like, there's many different circles of Jewish mystics even that are not orthodox, then you would map in those who are Hasidic. You've got folks influenced by the figure Nachman of Breslov, known as the Breslover Hasidim, who have a very strong presence and are sometimes on the borderline between orthodox and outside of orthodoxy. You've got Chabad, I mentioned, who are very much orthodox and traditionalist and who also hold these beliefs. You've got the Satmar Hasidim, who kind of have their own very ultra traditionalist ways of doing things in their own enclaves. But there is kind of a uniting fabric among them even as our political difference, like, couldn't be starker.

Méli Solomon [00:30:28]:

So in laying out those different groups, I think that's a nice segue to talk more specifically about practice.

Lex Rofeberg [00:30:37]:

Cool.

Méli Solomon [00:30:37]:

Right? All of this can be very abstract. We talk about the oneness and, you know, God is in all things. But what do we do?

Lex Rofeberg [00:30:47]:

Mhmm.

Méli Solomon [00:30:48]:

And where does it really show up? So let's focus on you. How is this showing up? You talked about the blood donation.

Lex Rofeberg [00:30:56]:

Mhmm.

Méli Solomon [00:30:56]:

Where else is this, showing up for you?

Lex Rofeberg [00:31:00]:

Great. I'll give two examples from two of the people I've decided just to have sort of some scaffolding to this conversation and continuity from one point to the other. I get on an airplane sometimes. It's easy for us to forget how wild that is. Like, we're human beings who can't fly, who until the very most recent fraction of all human history would have taken an unbelievably long time to get from where I am in Providence, Rhode Island to, like, say, the West Coast of the country or something. And we can get on a plane and just get there in a few hours. And so I would argue that mysticism practiced in my daily life is noticing that incredibleness, that wow, that awe in something that we could just see as, oh, I'm I'm traveling. I I'm going from one place to another.

Lex Rofeberg [00:32:00]:

And Shefa Gold has taught many of her students and including me. Like, she when she's in an airplane, like, she says some blessings and hopes for all the people beneath her. Now we could go into what I think prayer does. Like, I don't know that our prayers bring healing and, like, if you don't pray, somebody is less likely to heal from so That's not really how I approach it, but I do think that saying some blessings for all the people you're flying over is a great way to enact the ways in which we are not separate from those people, that we are connected to those people, that on a mystical kind of level, we are one. That is a is a meaningful act. And when you're in an airplane, you have more touch points. You can see more people. You can't see the people, but, like, you know they're there beneath you, and you're flying over tons of them than on a normal day.

Lex Rofeberg [00:32:52]:

And so I think that's a kind of enacted form of of Jewish mysticism, and I and I have done the same. It's better when I have a window seat and I can see. The other, I'd say, is one thing from Zalman, since I'm quoting people I mentioned before, he talks about vitamins. He talks about different religious traditions having basically, like, nutrients or vitamins. He talks mostly about Judaism as a starting point, and he says Judaism is rich in certain vitamins. We're certainly rich in, like, textual debate and preserving argument and seeing the value in dissenting opinions, that's all enshrined in the Talmud. It's, like, right there. You you can't miss it.

Lex Rofeberg [00:33:35]:

Even if you're a secular Jew who doesn't spend time exploring religious text, that's, like, so deeply part of Jewish culture that it tends to seep in. And we can be deficient in in vitamins. Judaism, for the same reason, we're we're strong. And what's I don't know the opposite of deficient in the body sense, but, like, we're whatever that word is for debate and textual conversation, we're not very good at silence. We're not very good at pausing, at slowing down, at chilling out for a second. Like, that like, that's not what our tradition has historically done. What we've done is, oh, we've got the Torah? Let's have a 63 part massive commentary that relates to that Torah and also goes on a bunch of tangents and takes seven years to read if you read one page every day. Oh, that's actually not enough.

Lex Rofeberg [00:34:27]:

We're gonna make a bunch of commentaries on that. We're gonna cut we're gonna words on words on words. We never pause. And so Zalman calls us like, we we kinda gotta learn from our siblings in other religious traditions and seek out ways to take a breath. He's a big advocate of forms of meditation. There are forms of Jewish meditation with a rich tradition, but they're they're sometimes less central and less known to Jews than, say, a typical Buddhist's relationship to meditation in their tradition. And so Zalman encourages us to try and find those vitamins in other religious traditions that we're deficient in. And so I'm in an interfaith relationship.

Lex Rofeberg [00:35:09]:

My wife is not Jewish. You actually met her when we gathered at BYU, which was an interfaith gathering that is part of what I'm talking about. Like, I see deep value in being in spaces where where I get to soak in some of those vitamins that I might be deficient in and that we as a as Jews might be deficient in. And so my relationship is actually an outgrowth of my mysticism. If I think everything is God, then I have to think that those who aren't Jewish are part of God and that they have, I would say, Torah to bring. They have wisdom to bring. And so my lived experience is being in relationship with somebody who isn't Jewish. It's also that I have a deep relationship.

Lex Rofeberg [00:35:48]:

I talked about, like, my own theology. In many ways, my my sense that I'm not a discrete self, that I'm not sort of a me, that's influenced deeply by the Buddhist notion of anatman, of no self. I don't go around, like, preaching anatman. I feel like there would be appropriative elements of that, and I don't know that the deep ins and outs of anatman to do so authentically and accurately. And it has transformed my life and helped me untangle and understand those practices like blood donation that I knew I cared about, but I didn't have language for why. But it's helping me upend my notion of self, which is a deep value to many who are practitioners of Buddhism. I take Hindu text seriously, and Hindu teachings seriously. I I take in in a country where Christianity is predominant and hegemonic.

Lex Rofeberg [00:36:43]:

Look. I think Christianity causes a lot of damage, and I do actually think there are cool things about it. How amazing is it on a regular basis to hold up a piece of wafer and wine and connect it to story, to say that's the blood and body of somebody who my tradition cares about? And, of course, I'm talking about the Eucharist and Jesus. Like, I I think that's a cool practice, and it doesn't threaten me. I don't feel like I am becoming unJewish or, like, doing anything dangerous by finding value in that. I also because the time of year we're recording this, I think Lent is so cool. The notion of having a a particular practice that you either give up or embrace for this extended period of, I think, it's just over forty days. How powerful.

Lex Rofeberg [00:37:34]:

How cool. Part of how I live out my Jewish theology or my my Jewish mysticism is actually by seeking out wisdom and teaching from other kinds of traditions. Zalman talked about this as deep ecumenism, and it totally affects my life. And how could it not? I live in a country where most people aren't Jewish, where most people aren't me. Like, in order to only be living in Jewish teachings, I I would have to sort of cloister myself off. And not only would that be hard, I don't think it's desirable. I think we all grow and are better when we have people in our lives and communities in our lives that push us to be something new.

Méli Solomon [00:38:16]:

Yeah. Well, you're not gonna hear any argument from me on that point. So, Lex, you've just talked about many wonderful, very positive, one might say, enlightening aspects of Jewish mysticism and how you connect with it. Nothing is all good. Right? There are challenges in all things. So can you briefly tell me something about the struggles or the risks that are entailed, maybe a surprise that you had?

Lex Rofeberg [00:38:51]:

Yeah. Sure. First off, I strongly agree. And if somebody thinks that God is everything, that means God is in horror. God is in the worst of humanity, the worst of our world, and that must be reckoned with. So I I super agree that nothing comes without its shadow sides, its horror sides. I'll give one practical answer, which is it's not only Jewish mysticism, but mysticisms across traditions have often had serious problems with cults of charisma, and that has in more than enough circumstances to make it something we should be wary of led to instances of sexual violence and sexual harassment. That should never be sidelined.

Lex Rofeberg [00:39:41]:

I recoil when Jewish communities, including some that I'm part of, try to sidestep the realities that I mean, we mentioned Art Green. That's, I would say, in the scheme of the kinds of situations we're talking about, a moderate form, but still serious and still caused real damage. And there are also figures in the recent past of Jewish mysticism who have been extremely prominent, who have done a lot of harm, including multiple examples of people coming forward with instances of sexual violence. Shlomo Carlebach is perhaps the best known. He was a founding figure, a core figure of contemporary Jewish neo-Hasidism that I was talking about. He and Zalman were two of the three first, what's called, like like messengers on behalf of Chabad that started going around to different places and sort of spreading the word about mysticism. Shlomo Karbach was serially violent to to to women, and that shouldn't be sidestepped. I and many others no longer use his melodies.

Lex Rofeberg [00:40:51]:

He's one of the most prominent Jewish musicians in addition to being, like, a rabbi and teacher of the last hundred years. And there were communities that on Friday night, their services were called Carlebach services. That was like a name for them because they just used his melodies. Those don't happen so much anymore. And when they do, I think they're doing harm because they are sort of lauding a figure and centering a figure who did a lot of harm. I think we can hold on to elements of what he taught without sanctifying him as a person and should do that, and we should also name that he did unbelievable harm in the world and that it wasn't separate from his mysticism. Like, when you have communities like those that I'm describing and historically, Hasidism and Neo Hasidism often have sort of a central rebbe. I'm talking about particular people, Zalman, Shefa Gold, Arkri like, they're different from, like, the rebbe in an ultraorthodox kind of setting, and they still come with the kinds of dangers of overly sacralizing a person that we should all be on the lookout for.

Lex Rofeberg [00:41:59]:

I don't want to give any person on the planet this unbridled sense that they are impeccable. I don't think that's healthy. I don't think having communities where, like, criticizing the core teacher is bad. We should avoid any situation like that because all of us are fallible. All of us have problems. And when you have those situations, it gives a free pass often to usually men, but to people at the center to take advantage of that and often do harm to people. And so that is a real part of the recent past and less than recent past of Jewish mysticism and broader mysticism. I don't wanna dismiss that whatsoever.

Lex Rofeberg [00:42:42]:

So that's that's the biggest example I'd I'd give. I'd also say that in less explicitly harmful ways, there's a dismissal of mind and rationality and intellect that I struggle with a lot. When people meet me and I say I'm a pantheist or I'm part of Jewish renewal, they're often surprised. And sometimes they'll say things to me like, you don't really look like you're part of renewal. You don't you don't wear the flowy clothes. You don't talk like this and bring words like discernment. There's an aesthetic that operates, and I I don't mean to disparage that. I actually I actually find deep value in some folks who who operate with that aesthetic.

Lex Rofeberg [00:43:27]:

It's not, like, unilaterally bad. It becomes the centerpiece, and people who are different from that can feel outsider. And for me, on the rationality point, like, what it comes along with is the sense that the authentic religious act is to connect through heart, through emotion, and that's the true way to connect to the divine. And if you're getting bogged down in your head in breaking down text and all, like, that's kind of less important. I think it's deeply important. I think heart and head should be intertwined. The the Hebrew word lev in the Torah, it's usually translated heart, but it actually means, like, heart mind. It's both.

Lex Rofeberg [00:44:10]:

They don't seem to have had a word for, like, mind or brain separate from heart, and that's how I think it should be. Biologically, it's it's not actually the case that our emotions live in our heart and our thoughts live in our brain. Like, we we know that's not the case. And so we should operate with a sense that both of those are valuable. I find that, like, one of the worst things you can sometimes be called in Jewish mystic spaces is cerebral or, like, intellectual. People mean that in a sly way. I could do without the mystic opposition to brain, to intellect, that there's this anti-intellectualism that I actually see also in, like, the the right wing politically, which is usually not the same as Jewish mystics, that I don't see any need for. But we we allow it to to flourish and render that which is in our heads. It's rendered less important than than that which is from our heart or from our emotions. Both matter.

Méli Solomon [00:45:20]:

Yeah. Amen to that. Yeah. Lex, clearly, we could go on for a long time. Is there any closing thought, some brief something you'd like to add in that is, core?

Lex Rofeberg [00:45:35]:

Sure. I think this relates to the mysticism piece, but it also relates to just my approach to Judaism generally. To the Jews listening, if you're like other Jews I hang out with, there's a pretty high chance that you think something about your Jewish life is sort of a bad Jew or somehow not doing enough, not Jewish enough. It is. You are. Like, you're good. You're doing great on the Jewish front. Whatever your spiritual practice looks like or doesn't look like, I think that you are embodying a deep connection to the sacred.

Lex Rofeberg [00:46:13]:

The fact that you're listening to this podcast at all points to the fact that you are seeking out holiness in some respect. And so I hope what I can convey to you is that this notion of Jewish mysticism, if all spaces are holy, if all people are holy, like, I actually don't think that the only place to connect to God or to connect to holiness is, like, in a synagogue. So people who haven't set foot in synagogue for however long, that doesn't strike me as you're inherently sort of not doing the thing. I don't have a problem with that. If anything, I find that a lot of those people have more sophisticated ways of thinking about the divine than those who are in synagogue all the time and sort of are led to this implicit assumption that God has to dwell in certain kinds of spaces, that the sacred lives in certain spaces. So that's to the Jews. And to the non-Jews, thanks for hanging out with us. I hope that you'll shower us with your thoughts about what inspired you in this episode, what you're struggling with from this conversation.

Lex Rofeberg [00:47:12]:

And in the same way I said that I strive to be shaped by other religious traditions, my hope is that you can be shaped by by Jewish tradition as well, and I don't say that with, like, hubris or arrogance. I think that that's something we all should be doing. We should all be offering one another our gifts, our spiritual religious gifts. We live in a world where people are super anxious about cultural appropriation for good reason. I want to invite those of you who are not Jewish. Next time you're considering, should I participate in some Jewish thing? Are people gonna be upset because I'm, like, crossing a line? Say that a rabbi on this podcast you were listening to encouraged you to do it respectfully and thoughtfully, because I'd much rather inhabit a a world where non-Jews are curious and encountering Jewish practice regularly than one in which people are so nervous to to interact that they end up not learning about Judaism at all. So that's what I'd say to the folks who are listening who are not Jewish.

Méli Solomon [00:48:16]:

Alright. Well, Lex, this has been a wonderful conversation. Thank you so much for coming on my Living Our Beliefs podcast. I really appreciate it.

Lex Rofeberg [00:48:25]:

Thank you so much for having me. This has been awesome.

Méli Solomon [00:48:31]:

If you'd like to hear a similar conversation about the practice of Sufism, check out my conversation with Thank you for listening. This podcast is an outgrowth of my Talking with God Project. If you'd like to learn more about that project, a link to the website is in the show notes. Thanks so much for tuning in. Till next time. Bye bye.