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JEWISH RENEWAL AND CONSCIOUS AGING FOUNDER IS OBERLIN COLLEGE BACCALAUREATE SPEAKER
MAY 13, 2003---Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi--considered "the great sage of a worldwide movement of Jewish renewal" (Visionaries: People & Ideas to Change Your Life) as well as the grandfather of the conscious aging movement--will present the 2003 Baccalaureate address Sunday, May 25, at Oberlin College.
Named this month as one of "The Fearless 50--America’s greatest innovators over 50"--by AARP Magazine, Reb Zalman, as he likes to be called, will explore the topic "Let The Learning Begin" at Oberlin’s Baccalaureate Service, which will begin at 4 p.m. in Finney Chapel, located at the corner of Professor and Lorain streets. The event is free and open to the public.
Born in Poland and reared in Austria, the Oberlin speaker left Europe with his family just prior to the Holocaust, traveling to France, Africa, the West Indies and finally to New York in 1941. He earned a master's degree in pastoral psychology from Boston University and doctorate in Hebrew Letters from Hebrew Union College.
Schachter (he added Shalomi to his name in the 1970s) attended the central Lubavitcher yeshiva in Brooklyn, where he took rabbinic ordination in 1947 and taught at the University of Manitoba and later at Temple University in Philadelphia. He is currently a professor of religious studies at Naropa University in Boulder, CO, and professor emeritus at Temple.
During his 30 years as a professor, Schachter-Shalomi embraced liberal Jewish values and became interested in all aspects of spirituality, studying with Sufi masters, Buddhist teachers, native elders and Catholic monks.
"I do not believe that anyone has the exclusive franchise on the truth," he says. "What we Jews have is a good approximation, for Jews, of how to get there. Ultimately, each person creates a way that fits his own situation.
"While there are differences between Jewish and non-Jewish approaches to mysticism in specific methods, observances, and rituals, there are no differences in the impact of the experiences themselves. When it comes to what I call the ‘heart stuff,’ all approaches overlap."
"Having been saved from the Holocaust. . . I felt something was needed from me to give back," he recalls. "I saw what was happening to our tradition, that it was being diminished. That the best and most advanced of our people had been decimated. So I was moved to think about creating a Noah’s Ark for our tradition."
Looking for forces within Judaism that would re-energize it and make it self-confident again, he founded ALEPH: The Alliance for Jewish Renewal, a contemporary nondenominational liberal movement for an observant, deeply traditional Judaism. The movement links rabbinic commentary and aspects of Kabala--various forms of Jewish mystical thought and practices and ancient Jewish practices of chanting and meditation--with feminism, ecology and social action.
Among his books are Paradigm Shift: From the Jewish Renewal Teachings of Reb Zalman Schachter-Shalomi; Sparks of Light: Counseling in the Hasidic Tradition; and The First Step: A Guide for the New Jewish Spirit.
Schachter-Shalomi also is the founder of the Spiritual Eldering Institute in Boulder. "In the popular imagination, old age means wrinkled skin and chronic disease, rather than the wisdom, serenity, balanced judgment and self-knowledge that represent the fruit of long life experience," he says in his path breaking book From Age-ing to Sage-ing: A Profound New Vision of Growing Older."
While facing his own retirement and aging questions, the scholar applied the growth techniques of modern psychology and the contemplative techniques from spiritual traditions to the aging process and developed ways to age based on a wellness model of wisdom, creativity, mentoring and reconciliation rather than on the traditional illness model of frailty and illness.
Media Contact: Betty Gabrielli
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