A Jewish Mother in Shangri-La

It is a difficult experience for a parent when a child reaches adulthood and makes a fundamental life decision different from the parent's own. Possibly the most trying of such situations involves religion -- not simply lapsing from practice but rather choosing a different religion from one's parents and embracing it fully and wholeheartedly. Rosie Resenzweig's book "A Jewish Mother in Shangri-la" (1998) tells the story of her to response to the decision of her son Ben to follow the path of Tibetan Buddhism. Her book, as it develops, is much more about her own spiritual search than that of her son. Rosenzweig and her therapist husband, Sandy, had themselves had a difficult and varied time in matters of religion, having participated themselves in various New Age and Eastern groups in the 1960s and 70s. They had disagreements in their marriage and Rosie Rosenzweig faced issues with her career and with the death, over a brief time period, of several close members of her family. The family situation improved with time and both Rosie and Sandy found their way to an increasingly observant Orthodox Judaism. Ben Rosenzweig, from this account, was a quiet, studious child who became seriously interested in Buddhism during a college year in Nepal. Following study, and several further trips to the East, he formally took refuge (in the Buddha, Dhamma, and Sangha) but did not renounce his Jewish faith. Rosie Rosenzweig was hearbroken. The story of Rosie and Ben begins in earnest when Ben takes and completes a three-year meditation retreat in upstate New York during which time mother and son correspond. Following the retreat Rosie accepts Ben's invitation to accompany him on a five-week trip to Europe and Asia to learn about Buddhism. They spend two weeks in France in the Plum Village Center of the Vietnamese Zen monk Thich Nhat Hanh and have an audience with him. They spend three weeks in Nepal and meet Ben's chief guru, an aging Tibetan monk named Tulu Urgyen Rinpoche, and Rosie receives a rare wisdom transmission from him. The Buddhists that Rosie meets are impressed with her openness, joie de vivre and willingness to learn. Rosie is increasingly impressed with the Buddhist path and search for wisdom as she tries to find parallels in it to her Jewish experience and teachings. She struggles to maintain her Jewish practices during the trip, including observing the Sabbath and avoiding unkosher food, and, in following the Jewish prohibition against image-worship, Rosie carefully avoids bowing to idols or persons. She gives the gurus she meets copies of the "Tanya" a Jewish mystical book by the founder of Lubavitcher Hasidism. Rosie learns to respect, if not share, her son's chosen religious path and reconciliation and love come to the fore between mother and son. But Rosie's own story and interest in Buddhism go further. When she returns from her trip (Ben stays in Nepal) she continues to study Buddhism while reflecting upon her own Jewish pra

This is a book of many layers. It begins with a dilemma common to religious parents -- what to do when a child leaves the faith -- moves through a journey of understanding -- and winds up as a commentary on the practice of meditation within Judaism. The last of these layers moves towards spiritualism, but it is saved from fuzziness by Rosenzweig's careful working out of her own boundaries in regards to Judaism. And we've seen how she works out these boundaries in her trip to Nepal. Her son, whom like every Jewish mother she thought would grow up to be a brilliant rabbi, becomes a devout Buddhist. He asks her to come with him to Nepal to meet his "root guru." There, in the Buddhist monastary, Rosenzweig makes connections between Buddhism and Judaism -- finding stone carvings in the shape of the Star of David, discovering some of the patterns of Orthodoxy in the daily lives of the monastary -- and she discovers where she cannot go -- she must refuse to bow to Buddha or take the vows of Buddhist teaching. It's this combination of connection and limits that makes the book an honest one. It is the honesty of the language here, the way we get to watch the author struggle in her understanding and her own spirituality, that makes this a book worth reading -- no matter what our religion.

New Age spirituality--with its dilettantist approach and breathless testimonials that bleach all the colour out of religion in an attempt to prove its basic unity--makes me queasy. The current fascination the mass media have with Tibetan Buddhism is sadly degrading to those who practice it. These are the things that sprang to mind when I saw the title of this book, "A Jewish Mother in Shangri-la."Still I read it, and I'm glad I did, for I was shown how wrong my initial prejudice had been. This is a tightly-bound story of a very personal journey, and although personal there is much that I could identify with. Ostensibly it is about a woman's attempt to understand her son's spiritual path, and although mother and son are portrayed together on the cover in grisly colour this narrative has little to do with the son at all; he merely provides a foil or backdrop for the main subject, the author's path, which is dealt with quietly but persistently, without sensationalism, and without digression from the key questions she seeks answers to: Wherein lies the profundity of Buddhist insight? Did Judaism ever have an equally profound lineage of wisdom transmission? Does it still? Does Buddhist practice *really* contradict Mosaic law? If it does, then why do they both seem authentic? The author does not presume to answer these questions with simple platitudes. Instead she faces them, time and again, with honest uncertainty. She leaves us feeling that this story has no end, and this, considering her subject, is appropriate.The main target audience for this book would seem to be Jewish, for her references are primarily to the Bible, the Talmud, and Jewish history. But anyone with an interest in these subjects, not just Jews, would benefit from reading it. It is also something of a primer on Jewish mysticism, and even some Jews may be surprised to find such depth of meditation practice in their own tradition as the author describes. As for Buddhism, details are scant, and it is mainly a _flavour_ of the Dharma that is conveyed: we get a taste of Thich Nhat Hanh's style of Vietnamese Zen teaching on the one hand, and Chokyi Nyima Rinpoche's Tibetan style on the other. This lack of philosophical detail is not a fault, though, for neither Buddhism nor Judaism are the book's real focus. One woman's relentless prodding of the truth is the focus, and she plainly considers the important point for maintaining the vitality of a spiritual path to be relentless questioning and not giving in to the impulse to accept an easy answer to anything.