Zalman Schachter-Shalomi

Born in Poland, Schachter-Shalomi was raised an Orthodox Jew in a variety of countries as his family repeatedly moved to evade increasing antisemitism in 1930s Europe. While awaiting a visa to the United States in an internment camp in Vichy France, Schachter-Shalomi met Menachem Mendel Schneerson, who later became the seventh Chabad Rebbe. Becoming a Chabad rabbi in 1947, Schachter-Shalomi took a deep interest in the spiritual practices of other faiths and immersed himself in the counter-culture of the 1960s. Eventually expelled from Chabad, he founded his own organization, B'Nai Or (later P'Nai Or), and his attempts to innovate in Jewish prayer helped pioneer what became the chavurah and Jewish Renewal movements.

Employed as an academic in his later years, Schachter-Shalomi continued to work in interfaith dialogue and spreading hasidut, and in the 1990s was part of a group of four rabbis who travelled to Dharamsala, India, to advise the Dalai Lama on how to retain religious traditions in exile and prevent assimilation. A prolific author, Schachter-Shalomi published dozens of books on many topics, including hasidut, ecstatic prayer, contemplative spirituality, environmental consciousness, and spiritual direction. Schachter-Shalomi died in 2014 and is buried in Boulder, Colorado. He was married four times and had eleven children.

Early life

Born Meshullam Zalman Schachter in 1924 to Shlomo and Hayyah Gittel Schachter in Żółkiew, in the Second Polish Republic (now Zhovkva, Ukraine), Schachter spent his early years in Vienna, Austria. His father was a liberal Belzer hasid and had Zalman educated at both a Zionist high school and an Orthodox yeshiva.

He and his family fled Austria after Nazi Germany annexed it in 1938 and later were interned in a detention camp under the Nazi's puppet government in Vichy France before moving to the United States in 1941. In 1947 he was ordained as a rabbi by the Chabad hasidic movement.

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Career and work

Chabad rabbi

In 1948, along with Rabbi Shlomo Carlebach, Schachter was sent out to speak on college campuses by the now Lubavitcher Rebbe Menachem Mendel Schneerson as one of the first shluḥim (; שְׁלוּחִים, 'emissaries [to Jewish communities]'; sing. shaliaḥ). In 1958, Schachter privately published what may have been the first English book on Jewish meditation. It was later reprinted in The Jewish Catalog and read by a generation of Jews and some Christian contemplatives. Schachter left the Lubavitcher movement in 1962 after experimenting with "the sacramental value of lysergic acid" (LSD). which he was given by Timothy Leary. With the subsequent rise of the hippie movement in the 1960s, and exposure to Christian mysticism, he moved away from the Chabad lifestyle.

Hillel director and ecumenical work

From 1956 to 1975 he was based in Winnipeg, Manitoba, though he travelled extensively. In Winnipeg, he worked as the Hillel director and head of the Judaic studies program at the University of Manitoba. These positions allowed him to share his ideas and experiential techniques of spirituality with many Jewish and non-Jewish students, which would be influential in his later work. While pursuing a course of study at Boston University (including a class taught by Howard Thurman), he experienced an intellectual and spiritual shift. In 1968, on sabbatical from the religion department of the University of Manitoba, he joined a group of other Jews in founding a ḥavurah—small cooperative Jewish congregation—in Somerville, Massachusetts, called Havurat Shalom (lit. 'Fellowship [of] Peace').

In the 1980s, Schachter added "Shalomi" (שְׁלוֹמִי, 'my peace'; from the Hebrew שָׁלוֹם, shalom, 'peace') to his name as a statement of his desire for peace in Israel and around the world.

Later years and death

Schachter-Shalomi was among the group of rabbis, from a wide range of Jewish denominations, who traveled together to India to meet with the Dalai Lama and discuss diaspora survival for Jews and Tibetan Buddhists with him.

In his later years, Schachter-Shalomi held the World Wisdom Chair at The Naropa Institute; he was professor emeritus at both Naropa and Temple University. He also served on the faculty of the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College. He was co-founder, with Rabbi Arthur Waskow, of ALEPH: Alliance for Jewish Renewal, bringing together P'nai Or and The Shalom Center. He was also the founder of the ALEPH ordination programs.

Schachter-Shalomi died of complications from pneumonia in 2014 at the age of 89. Schachter-Shalomi was married four times and was the father of 11 children.

Work

He was committed to the Gaia hypothesis, to feminism, and to full inclusion of LGBT people within Judaism. His innovations in Jewish worship include chanting prayers in English while retaining the traditional Hebrew structures and melodies, engaging davenners (worshipers) in theological dialogue, leading meditation during services.

His major academic work, Spiritual Intimacy: A Study of Counseling in Hasidism, was the result of his doctoral research into the system of spiritual direction cultivated within Chabad Hasidism.

Honors

In 2012 his book Davening: A Guide to Meaningful Jewish Prayer won the Contemporary Jewish Life and Practice Award (one of the National Jewish Book Awards).

He was also recognized as a shaikh in the Sufi Order of Pir Vilayat Khan in the United States and in the Holy Land.

In 2012, the Unitarian Universalist Starr King School for the Ministry awarded Schachter-Shalomi an honorary doctorate of theology, and he gave a popular series of lectures on the "Emerging Cosmology".