Westward Dharma: Buddhism beyond Asia

11. Buddha in the Promised Land: Outlines of the Buddhist Settlement in Israel

11 Buddha in the Promised Land Outlines of the Buddhist Settlement in Israel Lionel Obadia introduction In recent studies of Buddhist traditions outside Asia, scholars have focused primarily upon Europe, North America, and Australia, areas which Stephen Batchelor includes in his definition of Western culture.1 Consequently, Buddhist expansion is seen as concerning mainly Western and secularized Christian societies. Nevertheless, Buddhism has recently reached new soil outside this “Western” area, and has recently appeared in Israel, the only Middle Eastern nation, and the only country under political-religious rule, to welcome Buddhism. The rooting of Asian traditions in Israel raises the issue of the relationships between Judaism and Buddhism, in diaspora as well as in the Jewish nation itself. This chapter examines the history of Jews and Buddhism and attempts to portray the emergence of Buddhism in the Israeli landscape. Israel and its Buddhist communities provide a new and emerging terrain of study, allowing for re-evaluation of the phenomenon of Buddhist expansion in the West. the encounter between judaism and buddhism Two best-selling books, Rodger Kamenetz’s The Jew in the Lotus (1994) and Sylvia Boorstein’s That’s Funny, You Don’t Look Buddhist (1997), and the Bill Chayes and Isaac Solotaroff film Jews and Buddhism (1999) have given a high degree of visibility to the Buddhist-Jewish encounter in North America.2 In the last decade, joint programs and interfaith classes and conferences have also been initiated in zendōs, in ashrams, and even in Jewish communities throughout the United States. There are two possible explanations for the sudden interest in the conjunction between Jews and Buddhism. The first, quite simply, is that the encounter itself is of recent date. The second is that any trace of earlier contact 177 has not yet received the attention it deserves. Indeed, historical accounts of the encounter between Buddhism and the West usually focus upon Christianity, and in particular on the following contexts: the discovery of Asian religions by Christian travelers and missionaries in the Middle Ages, the literary study of Buddhism in nineteenth-century European circles in which Buddhism was defined in Christian terms, and the conversion of Christian-born Westerners to Buddhism in the twentieth century. With the exception of ancient localized and sporadic contacts between East and West,3 Judaism is virtually missing from general and historical accounts of the history of Buddhism in the West before the twentieth century. The Appeal of Buddhism among Jews It has been suggested that strong affinities exist between Judaism and Buddhism . According to Charles Prebish, “the Buddhist movement has been especially attractive to individuals from Jewish backgrounds.”4 Richard Seager notes that Jews played an “important role . . . in the introduction and adaptation of the Buddha’s teachings to America.”5 In the same vein, Rothberg points out that Jews have been and still are very active in the shaping of an American Buddhism, and especially in the emergent movement of socially engaged Buddhism.6 Yet, one might ask, to what extent does the relationship between Jews and Buddhism differ significantly from that of Christians and Buddhism? If we consider the phenomenon from a historical and sociological perspective, we find that the attraction for Buddhism among Jews needs to be somewhat qualified. Throughout the nineteenth century, the appeal of Buddhism was purely intellectual. Buddhism was likely to attract intellectuals and scholars of Christian as well as Jewish origin. Moreover, historically speaking, the active involvement of Jews in Buddhist practices follows closely that of other Western groups. Jewish commitment to Buddhism began with Charles Strauss’s conversion to Buddhism during the World Parliament of Religions (Chicago, 1893), and continued notably with Allen Ginsberg’s Beatstyled discovery of Eastern philosophies in the 1960s. The late twentieth century saw the emergence of a generation of Jewish-born Western Buddhist masters, such as Joseph Goldstein and Jack Kornfield, co-founders of the Insight Meditation Society in America. Rodger Kamenetz maintains that the number of Jewish-born Western practitioners of Buddhism in the United States is higher than one might expect.7 Likewise, Judith Linzer stated in 1996 that more or less “30% of non-Buddhist born American Buddhists were of Jewish origin, and that 178 / Lionel Obadia 30 –50 percent of Buddhist scholars in Buddhist Studies departments throughout the United States were of Jewish origin.”8 These statistics can be misleading. Martin Baumann, for instance, found...