Between Jerusalem and Benares: Comparative Studies in Judaism and Hinduism

1 Introduction: Judaism and Hinduism: Cultural Resonances

1 Introduction judaism and Hinduism: Cultural Resonances Hananya Goodman Personal Encounters Growing up, I had no idea that one day I would become so immersed in the comparative study of Judaism and Hinduism. It all began when, as a teenager, friends introduced me to the practice of silent mantra meditation, vegetarianism, and Indian philosophy. During the same period my friendship with a Hasidic rabbi exposed me to a devotional community where the study of Jewish mystical texts and the zealous observance of halakhah were the norm. When the experimental world of the 1960s arrived in my Midwestern hometown, I was ready. I came from a non-Orthodox but traditionally observant Jewish home. My liberal parents were devoted, professionally and personally, to "saving the world" through their work for international peace organizations, multicultural encounters, interreligious conferences. As a result of this family atmosphere, one of my brothers became a Japanese scholar, while the other brother became director of an educational institute in Jakarta, Indonesia. We each divided up the earth, like Noah's sons, and I took Israel and India as my provinces. 1 2 Hananya Goodman Although my exposure to Advaita Vedanta and associated meditation techniques is what first attracted me to Hinduism, I soon recognized that, just as a limb is attached to a larger organism, these formative experiences did not predeterminate the multitude of alternative approaches I could take to comparative inquiry. Jerusalem and Benares were fascinating and elusive sources of attraction, each side manifesting vast and untraversed regions of correspondence. They were living symbols of my encounter with exile in exile. They remained distant textual abstractions until I finally left exile by moving to a living Jerusalem. What had been unknown and exotic became elevated and concrete. Half of my pilgrimage has been realized, and I am still on the road to Benares. A History of Comparative Scholarship In the mid-1970s, I met Barbara Holdrege, who may well be the only person whose lifework centers on the academic study of Judaism and Hinduism. I was so impressed with her knowledge of and dedication to a topic of mutual interest, that I wrote Gershom Scholem for his opinion regarding the possibility of making further comparisons between the two traditions. He responded: I do not know of scholarly, critical studies comparing Indian and Jewish thought. Having read Pataftjali on Yoga and some of Sankara's writings in English and German, I doubt very much whether this would be a good subject for a critical comparison . But I may be mistaken. I possess a work by Schrader, Introduction to the Paiicaratra (Madras, 1914) which has struck me as presenting a system not unsimilar to the Kabbalistic tree of the Sefiroth, and I suppose that there may be a number of systems presenting similar structures of Divine powers. This, of course, would be something to be expressed as gnostic structures of the world of Divinity [which] have an overall affinity in many religious systems in quite different religions (Tantra, Hindu later philosophy, Islamic gnosis of Ismailitic type, Christian theosophy like Jacob Boehme, etc.). In all these independent or not so independent systems you find certain structural affinities with Kabbalah-only the contrary would surprise me.... Therefore, I am not sure that such a study would do much to "illuminate Jewish and Indian scholarship" as you put it. See for instance my remarks on the Shekhinah and Shakti at the end of my (German) lecture on the concept of the Shekhinah in Kabbalism in the Eranos-Jahrbuch vol. XXI Introduction: Judaism and Hinduism (Zurich, 1953) (also contained in my book Von der mystischen Gestalt der Gottheit, 1962).1 3 Scholem's skepticism had a cautionary effect, but I continued to sound people out about the project. Negative reactions generally softened quickly as scholars I spoke to warmed to the idea, offering their own suggestions and referring me to literary sources, articles, and other people interested in the topic. As I began to search I realized that a fuller presentation of the history of the idea of comparing Hinduism and Judaism was a desideratum for any future discourse between these two great traditions . The idea of comparing Judaism and Hinduism is not unique to this volume. In fact, such comparisons have been an important thread woven into the fabric of Western intellectual thinking for centuries. Placing Hinduism and Judaism side by side has played an important part in European discussions...