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DECEMBER 30, 2003: In the last several decades, countless Westerners have turned to Eastern religions for inspiration and spirituality, according to this article on jewish.com. Jews have been no different. Many American Jews flocked to Eastern religions as part of the hippy counter-culture of the 1960’s and 1970’s, and today, India and Thailand are havens for Israelis seeking to explore other cultures and religions, say author Rachael Gelfman. The article focuses primarily on Hinduism and Buddhism, as these are the religions most often discussed in Jewish sources. The medieval Jewish scholastic sources that discuss Hinduism consider it idolatrous. However, from the beginning of the modern era, some Jewish scholars began to see Eastern religions in a more positive light. In Jerusalem, Moses Mendelssohn, a leading Jewish Enlightenment thinker, argued that, “we should not be so quick to judge other religions — particularly Hinduism — as idolatry. First one must know that religion well and investigate how its own practitioners see it.” In recent years, interfaith dialogue between Jews and practitioners of Eastern religions has developed. One of the most noted of these dialogues is described in Rodger Kamenetz’s book The Jew in the Lotus. Kamenetz writes about eight Jewish delegates who traveled to Dharamsala, India to meet with the 14th Dalai Lama in 1990. The Jewish delegates had diverse attitudes toward this dialogue, reflecting the diversity of Jewish attitudes toward inter-religious dialogue in general. For the complete article, click on “source” above.

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