Michaelson - Everything is God: the radical path of nondual Judaism

[Michaelson] writes with clarity, passion, and a poetic ensibility.

Jewish Week

Jay Michaelsons captivating post-secular musings present for the generation of the new Jewish culture a vision of expanded religious possibilities.

Forward

Stripping away the barnacles of outdated concepts, Jay Michaelson aligns the best nondual thinking in Judaism with the best nondual thinking in other profound systems. Everything Is God is a timely and necessary contribution.

Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi, coauthor of Jewish with Feeling

Jay Michaelson has written a poetic, detailed, and radical book expressing a Jewish language of oneness: not the oneness of a bearded man in the sky but the Oneness of a universe not divided against itself. He gives the reader a gift of self-beyond-the-self, a gift that cannot be owned but is well worth having.

Rabbi Jill Hammer, author of The Jewish Book of Days

This is an awesome, highly recommended presentation of crucial mystical concepts.

Rabbi David A. Cooper, author of God Is a Verb

Fantastica book that offers a compelling theology for thinking Jews! Read this book, and buy a copy for your rabbi as well.

Rabbi Rami Shapiro, author of The Sacred Art of Lovingkindness

Michaelson patiently explains, again and again, truths that are beyond words. He shares this treasure generously and passionately.

Rabbi Jacob Staub, Professor of Jewish Philosophy and Spirituality, Reconstructionist Rabbinical College

If my mind were not already Gods unstretchable Mind, Id say the book is a mind-stretcher. And if the book were not already God, beyond even delight, Id say the book is a delight.

Rabbi Arthur Waskow, author of Godwrestling: Round 2

Compelling... jolts us from an ego-centered illusion of separateness. The authors language of oneness is certain to resonate with a younger generation of spiritual seekers.

Jewish Book World

ABOUT THE BOOK

This exploration of the radical, yet ancient, idea that everything and everyone is God will transform how you understand your life and the nature of religion itself. While God is conventionally viewed as an entity separate from us, there are some JewsKabbalists, Hasidim, and their modern-day heirswho assert that God is not separate from us at all. In this nondual view, everyone and everything manifests God. For centuries a closely guarded secret of Kabbalah, nondual Judaism is a radical reorientation of religious life that is increasingly influencing mainstream Judaism today.

Writer and scholar Jay Michaelson presents a wide-ranging and compelling explanation of nondual Judaism: what it is, its traditional and contemporary sources, its historical roots and philosophical significance, how it compares to nondual Buddhism and Hinduism, and how it is lived in practice. He explains what this mystical nondual view means in our daily ego-centered lives, for our communities, and for the future of Judaism.

JAY MICHAELSON is a scholar and activist who has written extensively on spirituality, Judaism, sexuality, and law. He is the author of God in Your Body and the founding editor of the award-winning publication Zeek: A Jewish Journal of Thought and Culture. He is a columnist for The Forward, the Huffington Post, and Tikkun. He holds a JD from Yale University and is completing his PhD in Jewish thought at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

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EVERYTHING IS

GOD

THE RADICAL PATH OF NONDUAL JUDAISM

Jay Michaelson

Trumpeter

Boston & London

2012

TRUMPETER BOOKS

An imprint of Shambhala Publications, Inc.

Horticultural Hall

300 Massachusetts Avenue

Boston, Massachusetts 02115

trumpeterbooks.com

2009 Jay Michaelson

Cover design by Jim Zaccaria

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Michaelson, Jay, 1971

Everything is God: the radical path of nondual Judaism/Jay Michaelson.1st ed.

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

eISBN 978-0-8348-2400-3

ISBN 978-1-5903-0671-0 (pbk.: alk. paper)

1. JudaismDoctrines. 2. Dualism (Religion) 3. Pantheism. 4. Panentheism. I. Title.

BM602.M53 2009

296.3dc22

2009010427

Es is mehr nito vie Ehr alein un vider kehren altz is Gott.

There is nothing but God alone and, once again, all is God.

R. YITZHAK ISAAC OF HOMEL

The world is holy! The soul is holy! The skin is holy! The nose is holy!...

Everything is holy! everybodys holy! everywhere is holy!

ALLEN GINSBERG

You surround everything and fill everything.

You are the reality of everything and are in everything.

There is nothing beyond You and nothing above You,

Nothing outside of You and nothing inside of You.

R. SAMUEL KALONYMOUS, SONG OF UNITY

ONENESS

What is Jewish Enlightenment? Well before the term entered common usage, and centuries before it became associated with rationalist philosophy, Jewish mystics pondered the prophet Daniels prediction that the enlightened (maskilim) will shine like the radiance (zohar) of the sky. What is that secret? The answer varies from text to text, tradition to tradition, but in the Zohar and elsewhere, the deepest secret is that, despite appearances, all things, and all of us, are like ripples on a single pond, motes of a single sunbeam, the letters of a single word. The true reality of our existence is Ein Sof, infinite, and thus the sense of separate self that we all havethe notion that you and I are individuals with souls separate from the rest of the universeis not ultimately true. The self is a phenomenon, an illusion, a mirage.

This view is called nonduality (not-two), and it is found at the summit of nearly every mystical tradition in the world. Nonduality does not mean we do not existbut it does mean we dont exist as we think we do. According to the nondual view, the phenomena, boundaries, and formations which constitute our world are fleeting, and empty of separate existence. For a moment, they appear, as patterns of gravity and momentum and force, like letters of the alphabet, momentarily arrayed into wordsand then a moment later they are gone. In relative terms, things are exactly as they seem. But ultimately, everything is oneor, in theistic language, everything is God.

To be sure, this is a God very different from the ordinary onea God beyond God, as it were, neither a paternalistic judge nor a partisan warrior, but Ein Sof, Being and Nothingness, without end or limit, and thus filling every molecule of this page and every synapse in the brain. God is who is reading these words and writing them, who is thinking and what is thought. (Indeed, this book could well be titled Ein Sof Judaism.) This is the world without an observer, with no inside and no outside, in which That (what seems to be without) and You (what seems to be within) are the same. And with this radically different conception of God come very different expressions of Judaism: elite, often hidden traditions quite unlike the mass religion of rituals, myths, and dogmas.