“What did the kabbalist say to the hot dog vendor?”
“Make me one with everything.”
Perhaps only a few would get that joke, but Rabbi Lawrence Kushner got a big laugh when he told it to a group of people interested in mysticism.
He told it to a multifaith, multicultural audience of several hundred on Sunday night, at a panel discussion called “Mysticism in the Abrahamic Faiths: Quest for the Unseen.”
The scholar-in-residence at Congregation Emanu-El in San Francisco joined his Christian and Muslim counterparts in a San Mateo panel discussion that could have been called “Mysticism 101.” Sponsored by Bay Area Cultural Connections, a Sunnyvale-based group that is mostly Turkish in membership, the discussion was followed by dinner.
The panel was co-sponsored by a number of interfaith organizations as well as the Jewish Community Relations Council.
“I was approached by United Muslims of America, with whom we’ve worked together many times,” said Rabbi Doug Kahn, executive director of the JCRC. As a result of the Middle East situation, “it has been more challenging the last couple years, so I was pleased that there was a program that was presented that was very easy to co-sponsor.”
The president of the S.F.-based Jewish Community Federation, Adele Corvin, attended, as did Rita Semel, a former JCRC executive director who is now chair of the global council of the United Religions Initiative. Raquel Newman, representing the New Israel Fund, also attended.
Kushner was the first to speak, offering a view of mysticism in Kabbalah, speaking of the concept of ayin, meaning “nothing,” and yesh, meaning “everything,” hence the hot dog joke. While ayin has no boundaries, has no beginning or end and represents eternity, yesh is anything with a beginning and end.
“Kabbalists call God Ain Sof, without limit,” said Kushner, who said a Jewish mystic believes in unity, that everyone and everything is connected. “To a mystic, God is not only involved in everything, God is everything.”
Kushner concluded by saying that the main question of Kabbalah is how to go from ayin to yesh, and offered an example from human experience.”We spend our lives trying to get far away from our parents and keep our children close. We have a problem here.”
The Rev. Arthur G. Holder, dean and vice president for academic affairs and professor of Christian spirituality at the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, offered a dictionary definition of a mystic as someone who has the experience of union or direct communication with reality. He wondered aloud whether there could even be such a thing as a Christian mystic.
“One can say ‘I am in God and God is in me,’ or ‘I am like God and God is like me,’ all this is fine, as God is God and we’re not. But as soon as he says ‘God and I are one and the same,’ he will be accused of blasphemy.”
He called Jesus the first Christian mystic, adding, “One can’t have Christian communication with God without Christ as mediator.”
Speaking about the Muslim point of view was Zeki Saritoprak, a scholar born and educated in Turkey who is the founder and honorary president of the Rumi Forum for Interfaith Dialogue in Washington, D.C.
Saritoprak spoke mostly of Sufism, the mystical movement within Islam.
He defined Sufism as “annihilation of thought, to be nothing.” To be a Sufi, one must live an austere lifestyle, he said, renouncing carnal desires and doing whatever it takes to be disciplined.
“Whatever your soul desires, you refrain from,” he said. “You sleep less, you speak less, you eat less, as you cannot experience ultimate reality with a full stomach.”
In Sufism, Saritoprak said, one’s race or religion is not what’s important; character is. “The human character is never finalized. There is always more time to do good.”
Semel, a veteran of interfaith events, said she thought such explorations are extremely valuable, particularly with Muslims now joining “the conversation” with Jews and Christians.
Noting that the topic was not about politics but about the intangibles that touch people’s hearts and minds, Semel said such discussions help to dispel stereotypes.
“Anything that provides connections for people where they see the other as someone like themselves, struggling with the same issues, is important in an increasingly multicultural world.”