Share in a spiritual weekend

CYNTHIA RAMSAY

This weekend's Jewish Meditation Practices for Everyday Life will draw on life experience and living life with greater clarity. Through personal anecdotes and light exercises, it will focus on the wisdom of Judaism and Buddhism as a way to learn from life experiences. Leading the activities will be Rabbi Jeff Roth, author of several books and co-founder of Elat Chayyim, which is located in New York state.

"I believe we live in a time where post-triumphalist approaches to religion are counterproductive," Roth told the Independent in an e-mail interview. "Every religious path, as well as every field of learning, should be explored in an effort to keep religious practice alive and relevant.

"From my perspective, Judaism's strength is that it always actively incorporated changing wisdom in order to stay a living, relevant tradition," he continued. "In every religion, there are forces that push back against change as well. The practices of Jewish meditation I promote strike a healthy balance in uncovering Jewish contemplative practices that have been used before our generation and combines them with practical insights from other meditative approaches in order to create a contemporary Jewish approach to meditation that effectively allows people to develop intuitive wisdom about the nature of living as a human being.

"This wisdom, as well as the understanding of the unique challenges and experiences of each person that it brings, helps us develop a heart of compassion and impels us to act kindly in the world to all beings with a sense of responsibility that this is our life's task. This is a deeply spiritual approach to life. It centres on the experience of the Divine as being inherent in all aspects of life. It is the God-centred focus of the approach that gives a particularly Jewish flavor to the practices we will explore in the events of the weekend."

Roth is a graduate of the Reconstuctionist Rabbinical College and received semichah (ordination) from Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Sholomi. Roth is the director of the Awakened Heart Project for Contemplative Judaism and the author of Jewish Meditation Practices for Everyday Life: Awakening your Heart, Connecting with God (Jewish Lights).

"The Baal Shem Tov, the founder of Chassidism, teaches that it is the sense of self that gets in the way of seeing the Divine in all things," explained Roth. "In this weekend's events, we will learn to explore the nature of the self and its part in, and relationship to, the Divine, allowing for a greater sense of the Oneness that pervades existence."

Roth will be in Vancouver June 5-7 and people are welcome to attend one or all of the weekend's events at no charge. There is a Kabbalat Shabbat at Or Shalom, 710 East 10th Ave., on Friday, June 5, 7p.m. On June 6, 10 a.m.-4 p.m., there is a Shabbaton and, at 8 p.m., a book reading, both at Ahavat Olam, in the Peretz Centre for Secular Jewish Culture, at 6184 Ash St. On Sunday, June 7, 9 a.m.-4 p.m., there is the Day of Jewish Meditation retreat at Crossreach, 3348 West Broadway. For more information, visit www.ahavat-olam.ca or call Marianne at 604-874-8721.

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