An Empire of Their Own: in which we receive some basically redemptive message about human goodness I'm used to trusting movies. The film industry is mostly made up of Jewish liberals, and so when I go see a film, I trust -- often with a note of boredom -- that what I'm going to see has been politically approved by the mainstream left. Unless it's an indie flick, it won't be too radical. But it'll be comfortably liberal, with some basically redemptive message about human goodness, seizing the day instead of selling out, living with your heart more than your head. This is what Hollywood sells and, as described in Neal Gabler's fascinating An Empire of Their Own, it's an ideology that secular Jewish Americans deliberately created.

Well, the Right has gotten wise. After spending two decades whining about the liberal Hollywood elite, they've gone and created an evil empire of their own. Mel Gibson was just the beginning; now there's tycoon-funded Walden Films, devoted to Christian-friendly entertainment and/or brainwashing, and a dozen other outlets that seek to reverse the tide of secular-liberal culture. Watch out, rock & roll!

The Narnia series is Walden's first major undertaking, and it is major: seven multi-million dollar blockbusters based on C.S. Lewis's beloved tales. I liked The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, but I liked Prince Caspian even more. It's more focused, more fun, and darker. It's a war movie, basically, but it's also wistful where Lion was innocent, and it's got more cute guys in it.

It's well known that C.S. Lewis incorporated Christian religious themes in the Narnia series. What's debated is how intentional that was. Lewis himself, a convert to the Church of England who wrote several nonfiction books on religion, claimed that whatever symbols appear in the books crept in almost by accident. He didn't set out to teach Christian theology, he says; these were just the symbols floating about in his imagination.

Well, fair enough, but it was also Lewis who said that we moderns had to relearn religion from scratch, and that myths were the way to do it. And it was also Lewis who said that the best myths to teach the basics of religious instruction were pagan myths, fairy tales... stories just like those of Narnia.

So, at the very least, it's a tidy coincidence that the same man who said that we need new myths to teach the Christian religion also wrote new myths which happen to teach the Christian religion. No?

Prince Caspian is above all a tale of faith. The four adolescent heroes of the first book/film return to Narnia after a year away, only to find that many hundreds of years have passed in Narnia-time. Narnia itself has been conquered by the evil human Telmarines, and the children's exploits are now the stuff of myth. Some believe, and others do not.

Even once the children return as prophesied, the real hero, Aslan, does not. In the first film, Aslan is obviously Christ. He sacrifices himself for the good of others, is killed, and then rises from the dead. The film, in case it wasn't obvious, sets the scene on a kind of otherworldly Golgotha. Now, hundreds of years later, Aslan is the Christ not of the Passion story but of the Christian faith. He is absent from the stage, and all but the few faithful doubt he even exists anymore. Even three of the four children doubt, with only little Lucy still remaining entirely faithful.

But this is a Christian film: the good guys' dependence on Aslan is absolute. Their plans, from their foolish first assault to their clever second effort, are doomed to failure. Nor do they hasten Aslan's arrival by their efforts at tikkun olam. Not Peter's swordsmanship, and not Susan's archery, but only Lucy's faith brings the true Savior.

C.S. Lewis: claimed that his religious symbolism happened by accident Not just a Christian film, but a Catholic one. At perhaps the most exciting moment in the film, Peter is tempted by the White Witch, the Satanic villain of the first film. Aslan is absent, but the White Witch is summoned in a Satanic ritual, and offers her help. Peter knows she can save Narnia. He is sorely tempted. Evil is real, and powerful. Even if you probably know how this test turns out.

And not just a Catholic film, but a pagan-Catholic one as well. Prince Caspian threw me off at times, because the faith that must be maintained is not just faith in Aslan, but faith in magic as well: in centaurs, gryphons, talking animals, and fauns. Some have complained that the swarthy, accented Telmarines are typically ethnic baddies, but to me they resembled no one so much as corrupt churchmen stamping out the memory of pagan religion. They cut down trees, they work with machines; the heroes are the Earth-people.

This was surely Lewis's intention. In an interview he said that it was necessary "first to make people good pagans, and after that to make them Christians." The grammar of belief is first and foremost, not the object of it. First get children to see that faith is important, that the old stories are true, and that you must hold onto your beliefs no matter what people say. Then apply those lessons to Christian religion. Or, as the contemporary Kabbalist Ohad Ezrachi put it to me, first you have to see that there is a spirit in the tree, the lake, and the sky -- then you can understand they are all one spirit.

This is a fascinating strategy, and I wonder if it works. These days, a lot of people believe in weird myths that have nothing to do with Christianity -- the Secret, Qabalah, gnosticism, the Nation of Islam, Scientology -- and there's no sign that the New Agers are becoming baalei tshuvah for Jesus. Perhaps what these and other movements are tapping into is the unmet desire to believe in myth. Not just spirituality, but gnosticism, in its modern form: occultism, the notion that somewhere out there is indeed a secret power (or powers) that really does exist.

If belief is the Christian mode of myth-making, then interpretation is the dominant Jewish one. Kabbalah (the real, not the marketed, one) is largely about learning how to read texts and the text of the world. Allegory is central, as is allusion, symbol, and multivocality. They believe, but we read deeply.

If so, then perhaps Prince Caspian is a Jewish film, as well as a pagan-Catholic-Christian one. It is, of course, wholly enjoyable just as a fantasy film, and many critics have observed that you have to be eagle-eyed to even get the Christian references. (I may even be looking too closely; at one point, a warrior-mouse discovers that his tail has been cut off, and his fellow mice say they will cut their tails for Aslan. I whispered to my friend Tovah that this was an obvious circumcision reference, but Tovah said I was nuts.)

Lewis's Lucy Might Have Demanded More of Her God: if she had been jewish But the Jewish way is to read deeper. This is why we get accused of lacking organic genius: because we like to take things apart, analyze them, and read into their symbols. From Joseph to Freud, we love to interpret dreams, stories, and myths. Rabbis, mystics, and commentators alike delight in multiple levels of meaning. For better or for worse, we like to pay attention to the man behind the curtain, to see how the magic is done.

At its core, beneath the many layers of meaning which delight this critic, Prince Caspian finally refuses the effort of interpretation. The ultimate question, asked by several characters in the film, is why Aslan waited. Why, given the centuries of suffering and carnage, did he wait for the four English children to come back? If he's omnipotent and loving, why didn't he hear the cries of the faithful, like God heard the cries of the slaves in Egypt?

Aslan does not answer this question. In Liam Neeson's magisterial voice, he simply says that "things do not happen the same way as before." No explanation. God works in mysterious ways. That is all. If Lucy were Jewish, she would demand more of her God. She would bargain for the last ten souls in Sodom, plead for the unfaithful Israelites, and perhaps abandon God if he failed to save the innocent -- in Narnia, or in her own Europe of 1944. But Lucy is not Jewish.

As for me, I find myself caught in the crack between wanting to believe, with her emunah shleimah, her perfect faith, and being unable to accept into my heart an Aslan who consigns thousands of Narnians to death. I believe in the magic of the wood. I love the God that is with me now. But I cannot take the next step and embrace the myths of religion which Lewis thought were so central. If there is an Aslan, I hope that he can forgive me.

Crashing Birthright Israel: Bush and the flagJerusalem has never seemed so American. By chance, my first trip since living here two years ago coincides with President Bush's second trip in the last six months. And so the capital city is in lockdown: buses rerouted, streets closed, and cops every ten meters or so. Your tax dollars even paid for renting out the entire King David Hotel for the POTUS and his team.

But it's not just the conspicuous inconvenience of the President's visit: it's Jerusalem itself. The city has always been filled with American tourists, students, and immigrants. But increasingly, Jerusalem is an American city in more and deeper ways.

First, it's grown incredibly classist. No pioneering socialism here; the center of town is now halfway through its conversion process to the Upper East Side of Israel (complete with the ghost town feel in the off season). The hulking Hilton hotel, once a white elephant, is now met by the rising Jerusalem Palace, King David Residences, Mamila project, and a new high-end pedestrian mall, all of which are priced beyond all but the wealthiest of Israelis. This is Jerusalem's new rich-folks neighborhood -- greater Yemin Moshe, if you like. I wonder if it'll eventually be gated.

Strolling along that mall, filled with empty boutiques waiting for their Jewish American Princesses to come, I felt like one of those irritating New Yorkers who complains about the bad old days of Times Square. After all, I can't really complain about this macro-economic plan for Jerusalem's development. This is valuable real estate, and if rich jerks from Westchester are willing to plonk down a mil or two for an apartment, my Zionist self is all for it. But it's sad to see the stratification of Israel/America so starkly depicted, right next to the Old City Walls.

Second, Jerusalem has grown even more like Disneyland. Crawling with Birthright kids and UJA missionaries, it's rapidly becoming an entirely ersatz city. The real Jerusalemites are in Malha at the mall, the Americans on Ben Yehuda. The real Jerusalemites gather in little shtiebels, the Americans in the Old City. Even the shuk now feels somehow pre-packaged, like the Olde Townes and Harbor Villages back home. Meanwhile, the real cultural creatives have fled, as secular Jerusalem dwindles to a mere simulacrum of a culture in the face of Haredi power, foreign-fueled rent hikes, and American fakery. The Palestinians, of course, are more invisible than ever; no politics intrudes on the fantasy of homeland.

Third, and relatedly, Jerusalem increasingly shares the Bush-era predilection for oppressing and radicalizing enemies, rather than engaging with them. Two weeks ago, Bush implicitly likened Barack Obama to Neville Chamberlain, saying that talking with Hamas was like appeasing the Nazis in 1939. This is, of course, outrageous, a poor update of the reductio ad hitlerum argument. Given the reality of Jewish (and wider) racism and anti-Islamism, I'd even say it's close to race baiting.

Ugly Americans: We're everywhere But as political philosophy, it's vintage Bush. The world is made up of good guys and evildoers. You don't talk to evildoers, and you don't care what they think, because they're evil. So, go ahead and prosecute your outrageous war strategy, evince endless arrogance, and talk a rhetoric only slightly less deluded than that of the Chinese. It doesn't matter, because the evildoers are already evil. Moreover, those of us who dare to suggest that maybe the world isn't so clear cut -- we're appeasers, weak, and naive.

Post-wall Israel is increasingly similar. I don't know if Prime Minister Olmert is the latest Yitzhak Shamir, feigning a peace process while stalling for time, or whether he's sincere in his talk for peace. Politically, Israel has continued to stick it to the Palestinians, and damn the consequences. The Israeli government has grown dependent on Bush's blank-check policy -- which perhaps explains why they're so terrified of Obama. They've avoided making difficult choices, because no one's making them do so.

Worse than that, rich American right-wingers are distorting Israeli politics by massively funding conservative politicians. These Americans have a Birthright-style fantasy of Israel, the holy land, the only democracy in the Middle East, etc. They stay in the big hotels and take tours of archeological sites. And then they give millions to right wing politicians who maintain the fantasy and refuse any compromise with the three million people living in maybe-one-day-Palestine. "We" -- by which I mean Americans -- are undermining the real Israel in order to preserve the fantasy one.

Bush's non-engagement policy works, somewhat, if you're a superpower -- although the last seven years have surely been the most destructive to American interests in the last century at least. But if you're Israel, it's a disaster. The world is not simply standing by while Israel builds more settlements; many people are increasingly infuriated, with rhetoric that boils over into antisemitism at its worst.

Of course, Bush would say you can't run around trying to please people. You have to be strong, and do what's right. But when your friends stop being your friends, you'd have to be stubborn and foolish not to take their desertion seriously. Which, well....

All these elements -- the class stratification, the delusion, and the know-nothing/doubt-nothing policy -- are part of the same Ugly American arrogance that has made us so reviled in so many parts of the world today. We just get fatter and fatter, richer and richer, meaner and meaner. Damn the consequences, we'll have our SUVs, gated communities, stratified health care system, and imperialist foreign policy. We're Americans and we like things big, dammit. Big, vulgar, and mean.

But the consequences are real. It's just not true that large swaths people have always been and will always be anti-American;only someone as provincial as Bush could believe that. Public opinion is mutable -- not entirely, but somewhat. Likewise, though large swaths of people have always been anti-Israel and antisemitic to some degree, it is just that: a matter of degree. In all cases, the degrees have been increasing lately. We can damn the consequences, but they might just damn us back.

I love Israel, and love Jerusalem, despite it all. I love my favorite field, love the kosher restaurants, I even love the Kotel. But as Bush swaggers through his last months in office, and the political campaign begins in earnest, I worry that play-attending, latte-drinking, Prius-driving Obama voters like me might be more marginalized than ever by oligarchs masquerading as populists. People like Bush do have the simple answers. They just happen to be wrong.

In the forms of meditation practiced by many Westerners, one central practice is simply "being with" everything that arises in the body, mind, heart, etc., neither holding onto anything nor pushing anything away. This is quite different from most Jewish and psychiatric practices, which often seek to change these states--from sadness into joy, for example, or restlessness into peace. And it is entirely different from our basic instinct, which, thanks to eons of evolution, is exactly to hold onto the good stuff and push away the rest. If we didn't do that, we'd never survive. Indeed, self-preservation is surely the purpose of registering stimuli as positive or negative in the first place.

Happiness, too, is unnatural. Once again, if we were all perfectly happy with what we already have, we wouldn't strive for more. We wouldn't reproduce, wouldn't compete for scarce resources--and we'd be selected right out of the species. So it's human nature to be somewhat unhappy, and to work to address that unhappiness by taking action, building things, having children, nurturing them, and building cooperative communities of love. All these things feel so right because we've been bred for them.

So what the Dalai Lama has called "the art of happiness" is unnatural in its means and its ends. Its means are counter to basic human instinct, and its promised end of happiness is the opposite of our natural (naturally selected) disposition.

But given the choice between Buddhist-style being-with and Jewish-style fighting negative emotions, I'll take the Buddha, thanks. Nothing depresses me more than trying to be happy.

In my own practice, I've often experienced "being with" negative emotions in a visual way, seeing myself as someone nearly drowning in mud or excrement, but managing to be with it, to stay alive and breathe. For years, this extremely unhelpful image both encouraged and betrayed me. Encouraged, because it emboldened me to stay with it, like a dharma fighter on the cushion. Betrayed, because the whole image contains an inevitable aura of resistance--of fighting, enduring, persisting. Actually, it was more Jewish than Buddhist. After all, how many Jewish mothers does it take to change a light bulb? "None, dahling, I'm fine here in the dark." We stay, we complain, we endure.

But what I've learned over the last few months, in the wake of breakup, loneliness, heartbreak, and occasional rebirth, is the benefit of drowning. There's been so much pain for me in this period that I couldn't fight it if I tried (and I have tried). If I were really standing in a deep pile of mud, it would've covered me long ago. And so I've let it. And I found I can breathe underwater.

Instead of fighting to stay afloat in the indignity, anger, sadness, unpleasant physical sensations, I've just myself sink down, and down, and down... and sometimes, through. The lesson is: I thought I needed air, but I don't. I can breathe in the mud, and the act of surrendering to it is the relaxation and release.

What about the other times? The other times I do one of two things. Either I feed the negative emotion with stories, self-pity, and endless thoughts about what's wrong--or I fight the negative emotion with more stories, justifications, or accounts of why this happened or how I should act next. Either way, the effort is the problem. Sadness is like quicksand: moving in any direction makes it worse. But it's unlike quicksand in that the point is to sink in, be swallowed--and be fine.

Surrender and Supplication

This surrender, this willingness to be thoroughly taken and destroyed by sadness, is consonant with two quite different faces of God that I experience in my religious life.

The first of these faces is the nondual, which is essentially mental where the personal is emotional. This is the nondual truth that God is the yotzer or u'vorei choshech, the Former of light and Creator of darkness. This God offers a different kind of comfort; not the love of the Friend, but the simple truth of what is. This God is not necessarily nice; it's the God of cancer wards as well as summer pastures, of war as well as love. This is the God that asks us if we can handle the truth: that both evil and good are godly.

But then there is also the personal God, the emotional one, the one to whom I cry. The personal is the devotional, the place of faith and trust: hinei el yeshuati, eftach v'lo efchad. Behold, God is my salvation; I will trust and not fear. This personal, devotional, anthropomorphic God is largely projection; it's a way of seeing more than a thing that is seen. But as projection, God is a precious Friend, a beloved, a companion.

My religious life oscillates between these poles. At times, I love to think of God in what are essentially human terms. This is the God to whom I pray--and of whom I say "whom." This is the God that is You. At other times, I love the clarity of the more atheistic, nondual God: What Is, YHVH. And of course, I've long understood that these "poles" are better expressed as two sides of a single coin, or two perspectives on the aperspectival.

But I've only recently understood how these two perspectives so deeply enrich one another. When I'm drowning in the shit of life, I say hinei el yeshuati precisely because God is the vorei choshech. I can trust that I can breathe in this mud because the mud is God. Not good--it's definitely not good in any ordinary sense of the word. But God. I can cry out because I can let myself be drowned.

For the Seal of God is Truth

If all these words were just words, just theological proposition, they wouldn't be worth much. What's more important-at least to me-- is that I can experience the nondual God. After the surrender, during the drowning, the Presence is still there. That's what matters--not the premise but the proof.

I know, because I've heard from others, that the path of embracing light and darkness which I've sketched over these last few months is not for everyone, and is not necessarily the dominant strain in the Jewish religious tradition. I also know that it's difficult to tread, and difficult to share with others. No one really likes negative energy, even if, for me, it connects me to the parts of myself I like the most: the open, feeling, truthful, loving, and teaching parts. It's good at retreats, not so good at parties.

So given all of that, it's important to me to see that this idiosyncratic, difficult, and not-for-everybody religious path actually works. I assume that the more conventional one--fighting sadness with joy, accentuating the positive--works also, since I see so many people following it and seeming to have success. But I'm a truth addict. Anything that seems to be coloring or distorting what is feels uncomfortable, even insincere. Just to see that it is possible to breathe while drowning gives me the trust to do it more.

Just the release in my own heart is enough to make the effort/non-effort worthwhile. But there are three consequences I want to notice briefly before concluding.

First, as the "law of attraction" is increasingly popular these days, just a word about that. The main point is that "breathing while drowning" is not wallowing. Emitting negative energy, dwelling on it, turning it over, is even more counterproductive than trying to struggle over to the positive side. The point is total surrender, total release. Not judging anything as good or bad. Not feeding the fire (to switch elemental metaphors) or trying to squelch it. Just letting it happen, letting it burn--and letting it burn me up, only to discover that I am not consumed. In that fiery place, love is possible, as is positive intention. I continue to believe that the specific directionality of conscious manifestation is ineffective. But in my experience, there is power to a general setting of intention, and a general openness to abundance. These are enhanced, not compromised, by surrender.

Second, as I mentioned a moment ago, I'm at my most real when I'm most connected to my brokenness--and I'm at my most effective as well. Having just taught at two Nehirim retreats, I've seen firsthand that I am more effective and compassionate as a teacher when I'm not pretending to be okay. I don't know about you, but I can't stand these teachers who hold themselves out as never-suffering and so successful. I have met a few enlightened people, and it is indeed possible to end suffering. But only a small percentage of teachers who hold themselves out in this way actually are, and many are offering a kind of false consciousness. I don't trust them. In any case, even if all the authentic teachers were teaching the cheerleading approach, I'd stick with mine because it's true in my experience.

And speaking of my experience, I finally want to note that this doesn't work all the time--but it is available all the time. On a particularly lonely night recently, I just couldn't break free of the mental pattern of self-pity, blame, and regret. Even now, there are so many opportunities for it; just one evocation of one issue from my just-ended relationship, and I can get hooked into content and story and argumentation. It's almost irresistible. But unlike trying to swim, which gets more difficult the deeper you sink, drowning is always available. If I can't "make it work," I can surrender to having failed at making it work--and then it works. There is always a new opportunity to surrender more, even to the most inveterate of Buddhist sinners like me.

Ultimately, the method remains a simple one: releasing whatever is going on (but really), letting go, letting drown, letting expand, letting relax. Breathing while drowning, the attention naturally comes to the present, with nothing pulling it elsewhere. And then, with a breath, without hope, expectation, or object, a simple wish of love.

 

Art Credit: Sushanta Meh

 

Asking the big questions: The ad campaign for Satyagraha It's become a cliché to search for Jewish influences or themes in works by Jewish artist. Generally the effort is one of overzealous interpretation, if not projection. Consider the following, then, not a reading of Philip Glass's Jewish opera Satyagraha, but a Jewish reading of Philip Glass's opera Satyagraha—a work which evokes both the pride and anxiety of contemporary Jewishness.

The pride came not from "one of our boys done good," although such a sentiment might be excused in this case. When Satyagraha was written in 1979, Glass was still an up-and-comer; he'd only recently made it big, was only a few years away from having been a starving artist, and was still regarded, by many, as part of the avant garde. No longer -- for better or for worse. Satyagraha opened at the Met April 11 after a bombastic ad campaign. “Could an opera put virtue back on its feet?” asked posters around New York City. “Could an opera make us stand up for the truth?”

These questions are as yet unanswered, but the New York Times did call Satyagraha “a work of nobility, seriousness, even purity.” Glass is probably the most widely-heard composer active today, and while some of his later works have begun to seem rather derivative, the Met’s enormous production, brilliantly [re]conceived by Phelim McDermott with sets by Julian Crouch, shines. It reminds us why we loved Glass in the first place: the repetitions are haunting, not tedious; the melodic and conceptual reaches soaring, not pretentious.

Satyagraha tells, in non-linear and largely non-verbal fashion, the story of Gandhi’s struggles on behalf of South Africa’s Indian population. During the course of this twenty-year fight for civil rights, he developed the philosophy and political tactics he would eventually use to liberate India from British colonialism. These tactics went on to inspire Martin Luther King, Nelson Mandela, and other liberators around the world. But in this period, they were still a work in progress, paid for in risk and blood.

Satyagraha juxtaposes symbolic stagings of key episodes in Gandhi's struggle with Sanskrit quotations from the Bhagavad Gita, among the most sacred texts of Hinduism. While to some this may seem an obvious choice, it is actually a curious one, as much of the Gita is about why its hero, Arjuna, must go to battle. It's hardly a nonviolent text.

Puppets for peace: The British staging of the opera Yet it is a text, perhaps above all, about knowing and fulfilling one's holy mission, of virtue in the face of adversity, of duty and moral responsibility. This is why Satyagraha appealed to me as "Jewish": not because of its composer's ethnicity, but because it captures the power of sacred text to inspire sacred action.

Gandhi was, after all, a holy man. In his later life he was an ascetic, fasting regularly and relinquishing all possessions. Like Dr. King, he regularly used not only religious language but religious spirit to motivate and comprehend his work—and to stir up his audience. Satyagraha is an opera about the power of spirit and word to require us to be our best selves -- which is also what Judaism does at its best.

It is a message we need to hear today. Just as Satyagraha's provocative marketing campaign asked us if an opera could inspire us to stand up for truth, we need to ask whether the Torah can inspire us to take a stand for justice, economic fairness, equality, human rights, and peace? Can it move us to oppose appalling injustices in Tibet, Darfur, and around the world?

The questions are not entirely rhetorical. There are those today who think religion is at best a superstition, at worst a force for ill, and should be kept entirely separate from any notion of political engagement. There are others who think that the Jewish religion is mainly about aggrandizing and protecting the Jews. Those of us who disagree, who believe that our Jewishness compels us to fight torture, unnecessary war, environmental irresponsibility, and economic oppression by our own elected officials, may be inspired by Satyagraha even if we don't speak a word of Sanskrit.

(Indeed, since few audience members do, the opera inspires by musical and visual gestures, like the sight of a hundred lanterns being lifted in protest, or remarkable outsized puppets symbolizing collective action against greed.)

At the same time as Satyagraha evoked this pride in the possibilities of a prophetic tradition, it evoked in me a feeling of shame. It's impossible to watch hordes of second-class citizens standing up for their rights against an occupying regime and not think of Israel and Palestine. To be sure, the opera never draws that connection -- it is explicit in linking Gandhi and King, and some of the new production's imagery suggests Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo, but nowhere does it reference the Israel/Arab conflict. Yet to my eyes and ears, the parallels were unavoidable.

Behind the scenes: Set elements backstage (photo via the New York Times) This is not because the Palestinians are in the same position as the Indians (or black Africans) in South Africa, or that Israel is a colonial power. They are not. But the contours of popular struggle against a better-armed adversary are unmistakable.

Let us grant that there may be many differences. Yasser Arafat never was Mahatma Gandhi, or Nelson Mandela for that matter. The Palestinians were not a nation in the same way as India or Tibet is. And of course, Israel's safety is at stake in a way that Britain's and China's never have been, and violent, rejectionist Palestinian factions enjoy considerable power. Let us grant all of these distinctions. There are still the brute facts of checkpoints, separation barriers, closures, and settlements. There are still the day-to-day realities of people living under occupation.

If we grant all these differences, we may well end up with a political program not so different from that of the current Israeli government. Yet at the very least, the brute facts demand that such a program be pursued ambivalently, even regretfully—not with the sort of reflexive, defensive cheerleading one finds in many Jewish quarters today. If indeed these policies are necessary, then our own support of them must be tinged with the awareness that every day, they place the Jewish state on the wrong side of justice. Perhaps these "costs" are justified by a higher good—but let's not pretend that they don't exist.

This was the ambivalence I felt watching Satyagraha, the title of which means "truth-force." One of the blessings and curses of Separation-Wall Israel is that the Palestinian crisis is more invisible than ever to visitors. We can stay at the Dan Pearl, visit holy sites, and once again promenade down pedestrian malls with comparatively little fear of violence. But if we take our sacred texts as seriously as Gandhi did, they must remind us of the costs of our freedom -- in this case, costs borne largely by people who do not enjoy the benefits.

Hopefully I have been clear that neither I nor Satyagraha advocate a particular policy position. But in reminding me the beauty of religious consciousness, Satyagraha also reminded me of the responsibility it demands.

[Ed note: Our point/counterpoint with David Klinghoffer and Sahotra Sarkar on Ben Stein's Expelled provoked a heated reaction from readers and some regular writers. Jay Michaelson's follows below, the first of several more likely to be posted soon.]

"All of a sudden, there was hope in my heart I'd see my father again."

Thus says one of America's most influential religious leaders, of the moment when he became religious: it was at his father's funeral, and the presiding minister had just said that death is not the end, that there is an afterlife. The boy was only ten. And he grew up to be Tim LaHaye, evangelist and co-author of the massively best-selling Left Behind series.

This is why it is so difficult to talk about religion in America today, why we fight wars about it, why we condemn and even kill one another about it: because it gets us in our guts, and stays there. Religions do offer theological doctrine, but what they really offer is solace, love, sanctity, and value -- all of them inchoate, all of them dear.

Really, why should anyone care so much about the age of the Earth, the parting ofKitzmiller v. Dover, 2005: A Christian Bush-appointed judge finds ID to be an unscientific sham the Red Sea, or the resurrection of Christ? Do we really suppose that the most ardent of religionists are committed to ontology and history?

No --- these doctrines are only important because of something else, and that something is the deep desires to which religion caters. Fundamentalisms and orthodoxies may say they are about the content of theological propositions, but the reason it's impossible to argue with them is that their adherents have so much at stake in their being right that they'll say or do anything to make it all work out. What's at stake? If the Torah isn't literally true, then something in my life is wrong. If Jesus didn't die for my sins, then I am not okay.

This is how religion works. As those in the Jewish community arguing for "deep, immersion experiences" are coming to realize, religion works by grabbing us where it counts. This is why religion makes so much sense at funerals -- because we need it.

The trouble is that, for many people, these intense feelings become invisibly translated into beliefs and opinions. Israel's religious right has intense religious experiences, and associates them with notions of chosenness, and holy land. America's religious right has intense religious experiences, and associates them with Biblical literalism. The Islamic world's religious right has intense religious experiences, and associates them with keeping the umma pure of corruption and decay.

This is why arguing about "Intelligent Design" is so pointless: because those who "believe in it" (notice the locution) do so for reasons totally unconnected to science, evolution, truth, and logical inquiry. They are committed because they think religion is really, really important, and it's at the core of their lives. The debate is not about bacterial flagella, evolutionary biology, or any of the other details. It's about a terrified minority, afraid that society is slipping away from all it holds dear.

Just imagine the grief of a young boy whose father has died. And imagine the hope, the consolation, when that boy is taught that at the Rapture, he'll meet his dad again. All of a sudden, Biblical inerrancy is no longer a hermeneutical proposition; it is necessary for the dearest of dreams to be true.

Closer to our own tradition, how many of us have felt, at one time or another, that if the perfect edifices of Biblical and rabbinic law were to crumble, that not only they but our very souls would lose structure and coherence? Surely, this is the great appeal of Orthodoxy, and the great lack of more liberal Jewish movements: that it all makes sense, even if it doesn't. That there is a point, a design, a truth at the core of life. Liberal rationales --- that the commandments are a path toward god-consciousness, or ethical behavior, or social justice --- just don't have that kind of power. And if it can't make you cry, it's not religion.

This is why otherwise intelligent people like David Klinghoffer make absurd, ridiculous claims that fly in the face of the scientific revolution --- you know, the folks who brought you the airplane, the computer, and the artificial heart.

On the facts, there simply is no doubt, and no controversy, whatsoever. Evolution is among the most successful explanations of facts that has ever been propounded. And "Intelligent Design" has no alternative to it --- it simply says that it's incomplete, and therefore, the incompletion means there must be some "Designer." Big surprise to no one: that Designer is probably God. (Admittedly, it could be space aliens, some ID proponents say.) This is not a new argument; it's been around for hundreds of years. And it's as false now as ever before.

As documents uncovered in the Kitzmiller case show, the Discovery Institute is a well-funded front for those seeking to re-Christianize America. Klinghoffer and folks like him are basically Jewish Uncle Toms. I'm only surprised that Jewcy gave him a platform.

Klinghoffer's argument is as vacuous as Intelligent Design itself: that because Hitler made use of Darwin, Darwinian theory is morally suspect. Last I checked, Hitler also made use of automobiles. Indeed, he based a lot of ideas on militarism and machines; does that mean technology is morally wrong? Should you turn off your computer right now?

Social Darwinism, Hitlerian and otherwise, was a misapplication of scientific rhetoric --- just like Intelligent Design. Its claim was that we can derive moral truths from natural facts, and that is false. You might as well try to decide what music is good by what sounds most like birdsongs, or base your taste in food on how rabbits like to eat.

Darwinian theory simply points out that we, like every other life form on the planet, are part of the natural world. It does not imply anything about how we ought to behave; it does not create a should from an is. Indeed, one could make an entirely Darwinian case for conservative morality: precisely because we are animals, we need strict rules and codes of conduct to keep us from killing each other. This is what the right says all the time. It's the left that says we can trust people not to be awful.

Yes, the great irony is that the only Social Darwinists left today are...you guessed it, Klinghoffer's allies on the political right, who blame poor people for being poor (morally deficient, perhaps) and who advocate less of a safety net to catch them when they fall. (To be clear, I'm not accusing Klinghoffer himself of this position; I have no idea what he thinks about this issue.)

But all this is beside the point. As the Kitzmiller case conclusively showed, these ID guys aren't interested in scientific reasoning. They're using scientific language as a wedge to get Americans to be more religious. That's what this "debate" --- which is not a debate, but which the ID partisans want to convince us is a debate so that we'll be fair and hear "both sides" --- is really about. There are not two sides of this issue, any more than there are two sides to the question of whether the Earth is flat.

I am a religious person, in love with God, and a mystic. As my readers know, I think spiritual and contemplative practice makes us better people, and makes life worth living. But when those spiritual states become wedded to ideology, they become dangerous. Already, a third of our country believes itself to be at war, primarily with Islam, but also domestically, in what used to be called the "Culture Wars." America does not need less reason and more religious passion. The Discovery Institute's wedge strategy is exactly the wrong prescription for our nation.

Three hundred years ago, John Locke wrote his Letters Concerning Toleration inspired by the English Civil War. In the shadow of that conflict, Locke argued that because religion so stirred up the sentiments, and because its claims could never be objectively arbitrated, religion should have no role in shaping public policy. It's just too contentious, Locke said, providing what would become one of the core theories for the Enlightenment's separation of church and state. Locke, of course, was right.

Spokeswoman of the faith: Madonna leaves the Kabbalah Center Kabbalah is over. It was over before Daphne Merkin's two-year-researched, impeccably well written report on the Kabbalah Center last week in the Times. It was over before the JCC in Manhattan started offering a "Day of Kabbalah" and independent teachers like me put up websites like learnkabbalah.com and kosmic-kabbalah.com. It was over, I think, the moment red strings became a sign of spiritual consumerism, rather than spiritual search.

Here's the point. Real spirituality messes you up. It transforms the ego, beats your inner swords into plowshares, and disrupts your sense of priorities. Fake spirituality, on the other hand, builds you up. It caters to what you want, rather than challenges what you think you want. It tells you that, yes, you can have everything you desire -- and all that desire is just fine.

As a spiritual salesman myself -- did I mention learnkabbalah.com? -- I've wrestled for years with the clear opposition between truth and advertising. I know how to fill a room; I've done it many times, and I have gotten good enough at it that I can produce a real spiritual experience in workshops, auditoriums, even bars. (Did it most recently last week in Boston, at a music dive called the Middle East.) I also know what sells: sex, drugs, and mystery. I know how to market myself, my work, and my message.

But I also know that the true spiritual power of my teaching is in inverse proportion to how easy it is to advertise. Because the unadvertisable truth is, if you really want to study Kabbalah, you have to be prepared to give something up. And not just anything, but your sense of self, your priorities, even the ways that you love.

Of course, none of that will happen at the first few classes, at which I'll explain the concept of the sefirot and teach you something about meditation, or reincarnation, or whatever. Most likely, that'll be all you'll come for anyway, and you'll leave refreshed, inspired, informed -- and fundamentally unchanged. Baruch hashem. But if you start doing the real work, whether with the tools of Kabbalah or meditation or energy or a host of other spiritual technologies, you'll see that this "you" you wanted to make happy, enlarge, and empower -- is a mirage.

So yesterday: A kabbalah bracelet plus hamsa The Kabbalah Center, it seems, has made an institutional choice to stay on the side of sales. They've got a great racket going, charging $25 for a $1 bracelet (free on the streets of Jerusalem), and $1000 for a $250 set of the Zohar. Why mess it up? They provide a product that people want. Hell, if 150,000 people visited learnkabbalah.com every month (did I mention the website yet?), I probably wouldn't tinker with the formula either.

I give the Center the benefit of the doubt. Associates tell me that Michael Berg is a sincere learner, and a true scholar. And there is no question that the Kabbalah Center has brought more people to Kabbalah than any other institution in history -- a feat they couldn't have accomplished with a more scholarly, or pious, approach. So, if you believe that Kabbalah will bring about redemption, all that salesmanship is in the service of the highest good. And I think it's possible that many at the Center do believe that.

But when sales is the goal, it's hard not to be craven. I cringed when I read Merkin's account of talking about her mother's death with the Bergs, because here was a real emotional-spiritual moment, played out in the context of the marketplace. If only Merkin would've visited (or mentioned) one of the many real neo-Kabbalists out there today, an Ohad Ezrachi or David Ingber, a Tirzah Firestone or a Jill Hammer, someone who both knows her stuff and knows the human heart. Someone who's not in it for the money.

Again, I'm not claiming that Michael (or even Yehuda) Berg has such low motives. I have no idea, and have good reason to think otherwise. But visiting the Kabbalah Center for spiritual advice is like visiting McDonald's for a salad. Sure, it's on the menu, but there are deeper, heartier, and more sincere options away from the strip malls. Reading Merkin's article, I felt sad that she didn't know any better.

The spiritual seekers I know have, at this point, all gotten over the novelty of Kabbalah. I don't teach "Kabbalah 101" anymore myself, although I do regularly use Kabbalistic language and imagery in my work. Kabbalah itself is not, of course, "over" -- it's thriving in both traditional and radical contexts, and incorporating new voices (of women, non-Westerners, heretics) at an astonishing rate. But the gee-whiz phase is over, yesterday's news like the Da Vinci Code or Rudy Giuliani.

And I think that's a good thing. By now, anyone who's sincerely interested in Kabbalah has a bevy of courses, books, and teachers to choose from -- all of which are way better than the Kabbalah Center's fast-food spirituality -- and can do the serious work of kabbalah ("receiving") the truth of infinite being (ein sof). Meanwhile, those who want something quick and off the shelf will find the teachers they deserve.

And the twain will never, I think, meet.

Last night's hottie-filled fashion show debuting Hasidic Levi Okunov's spring collection was, despite the shvitzing of a hundred Heebs packed into an auditorium, very cool. Kudos to Andy Ingall and the JuMu staff for turning what is often a highly un-cool space into a place where it seemed like something new and sexy was actually happening in real time. Kudos to Melissa Shiff for trancing us out to digital mandalas made of Hebrew letters and sacred objects. And kudos to whoever bought the free vodka.

But mostly, kudos to Levi Okunov himself, interviewed elsewhere on this site, and ably profiled by Jennifer Bleyer on Nextbook, who fused his Hasidic background and his audo-didactic fashion sensibility to create work that could've been novelty, could've been irony, but actually was art. Would that the vanity projects of some absurdly-funded Jewish narcissists were as careful to avoid the easy temptations of kitsch. What's the difference? Whereas aint-it-cool cultural kitsch is just a snide in-joke, Levi Okunov is actually trying to say something, to make something new.

To back up a little -- the Sabbatean heresy, which lasted from about 1665 to around 1820 (though there are still hidden Sabbateans today, some of whom are on Facebook) -- was, in large part, a secret mystical movement which laid the groundwork for Hasidism and preserved the antinomian ecstasy of Jewish messianism for over a century and a half. As the name implies, their central object of devotion was Sabbetai Sevi, who in 1666 counted 1/3 of all European Jews as his followers -- but who lost most of them when he converted to Islam rather than die at the hands of the Turkish sultan.

But devotion to Sabbetai was not the only point of the movement, especially after Sevi's death. Many Sabbateans believed that the redemption had come, and our job was to experience it now, by deliberately transgressing the laws of the old regime -- especially regarding sex. One of their notorious rituals involved having a young girl dress as the Torah, her breasts exposed, while (male) devotees danced around her kissing her breasts. This was, in a sense, a recorporealization. The Torah is itself a stand in for the Shechinah, the feminine aspect of God (a/k/a the Goddess): She wears a beautiful velour dress and a crown, and then at a special time, we take the dress off, open her parchment legs, and with our phallic pointer open her to reveal the secrets that lie between them.

Many of Okunov's designs are quite similar, placing the garments of the Torah upon a (half-undressed) beautiful woman. I know that Okunov isn't deliberately referencing the Sabbatean ritual (he told me so last night), but I'm struck by the similarity of inspiration. In a sense, both Okunov and the Sabbateans are simply responding to the feminine iconography of the Torah H/herself. But I think there is something more interesting going on in both cases, which is the re-universalizing of the particular, the transcription of the mythic into a realm that is deeper than myth and which underlies the Torah, the Sabbateans, contemporary fashion, and all the other iterations of eros which spiritual and aesthetic souls have devised.

Sabbateans, after all, are not just finding excuses to have sex; like all heretics, they are believers. Like Okunov, they are moved by beauty and eroticism, see them as gifts from God no less holy than the Torah itself. Okunov's post-Hasidic theology finds God everywhere (he told me that too), not just within the bounds of orthodoxy, and indeed, quite often in exactly those places which traditional law is so afraid of. In the hands of a lesser artist, dressing a woman up in the Torah's clothes would be an act of puerile rebellion. Oh boy, what a thrill, a woman in a Torah crown. But in the hands of a mystic, it is to take seriously the power of sexuality that makes religion worth doing in the first place -- and worth stealing back from the pious. (Not coincidentally, Sabbateanism extended its defiance of gender roles well beyond sexuality; women were in positions of leadership and power in the movement, and were as learned as men, even in the 18th century. Mysticism and liberation don't always go together, but here they did.)

In an essay called "Renewal is not Heresy," Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi, like Okunov a renegade ex-Chabadnik, tried to explain why his form of de-orthodoxed Hasidism was not Sabbateanism. To many of us, he never quite succeeded. Who knows, maybe a kind of neo-Sabbateanism -- here as a stand-in for celebrating the erotic, visceral essence of true religion outside the bounds of traditional law -- is the Jewish renewal that many of us have been looking for. If so, I hope Levi Okunov's designing the costumes. Or lack thereof.

When Rav would visit the city of Dardishir, he would announce, "Who will be mine for a day?" And when Rav Nachman would visit the city of Shachnetziv, he would announce, "Who will be mine for a day?" (Yevamot 37b)

What is the Jewish response to the Eliot Spitzer affair?

Predictably, most of our leaders have joined in the chorus of disappointment, condemnation, or just plain embarrassment at the ex-governor of New York, whose brilliant political career was felled by a single (okay, octuple) transaction with a prostitution ring. Certainly, it's a shonde. But if we were more careful with both our sources and our values, we might not rush to judgment.

First, the sources. The fact is that prostitution is a Christian, not a Jewish, sin. LookAshley aka Kristen for the prohibition in the Torah, and you won't find it. On the contrary, you'll learn of Judah visiting a prostitute -- without condemnation -- as well as of concubines and polygamy. (Cultic harlotry is banned by Deuteronomy 23:18-19, but not secular prostitution.) Even the Talmud is ambiguous; sometimes it appears to condemn prostitution and illicit sex of all kinds, and other times it tells of lusty rabbis visiting prostitutes and otherwise circumventing our expectation of chaste monogamy.

In fact, it was expected that men would have sex outside of marriage. It wasn't exactly celebrated, but it wasn't condemned either. In short, within the gendered context of Jewish law, it's a peccadillo.

Of course, Jewish law is very concerned about adultery. But "adultery" meant sex with another man's wife. As in the ancient British law from which the English term is derived, it was "adultery" in the sense of "adulterating" a man's bloodline -- and the offense was against the other man: abusing his property, confusing his lineage. The concern is about patriarchy, not sex. As usual, sex is problematic not in itself (indeed, you won't find any clear condemnation of heterosexual sex, by itself, in Jewish law) but because of its context.

The source of the religious disapproval of sexuality is not the Hebrew Bible, but the New Testament. Paul does condemn prostitution, along with all other forms of non-procreative sexual expression. And Paul reframes sexual sin in terms of carnality itself. The Jews? Not for another thousand years.

So much for the texts. What about contemporary values?

Some progressives today argue that prostitution is against Jewish (and universal) values because it objectifies and victimizes women, as well as supports an international slave trade. Certainly, these claims have merit, as does the observation that Jewish law is sexist and asymmetrical, banning for women what it permits for men.

But while all these concerns are important, are they really what's motivating our outrage today? Sure, progressives dislike prostitution for feminist reasons, but Christians hate it for Christian ones. And think about it: what really brought Spitzer down? Was it the hypocrisy? The objectification of "Kristen" the call girl? Or -- let's admit it -- the sex? Condemning Spitzer for feminist reasons creates an unholy alliance between the pre-modern Right and the post-modern Left.

Indeed, there are good Jewish arguments for seeing the Spitzer case as indicting society more than the philandering ex-governor.

We live in a sex-crazed society, and we are crazy because of repression. Few cultures in history have enforced the monogamy ideal as we do. Jewish culture was polygamous for most of its history, approved of concubines, and tolerated harlots. European and American cultures usually looked the other way at prostitution, regarding it as a (male) private vice. Many non-Western cultures had elaborate systems of concubines, harems, brothels, and so on, before Christianity told them it was evil and sinful. We are, in short, an anomaly.

And we are equally anomalous in our puerile approach to sex. Our media cultureSt. Paul: Chairman of the No-Fun Committee saturates us with cheap, vulgar sexuality, objectifying to women and pandering to men. Surely, if Spitzer is a hypocrite, our media culture is even worse: titillating us with the endless commercialization of sex, then wagging its moralistic fingers at someone who buys sex for money.

If Judaism celebrates healthy, robust sexuality, then it must condemn all three of these trends: the Puritanical repressiveness, the puerile vulgarity, and the pious hypocrisy.

But there is a fourth and final Jewish reason to hesitate before condemning the ex-governor. Yet again, a conservative party which defends thieves, crooks, and warmongers has taken down a liberal because of sexual peccadillos. No one cheered Spitzer's fall more than the crooks of Wall Street -- including those who just benefited from the multi-billion dollar corporate bailout of Bear Stearns. Just like no one cheered Clinton's fall more than those same crooks, and their war-mongering friends who embroiled us in Iraq.

If Jewish values mean anything, they mean that senseless war is worse than a blowjob, and that billions of dollars of thievery and greed are worse than a visit to a whore.

Of course, none of this is to excuse Spitzer's violation of his marital vows, or his own hypocrisy -- he portrayed himself as an ethical crusader, and so perhaps was right to resign. Nor is this an argument for legalized prostitution or open marriages. Questions of sexism, privilege, and economics are too serious for simple answers.

But our culture's rush to judgment, its phony piety, and its outrageous moral hypocrisy have neither textual antecedent nor philosophical basis. Not in the Jewish tradition anyway. Quite the contrary. While Spitzer may be a moral failure and a hypocrite, many of those who condemn him are worse.

And Moses Said: i am a golden god!People have sure leapt on the story about how Moses may have been under the influence when he went up Mount Sinai, but while it is interesting to note the importance given to one possibly psychoactive plant—acacia—in the Bible, there are a lot of gaps. Israeli Researcher Benny Shanon—author of one of the best phenomenological studies of the psychedelic experience—has suggested in an academic article (and a resultant slew of radio interviews) that certain plants native to Sinai contain the same psychoactive ingredients as the Amazonian shamanic plant medicine ayahuasca (described in a recent Jewcy article by yours truly). Whoa, Nellie—here are three simple reasons why the "Moses on Drugs" theory is nothing to get high about:

1. Most (secular) Biblical scholars say the Exodus never happened anyway; it was a legend told by one group of Canaanites to create a distinct identity for themselves. Shanon has taken the weird position that the Exodus did happen, though it was not supernatural. Ergo, some explanation is needed. Ergo, ergot (or DMT).
2. The "similarities" between the ayahuasca experience and Mount Sinai are slim and stretched. Yes, ayahuasca leads to visions and spiritual epiphanies. It also leads to apparent encounters with spirits (forbidden by the Torah), complex visual revelations (mostly absent in the Torah, but present in Ezekiel and Hechalot mysticism), and a lot of nausea (curiously absent in the Torah's narrative). Worse, many popular press reports on Shanon's article have lumped the psilocybin and ayahuasca experiences together, when actually they're very different.
3. What is all this trying to prove? That Moses was "merely" stoned? That Western religion came from a psychedelic experience? (Terrence McKenna said that decades ago.) Or, conversely, that psychedelics lead to God? (Ram Dass got that one.) None of this is new: I've seen articles suggesting the knei bosem in the sacred incense is cannabis, and McKenna has an interesting riff that the tree of life is a mushroom. Is this supposed to "explain" the Exodus narrative like low tides "explain" the parting of the Red Sea? Why is such an "explanation" useful? Isn't it easier to just assume the whole thing is a legend?

Related: New Psychedelics Are Transforming The Future Of Spirituality

Hey, everyone needs a hobby: Woody Allen also plays the clarinet

For fans of Woody Allen, the elephant has been in the room for fifteen years now. We remember it's there, right? That Allen took up with his quasi-stepdaughter, Soon-Yi Previn when he was 56, she 22? That he had nude photographs of her? That Mia Farrow accused him of molesting their adopted daughter (a judge found the charges "inconclusive")? Sigh. We -- especially those of us who are, despite it all, fans -- remember.

And yet, for someone whose mature films were once so autobiographical, this notorious, unavoidable aspect of Allen's personal life has seemed absent from his artistic production. On the contrary, many of the films of the last decade and a half (and there has been roughly one each year) have been fluff, like the caper Small Time Crooks, the musical Everyone Says I Love You, the mob farce Bullets Over Broadway -- and those were the good ones. This has led many critics to conclude that Allen's introspective phase is over. The old man is going through the motions.

A closer look at Allen's late films, however, belies that claim. In fact, Allen's new film, Cassandra's Dream, is but the latest in public confessions of moral failure and deep ethical ambivalence. It's in code, but if we look closely at this series of Allen's films -- and this article will have spoilers for Match Point, Cassandra's Dream, Crimes and Misdemeanors, and Scoop -- we can see they are exactly about "the elephant in the room."

The first, and best, of the late films is 1989's Crimes and Misdemeanors. (Notice that, if Farrow's accusations were at all true, this was exactly when Allen became inappropriately interested in the minors living in his home.) That film introduced the central question of the late work: whether there's anyone minding the moral store, whether criminals ever get their comeuppance. Crimes and Misdemeanors also explicitly blends tragedy and comedy, a formal choice that reflects its ethical content. For flawed people, does life end tragically (as it ought to) or comically (as it oughtn't, but often does)?

Don't worry, Sam: You've got a friend who can loan you some eyesIn Crimes, the contrast is stark. Martin Landau, in perhaps the most brilliant performance of a brilliant career, plays Judah Rosenthal, who contracts to kill his wife  mistress (murder is the quintessential immoral act in the late films), and gets away with it. At first he is wrought with guilt, but eventually, the guilt passes. Meanwhile, Woody Allen's character, a good man, loses everything, and the film's moral conscience, a rabbi played by Sam Waterston, goes blind.

In the film's climactic scene, Rosenthal tells his story, in third person. He’s guilt-ridden and believes God is monitering him. “Little sparks of his religious background which he'd rejected are suddenly stirred up,” he says. He’s driven almost to confess. “And then one morning, he awakens. The sun is shining, his family is around him and mysteriously, the crisis has lifted... he's Scot-free. His life is completely back to normal.’’

Knowing now what we didn't know in 1989, it's not a huge stretch to see Allen reflecting on his own situation in these words. Did he commit a crime? Or just a misdemeanor? Who knows. Maybe all he did was fantasize about a much younger woman who was effectively, if not legally, his stepdaughter. But perhaps there were pangs of guilt already. And yet, as Alan Alda's smarmy character says in the film, "comedy is tragedy plus time." Time passes, and Oedipus gets over it. The tragic, ethical sense of what ought to be gives way to a comic, aesthetic play of what just is.

Flash forward to 2005's Match Point, widely regarded as Allen's return to form, and featuring Jonathan Rhys-Meyers as Chris, a tennis pro who, by chance, falls in with a wealthy playboy and ends up marrying his sister Chloe -- all the while lusting after the playboy's fiancee Nola, played by Scarlett Johansson. Eventually, Nola and Chris have an affair, Nola becomes pregnant, and refuses to have an abortion. Chris is trapped: he depends on Chloe's family for his job, his life, his dreams of making it in the world. And so he ends up killing Nola (and a neighbor) in cold blood.

Case in point: Pigeons plus time equals creative pun Chris is almost caught when he fails to destroy a piece of evidence -- a gold ring that bounces on a railing like a tennis ball bouncing on the net. But luckily for him, the ring gets picked up by a drug addict, substantiating rather than undermining his alibi. He escapes. It's a comedy. Cue jazz music and white-on-black credits.

As in Crimes and Misdemeanors, the bad guy gets away with it, though this time the emphasis is less on his cool lack of conscience than on his dumb luck.

The same themes are repeated in Cassandra's Dream. In it, Ewan McGregor and Colin Farrell play two working class English brothers, Ian a striver like Match Point's Chris, and Terry, down on his luck. Their wealthy uncle promises them all the money they need -- if they kill a business associate who's about to testify against him. Eventually, the brothers do the deed. But then Terry spirals downward, consumed with guilt, while Ian represses the guilt and gets on with fulfilling his ambitions.

That haircut is a crime AND a misdemeanor: Farrell and McGregor Finally, when Terry is about to crack, Ian plots to kill him before he confesses. But at the last moment, Ian repents, and instead of poisoning Terry, merely punches him. In the ensuing fight, Terry accidentally kills Ian, and then kills himself out of remorse. It's a tragedy. Cue brooding Philip Glass music and white-on-black credits.

Cassandra's Dream is perhaps even darker than Match Point, which was even darker than Crimes and Misdemeanors. In Crimes, the comedy unfolded despite the murderer's remorse. In Match Point, remorse is irrelevant. In Cassandra, it's downright harmful: the tragedy is precipitated precisely because of Terry's last-minute pang of conscience. If he'd been more cruel, there would have been a happy ending.

The lesson is clear: comedy is tragedy plus time -- unless you brood about it.

In this light, even some of Allen's lesser works begin to take on a new light. For example, Scoop's murderous villain is only discovered by a comic mix of supernaturalism and shtick (and Allen's character pathetically dies as he tries to save the heroine). Melinda and Melinda revisits the comedy/tragedy dichotomy, suggesting that luck determines the outcome much more than our own actions. And so on.

So, the elephant is in the room, and in the frame. By now, "Woody and Soon-Yi" have become a fixture on the New York cultural scene; we're no longer shocked. But whether there was misconduct early on, or only unseemliness, Allen has not overlooked the obvious, which is that he is a 72-year-old married to a 30-year-old who wasn't quite his stepdaughter but almost sort of was. Allen is unpunished, but perhaps unforgiven as well, at least by himself.

Let me out!: The elephant plots its escape On the surface, Allen's agonizing agnosticism is squarely at odds with traditional Jewish conceptions of justice, Allen's obvious foil. This is the "religious background which he'd rejected." But Allen hasn't rejected its most salient feature, which is not the pat answer that God sees everything, but the wrestling with the problems of justice and evil in the first place. Judaism is a religion of Job, not just Sunday School, and Allen's extended meditations on the presence or absence of moral order are the essence of the Jewish ethical conscience.

We all know that God does not punish the wicked -- at least not in ways we can see. And yet, we who were raised in the Jewish tradition still experience Jewish guilt, itself both comic and tragic. Is there really no moral order in the world? Is remorse an ally or an adversary? Will there be an accounting at the end, or is religion for suckers? Is it better to remember the past, or let it go?

Allen has now worked out at least three different permutations of these questions in his late films, each one with a different sense of pathos, a different perspective on the mystery. Of course, all this is speculation. Maybe there's really no big deal about the Allen/Previn marriage. Maybe Allen couldn't care less. Or maybe that's what he's trying to figure out.

In 1954, Aldous Huxley published "The Doors of Perception," a famous essay observing that the effects of mescaline were remarkably similar to the unitive mysticism of the world's great religions, particularly Vedanta, the philosophical-mystical form of Hinduism which Huxley practiced. It caused an immediate sensation. Because He Got High: Aldous Huxley's classic essay, "The Doors of Perception"Many in the public were outraged by its pro-pharmacological spirit, and many in the academy accused Huxley (like William James before him) of flattening different mystical traditions, and of disregarding distinctions between "sacred and profane" mystical practice.

But many more were inspired. Huxley's essay, and other works like it, set the agenda for 1960s spirituality, and what later came to be called the New Age movement. He provided a philosophical explanation of what was important about mescaline—that our perceptive faculties filter out more than they let in, and that mescaline, like meditation, opens those doors wider—and a personal account of what a "trip" was like. He showed how entheogens (as they later came to be called) could be a part of a sincere spiritual practice. And he perhaps unwittingly imported a certain Vedanta agenda of what the "ultimate" mystical experience was like: union. As has been argued by many scholars over the last few decades, this claim of ultimacy—that unio mystica is the peak form of mystical experience, with others defined by how close they approach it—is actually a rather partisan one. Why is "union with the All" superior to, or more true than, deity mysticism, visions of Krishna/Christ/spirits, and the text-based mysticism of the Kabbalah? Sure, for Vedanta it is—but that's just Vedanta's view.

Two generations of spiritual seekers have been influenced, for better and for worse, by this hierarchy. From the naive hippie to the sophisticated yogi, Jewish Renewalniks to Ken Wilberites, hundreds of thousands of spiritual practitioners have implicitly or explicitly assumed the prioritization of the unitive over all else: the point is that All is One.

Most of these constituencies are also, like Huxley, influenced by the psychedelic experience, primarily that of mushrooms and LSD. While most contemporary spiritual teachers have long since given these substances up, in favor of meditation and other mystical practices which afford the same experiences in a more reliable container (and one greatly enriched by self-examination and introspection), if you ask them, as I have, they'll admit that the psychedelic experience formed an important part of their spiritual initiation.Do You See God?: Psychedelic experience can initiate a lifelong spiritual journey Whether it's what got them on the road in the first place, or confirmed their earlier intuitions, psychedelics have set the agenda for a huge percentage of contemporary spiritual teachers, across religious and spiritual denominations, and many of their followers as well.

These two trends — that "all is one" is the point, and that it accords with the psychedelic experience—have occasionally led to a distortion of religious and spiritual traditions. In the Kabbalah, for example, unitive mysticism is only a small part of a wide panoply of mystical experiences. Yes, there are texts which speak of annihilation of the self (bittul hayesh) and a unification with God (achdut). But these are, truthfully, in the minority. Many more are visionary texts, describing theophanies of all shapes and sizes; or records of prophecy or angelic communication; or less explicitly unitive accounts of proximity to the Divine. Yet there's a sense, among teachers of contemporary Kabbalah —and I'm not referring here to the Kabbalah Centre (where Madonna goes), which does not teach Kabbalah proper, but rather a unique and sometimes weird synthesis of Kabbalah, the Human Potential movement, and New Religious Movements like Scientology—that unitive mysticism is the summum bonum, the ultimate good.

Some Kabbalistic texts agree, but many others do not. For example, Rabbi Arthur Green, today one of progressive Judaism's leading teachers, in 1968 wrote an article (under a pseudonym) called "Psychedelics and Kabbalah," explicitly analogizing the psychedelic experiences to aspects of Kabbalistic teaching—but selecting those aspects of Kabbalah and Hasidism which fit the experience. Naturally, Green was also influenced by the many forms of non-Jewish mysticism popular at the time, most of whom asserted that "All is One," but in that essay, he makes clear that the psychedelic experience affected how he understood Kabbalah. Green, and a fellow practitioner-academic Daniel Matt, have been enormously influential: their anthologies of Hasidic and Kabbalistic texts are read far more widely than the texts themselves, and are widely assumed to represent the mainstream of their respective traditions.

I am not taking a position on whether this "distortion" is for good or ill; in my own practice, the nondual/unitive perspective plays a central role, and I am grateful for it, whatever its sources. But I have a hunch that it is about to change.

The reason it is changing is that more and more Jewish spiritual seekers are pursuing non-unitive paths. This includes earth-based ritual, shamanic ritual, and other disciplines which, while they may hold the view that "all is one," provide experiences of differentiation (energies, elements, visions, etc). But perhaps more importantly, it includes drinking ayahuasca, smoking DMT, and visionary shamanic-entheogenic practices which offer different experiences from the unitive one. The ayahuasca trip, unlike the mescaline one, is not especially unitive: indeed, one of its hallmarks is the sense of communication with other life forms or consciousnesses. And while a sense of "all is One" is sometimes reported in the midst of the ayahuasca experience, it's more common to read reports of visions of phenomena—manifestation, not essence.

Some of these accounts are strikingly similar to texts from the Hechalot and Merkavah schools of Jewish mysticism, which flourished between the second and ninth centuries. In the texts from this period, we read detailed accounts of heavenly palaces, Divine chariots, and angels; of ascents to other realms which seem somehow to be in outer space or an extraterrestrial locale; of a sense of great danger, but also great awe, beauty and love; and of beings which travel on some kind of cosmic vehicle. The descriptions are visionary and auditory, much like the accounts of ayahuasca visions. They are "shamanic" journeys, both in the sense of being journeys of the soul to other realm and in the sense of a transformation of the self. They yield information, prophecy, revelation, theophany. And they are not really about "all is one."

Hechalot and Merkavah mysticism is studied in the academy, but it is little known in the contemporary spiritual world. It's complicated, arcane, and literally other-worldly. But just as the unitive moments of Hasidism appeal to those who have had a unitive experience on mushrooms, so too the visionary aspects of Hechalot and Merkavah mysticism appeal to those who have had a visionary experience on ayahuasca. The similarities are striking.

What's more, Hechalot and Merkavah mysticism, related as it is to gnosticism, provides one of world literature's richest libraries of other-worldly mystical experience. It's eerie how similar some of these millennia-old texts are to the records contemporary journeyers provide of the ayahuasca trip: the sense of being in "outer space," the tenuous links to consensual reality, the sense of danger, and above all the colorful descriptions of chambers, angels, songs, palaces, ascents, descents, fire, music, and so much more. It also provides a sense of history, context, and "belonging" to those who affiliate with Judaism, Christianity, or gnosticism; like unitive experiences, non-unitive visionary/ ecstatic experiences have a lineage within these traditions. Perhaps, too, it might offer guidance for those seeking to integrate such experiences into their lives.

To reiterate, I am taking no position on whether unitive or non-unitive experiences are "better," and see nondual essence and dualistic manifestation as two sides of the same ineffable unity. My point, simply, is that much of contemporary Western spirituality derives from a particular psychedelic experience and a particular form of mysticism it approximates. With the increasing popularity of ayahuasca and similar medicines, the former element has changed — and I think the latter will too.

In the esoteric world, this kind of change and interchange has always been with us. Hechalot mystics learned from the gnostics, who learned from the Jews, who learned from the Babylonians. Medieval Kabbalists learned from the Sufis, who learned from the Hindus, who learned from the Buddhists, who learned from other Hindus. One need not make the facile, and false, claim that all mysticism is the same thing in order to recognize that mystics across space and time have understood themselves to be gesturing toward the same truths, albeit in very different ways. And those differences advance, not obstruct, the progress of realization. After all, when one can ultimately know nothing, it helps to learn from everything.

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NEXT: Drugs mix with spirituality. But can they mix with parenting?

And all good things must come to an end -- sometimes, as with Godfather III or Clerks 2, after they've overstayed their welcome a bit.  The parallels with meditation retreat continue; on the last day of a retreat, it's really hard to sit still, because your mind has already started thinking about going home.  Likewise, I'm now sick of the spicy lemonade, because I'm ready to move to orange juice and veggie juice, which is what I'm starting tonight.  Plus I'm now up at my house, with my partner, who is microwaving veggie burgers and eating cereal and basically causing my appetite to roil.  And then, because I'm not drinking enough of the lemonade, I get headaches.  Which I know I'll get, because I've learned that lesson already.  But I'm sick of the lemonade -- and round and round it goes.  Lotta Lemon

So, what have I learned during this week of near-fasting (and drinking the juice of all the lemons at right, and then some)?

First, that we really don't need anywhere near as much food as we take in.  It really is amazing how high-functioning I've been able to be, just on lemon juice, water, cayenne pepper, and maple syrup.  I'm going back to eating not because I have to, but because I want to. 

Second, that I would really look great if I didn't eat so much crap.  I'm back down to my optimal weight of 160 -- I must've been pushing 170 before the cleanse, given how much thinner I look.  And not just thinner -- better.  Skin clearer, eyes clearer, and somehow, the lost few pounds were all in the right places; my face looks like it used to 10 years ago, and so does my gut.  I was thinking about posting some pictures online -- but I thought better of it. 

 Now, I still think that, on balance, enjoying the delicious variety of foods in the world is worth a little extra flab and a little less energy.  It's part of the delight of life, and this discipline is too ascetic for an everyday lifestyle.  But it is instructive to see what's really causing the paunches and big bottoms of America: eating garbage. 

Third, I've really appreciated, in a visceral way, the fact that I always have enough to eat in my life.  When your entire mental stability depends on one bottle of orange fluid, you can really see that clearly.  It's like that environmental parable about a civilization entirely dependent upon a single pipe.  They love it, take care of it, even venerate it -- now if only our dependence on the Earth were as clear for us to see.

Fourth, I think I've put some space between the sensation of hunger on the one hand, and the grouchy, crabby feeling I usually get when I'm hungry on the other.  This week, I always felt hunger in my belly.  But it was just part of the scenery, and part of the plan of the week.  I got used to it; it was really no big deal.  If only I'd feel that way when it's 2:30 in the afternoon and I haven't managed to eat lunch yet. 

And finally, I do feel, somehow, cleaner.  I've learned a lot this week about "toxins" and "cleansing" and other dubiously-defined touchstones of the wacky nutritionist fringe.  And I don't know about any of that.  But I can say that I feel somehow cleaner inside.  It's amazing how much crap (literally, in this case) was still coming out of me during my daily salt water flush, days after I'd stopped eating.  That stuff just sits there, all the time; who knows, maybe it does have something to do with toxicity, or loss of energy, or, well, something we don't yet fully understand.

  I'm glad I did the cleanse, and I'd recommend it to any healthy individual, if only for the adventure and for seeing how much of our ordinary responses to food and hunger are conditioned behaviors that have little to do with actually nourishing the body.  It was important that I was working with a nutritionist, in case anything did really go wrong.  Nothing did, but it felt good to know that my back was covered.  Not that I'm really out of the woods yet -- for many peop