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Friday May 23, 2008

Author talks about circuitous route to Orthodoxy

by stacey palevsky
staff writer

At the front of the room stands an Orthodox woman. This is no secret — she wears a turquoise headscarf and matching blouse, and interrupts her presentation to recite a blessing over a mug of water.

But until Sara Yoheved Rigler speaks, a casual observer would never know that this woman lived in and directed one of the largest Hindu ashrams in the United States for 15 years before she ever studied a word of Torah.

Rigler spoke May 15 to 18 at the Beit Midrash Ohr Ha Chaim, an independent Torah learning center and synagogue in Berkeley. The talks ranged from her “long and bumpy spiritual journey” to the lessons contained in her most recent book.

“I invited myself,” she joked. “It’s my first time in Berkeley — I have always wanted to come here.”

Rigler, who grew up in New Jersey, spoke four times as part of a national book tour for her newest book, “Holy Woman,” a biography of Rebbetzin Chaya Sara Kramer. Her appearances were co-

sponsored by the Beit Midrash, Afikomen Books and Chabad of Berkeley.

“She’s really gifted in her ability to articulate the details and intricacies of her journey,” said Tamar Bittleman, a founding member of the Beit Midrash who helped arrange Rigler’s visit. A religiously diverse audience of 25 attended her autobiographical talk May 15.

Rigler grew up in a Conservative Jewish household in Cherry Hill, N.J. She enjoyed Hebrew school, but wasn’t particularly religious. She got swept up in radical leftist politics as a student at Brandeis University.

It was 1968. The Vietnam War raged. She embraced the ethos of philosopher Alan Watts, that “peace can only be made by those who are peaceful,” so she went to India. After all, West had just met East thanks to the Beatles.

Rigler spent a year meditating and studying with a guru who taught her that she was not a mind within a body, but “a soul who also has a mind and a body.”

The revelation rocked her. How could it be, she wondered, that she wasn’t who she thought she was?

That question would resurface once more, though not for another 15 years.

She finished her degree at Brandeis, after which she moved to an ashram in Massachusetts. Though not her intention, she ended up spending 15 years there, studying with a guru “who, like a physical therapist, can push you beyond your comfort zone.”

Years later, in 1984, several famed gurus were found to have had affairs with young female students (which was particularly offensive to their followers, who trusted that the gurus practiced what they preached, i.e., celibacy). Rigler felt betrayed.

Meanwhile, she also felt spiritually stunted. She had been meditating for so long; why didn’t she feel more enlightened?

Around that time, a rabbi visited the ashram. He spoke about how halachah — Jewish law — comes from the same root as the Hebrew word for “to walk,” indicating that halachah is like a path. It takes you somewhere.

Once again, she felt her orbit shift.

“I was floored. I had never heard this before,” she recalled. “But I didn’t know that I didn’t know this was Judaism. So I didn’t think to ask.

“I think 90 percent of American Jews don’t know they don’t know” the essence of Judaism, she added.

They see multimillion-dollar synagogues and fundraising campaigns, she said, and so, “Who would even think to look for a spiritual path in Judaism?”

Rigler’s guru awarded her a two-month vacation for good behavior. She went to Brooklyn, and then to Israel.

Twenty-three years later, she’s still there, living within the walls of the Old City, a married woman, mother, author and essayist.

She cites her background in meditation, yoga and the guru system as helping her adapt to an Orthodox Jewish life, practices that teach submitting one’s will to an external authority as a step toward spiritual growth.

“I slipped into Torah Judaism like a glass slipper thanks to the ashram,” she said.

Today, however, she thinks of the Torah as “the best guru.”

“Humans are changed not by what they know, but by what they do,” she said. “Mitzvah changes us in a way meditation doesn’t.”

Sara Yoheved Rigler writes for Aish.com and is the author of several books, most recently “Holy Woman: The Road to Greatness of Rebbetzin Chaya Sara Kramer,” (375 pages, Mesorah Publications, $23.99).

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