Orthodox in Unorthodox Way

By Barney Zwartz, The Age

About 60 people relax cheerfully on chairs and beanbags in a big room. Men on the right, women on the left, divided by a slight curtain; but they laugh and call out to each other. Then a young man in fashionable black takes charge, as they sing, clap, chant, listen attentively and pause to meditate.

It could be a New Age session, a team-bonding exercise, even a trendy planning seminar. Actually, it’s the Friday night Shabbat service at a deeply Orthodox Jewish synagogue, or shul, which is fighting the decline in traditional Judaism with a rather unorthodox approach. The black is the traditional garb of a 17th-century East European rabbi.

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“There’s nothing in the world like this,” says Spiritgrow’s founder and “dean”, Rabbi Laibl Wolf. “We bring together ancient teachings and tradition with contemporary research to improve people’s lives.”

According to Menachem Wolf, Laibl’s son and the centre’s director, its purpose is partly to draw back Jewish people who have become detached from their roots and are drawn to Eastern religions, especially Buddhism.

Spiritually sophisticated but religiously untutored, they turn to the East for tranquillity and because they find it less religious and more spiritual.

Menachem says: “We want them to try their own religion before they search elsewhere. People want peace and meditation without the religious side, and we want people to see there’s a spiritual side to Judaism as well, including peace and harmony. It’s not just what they see in the media: rock-throwing, rules and finger-wagging.”

He says the Wolfs intended to focus on health and spirituality when they opened in attractive, modern premises in Caulfield in 2007. “But we found many people didn’t have a shul to go to because they were scared of it or it was too old-fashioned.”

Spiritshul opened last year and the Wolfs set out to make people comfortable, using traditional prayers and ancient Hebrew tunes and chants while explaining everything as they went. Worshippers share kosher sushi and sake after the service. Menachem is preparing a CD of the nigunim (musical chants) and services so people can listen at home or in their cars.

During the High Holidays last October, Spiritshul had to turn away more than half the people who wanted to come. Laibl says: “Most people go to synagogue to sleep, or meet their friends, or salve their conscience. Here they are very involved and very interactive, spiritually and intellectually.”

Menachem says: “We try to have a personal conversation with everyone who comes, making our good times their good times, and their problems our problems.”

With his black beret and bushy beard, Laibl could be an artist on the Left Bank of the Seine. Menachem, 25, dresses like the ultra-Orthodox Lubavitch rabbi he is: beard, black hat, black tie, black coat.

“For a black hat, he’s the most progressive Orthodox rabbi I’ve ever met. I’ve done the shul-hopping, from liberal to Orthodox, and this is home now,” says Larry Blode, 46, an IT consultant. “We are all good mates. We feel we are getting something the mainstream shuls aren’t providing.”

Yvette, a coppersmith, agrees. Her background is secular, and though she used to attend synagogue on the Jewish High Holidays, she didn’t see the point. “It was like everyone crammed in, with all the women gossiping. And I thought I could have a more spiritual time in my studio. Here it’s very intimate. They know if you don’t come you feel Jewish guilt. I come because it’s a link to part of myself and my Jewish heritage, it’s continuity with my family’s past, and it improves my Hebrew.”

How does Laibl Wolf get away with something so different among the deeply conservative Lubavitch community? “Because my credentials are impeccable as Lubavitch and Hasid, I’m allowed to be more adventurous then most,” he replies. Also, of course, it’s an outreach to the unaffiliated, not the Lubavitch.

The link between Jewish and Eastern religion is no coincidence, according to Laibl. He claims that the sons of Hagar and Abraham — a central figure in Judaism, Christianity and Islam — went to India more than 3500 years ago, and that Hinduism and Islam are daughter religions of Judaism.

Abraham was called “Ivri”, the “other-sider” (which came into English as Hebrew), while India’s great river was called the Indus, or “other-sider” in honour of Abraham’s sons, Laibl explains.

The word “Brahman” is a rearrangement of the letters in Abraham, and there are many other linguistic and spiritual parallels, including reincarnation. Many aspects of Hinduism have been taken from Jewish spiritual teaching, he says.

“Judaism is not the only path to God. There are 71 soul typologies in creation. Judaism is one. There are another 70, each with their own legitimate pathway and connection to God.”