Kallah: An Oral History
In July of 2016, around 500 members of the Jewish Renewal community congregated at Colorado State University in Fort Collins, CO for their annual Kallah gathering. The weeklong convocation is a time where community members celebrate their core principles which include eco-consciousness, davvenology (an experiential form of prayer), age-ing to sage-ing, and deep ecumenism (a strong call for religious unity). To enhance the robust Post Holocaust American Judaism collections at the University of Colorado Boulder, I, along with a team of three others, interviewed around 30 members of the community. Most of the interviews focused on each individual’s path to Renewal Judaism and also their personal history with the late Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi, known as the father of the movement. After facilitating each interview, I captured their portraits. Here are a few faces of Renewal Judaism:
“[Rabbi Zalman] wasn’t afraid to be a great rabbi who also studied with great Zen masters or with great Hindu teachers or with great Christian theologians. That was an eyeopener, that you could be strongly yourself and also welcome the wisdom from other traditions...A lot of us in Jewish Renewal have done that...to see the wisdom that is global rather than just tribal.”
“I had been in the business world for about 35 years...During that time, although I knew that I was treating people fairly and doing good business, I really kept asking God to show me what I could do that had more redeeming value. Through a series of what I would call ‘spiritual signposts’ I was led to become a chaplain.”
“My hope is that we will continue to drink from the wellsprings of tradition…[and] at the same time try to see what it is to live in a world where the image of the divine is not limited to the human--it also includes the more than human, the other than human.”
“So, nature was a great [spiritual] guide. I processed my laboring outside, under the sky watching a cloud just feeling like 'well, just be like the clouds,' you know, they kind of disperse, then they condense, and they disperse. And so, a baby was born through my body. And then there were eight spouts of milk within a few days coming out of these bags that I had carried around. And I was just in awe. I was in a state of I don’t know how this happened but whatever it is that knows how to do this, I want to track that.”
“All that existed was serendipity between [Rabbi Zalman] and me...That’s who he was for so many people. I’m one among hundreds.”
