What is Deep Ecumenism?
Deep ecumenism, a term coined by Matthew Fox and expanded upon by Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi z"l, the founder of Jewish Renewal, orients us to the potential for learning from and growing spiritually with teachers and adherents of all faith traditions.
One of the kavanot (intentionalities) of our community is to respond to the challenge of overcoming the historic hostility between faiths, primarily between Judaism and Christianity, but also to be open to learning from and growing spiritually with teachers and adherents of all faith traditions.
In the delicate process of God-seeking, there is no way to overestimate the centrality of the experiential. Each of us shares in a holy obligation to open our minds, hearts, and souls to the Reality of God and to the reality that God loves diversity, nearness, and surprise.
Deep ecumenism requires us to accept the consequences of divine Oneness: One is One and One is All, and the One invites us to bring the reality we affirm in our prayer into the routine of our lives.
As Reb Zalman has long taught, limiting ourselves exclusively to traditional images of divinity, or only to those images inherent in Jewish tradition, may constrain and hobble our spiritual evolution.
Deep ecumenism neither minimizes our attachment to Judaism’s spiritual understandings, nor compromises our personal and communal religious practices. If ecumenism has a boundary, it’s in the realm of practice, at the point where we sense something damaging to the spiritual immune system, something that calls into question for us the integrity and beauty of Jewish teaching.
One of the kavanot (intentionalities) of our community is to respond to the challenge of overcoming the historic hostility between faiths, primarily between Judaism and Christianity, but also to be open to learning from and growing spiritually with teachers and adherents of all faith traditions.
In the delicate process of God-seeking, there is no way to overestimate the centrality of the experiential. Each of us shares in a holy obligation to open our minds, hearts, and souls to the Reality of God and to the reality that God loves diversity, nearness, and surprise.
Deep ecumenism requires us to accept the consequences of divine Oneness: One is One and One is All, and the One invites us to bring the reality we affirm in our prayer into the routine of our lives.
As Reb Zalman has long taught, limiting ourselves exclusively to traditional images of divinity, or only to those images inherent in Jewish tradition, may constrain and hobble our spiritual evolution.
Deep ecumenism neither minimizes our attachment to Judaism’s spiritual understandings, nor compromises our personal and communal religious practices. If ecumenism has a boundary, it’s in the realm of practice, at the point where we sense something damaging to the spiritual immune system, something that calls into question for us the integrity and beauty of Jewish teaching.