Anyone involved in new age spiritual Judaic practice has probably heard of Jay Michaelson; his influence extends to books, articles, publications, spiritual retreats, speaking tours and the like. He was even recently named as one of the Forward 50, an annual list of important and influential Jewish figures in America. In Everything is God, his magnum opus on the nondualistic Judaism Michaelson promotes, he attempts to bring "Jewish Enlightenment" to more traditional consumers. I assume. His sources are not strictly Jewish; by "mapping" Hindu, Buddhist, Islamic, Christian, and other religious traditions onto traditional Judaism, Michaelson and his ilk are syncretizing a new Judaism, one more compatible with mystical Eastern traditions. I’m many years out of yeshivah, but I recognize avodah zarah when I see it.

Traditional Judaism posits a anthropomorphic god, with human characteristics, who intervenes in the universe and gave positive commandments. Nondualism on the other hand sacralizes, well, everything, insisting that the whole universe is in the process of "godding." That is to say, that all existence is God’s existence, that there is nothing that isn’t god–and therefore God encompasses all existence–good and bad, pleasure and suffering–but does not necessarily have discrete characteristics or a personality (except when it does). God isn’t just in everyone and everything, it is everyone and everything. The Kabbalistic name for this phenomenon, Michaelson tells us, is "Ein Sof," meaning "without end." In Michaelson’s universe, nondualism is a pervasive and obvious truth, but don’t look to the book to make too much sense out of it. The true nature of God is constantly being described as both knowable and unknowable; ineffable but universally understandable. Nondualism, the focus of this book, is the idea that God is the universe. "Nothing is excluded," Michaelson writes early in the book. (It turns that out this is false, but not in the way you’re probably thinking). Nondualism stands slightly apart from monism (everything is one) and dualism (there is a difference between the mental and the physical) by being unable to commit to either view to the exclusion of anything else: separateness (for example, the mind/body split) is an illusion, a series of masks God wears because he loves to play tricks on us, or something like that. Nondualism, the author tells us, is not exactly pantheism (all gods are the same god, who is within all of us) or panentheism (pantheism plus a bonus extra god outside of all of us), but encompasses both in a characteristically equivocal fashion. Atheists call this kind of argument "conversion by bear hug" — you don’t have to believe in god, god is already inside you, therefore you can’t realy disbelieve in god, QED. "Neither oneness or twoness, neither yesh nor ayin, but both, and thus neither. It’s not quite paradox–it’s enlightenment," explains Michaelson. "The Kabbalistic math of this reality is that 2 = 1 = 0. Fortunately, I don’t have to be good at math anymore." Watching Michaelson twist and weave ancient texts and obscure mystic rants into a cohesive nondualist picture of the Universe that seems to connect Krishna and the Ba’al Shem Tov raises an interesting question: for hermeneuticists like Michaelson, is there such a thing as misunderstanding, or is it merely ‘recontextualizing?’ If there is such a thing as willful misunderstanding, Michaelson is definitely guilty. As he says when explaining the nondual nature of Hassidism, "[o]ne could very easily write a book on ‘Hasidic dualistic Judaism’ –indeed, using some of the same texts I cite here." When all is an illusion of separateness, which mask god happens to be wearing at the time doesn’t seem terribly important. Some other nagging questions: are all self-contradictory statements deep? Nondualists seem to think so. Ultimately, isn’t it true that any sentence beginning with "ultimately, isn’t it true that…" is necessarily bullshit? (This phrase precedes the crux of Michaelson’s argument.) Are pantheism, panentheism or nonduality really "religion and atheism shaking hands?" As an atheist, I’m not finding anything here that’s makes me want to congratulate anyone. Let’s get down to brass tacks. Even if you’re a student of philosophy and religion (and I like to fancy myself one) you’ll be hard pressed to get through the first 20 pages. If I wasn’t already doing a book review I would have quit reading the book by page 11, which is right after two pages worth of three-columned examples of how nondualism encompasses old dichotomies, such as "Dualistic/Unitive/Nondual," "manifestation/essence/both," "ethics/no ethics/nondual ethics" and "mountains/no mountains/mountains." I’m still trying to finger the book’s intended audience; if you aren’t already a nondualist, odds are you won’t emerge as one after reading this book. Nondual mystics seek a real connection not only with "Nature," but with all living (and non-living) beings. By focusing on the ineffable essence of the divine, they maintain, they can reach out and touch all of existence, commune with everything that is, because of the innate and existential connection between everything in the universe. At least it’s a metaphysical kind of touching–because in the physical sense, the minute one of the creepy mystics tries to "become one" with me, I’m calling the cops. Nondualism and Solipsism In kabbalistic terms, nondualism is the union of "yesh" (in Hebrew, to have something) and "ayin" (which Michaelson variously describes as Nothingness or emptiness). Taoists (and surfers) recognize these two things as "yin" and "yang," which symbolize all dualities: good and evil, male and female, black and white. But as I quoted previously, "Nothing is excluded" from the all-encompassing idea of God. So how can this be? (Hint: the difference between "Nothingness" and "Emptiness" is that emptiness implies you were expecting it to full of something.) The answer is that the "yesh" and "ayin" of Michaelson’s nondualism actually represent "real" and "imaginary" (or, if you prefer, "true" and "false," or "physical" and "mental"). The nondual god unites the physical with human consciousness. But are thoughts ‘in existence’ too? Nondualism doesn’t place much value on differentiating between true and false (unless you’re talking about nondualism itself) because it believes that such distinctions are ultimately false. "The heart loves what the mind knows," Michaelson reminds us, but what if the mind is wrong? Can you have a unitive mystical experience with something that isn’t there? How would you know? It turns out that it doesn’t matter. As the union of true and false, the nondual god is merely a concept, and it doesn’t care whether there is any reality behind any other concept. For Michaelson, "every concept is a mask [for God], and all masks are illusory, but many are helpful in translating nonsense into sense. And since all masks are illusory, all masks are permitted." This is part of the mystical union between thought and the universe; if the mental and the physical are all part of god (classical duality separates these two), it doesn’t matter whether your concepts are true or false. Because the Ein Sof includes the mental universe as well as the physical one, your mental images of things become as real as anything else. In Western philosophy, (where nondualism was first formulated), one of the worst insults you can level at another’s argument is that it collapses into solipsism, or the idea that there is no reality, only your thoughts. Nondualism slips into solipsism when it decides to locate Everything into an idea called God, and then locates that thing inside all of us. There are Jewish nondual traditions (such as some in Chassidism), Michaelson explains, believe that the universe is merely God’s dream.

The book is divided into theory and practice; in practice, nondual religion doesn’t seem to have many rules, or for that matter, a point. For example, why keep kosher? "I do it because I love God," says Michaelson, "and when you love someone, you do stupid things for them." The rest of the practice section is equally disconnected from its philosophical underpinnings. He doesn’t just love God; for some reason that is never fully explained, "God" actually becomes "Love" at some point along the way. Does the fact that humans seek love mean that rocks seek love, too? For nondualists, it’s all just divine masturbation. Michaelson’s nondualism, for all its academic and philosophical appeals, rests on experiential knowledge about the Universe. As he asks in the final section of the book ("Not Knowing: Is Life But A Dream? Is Mysticism But A Feeling?"), "suppose the ‘knowing’ in the previous section is just a feeling. Yes, for many of us, there is a resonance inside–but maybe that’s all there is: a neurosis, not a stirring of truth." What we do know is that not everyone is a nondualist, so if there is a universal consciousness, it’s not exactly universal. In a universe where everything is god, if the heart loves what the mind knows, and you love god, do you know everything? How could you claim to love God if you didn’t? Sure, you might harbor some general warm-and-fuzzy feeling about the universe, but how (and why) do you know you really love everything if you can only interact with an infinitesmal fraction of it? (Benedict Anderson, the foremost political theorist on nationalism, said that a common literature is what makes it possible for people to feel kinship with people from the same country they will never meet. One assumes nondualism works on the same principle.) At the base of all this claptrap, the essential experiential moment in any nondual religious journey according to Michaelson is ego death (and later, rebirth). In a book filled with 225 pages of text (and another 50 worth of footnotes, bibliography and so forth), the actual argument for it rests on ten-odd pages in which Michaelson attempts to dispel the notion of "self":

"What actually acts, thinks, feels, dreams are one or more mental factors, usually in combination, none of which is actually ‘you.’ They are the conditions necessary for the action to take place–not ‘you.’ Who moved? The conditions moved."

If there was more to the argument, I’d quote it, but there isn’t, really. There’s no self because identity is dependent on a number of factors and conditions which, although they are necessarily unique to each person, mean that none of us are actually ourselves. In this way, conditions (which remain constant, of course, because they’re in the past) can be said to have moved instead of you. The one thing we all actually experience (regardless of religious convictions) is in fact a sense of self, but no matter. Now that we all see that there is obviously no self, Michaelson proclaims, we must conclude that there is a single unitive, integrated connection to everything, and it’s called God (or Nature, or "Ein Sof," etc.). But there’s little connection between the declaration of "No Self" and "Everything Is One." If the self is an illusion masking "a number of factors" as a single concept, why doesn’t "Everything" work (or not work) the same way? In a world where everything is an illusion and distinctions are all ultimately false, it doesn’t seem to matter. Way back when nondualism was being invented by the neo-Platonists in Greece, philosphers used to be scientists. Sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic, and apparently vice-versa. Science (as a smattering of neurology, biology, physics, etc.) makes some cameos in the footnotes of Everything Is God, but as Michaelson writes, "[t]he real reason a believer believes has to do with her heart, not argument from design. Would she really stop believing if quantum mechanics didn’t bolster her claims? If not, why pretend that physics is relevant?" Good question. At one point, Michaelson asks if there’s no self, "What is there, really? Well, we’d have to ask the scientists…" and then goes on to quote the fourth Lubavitcher rebbe as saying that everything is made up of "fire, water, air and earth." It’s reminiscent of the ancient sages who developed grand and convoluted explanations for why the sky is blue but had never heard of nitrogen. It turns out a tree falling in the forest makes a sound whether anyone is around to hear it or not. In the end, the enlightenment described by Michaelson is pretty boring: relinquish the old gods, he exhorts, come to peace with a universe that works as you would expect it if there were no God (done!) and then return to an ecstatic love for the universe by recognizing that everything is part of the same interconnected thing, based on faith. Certainly, we are connected in space-time, by atomic bonds, by causality, but Michaelson’s insistence that free will is merely an illusion doesn’t square with the scientists he haphhazardly quotes as evidence that we are all machines being divinely guided. Sure, we’re conditioned (albeit uniquely) to react to things in certain ways. But it turns out that even though we have strong instincts, we still make choices–in a physical sense, there are unpredictable patterns of electrons moving through our billions of neural processors 200 times a second, connecting, disentangling, working without our direct knowledge–but that doesn’t imply that everything is one in any sense. Nondualism embraces multiplicity (the idea that there is more than one thing), but only in a superficial sense. Perhaps there is no self because there is more than one self. Quantum physics hypothesizes a multiverse where everything happens at once despite causality; fractal theory suggests that perhaps we are part of an endless loop of smaller and larger universes that exist within us and beyond the scope of our known universe. But none of these things, including nondualism, really cohere into a rational argument for unity, duality or multiplicity, because the Universe doesn’t owe us an explanation. And I think Michaelson would agree. If traditional Judaism, with its anthropomorphic, interventionist God is unsatisfying to you (and believe me, I understand) and you’ve always been curious about Eastern religion, you still have to be a spiritually needy seeker to get anything out of this book, because no one else could get through it.

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To put it bluntly, are some people pretending to be more religious than they are to get laid? Or in larger, sociological terms, how many people are just going through the motions in order to belong to a group? (All of them, says the cynic). It’s what I think about if I’m ever at a religious ritual or ceremony. I know what the Hebrew prayers mean because I happen to have gone to a yeshivah when I was young, but I think most people who sing along at services don’t know what they’re actually saying, but they do have it memorized. When I was an activist helping organize anti-government protests with thousands of people in attendance, I definitely met guys who showed up at the rallies to meet girls, and vice versa. When I was a student I met people who got involved with extracurricular activities for the same reasons. I know people who have moved, taken jobs, changed careers, renounced their families, and so forth to in order to belong somewhere, to meet the kind of people they always wanted to meet and join the circles they’ve always wanted to be part of. Many of us still recall the great wave of women who came to Manhattan in the last decade intending to re-enact Sex and the City or the crowds of hippies from across the country who flocked to Haight-Ashbury in San Francisco. The urge to join and be part of something greater than yourself is natural. So how much of it plays into the reality of religious practice? Does it matter if your religious journey ends up at a popular resort, or does everyone have to hike through the woods?

I definitely went to synagogue long after I gave up believing in G-d to hang out with my friends. I even went to Hebrew school in order to hang out with friends and attend a Conservative summer camp (where I cut all the religious classes) with my friends. You can enjoy some of the benefits of religion without enjoying the religion: Richard Dawkins calls himself a "cultural Christian," meaning that he still enjoys Christmas food and presents even though he doesn’t particularly believe in Christ. We still call the days Thursday and Friday even though few of us believe in Thor or Freya.

The search for belonging is powerful indeed. I wonder how many people are just going with the flow because they’re lonely? Joining the army or the PTA or the IRA out of anything but true faith in their cause? As a parallel manifestation of this tendency, how many people never leave traditions because they fear anything unfamiliar? Maybe there are people who just like the fringe benefits, like the dentist on Seinfeld who converts to Judaism for the jokes. Certainly the Catholic Church wouldn’t turn someone away just because they have a Latin fetish.  There are all kinds of crazy cults and societies around the world who know this and have leveraged the need for acceptance in all sorts of ways. There are also those who choose an unfamiliar tradition because they make social connections within a new and restricted group. (I, on the other hand, adhere to Groucho Marx’s advice not to join any club which would deign to have me as a member.) I wonder if anyone keeps track on how many conversions happen for the sake of marriage vs. other motivations. You’d think somebody would have records. As a general rule, if you go through motions in the first place, you’ve either learned them from an existing practice or you’re just riffing it on your own. I’m really not seeking to offend true believers here, just wondering how many orthodox adherents–those who maintain a conservatism of faith–are actually orthopraxists, meaning those who maintain a conservatism in custom. I’d like to think of myself a neutral observer here, because I don’t adhere to any of the above (aside from some family holidays which I suspect I enjoy as much as Dawkins does his own). Motivations are complex, and there’s probably an element of both faith and the desire to connect with other humans in every religious choice. But I suspect there’s probably a lot of the latter for everyday people of faith.

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All religions with a Holy Book struggle to stay relevant from the moment the book gets written. Scriptures preserve the mores of the day in a sort of amber made of parchment. As time moves on, clerics have to keep extruding relevant advice from ancient texts, stretching and distending the meaning of these old-fashioned hidebound proscriptions and prescriptions like so much saltwater taffy. And the more established (read: older) a religious tradition, the less it has to say about the reality of modern life. Naturally, you shouldn’t be surprised when your religious figureheads try to salvage some kind of meaning from the old books (what else are we paying them to do?) and so there must have been an avalanche of sermons in houses of worship across the board over the past year trying to glean something about the current economy from long-outdated sources. Since the Five Books of Moses alone provide three different (and somewhat contradictory) prohibitions against lending money at interest, it seems natural to try to link these passages to today’s credit crisis. Now that there’s a problem, we are obliged to pretend we knew all along that the economy collapsed because we had sinned against the precepts of the Bible.

The Torah describes a legal system for an agrarian society. In order to make the transition to a capitalist economy, authorities had to engage in various dodges to directly contravene previous regulation, beginning with King Josiah and Deuteronomy. Most scholars today recognize several distinct stages of biblical authorship (known as the Documentary Hypothesis), and through this lens we see how ancient Jewish financial regulations change within the pages of the Penteteuch itself. The first prohibition against interest-taking is in Exodus, chapter 22; written around 850 BCE: "If thou lend money to any of My people, even to the poor with thee, thou shalt not be to him as a creditor; neither shall ye lay upon him interest." By 620 BCE, King Josiah and the Deuteronomists had changed the proscription to "Unto a stranger thou mayest lend upon usury; but unto thy brother thou shalt not lend upon usury" which  opened up a loophole allowing creditors to use a third party to charge interest to their fellow Israelites, sort of like divine money laundering. By the time the Jerusalem priesthood wrote Leviticus around 450 BCE, the law changed again: "if thy brother be waxen poor, and his means fail with thee; then thou shalt uphold him…Thou shalt not give him thy money upon interest, nor give him thy victuals for increase." Regulation is one thing, and deregulation is another; what deregulation does is cede moral territory for material gain. Look at how simple and broad the earliest prohibition is: lending money at interest to anyone is forbidden (even unto the stranger among Israel). Subsequently, when the government wanted to increase the tax rolls, Deuteronomy inserts a way to sidestep the old blanket proscription by explicitly allowing usury in certain circumstances. Two hundred-odd years later, Leviticus retains the old loophole ("thy brother" as opposed to "any of my people") while reworking the focus of the law; now it is only the Hebrew poor who are covered by anti-interest legislation. Rabbinical authorities from the Mishnah onwards have employed various evasions and by now there doesn’t seem to be any practical restriction against lending money at interest, even to fellow Jews (e.g., try walking into a Bank Leumi with a rabbi’s note invalidating interest on a loan they’ve granted you and see what happens). Old laws are as impractical today as they were practical back then. If an economy is to be considered capitalist, it needs to be able to charge interest. Judaism, Christianity and Islam all have prohibitions against interest that stem from the Hebrew Bible, and all three have their own ways of dodging the ban. As economies move forward, they need new regulations to keep them in line; repealing or resurrecting old laws merely resurrects old scams and dormant instabilities within those market systems. Having said all this, the moral value of usury remains dubious. It’s interesting to see how many people have turned their ideological backs on the idea of "making money from money" when it stops working; during the boom times, few people had anything bad to say about the ridiculous schemes the financial industry was cooking up to enrich stock holders and financial instrument consumers (it was a lonely time for us purists). Success is seldom questioned. For all their righteous indignation, I haven’t heard a religious figure propose a real alternative to credit (except for the Muslim jurists who recently declared various new forms of "Islamic banking" unkosher, leaving the traditional schemes allowing interest to be charged without calling it such to remain unchallenged). If we really committed to wiping out interest, the economy would have to be completely refashioned–which is not something I’m against at all; I just doubt everyone else’s committment to that larger goal. Some people yearn for a simpler time, but are unwilling to give up the modern world’s comforts. Those who think that somehow we ought to turn to the Bible’s economic system because they see a modern failure are cherry-picking a few choice phrases from an irrelevant text; their motives have nothing to do with the past and everything to do with the present. ("Seek and ye shall find," says the New Testament.) Why doesn’t anyone focus on bringing back slavery or thinning the population by enforcing all the death penalties? Either one, from a purely functional standpoint, might work as well as abolishing the charging of interest. We work in a modern, secular system – nothing is going to be solved by moving backwards. Anyone who thinks the Bible is the answer to our problems needs to buy a farm and go back to the land first. But don’t forget to leave your fields fallow in the seventh year, a quarter of your orchards for the homeless, and return the land to its original owners in the 50th. Sell your children into slavery and have them executed if they disobey. If you want to charge interest on a loan, go find a helpful and willing Amalekite, if you haven’t slaughtered his wife and children and livestock. For that matter, quit going to synagogue and start offering animal sacrifices from your bountiful flocks. But please, stop pretending that any of this makes sense in the present day.

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