Jewish view of eastern religions

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Jewish View of Eastern Religions

http://jewish.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=1073

 

DECEMBER 30, 2003: In the last several decades,

countless Westerners have turned to Eastern religions

for inspiration and spirituality, according to this

article on jewish.com. Jews have been no different.

Many American Jews flocked to Eastern religions as

part of the hippy counter-culture of the 1960's and

1970's, and today, India and Thailand are havens for

Israelis seeking to explore other cultures and

religions, say author Rachael Gelfman. The article

focuses primarily on Hinduism and Buddhism, as these

are the religions most often discussed in Jewish

sources. The medieval Jewish scholastic sources that

discuss Hinduism consider it idolatrous. However, from

the beginning of the modern era, some Jewish scholars

began to see Eastern religions in a

more positive light. In Jerusalem, Moses Mendelssohn,

a leading Jewish Enlightenment thinker, argued that,

"we should not be so quick to judge other religions --

particularly Hinduism -- as idolatry. First one must

know that religion well and investigate how its own

practitioners see it." In recent years, interfaith

dialogue between Jews and

practitioners of Eastern religions has developed. One

of the most noted of these dialogues is described in

Rodger Kamenetz's book The Jew in the Lotus. Kamenetz

writes about eight Jewish delegates who traveled to

Dharamsala, India to meet with the 14th Dalai Lama in

1990. The Jewish delegates had diverse attitudes

toward this dialogue, reflecting the diversity of

Jewish attitudes toward inter-religious dialogue in

general. For the complete article, click on "source"

above.

 

 

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