Book Review: The Rabbi Rami Guides

This review by Rabbi Goldie Milgram first appeared in the Philadelphia Jewish Voice

Each of the four Rabbi Rami Guides from Spirituality & Health Books is a keeper. Rich in refreshing touchstones for meaningful daily living, each pocketsize volume of the Rabbi Rami Guide series offers a roughly 120 page essay. His contemporary theologies are liberating and inclusive and he offers us specific actions that make the world a better place in sometimes subtle and delightfully surprising ways. The first three titles are Parenting; Forgiveness; and God, and the fourth begins with a commentary on Psalm 23 which then informs the author's understanding of two of our best know mitzvot, in fact the two cited by Jesus as most important, which Rabbi Shapiro uses as a starting point for creating a lovely interfaith learning opportunity booklet. [See Mark 12:28-34, then Deut. 6:4-5 and also Lev. 18:19]

Parenting

Who am I? Where did I come from? Where am I going? What am I here to do? Why? For those who wonder, or raise children who wonder, the Rabbi Rami Parenting Guide offers lively and livable parental approaches to these five primary questions. He also offers a powerful critique of the range of stories available for reading for children:

"An unhealthy story is a story that leaves your children feeling superior to others, or frightened of others who are different from themselves. An unhealthy story is one that excuses violence, exploitation, the dehumanization of people, or inhumane treatment of animals. An unhealthy story is one that places your children in a world of perpetual conflict where friendship is rare if not impossible, where love is limited, where race, religion, creed and ethnicity determine the value of a person rather than what she does, where collaboration is dismissed as starry-eyed idealism….."

Rabbi Shapiro then contrasts two Shel Silverstein stories The Giving Tree and The Missing Piece to show how even a great author's work bears reflection and screening.  The second half of the volume weaves his clear-eyed parenting philosophy with specific stories from a variety of traditions, as well as of his own construction, that he recommends as holy and healthy. Each is brief and affords great opportunity for meaningful family discussion.

Interfaith Opportunity

Rabbi Shapiro has a long and distinguished career in the pulpit, as well as founding innovative Jewish organizations that teach meaning, spirituality and menschlichkeit (Yiddish the state of being an honorable, ethical person), as perhaps the first rabbi to have a website when the Internet was founded. More recently he both teaches Bible at Middle Tennessee State University and directs Wisdom House, a center for interfaith study and contemplative practice in Nashville, TN. So, it is not surprising that the Rabbi Rami series also pilots a fourth, dual volume of essays, Psalm 23 & Jesus' Two Great Commandments. While I see great interfaith study and dialogue potential in this volume, this is his expected audience for this book:

"I suspect that most readers of Matthew and Mark, and most readers of this Guide, are neither   rabbis nor even Jews. And because I think this is true, I fear you may overlook some of the deeper insights Jesus meant to teach when he chose these two mitzvot as the chief commandments of the Torah and his touchstone texts. It is my wish to make plain the deeper meaning of his teaching by placing it in the Jewish context in which it was spoken by Jesus and heard by his fellow Jews, and in this way enhance your understanding of Jesus' message."

I can only begin to imagine what an eye-opener study with Rabbi Rami must be for students of all faiths. For example, his explication of a verse in Psalm 23, "I shall not want":

"...does not mean, "I shall not desire," but rather, "I shall not lack." The Hebrew verb <i>echsar</i> (Lack) is in the future tense, suggesting that freedom from want comes only when you realize that God is your shepherd. Why? Because it is then that you realize your desires, endless and endlessly satisfied, are a distraction seducing you from your true calling and trapping you in the narrow and lifeless worship of the next big thing.
    With God as your shepherd, the chains of idolatry are severed. You are now free to be what God is calling you to be: a source of blessing and liberation for the world…..you will have everything you need to fulfill God's desire—that you will have everything you need to become a blessing to others by liberating yourself and them from narrowness.

    Rabbi Rami channels the Good Shepherd in ways healthy and holy; he appreciates that spiritual development is a process of awareness and personal growth. In his commentary on the Psalm 23 verse "He maketh me to lie down in green pastures," Rabbi Rami Shapiro takes to where we may not all have gone before: "The first step is to rest, to lie down, because the way to blessing and liberation isn't simply an outer journey, but an inner one as well."

For "He restoreth my soul", Rabbi Rami transduces the text to reveal another of its infinite possibilities for the non-dogmatic reader:

"What does it mean to be a breath-bearer? It means to breathe life into the world as God breathed life into you. This is what the Torah reveals when she tells us, "The ineffable One placed the earthling in the Garden of Eden to till it and protect it' (Genesis 2:15). The garden is the original state of creation but without you, the earth grows hard and lifeless, incapable of birthing plants or herbs (Genesis 2:5)…"

     And in regard to "He leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for His names sake…":

David…is not saying that God acts for self-aggrandizement, but that God acts on behalf of all reality, for God is all reality….A path is righteous if walking it breathes life into life, if it blesses and benefits creation, and if it fosters love, justice and compassion.

Teshuvah and Forgiveness

In the Rabbi Rami Guide to Forgiveness, the term takes on an expanded meaning grounded in the author's training in Buddhism, life experience and psychology. Pratityasamutpada is "co-origination. It means that everything is connected to everything else and happens altogether." Although he doesn't cite it, those who study Kabbalah recognize the related teaching of the Hebrew term for stone, ehven.  "If a soul is like a ben (ven), son/child, cleaved from the av (ehv), father/parent...can you picture that God would separate a part from God's essence?"  No, I can't.  Can you? This is why the Buddha's conceptualization rings helpful on this topic, thank you Rabbi Shapiro.

Deftly wielding the language of living at the level of soul, Rabbi Rami doesn't have us wait for others to confess how they've hurt us. He shows us how to heal ourselves through specific questions that restore us to living in the moment. This approach to removing toxic encounter hangovers is useful, and in my opinion, sufficiently only as a complement to the Jewish practice of teshuvah. Teshuvah, in brief, is where we return to those we've hurt, own up, are received with respectful listening and the necessary time is taken to process and restore relationships to good health. What do when teshuvah takes quote some time? Rami's volumes are subtitled "Roadside Assistance for the Spiritual Traveler," let him show you the way.