Zalman Schachter-Shalomi

Meshullam Zalman Schachter-Shalomi (August 17, 1924 – July 3, 2014; ), commonly referred to as Reb Zalman , was an American rabbi, writer, and activist, and one of the founders of the Jewish Renewal movement and an innovator in ecumenical dialogue.

Born in Poland, Schachter-Shalomi was raised an Orthodox Jew in a variety of countries as his family repeatedly moved to evade increasing antisemitism in 1930s Europe. While awaiting a visa to the United States in an internment camp in Vichy France, Schachter-Shalomi met Menachem Mendel Schneerson, who later became the seventh Chabad Rebbe. Becoming a Chabad rabbi in 1947, Schachter-Shalomi took a deep interest in the spiritual practices of other faiths and immersed himself in the counter-culture of the 1960s. Eventually expelled from Chabad, he founded his own organization, (later ), and his attempts to innovate in Jewish prayer helped pioneer what became the and Jewish Renewal movements.

Employed as an academic in his later years, Schachter-Shalomi continued to work in interfaith dialogue and spreading , and in the 1990s was part of a group of four rabbis who travelled to Dharamsala, India, to advise the Dalai Lama on how to retain religious traditions in exile and prevent assimilation. A prolific author, Schachter-Shalomi published dozens of books on many topics, including hasidut, ecstatic prayer, contemplative spirituality, environmental consciousness, and spiritual direction. Schachter-Shalomi died in 2014 and is buried in Boulder, Colorado. He was married four times and had eleven children.

Early life Born Meshullam Zalman Schachter in 1924 to Shlomo and Hayyah Gittel Schachter in Żółkiew, in the Second Polish Republic (now Zhovkva, Ukraine), Schachter spent his early years in Vienna, Austria. His father was a liberal Belzer hasid and had Zalman educated at both a Zionist high school and an Orthodox yeshiva.

He and his family fled Austria after Nazi Germany annexed it in 1938 and later were interned in a detention camp under the Nazi's puppet government in Vichy France before moving to the United States in 1941. In 1947 he was ordained as a rabbi by the Chabad hasidic movement. In 1958, Schachter privately published what may have been the first English book on Jewish meditation. It was later reprinted in The Jewish Catalog and read by a generation of Jews and some Christian contemplatives. which he was given by Timothy Leary. These positions allowed him to share his ideas and experiential techniques of spirituality with many Jewish and non-Jewish students, which would be influential in his later work. While pursuing a course of study at Boston University (including a class taught by Howard Thurman), he experienced an intellectual and spiritual shift. In 1968, on sabbatical from the religion department of the University of Manitoba, he joined a group of other Jews in founding a —small cooperative Jewish congregation—in Somerville, Massachusetts, called .

Later years and death

Schachter-Shalomi was among the group of rabbis, from a wide range of Jewish denominations, who traveled together to India to meet with the Dalai Lama and discuss diaspora survival for Jews and Tibetan Buddhists with him. he was professor emeritus at both Naropa and Temple University. Schachter-Shalomi was married four times and was the father of 11 children. and to full inclusion of LGBT people within Judaism. His innovations in Jewish worship include chanting prayers in English while retaining the traditional Hebrew structures and melodies, engaging (worshipers) in theological dialogue, leading meditation during services.

His major academic work, Spiritual Intimacy: A Study of Counseling in Hasidism, was the result of his doctoral research into the system of spiritual direction cultivated within Chabad Hasidism.

He was also recognized as a shaikh in the Sufi Order of Pir Vilayat Khan in the United States and in the Holy Land.

In 2012, the Unitarian Universalist Starr King School for the Ministry awarded Schachter-Shalomi an honorary doctorate of theology, and he gave a popular series of lectures on the "Emerging Cosmology".