On Being Blog

Photo by Gil Seo

Many people, myself included, believe that art can build bridges. But the same day that a new festival started in New York that was supposed to do just that, the world was aflame because of another piece of art.

I have been to a fair number of programs where an artistic expression is considered a panacea. There is little thought to curation, conversation, or contemplation. Like anything of value, to make art a tool for bridge-building takes effort. When I attended the opening night of the Locating the Sacred Festival, I heard and saw the power I believe that art has. It was not only well-conceived, but it was also living proof that difference doesn’t have to lead to exclusion.

That night, it was cooperation and transformation on display. The night was passionate, and the performers were exquisite. It was a night that ruptured the vision of the world I had before going to the Church of the Ascension.

I went to sleep the evening of this September 11th, thinking that New York City felt close to normal that day; we really were healing. The morning of September 12th, I woke up at 5 a.m. and offered prayers, then went to my email.

Benghazi was in the news, the American embassy was attacked, and I would shortly find out that Ambassador Chris Stevens was killed. I worked on the #NoToViolence campaign. The dread I had missed the day before had returned. As the day wore on, it became clear that Libyans were disgusted with the works of al-Qaeda, and people in the U.S. were able to understand that Muslims were not inherently violent and anti-American. I wasn't elated, or even hopeful by the end of the day, but at least I wasn't defeated.

However, the last thing I wanted to do was attend the opening of the Asian American Arts Alliance's Locating the Sacred Festival.

I was exhausted. My mind was in a political state, not a spiritual or aesthetic one. The idea of seeing Buddhist monks, a contemporary experimental musician, and a qawwali group perform in a church just didn't seem like a good thing. It felt contrived and not really respectful to the events of the day.

But I went. I was cynical. I walked in and started criticizing everything.

The qawwali performers were set up in front of a big cross, which is a difficult symbol for many Muslims to deal with, as we do not believe in the crucifixion of Jesus. The Buddhist monks came out and did their blessing chant, and people started applauding. They started applauding! It was a prayer and they were clapping!

I wasn't critical anymore. I was angry. Angry at the events of the day. Angry at the fact that people would clap at a prayer. And I took a breath. I was still angry, but I understood my anger. Where was God that day? I had not witnessed God Glory and Majesty, and I was being faced with people who had come for performance.

Then I thought about the monks. U Pyinya Zawta was introduced as being one of the leaders of Burma's Saffron Revolution.

He was a religious leader in exile, but he was in front of a crowd, offering a prayer that earned applause.

It was a reminder. A reminder that one always has to struggle to experience the Divine. That devotion is performance. It's not always done for the "audience." But the audience can get something out of it. And I stopped. And I listened. And I looked for the sacred.

I wanted to take each presenter on their own terms, but I needed to have them work on mine. You can never know the author's intent, and when it is an attempt to bridge you to a greater state of consciousness, isn't it ultimately about the listener's experience? The evening was an experience.

Religion is revolutionary. It was, is, and will be a catalyst for change. The Burmese monks were living proof of that. Marx may have thought that religion was the opiate of the masses, but he never thought about how radical it was to have to, in the language of the Sufis, polish the mirror of the heart to see yourself and the world anew. That is a radical act. There is the societal revolution and there is the personal revolution, and they are linked.

Bora Yoon was introduced as doing something sublime. It was a good description. My ear is not accustomed to contemporary experimental music. I'm happy that I can appreciate 4'33" by John Cage. Yoon plays with "found things," including old instruments, things that would not traditionally be called instruments, and sounds. She has an ethereal voice that sounds like it would be at home in the Choir at the Church of the Ascension, which it is, or in the Elvish kingdoms of The Lord of the Rings.

One of her found sounds was of a subway, which she explained came from an elevated line near the Triborough Bridge in Astoria, Queens. As a New Yorker, it was a sound that instantly made me feel comfortable. I realized the rhythm of the clackity-clack of the wheels was the rhythm of a dhikr, or remembrance of God. I was, at the moment, experiencing important parts of who I was as a person: New Yorker and Muslim. It was also a reminder that God can be found in the everyday.

The combination of Yoon's voice and the electronic components helped create a bridge between the trappings of the modern and sense of spirituality as being ancient. The stories were inverted, and technology was ancient, with spirituality being modern. Perhaps that is the state of affairs we are entering. Twitter and the writing stick are both technology, and we are coming to grips with our own spiritualities now. And when I think about the prayer of the monks, with nothing but their voices, it makes me wonder if we can only understand a mediated spirituality.

With that thought in my mind, we entered intermission.

I looked at the stage again. My eye was once more drawn to the cross on the wall.

There is a Muslim theologian who argues that the cross, not the crucifix, should become an acceptable symbol for Muslims. It's a reminder of humanity's broken relationship with God, that we could have treated Jesus, a prophet of God, in such a degrading manner. If devotion is to help bridge that divide between creation and the Creator, than starting with a reminder of that rupture seemed important. I also realized that the Muslims who would be offended by a cross would probably not be setting foot inside a church, or listening to devotional music.

Above the cross were two angels holding a chalice, and it reminded me of a couplet by the famous Persian poet Hafiz. He writes,

Last night I saw the angels knocking on the tavern door
They took the clay of Adam and fashioned a goblet.

It's a dense verse, but a powerful one. In Muslim thought, angels have no free will. They want to become like humans, who can choose to love God. One can become intoxicated on the love of God, and this is compared to drinking wine. Therefore, the tavern is where Sufis, mystics, go to drink of that love. Since the angels cannot choose to love God, they cannot enter. They try to mimic the experience by taking the clay of Adam and creating a goblet, presumed to be in the form of human, to receive the love of God.

Underneath the angels and above the cross was the inscription, "This do in remembrance of me." (Luke 22:19). The quote echoes a verse in the Qur'an, "Remember the name of your Lord" (73:8), which is one of the verses that Sufis use to explain their participation in dhikr, remembering God's name. Dhikr is the basis of sama', or the spiritual concert, of which qawwali is one type. Flanking the cross on either side were images of angels with wings that would be at home on Persianate representations of angels. Decorating the moldings for the organ pipes were peacocks, which are the birds of Paradise in Muslim lore. I had moved — from being distrustful of the site to appreciating all these signs of connection amongst traditions.

Then the qawwals came on stage and they started singing "Allah Hu," a fast-paced qawwali and sure crowd-pleaser. They stopped after a minute. It was a sound check. But a good one. The phrase means "God is." You, as the listener, fill in whatever you want after the verb. The lacuna is powerful. Those in the audience who were familiar with the tradition were clearly energized.

The group members of Riyaaz Qawwali were trained in various different traditions, but they say they were brought together by their love of the art of qawwali. While all of South Asian heritage based in Austin, Texas, they are unusual amongst modern qawwals in that they are not all Muslim. In some ways, that seems very modern, to have so many non-Muslims involved in a genre of music identified as Muslim devotional. In other ways, it seems normal.

Qawwali has been consumed by non-Muslims in South Asia for generations. It is about the power of the blessing, or baraka, that the music is supposed to invoke. There is little doubt that Hindus and Sikhs participated as qawwals, and contributed to the text.

Riyaaz Qawwali plays to their multi-religious background, saying on their site that their recordings will include devotionals from HIndu and Sikh traditions. That sort of melding of lyrical tradition into qawwali is not unusual, and they gave a preview with a performance that included the refrain “Ishwar Allah donoñ tera naam” (“Ishwar [an Indic name for God], Allah [an Arabic name for God] both are your name”).

They ended their solo set with a well-known song in the genre, “Shahbaz Qalandar.” It was the perfect piece to end with, as it was upbeat and demands participation. More importantly, it is in honor of a figure that is a conflation of two separate figures: Lal Shahbaz, a Muslim mystic, and Jhule Lal, a Hindu deity, who become melded in folklore. The song is about the organic ways in which we come together.

The last song the group was going to perform is a traditional opening or closing song, “Man Kunto Maula.” It is an Arabic phrase that refers to Prophet Muhammad naming Ali as his successor. For Sufis, this is an important moment in history for the transmission of spiritual knowledge.

Riyaaz Qawwali was supposed to perform with Bora Yoon, but technical problems prevented that from happening. However, I could imagine the earthiness of the voice of the qawwals playing against the ethereal quality of Yoon’s; religious traditions, and body and spirit, coming together. While Yoon’s voice was missed, the combinations were still there. The body in motion, the cultures coming together through words, which elevated the spirit, could not have been a better way to end.

That absence of God I had felt, and the cynicism I walked in with was gone. This experience was a hopeful one, not aspirational, but grounded in a reality of that environment. It was a way to locate the sacred.

Photos by Gil Seo, except fifth photo from the top by George Hirose.

Hussein Rashid is a faculty member at Hofstra University and associate editor at Religion Dispatches. He is the convener of islamicate and a contributor to Talk Islam and AltMuslimah; his work has appeared at City of Brass, Goat Milk, and CNN.com. He has appeared on CBS Evening News, CNN, Russia Today, Channel 4 (UK), State of Belief - Air America Radio, and Iqra TV (Saudi Arabia).

Proof of the cover of "Al Khozari," Nabih Bashir's newly published Arabic transliteration of Yehuda Halevi's classic text, "The Kuzari: In Defense of the Despised Faith."

In the past few months several news agencies have reported on a new publication of Judah Halevi's Kuzari, a classic of Jewish thought written in Judaeo-Arabic (Arabic written in Hebrew characters).

Completed in 1140, the Kuzari is an apologetic defense of "the despised faith" framed as a dialogue about the conversion of the Kazar kingdom to Judaism. The king of the Kazars, tormented by a recurring dream which tells him his thoughts are pleasing but his actions are not, interviews in succession a philosopher, a Christian, a Muslim, and a Jew, the latter converting him — along with his entire kingdom — to Judaism. Much of the book is focused on the dialogue between the King and the Jew, including an argument for the superiority of the Hebrew language written in fine classical Arabic! The dialogue ends with the Jew's departure from the Jewish kingdom for the Holy Land — reflecting Halevi's own migration East from Islamic Spain.

Not often does the publication of a medieval work of Judaeo-Arabic thought receive attention in the press, even if it is a classic. This publication, however, is different. It is an Arabic-script version of the work published in Beirut by an Arab-Israeli doctoral student, Nabih Bashir, for a Muslim readership. What's more: the author's copies of his new book, sent from Beirut, were prevented entry into Israel, since imports from an enemy country of Israel are illegal. The irony was certainly not lost on the reporters: a classic of Jewish thought and foundational work of Zionism was prevented entry into Israel; a work on dialogue between philosophy and the three Abrahamic religions was not allowed free distribution.

Nabih Bashir in his Jerusalem apartment. (Photo by Yasmin Bashir)

Nabih Bashir's work (which has since made it to Israel; I just bought a copy in Jerusalem), however, is more than sensation. What he accomplished is quite remarkable. Although the Kuzari has been published several times — in the original Judaeo-Arabic, in Hebrew translation, and in European languages — this is the first Arabic-script version.

And he did much more than transcription: He translated biblical and rabbinic citations into Arabic, provided a lengthy Arabic introduction setting the work in its intellectual context, and added copious annotation. The result is an impressive 727-page tome which immediately makes a foundational work of medieval Judaism, still studied avidly by Jews today, easily accessible to millions of Arabic-speaking Muslims (and Christians) who do not know Hebrew.

To be sure, this is not the first Judaeo-Arabic work published in Arabic characters. Maimonides' Guide of the Perplexed circulated in Arabic characters during the Middle Ages, and an Arabic version was published in 1972 by the Turkish scholar Huseyin Atay; his version — now available online — is (I've been told by students) intensely studied by Muslims at al-Azhar in Cairo.

Saadia Gaon's theological Book of Beliefs and Opinions, Bahya ibn Paquda's sufistic Duties of the Heart, Solomon ibn Gabirol's ethical treatise Improvement of the Moral Qualities, and Moses ibn Ezra's work of poetics Book of Conversation and Discussion have also appeared in Arabic characters. Moreover, the Karaites, a non-rabbinic, often anti-rabbinic sect of Judaism, wrote many of their Arabic works in Arabic characters during the tenth and eleventh centuries — they even transcribed the Hebrew Bible into Arabic script! — and, more and more frequently, in recent years their works have been appearing in the original script.

With the exception of Huseyin Atay's Guide, however, the others were produced by scholars for scholars. In contrast, Nabih Bashir's Kuzari is self-consciously directed at a popular non-Jewish audience in the Middle East.

In a region where the Jews, Christians, and Muslims have a shared religious and intellectual history, yet remain so divided politically and socially, the significance of Bashir's work should not be underestimated. One might even hope it is the beginning of a trend.

As mentioned, Maimonides' (Ibn Maymun's) Guide is studied intensely in the Muslim world, as are works by Abu al-Barakat al-Baghdadi and Ibn Kammuna, two important Jewish influences on the development of Ishraqi philosophy (Illuminationism). The Talmud has recently been translated into Arabic by a team of scholars in Amman. And, in the other direction, Arabic texts are being put into Hebrew. A new rendition of the Qur'an has recently appeared, along with Hebrew translations of Sufi and philosophical texts, including writings by al-Farabi, Ibn Sina (Avicenna) and Ibn Tufayl.

One can only hope that the work of dedicated scholars and translators like Nabih Bashir in the literary and cultural sphere will gradually break down the artificial borders that separate the communities of the Middle East, which have so much in common and so many ideas to share.

James T. Robinson is Associate Professor of the History of Judaism at the University of Chicago Divinity School. His latest book is Asceticism, Eschatology, Opposition to Philosophy, and he is currently constructing a website devoted to the Jews of the Medieval Muslim world.

This essay is reprinted with permission of Sightings from the Martin Marty Center at the University of Chicago Divinity School.

"Space That Sees" by James Turrell at the Israel Museum. Photo by Lisa Motro

Jewish law requires that all synagogues have windows. We’re not supposed to pray in separation from the world; we’re supposed to pray with the world, conscious of its cycles, in a space that invites connection with them. Unfortunately, most authorities interpret this rule as permitting synagogues to have windows that never open — windows that seal congregants in an air-conditioned bubble, even on days when outdoor temperatures are moderate.

Synagogues, like other houses of worship, are no different from the majority of our secular spaces. Our default building methods presume round-the-clock mechanical air circulation — windows do not open, and natural cooling designs like cross-ventilation, high ceilings, porches, and recessed doors and windows are quaint rarities. The official guided tour of Washington DC’s National Building Museum, built in 1887 and inspired by Michelangelo’s church architecture, features the building’s ventilation system literally as a museum piece. Visitors are informed that the building’s great hall was designed to “create a healthful building with plenty of fresh air” — but in step with the times, the days of natural airflow there too are gone.

Like many Jews, my only visits to synagogue are during the High Holy Days, which begin next week with Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year. This is also one of the periods when the ubiquity of air conditioning saddens me most. It saddens me because of the sheer waste. It saddens me because I like to wear white linen to usher in the holiday and walk to services carrying nothing, rather than packing layers fit for the tundra as I do when I go to the office, the megaplex, or the airport. And it saddens me because sealed windows separate me from the signs and wonders with which nature beckons me to contemplate the very same lessons that are at the heart of what Rosh Hashanah is all about.

For me, this is a holiday that is centrally about the cycles of life. On eve of Rosh Hashanah, we eat round rather than braided challah bread. We pray to be written in the book of life, recognizing that we are only passing through on this earth, that the length of our stay is out of our hands. We offer gratitude for each of the gifts with which we have been graced, apologize for taking them for granted and for any harm we may have caused, and promise to do our best to take better care.

Is there a season that more aptly reminds us of these most universal of teachings? The smell of crushed leaves. The shortening of days. The air that doesn’t know what it wants to be — dry one moment, cool the next, like a balmy lake with icy flows that tickle your toes. The sky when it turns into a luminous cobalt dome, infinite but somehow also sheltering. The Hebrew sources speak of chupat shamayiim, the canopy of the heavens. Since 2001, when I wake up and see this ethereal shade of blue, a shade that appears only now, in September, the words that flit across my mind are: it’s a 9/11 day.

Rainbow over the Dead Sea. Photo by Lisa Motro

Autumn invites us to surrender to the fact that all things come to an end, and to hold this truth with tenderness, with awe.

So as I swaddle myself in my woolen layers — in synagogue, at work, in the supermarket — I wonder whether I am the only one who dreams of a world with open windows. Is 24/7, year-round conditioned air really a choice that we as a society actively made, or did it creep up on us? Who wants this? The AC lobby? The military industrial complex?

Or perhaps this is a gender issue? For one, women are generally more sensitive to cold than men. More importantly perhaps, and here I’ll speak only for myself, my growing appreciation for nature’s cycles coincided with the acceptance and even delight I discovered when I started paying attention to the changing moods and rhythms of my own cycle.

Ani Difranco begins one of her songs with these lines:

Somethin' about this landscape
just don't feel right,
Hyper-air-conditioned,
and lit up all night.
Like we just gotta see how comfortable comfortable can get,
Like we can't even bring ourselves to sweat.

The song goes on to tie over-airconditioning with consumerism, conformism, and pollution. It ends with a call to women. “O women, won't you be our windows,” sings Ani. “Show us we are connected to everything. Show us we are not separate from everything.”

Some see Judaism as an essentially patriarchal religion. Like all religions, it has many faces. The Judaism I am drawn to puts love of women and love of nature at its center. It gives us words and customs that can help us practice non-attachment and humility, to see ourselves not as masters but as stewards.

Rosh Hashanah starts on the new moon. It is the darkest night of the month, but also the time when the stars shine at their brightest. We can still catch a glimpse of the show if we turn off the lights even from inside our air-conditioned bubbles, but a different sort of communion is available when we revel at the constellations while breathing with the night.

Shari Motro is a professor of law at the University of Richmond. She is currently on sabbatical in Jerusalem, where she is working on a book based on her article "Why I Left Israel, and Why I'm Going Home."

During the past week, we watched and listened to a half-dozen or more "secular sermons," as Alain de Botton calls them, from The School of Life in London. These are weekday or Sunday meetings that are rich with singing and presentations by Mr. de Botton himself, as well as a wide array of outside speakers from all types of disciplines. Our task: to find about a minute of audio from one of these secular sermons that gives listeners a more visceral sense of what he's describing:

"We've had terrific success by hosting what we're calling secular sermons. Why are we calling them sermons? It's to try and suggest that listening to them is not simply going to be an intellectual exercise, you know, fascinating little bit of knowledge, a way to show off to friends about new stuff you've learned. It's actually going to be something that will hope to steer how you live. So it's didactic, you know, it's explicitly moralistic not in a kind of starched, Victorian way, but in the best possible sense. It exhorts you to a kind of better, fuller life and why not? Why should these pretty quite nice maneuvers only be the preserve of religion? As I say, they really are for all of us.

We ended up excerpting part of neuroscientist David Eagleman's lecture on "being oneselves." Dr. Eagleman holds joint appointments in the Departments of Neuroscience and Psychiatry at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, Texas, and is the founder and director of the Initiative on Neuroscience and Law. In this secular sermon, he focuses on how our conscious mind represents only a small portion of who we are: "It turns out that almost everything that you think and do and you act and you believe is generated by parts of your brain that you don't have access to."

He follows by saying that each person is not one singular body, but an amalgamation of many parts that are competing with one another. He likens our brains to conflicted democracies engaged in these internal battles with each other: emotion versus reason, how we make decisions in time and the appeal of right now, and the moral contracts (check out the part about the "Ulysses contract" at the 30-minute mark!) we make with ourselves.

"And I think the thing for all of us to think about, all the time, is how are we lashing ourselves to the mast. We all have weaknesses and things that we want to do better. And as we come to understand more about ourselves, there's this issue of what can we do to — to combat this? How can we really think hard about structuring things in our lives so we don't do the wrong things? And I think this gives us traction, you know, understanding what's going on under the hood gives us traction on old philosophical problems and ways to think about things.

Just think about the concept of virtue. I think that virtue has to do with the battles between these populations. If you've got a real drive to do something you want it so badly and yet you override that with more long-term decision making, with the parts of your brain that care about the deferred gratification verses the parts that care about, I want it right now. If you have that battle and you're successful, I think that's what we mean by a virtuous person. . . .

I think virtue comes at people's point of struggle, right when the parliament is sort of evenly balanced and they have real decision to make there about which way it tips."