Rabbi teaches about interconnectedness

Rabbi Miles Krassen

DEBORAH MAYAAN
Special to the AJP
On the surface, Purim is a story of the triumph of Esther, Mordechai and the Jews over Haman and all who would wish to kill us.
On a deeper level, the story goes beyond triumphalism, to the integrative worldview that Rabbi Miles Krassen, Ph.D. sees as critical for the survival not only of our people, but of the entire world. At Purim, we aim to achieve a consciousness in which we cannot distinguish between Mordechai and Haman, between what is blessed and what is cursed; this, says Krassen, is compatible with systems theory and the findings of the new physics. “Nothing really is independent; everything affects everything else,” he says. “If anybody loses, everybody loses.” This takes us a step beyond the idea that all Jews are responsible for each other, to the idea that all human beings are responsible for each other, says Krassen.
“Religious forms need to evolve into ways that can fit the way that we’re viewing reality,” says Krassen, who is teaching a yearlong class in Tucson using Hasidic sources and new approaches. He also teaches classes by conference call to make study accessible to people outside the area.
Krassen, who is also known by his Hebrew name, Moshe Aharon, moved to Tucson in May after serving as professor of Judaic Studies at Naropa University in Boulder, Colo., since 2004. His study of spirituality began in the 1950s and has included yoga, Buddhism, Daoism, Sufism, Christian mysticism, the teachings of the Armenian-Greek mystic Gurdjieff and western wisdom traditions dating back to Plato.
In the ’70s, Krassen, then a graduate student in ethnomusicology, experienced an identity crisis after immersing himself in the world of traditional Irish folk music. A series of what he calls providential events led him to connect with his Jewish cultural identity and then to study Hasidism at a yeshiva in Boro Park in Brooklyn.
He went on to study religion at Indiana University in Bloomington and at the Hebrew University in Jeru­salem, where he was a Lady Davis Fellow, and earned his doctorate from the University of Pennsylvania in 1990. He taught at Smith College in Massachusetts and Oberlin College in Ohio, and wrote “Uniter of Heaven and Earth,” about mystical experience in early Hasidism. The early Hasids brought a new paradigm into Judaism, says Krassen: “It’s not just raising an individual’s consciousness, it’s raising Judaism itself.”
When two of Krassen’s students founded Elat Chayyim, a Jewish retreat center then located in upstate New York, they asked him to teach there. After a 10-day retreat over the High Holy Days in 1995, during which psychotherapist and author Sylvia Boorstein taught meditation and he taught about teshuvah (repentance), Boorstein urged him to get his smichah, or rabbinic ordination, since people were turning to him as a rabbi. Krassen was ordained by Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi in 1996 and currently serves on the board of the ordination program at ALEPH: Alliance for Jewish Renewal.
Krassen, who had visited Tucson several times to teach during his years at Naropa, began teaching his local class in November. At the first class of the current session, which began Feb. 14, Krassen taught about healing disheartenment by reconnecting to God. Since we are commanded to be a nation of priests, he says, disheartenment can be a signal to learn to see the cohen (priest) in every person, to receive the unique gifts they have to offer. Prayer is also important in this healing, because God will listen when we talk straight from the heart, says Krassen.
We need to have all of ourselves present, to connect mind and body, and soak in a teaching so it’s in every cell of the body, says Krassen. To facilitate that connection at the Feb. 14 class, he taught a kabbalistic meditation in which participants visualized the letters of the four-letter name for God, yod-hey-vav-hey. When we added the vowel sound “oo” with each letter — yoo-hoo-voo-hoo — in a silent inner vocalization, I was surprised to feel a vibratory effect similar to chanting.
Krassen’s Purim class, open to the public for a suggested donation of $14 (for the 14th of Adar), will include the reading of the Megillah by Rabbi Steph­anie Aaron. It will be held Thursday, March 20, from 5:30 to 8:45 p.m., at the Browne/Davidson home at 5051 N. Apache Hills Trail; no registration is required. For more information, call 777-7190, e-mail mosheaharon@rainofblessings.org, or visit rainofblessings.org.
Deborah Mayaan is a writer and energy work and flower essence practitioner based in Tucson. deborahmayaan.com