This book comes with a recommendation on the cover from one of our favorite Living Spiritual Teachers, Rami Shapiro, describing it as a “vision of a Jewish future that is nondual, universal, integral, inclusive, detached from political Zionism, aligned with liberal democracy, and open to learning alongside and from other religions.” That says it very well.
Lauren Zinn has been a Jewish leader and trained interspiritual minister in Ann Arbor, Michigan for decades. “Belong to the World” and “Bring Your Tribe” are parts one and two of her book, which detail the vision Rami describes. Part three, “Become Interspiritually Jewish,” is where Zinn brings it together. There are chapters about making observances of Hanukkah, Purim, Passover, Yom Kippur, and Shabbat into interspiritual occasions. Zinn wants to see Jewish communities commit to building relationships and friendships by sharing in each other’s religious lives.
There’s another important chapter on how Jewish practice can be consciously “Ramadan Adjacent”; it is full of ideas on ways to do this starting with “Pick a day to fast with Muslims,” and continuing to include ways Jews can learn from Muslims how to break a fast most inclusively: “I learned about Ramadan and its various practices across different Muslim cultures. The image that stands out is of communities laying blankets on sidewalks covered with dish after dish of food for the sundown meal — for all to come and eat, especially those who are hungry and needy. Ramadan cultivates compassion. It made me want to see and experience this compassion in Judaism and to appreciate it when I saw it, for example, at the Passover Seder. This experience of interdependence, of leaning about our own and others’ holidays through each other, is a feature of the Interspiritual Age.” Always, Zinn is aiming to inspire based on her own experiences in the field.
This book is self-published, but it is readily available from major booksellers.
