The Ravenna Kibbutz

In the course of researching an upcoming Jew-ish.com article on Jews and Buddhism, I watched Laurel Chiten’s hourlong documentary The Jew in the Lotus, which is based on Rodger Kamenetz’s book of the same name. In 1990, a number of prominent American rabbis met with the Dalai Lama so that His Holiness might ask them the secret of Jews’ survival—physical, cultural, and spiritual—as a people in exile. One interviewee notes that Tibetans are the Jews of Asia, in that they’ve been displaced and are a people without a country, which Jews were until 1948. Chiten moves back and forth between footage from the historic meeting and interviews, years later (her film was released in 1998), with members of the Jewish contingent, including Kamenetz, who was trying to dig himself out of a dark spot in his life and accompanied the rabbis as a “scribe,” to use his term.

As films about interfaith dialogue go, it’s both direct and subtle; the value of the powwow is clear from the footage (the Dalai Lama learns a thing or two, and the rabbis and their coterie seem duly impressed by his presence), but everyone took something different away from it. Kamenetz comes off in the film as humble, funny, and likable, and few portraits I’ve seen of spiritual seekers so deftly capture how gradual, and sometimes confusing, the process is. We don’t always know what we need until we find it, and sometimes even then it takes us a while. The film itself might be hard to find—I got a screener copy from the director—but it’s worth seeking out.

In other cultural-mashup news, the Ravenna Kibbutz took a field trip tonight to Town Hall for part of this weekend’s “Jewish in America” program. Seattle Jewish Film Festival director Pamela Lavitt presented a few short films, including Tiffany Shlain’s endearing The Tribe, which explains Jewish history in 15 minutes using Barbie dolls, and the Oscar-winning short West Bank Story, which riffs on West Side Story and was particularly poignant to view in light of the current situation in Gaza.

After the films, Joshua Nelson performed a heavily gospel-influenced song about wanting to be a more observant Jew. When I talked to Lavitt afterwards, she shared my enthusiasm for his smooth, incredibly elastic voice and commented that gospel legend Mahalia Jackson is one of his biggest influences. His main message was that just when you think you’ve nailed down the definition of Jewish music, it surprises you. His rendition of “Adon Olam,” viewable (and hearable) on YouTube, certainly bears that out.