Rodger Kamenetz

This book came to me from the free shelf at my local library but I have been wanting to read it since I first read a review of it almost three decades ago. I am neither Jewish nor Buddhist but I am interested in learning about other faith traditions and communities, and Kamenetz offers clear-headed observations about Tibetan Buddhism, American Judaism, and the reasons people who grow up in one religious tradition might find a more vivid faith by switching to a different one. This is a fascinating account of a visit by a diverse group of rabbis to Dharamsala at the invitation of the Dalai Lama and what the rabbis and Kamenetz learned there and thereafter. I learned a lot about both faiths, even accounting for change in the nearly thirty years since this book was published and reading this inspired me to reflect more deeply on my own attitudes toward my own faith and others beyond Buddhism and Judaism.… (more)

While accompanying eight high–spirited Jewish delegates to Dharamsala, India, for a historic Buddhist–Jewish dialogue with the Dalai Lama, poet Rodger Kamenetz comes to understand the convergence of Buddhist and Jewish thought. Along the way he encounters Ram Dass and Richard Gere, and dialogues with leading rabbis and Jewish thinkers, including Zalman Schacter, Yitz and Blue Greenberg, and a host of religious and disaffected Jews and Jewish Buddhists.

This amazing journey through Tibetan Buddhism and Judaism leads Kamenetz to a renewed appreciation of his living Jewish roots.… (more)