As for rabbinical ordination / smicha, all books I’ve got on European Jewish history (literally hundreds) that cover the topic state there was nothing like it. Somebody served as rabbi, and that was it.

So I’ll start calling DK ‘Rabbi Kelsey’ – afterall he’s vowed not to talk to his female friends anymore, but maybe he’ll make an exception if I start using him as spiritual guidance.

I know that, but I guess I would have assumed that even shtetl rabbis had smicha – not from institutions, of course, but from individual rabbis who served as their teachers.

Even so, I’m surprised to hear that a congregation would ask a Catholic priest to serve as their “rabbi”. I mean, knowledge of Hebrew and Torah wouldn’t necessarily qualify; he’d have to have a working knowledge of halakhah.

I’m assuming he wasn’t a Jew, so the question of apostasy didn’t enter into it?

As to ‘nulla salus extra ecclesiam’ – that has always been a core concept of Christianity (ecclesia as in Christian Church). There is no Christian denomination that does not abide by that concept, but it’s only the Roman Catholic Epistolic Church (aka Catholic Church) that has officially exempted Jews from missionary attempts. Compare that to the sneaky approaches other groups take (e.g. there’s an Evangelical “Bible Seminary” in Brooklyn that encourages its preachers, one of whom I’ve met, to pose as BT Orthodox Jews, infiltrate synagogues and eventually use Jewish help to make an ‘aaliyah’ to preach “the truth to the Jews of Jerusalem” – yuck!).

One should not confuse the Christian-influenced, more-than-less mandatorily ordained views of rabbis with what rabbis actually were (supposed to be) in the Old World: teachers and scholars of the Torah. Like most people of his rank, Vogels is fluent in Hebrew and Aramaic (and Ancient Greek, Latin, Italian, English, French and a whole host of othr languages; a Vatican career requires fluency in at least five languages), and the congregation felt comfortable enough with him to ask him to serve as their rabbi for a while. It’s congregations that hire their rabbis, in the past the oldest / wisest guy was called ‘rabbi’. There was nothing like an ordination or a central agency that “distributed” rabbis; that kind of stuff is pretty novelty. E.g. I could start calling DK “reb (which was used liked “Mister”) Kelsey”, and eventually some people might pick up calling him “rebbe Kelsey”. Not soon after, somebody will recall something magic he did someday.

there are certain principles that are mandatory of the beliefs of everybody who wants to associate with Roman Catholic Epistolic Church; no force, just terms and conditions.

Yes, but the understanding (among conservative Catholics) is that, if one leaves the umbrella of the Church, one is a heretic and is in danger of eternal damnation, yes? Even if one doesn’t believe that, the childhood conditioning runs deep. Even those outside of the Church who were never Catholic are seen as not necessarily damned, but as not having the full benefits of the salvific mechanisms of the Church available to them. In other words – they take their chances!

Vogels I don’t think I’ve heard of; is he Jewish? How, as a priest (whether Jewish or not), was he filling in as rabbi?

I have heard, once or twice, recently, that Ratzinger mellowed a bit after his election, but as far as his being willing to debate matters of theology is concerned – you’d have to prove it to me. Even then, I’d be inclined to see it as being just for show. People don’t change that easily – especially at his age.

Re: Jews practicing Buddhism – yeah, that’s a whole other deal. I agree with the Dalai Lama – Westerners shouldn’t become Buddhists. In fact, after thirty years of observation, I’ve come to feel very strongly that, with rare exception, Westerners shouldn’t be practicing Asian religions. The linguistic barriers, the cultural and conceptual gaps are simply too great.

Zalman Schachter-Shalomi has said that he thinks there are more Jews involved in Vipassana and Zen than in Tibetan Buddhism, and he feels that it has to do with the old injunction against idolatry. I don’t know if he’s correct – I haven’t seen figures – but it seems plausible. Zen is presented to Westerners largely as meditative method, and Vipassana is entirely method. Tibetan Buddhism is far more iconic. Although a lot of the early Western participants in Tibetan Buddhism were Jews, my observation has been that there aren’t as many involved in it today – but, of course, that’s entirely subjective on my part.

As for the Catholic faith in its persistence messing with peoples’ lives: nobody’s forced to stay with the Church. It’s easier to leave Catholicism than Orthodox Judaism. There are certain matters the Church won’t admit to or compromise on that are at the core of its beliefs; there are more than 1,200 other Christian denominations in the US alone. People have got the possibility of choice. A religion that would bend down whenever somebody asks it to would be rather opportunistic. Ratzinger’s point in documents like Iesus Dominus was that there are certain principles that are mandatory of the beliefs of everybody who wants to associate with Roman Catholic Epistolic Church; no force, just terms and conditions. His openness after his election and his willingness to debate matters of theology after his election came rather surprising to many, but as your joke quite shows, he’s an outstanding scholar, the intellectual quality of who compares to only a few contemporaries, e.g. Rahner, Breuning (great guy; at age 86 he decided he was bored with retirement and went back to university to teach for free and he even picked a small, progressive campus on purpose; professors of his standing usually make about $24k / month here) etc.

As for Buddhists, those roughly 30 to 40 years Judaism has effectively been exposed to Buddhists respectively Buddhism as the abract concept (I’ll try to find the text again where it says that Buddhism looks down upon religions for their acceptance of supreme beings), the mutual influences appear to have been limited, and not necessarily contextually benefactory to me as they seem somewhat limited to novelty esoterics taken as a surrogate for exploring Jewish spirituality.

Maybe EV can do a comic on that.

I’m aware that there is a difference between Buddhist philosophy and the beliefs and practices of common people, but I’m not talking about hybridized versions of Buddhism. The idea of the Adibuddha, or primordial Buddha, being the source of all phenomena if from Tantric and philosophical texts (I’ve been told that there is at least one source that also identifies this “original Buddha” with Amitabha, but don’t ask me to find it!)

I’ve been complaining for years that Buddhists like to tout the fact that the Buddha supposedly said, “Don’t take anything on faith, even the things I tell you”, but then, you come up against the teachings on karma and rebirth, and then – guess what? You have to have faith in the Buddha’s awakening, as well as the accuracy of the reporting. A couple of years ago, Thanissaro Bhikku told me that in the beginning, this aspect of having faith in the Buddha and his teachings was taken for granted, that the idea of Buddhism as being faith-less was an innovation of the philosophers, particularly the Mahayanists, centuries later. However, Alan Wallace told me recently that he disagrees. I really don’t know what to think at this point.

My point is that Buddhism, as a whole and as we now have it, incorporates the idea of faith. If that wasn’t the case in the early years, it is the case now.

As far as the idea of deities is concerned, I’m not sure what you mean. Buddhism has always accepted the existence of deities, as beings on higher levels of reality; it teaches that no one of them is omniscient, omnipotent or immortal, and none of them is the “creator” – but it does accommodate the idea of a creative absolute. And I think we got here because you claimed that the Catholic Church is actually more favorably disposed to Judaism that Buddhism is. If that’s what you meant, I think it’s a huge over-simplicfication. Yes, Buddhist philosophers have demonstrated some condescension concerning the idea of a personal creator, but, in practice, Buddhism has never displayed the kind of condescension (to say nothing of the aggression) toward Judaism that Christianity has. We don’t have the history with Buddhism that we have with Christianity. Yeah, the Church has “officially” had a better attitude toward us since the sixties, and unofficially from a few decades prior. I’ll grant you that. That now leaves us nineteen centuries with which to contend! By contrast, for 2,500 years, no Jew has ever been afraid to leave his house at night because he might run into a gang of Buddhists!