Is Yoga Kosher?

Bottom line: Is yoga kosher?

I practiced yoga for several years under the guidance of Bonnie West, a wonderful American teacher in Minneapolis in the 1990s. Yoga increased my flexibility and balance through the poses and I learned to settle my consciousness through its breathing and meditations. I derived great physical and emotional benefits from practicing yoga. And I never once felt any conflict between my yoga and my Judaism.

I resumed my regular practice this month (August, 2017) at the 24 hour fitness club in Paramus, with a fine new instructor. I also from time to time go to classes at the JCC in Tenafly.

Yes, yoga is kosher for me. Your experiences may vary depending on who you are and where you are coming from, as the BBC article below deftly suggests.

Does doing yoga make you a Hindu? asks William Kremer across the pond at the BBC. He wrote a smart article on the subject with insights from a number of smart people.

He frames the issue in terms of whether people see yoga poses as religious practices.

For many people, the main concern in a yoga class is whether they are breathing correctly or their legs are aligned. But for others, there are lingering doubts about whether they should be there at all, or whether they are betraying their religion...

Farida Hamza, a Muslim woman living in the US, had been doing yoga for two or three years when she decided she wanted to teach it.

"When I told my family and a few friends, they did not react positively," she recalls. "They were very confused as to why I wanted to do it - that it might be going against Islam."

Their suspicions about yoga are shared by many Muslims, Christians and Jews around the world and relate to yoga's history as an ancient spiritual practice with connections to Hinduism and Buddhism.

Is Yoga Jewish?

No, yoga is not Jewish, it is Hindu in origin.

I did yoga regularly in the early 1990s at the Northwest Tennis Club in Minneapolis Minnesota. My teacher was Bonnie West, an American woman from St. Paul with a wicked sense of humor and with no Hindu agenda at all. Her yoga classes provided wonderful exercise and discipline for the body and mind.

But the plot thickens. The Times chronicled in 2010 a controversy over the "ownership" of the practices of yoga in America..

Hindu Group Stirs a Debate Over Yoga’s Soul
By PAUL VITELLO

Yoga is practiced by about 15 million people in the United States, for reasons almost as numerous — from the physical benefits mapped in brain scans to the less tangible rewards that New Age journals call spiritual centering. Religion, for the most part, has nothing to do with it.

Is Mindful Meditation Finally Going to Become Jewish?

Around 1992 I took up both yoga and also mindful meditation a la Jon Kabat-Zinn. I wrote the post below 8/28/09 ending with the question/suggestion that we bring mindfulness into our shuls and schools.

Five years later, Jews finally are noticing mindful meditation -- because it saves money, according to the Forward, "Why Jews Should Tune In to the Mindfulness Revolution. It's Not Just 'Hippie Stuff' — Meditation Can Save Billions."

Here's what I said about my practices in 1992 in Minnesota, and a link to a 2007 Times article.

Our club, Northwest Racket and Swim in St. Louis Park had a wonderful yoga program. Our favorite instructor was Bonnie West, who led a totally Americanized yoga class. She'd crack jokes and talk about current events and get all of us to go to our limits.

At our HMO they decided to offer a free course in mindful meditation as an experiment. We were right there to take up the offer. We did yoga and meditation for several years and let it taper off when we moved back East.

Why did we stop? We actually didn't. We integrated mindfulness into our everyday life to a large degree. But that is a whole other story.

Anyway we were quite pleased to read in the NY Times, in 2007, about the acceptance of the practice in mainstream schools.

Wouldn't it be a great thing to offer instruction in mindfulness in our shuls and synagogues too?

In the Classroom, a New Focus on Quieting the Mind
By PATRICIA LEIGH BROWN

God's Favorite Prayers: The Music and Dance Video and Interpretation

My student at JTSA, Emily Passer submitted a video and interpretation for her final project. Its six dancers represent the archetypes of prayer that I developed in my teaching and that I write about in my new book, God's Favorite Prayers. Here is Emily's commentary:

Hey Jewlicious: Where is Rabbi Ingber's Romemu Center?

We don't read Jewlicious that often. Not sure why, perhaps because we always have the feeling that the site seems to be missing something.

In the case of an article on the Romemu Center and its rabbi, the two simple things missing that we wanted and expected to know from the piece were (1) Where is the center? and (2) What is the rabbi's first name?

The article tells us a few things about Romemu:

Take the work of Rabbi Ingber, for example. Ingber is the grounded and dynamic young leader of the Romemu Center. His background is deeply orthodox and traditional, but he also happened to study psychology, Buddhism and healing at different points of his life...

“I understand all the reasons that there needs to be an authenticity (in temple) that we’ve done for centuries, but there is also like this prayer not to just be Jewish but to be a person who is having a spiritual moment,” he says. “Judaism has always been willing to borrow from other traditions, complementing areas that were not very strong in the Jewish tradition. Abraham, the son of Maimonides, borrowed Sufi techniques from the mystical branch of Islam. It’s hard not to see spiritual aspects to yoga practices, so we bring it into the shul,” he says.

Sounds interesting and we'd like to visit the place. But where is it?

“One if the biggest principles of Buddhism is that there is no such thing as the self. All you are is parts. What we call the self, or give ourselves a name — it’s our way of giving ourselves a handle on something that doesn’t need a handle. We are so much more complex than the simplistic labels that we use. Labels are important but often turn something fluid and complex, into something simple and solid.The shul, like Romemu itself, is very complex,” he adds.

More tantalizing now. Still no address, no links, no clues. And as to the rabbi, maybe his first name is Rabbi.

(FYI we found that the locations are: brick and mortar services: 165 West 105th St. @ Amsterdam Ave and office: 308 West 92nd St, Ste 5B; web site; the rabbi's first name is David; see his about page; a primary mission of the center is. "Romemu was created in 2006 and now offers Shabbat and holiday services infused with meditation and yoga, as well as a myriad of community groups, teachings, and events.")

And last point, the title of the post, "Mind, Body and Soul in Synagogue," we do believe this applies to every synagogue.

Times Video and Reviews: Laughter Yoga, Zionist Beginnings, Christianity Clashes With Islam

We don't know what this is all about, but we like it!

On more serious notes, no laughter here, we know what these are about and they look good!

‘The Balfour Declaration’ By JONATHAN SCHNEER Reviewed by TOM SEGEV- A comprehensive study of the British government’s decision to support Zionism. Excerpt

‘The Tenth Parallel’ By ELIZA GRISWOLD Reviewed by LINDA ROBINSON - A fascinating journey along the latitude line in Africa and Asia where Christianity and Islam often meet and clash.

Times: Kabbalah brought Jesus Luz and Madonna together

 Here is a celebrity and her boyfriend at a Jewish mystic's tomb in Israel. 

Now, the Times is not a gossip sheet, nor is this blog interested in such mundane matters as celebrity pairings. But if Kabbalah is involved, well that is a whole other story for us.

...Jesus Pinto na Luz, who has two younger brothers, moved frequently as a child, especially after his parents split when he was almost 5 years old.

“I grew up with many ups and downs,” he said. “I also saw the beauty of people who were living an intellectual life and also people who were humble and had nothing.”

As a teenager he pursued modeling and acting, working odd jobs, including as a salesman at a surf shop in Ipanema.

“When I was a teenager, I thought I couldn’t do nothing in my life,” he said. “I felt very hopeless. And then something started to happen.”

He studied Buddhism and yoga and an ex-girlfriend introduced him to kabbalah. “I’m just looking for something to make me strong, and kabbalah has given me that,” he said. “I’m looking for something to make me comfortable and happy in my life.”

In 2006, he spent six months in New York, living with an aunt and learning English.

When he met Madonna, also a kabbalah devotee, last December, she had been divorced from the filmmaker Guy Ritchie for one month...more, "For Madonna’s Boyfriend, Fame by Association"...