A Jewish Perspective on Spiritual Seekers’ Attraction to Jewishness
The topic of Jewishness versus attraction to Jewishness is probably best approached through a lens I learned to see through from my friend and teacher, nobuhojimichaan ', a distinction he makes between “Earth Ancestry” and “Sky Ancestry” most publicly articulated on this podcast.
It’s a teaching about the layers to what we are as beings, which of course are many, and our awareness passes between the layers all the time. Nobu’s perspective, as translated into mine, describes a Sky Ancestry layer, which comes from Beyond and whose forms and the perception of those forms lie Beyond, and our understanding of them may be more complete when our awareness is Beyond and less so when our awareness is Here in more incarnate layers. But it’s not surprising to relate one’s Sky Ancestry to Earth forms, because those also have their own Sky Ancestry, and it may be shared. What’s important is to remember and discern between the layers.
Whereas Earth ancestry is incarnated and made manifest in the material, and it is transmitted by incarnated transmissions in forms like DNA and culture. Earth ancestral forms are accessible and discernible to Earthlings and can be agreed and disagreed upon within shared historical referents and linguistically defined meanings. Again, all forms have lineages on all layers, but that does not make all lineages the same.
Jewish peoplehood is a quintessentially Earth lineage. The name of the original ancestor, אדם, is rooted in אדמה, ground, the very mud from which they are made. Adam means “Earthling.” That is, the whole story of humanity from a Jewish perspective is an Earth story. While all Earthlings are related through the story of the original Earthling, the Jewish story is in essence the story of a particular family, and what has happened within and to that family on Earth. Being Jewish is identical with being part of that story and living to tell it and pass it on.
This is not to say we do not learn and teach the reality of the layered soul. To our sages, the distinguishing soul that makes a human human is the נשמה, the heavenly soul, which resides with the Holy One and distinguishes all human beings from one another in God’s Eyes. It is indeed on the נשמה level that one is Jewish. But it is made so in incarnation, when the נשמה is breathed into the Jewish body. And when the body dies and the נשמה is breathed out, we remember that incarnation of that Jewish person for all time, and we pray to be reunited with them After the End of Time.
This is why Jewish Earth Ancestry is such a serious thing. It doesn’t deny the possibility of Sky Ancestry resonance with Jewishness, but that is not being Jewish, nor is connecting with it becoming Jewish. The process of becoming Jewish by choice is not a merely spiritual matter, like a baptism. It is more akin to immigration. And that includes taking upon oneself the constitutional story of Jewish Earth Ancestry and becoming part of it, according to its own understanding of itself, all the way.
This constitutional story has caused its harms. It has caused Jewish peoples across time to dehumanize others who play the role of the enemy in a story to which they do not ascribe. So there is karma here, which brings more incarnation and more need for repair. That is also the Jewish story, and being Jewish is being implicated in it.
Jewish karma is shaped from without as well, though, and this is where people who are not Jewish having feelings about Jewishness becomes so fraught for Jewish people. Jewish history is rife with peoples who became obsessed with Jewish people, incorporating us into their stories and turning us into inhuman characters representing one thing or another. We have done that, too, as I said. It’s karmic. But sometimes, enemies are real, and there are not very many of us left. It has not been easy for Jewish people to watch entire world-spanning empires emerge, one after another, on a premise of being obsessed with their story’s version of us. Inevitably, these empires become hell-bent on exterminating us in service of their stories about us. I doubt I need to cite examples of this.
In the traumatized and karmically entangled Jewish Earth-Ancestral body, the presence of Sky-Ancestry-only feelings about Jewish people, no matter which side of the shadow-coin of philia and phobia faces up that day, is something we’ve developed a keen instinct around, like gazelles at the water hole, ears scanning for hyenas. To an extent, it makes no difference which story about us it is that day. On the other hand, the Christian story about us — its foundational myth being the fetishization of a dead Jewish body in a way that is abominable to every Jewish religious value — is particularly galling to be involved with.
So even though people with Christian Earth Ancestry sometimes feel an attraction to Jewishness — one which can be alarmingly intense and fetishistic — it is one Jewish people frequently perceive as a sort of parasocial, Sky-Ancestry-only attraction, one based in symbolism rather than reality, and one which involves Jewish people in something we never want to be involved with because of how it seemingly always ends. And usually, when we put up any sort of obvious resistance, the shadow-coin flips to the phobia side, and the other Christian stories of superseding Jewishness and saving all our souls by force kicks in, so we’re really pretty stuck, except in cases where we are safely invited to open our hearts with subtlety.
I have a litany of encounters I could share with you from throughout my life in which that invitation was withheld.
When I encounter people who are experiencing Sky Ancestry feelings from contact with Jewishness — which, in my family’s line of work, happens constantly — and I determine that I am safe around these people, I always try to encourage them to drop down from the Sky realm and into the Earth realm in order to be present with me. I don’t want to hear their views on Jewish mysticism, nor do I want to share mine. I want to know about their history with Jews. Who are the Jews they have known? What are the stories of those relationships? Were their families close with Jewish families? How close are they to the Jewish people? Those are the places where attractions become Earth relationships. That’s what proximity to Jewishness is.
