Rodger recently appeared on Coast to Coast AM, hosted by Ian Punnett.
The show included an hour and a half of interview.. it was originally supposed
to be 2 hours but there were so many callers lined up to share their dreams that
an extra half hour of calls was added.
You can find out more information about the show, and downloads are available
HERE.
As soon as the show was over, Rodger got into his car with his wife and evacuated.
As dawn came up, he was headed over the Rigolets.. on a narrow two lane bridge,
beautiful sight.. strange.. fleeing Gustav.
Rodger is back home now, but waiting for his power to come on.
As for Coast to Coast, the response was tremendous.. this is a great group
of listeners.. fascinating people.
Friday, September 05, 2008
Friday, August 29, 2008
DOING DREAMWORK ONE ON ONE
Are you interested in doing Archetypal Dreamwork?
It's a serious venture one-on-one, exploring your deepest feelings
and discovering the hidden path to the soul.
Dream sessions are typically an hour long, either by telephone
or in person on a weekly basis.
If you are interested in working with Rodger or one of the other
dreamwork therapists associated with North of Eden, you
can contact him at dreams (at)kamenetz.com
For more information please go to
DREAMWORK
It's a serious venture one-on-one, exploring your deepest feelings
and discovering the hidden path to the soul.
Dream sessions are typically an hour long, either by telephone
or in person on a weekly basis.
If you are interested in working with Rodger or one of the other
dreamwork therapists associated with North of Eden, you
can contact him at dreams (at)kamenetz.com
For more information please go to
DREAMWORK
Thursday, August 28, 2008
SUBMIT A DREAM TO NORTH OF EDEN
Would you like to learn more about one of your dreams?
North of Eden, the wonderful group of Archetypal Dreamwork therapists that I studied with is offering you that opportunity. You can SUBMIT A DREAM and one of the dreamwork experts will respond within a day or so.
North of Eden, the wonderful group of Archetypal Dreamwork therapists that I studied with is offering you that opportunity. You can SUBMIT A DREAM and one of the dreamwork experts will respond within a day or so.
Monday, July 21, 2008
Bill St. Cyr's Dreamwork Therapy page
Bill St. Cyr is an archetypal dreamwork therapist colleague
from North of Eden. He's posted a website with lots of good
information about doing dreamwork, and about his own work
and journey.
Bill is a great guy and a great teacher of dreamwork.
He works one on one with clients and also leads strings,
at the North of Eden retreat.
For more about Bill and dreamwork visit his
site.
from North of Eden. He's posted a website with lots of good
information about doing dreamwork, and about his own work
and journey.
Bill is a great guy and a great teacher of dreamwork.
He works one on one with clients and also leads strings,
at the North of Eden retreat.
For more about Bill and dreamwork visit his
site.
Tuesday, April 22, 2008
Monday, April 21, 2008
Wednesday, April 16, 2008
Thursday, March 20, 2008
NEXT YEAR IN LHASA?
Cry Out for the Fate of the Tibetan People Opinion
By Rodger Kamenetz
The Forward opinion editorial
Thu. Mar 20, 2008
Next month at Seder, we will recall how Egypt made the lives of the Children of Israel “bitter.” We will remember how “the children of Israel groaned… and cried out” and that “God heard their moaning.”
But this week we heard the groaning of the Tibetan people.
The Tibetans have no Seder, but they commemorate their history of oppression every year by remembering March 10. On that date in 1959, more than 100,000 Tibetans spontaneously demonstrated to protect the Dalai Lama from a death threat. He barely escaped the capital of Lhasa with his life, and in the uprising that followed it is believed that more than 10,000 Tibetans died.
Every year since, Tibetans remember March 10 with mostly peaceful demonstrations. This year in Lhasa was no different, until riots broke out and furious young Tibetans burned shops and murdered ethnic Han Chinese shopkeepers.
What happened that drove the Tibetan people to violence?
Theirs is a tragic history of cultural genocide. First the Chinese came with troops in 1949. Later they shelled the ancient Buddhist monasteries, which they’ve more recently rebuilt to serve as tourist traps.
Today’s Tibetan monks are tightly controlled and humiliated Ρ they must publicly disavow the Dalai Lama, which is like asking rabbis to renounce the Torah. The government has reached deep into the religious life of Tibet with clumsy hands, yet somehow the old religion of Tibet still lives.
Along with cultural destruction has come a massive influx of Han Chinese immigrants, who now far outnumber native Tibetans in Lhasa. The political and economic systems favor the immigrants, and Chinese rule has made the lives of today’s young Tibetans bitter.
Every people, if their groaning is never heard, has a breaking point, and this past week’s dramatic outburst of violence should be put in the context of 50 years of patient nonviolence.
From his home in exile in the northern Indian city of Dharamsala, the Dalai Lama has loudly and clearly condemned the violence. But he has no power at this point to control it.
The Chinese know this very well, but to cover up the harshness of their treatment of Tibetans they have trotted out the tired old propaganda of a “Dalai clique” fomenting an uprising. The fact is that the anger that has spilled over in Lhasa is a heartfelt response by a genuine popular movement — and it is spreading to neighboring provinces, where more than three-fourths of ethnic Tibetans now live.
The Dalai Lama is not behind the violence, he grieves over it, for he knows as a Buddhist that it only begets more violence — and that chapter is now unfolding.
The Chinese government has shut down the phone lines and Internet connections in Tibet, shut out the press and expelled tourists. Now the army has moved in.
What happens next — the roundup of civilians, the imprisonments, the killings — will take place in the dark. When the lights come back on, just as after Tiananmen Square, the victims will be out of sight, killed or hidden away in dank prisons.
As Jews we know in our bones how it feels to be oppressed and murdered while the whole world stands silent — and we ought to cry out for the fate of the Tibetan people.
In 1997, the Dalai Lama and I sat together over matzo with Rabbi David Saperstein and a table full of Washington dignitaries for a Passover “Seder for Tibet.” We shared the great promise of the Seder — that someday all people will be liberated from oppression. We heard the four questions and wept at the unforgettable voices of teenage Tibetan nuns singing of freedom, in a recording smuggled out of the dreadful Drapchi Prison.
We concluded the Seder in solidarity: “Next year in Jerusalem! Next year in Lhasa!”
For decades, the Dalai Lama has maintained his religious ideals while struggling to negotiate with the Chinese superpower. It’s hard not to think of Moses negotiating with Pharaoh.
As I listened to him recently on the news, pleading with his own people for an end to their violence, I felt how poignant and difficult his position is: The world praises him, but has given him no usable power.
The groaning of the Tibetans is not heard. It feels as if his dream is broken.
Our “Seder for Tibet” in 1997 was a Seder of hope — hope that the Dalai Lama’s inspiring message of nonviolence would be heard, that just this once another miracle would happen. I thought back then we did it for the Tibetans. I think now we did it also for us, because our hope for Tibetan freedom resonates deeply with our own deepest hopes.
The liberation from Egyptian bondage was not a Jewish military operation or armed resistance struggle. It was a demonstration of divine grace.
One midrash tells us that God liberated us by miracle, so our people would not learn to rely on the way of the fist. Another teaches universal compassion. When the Egyptians drowned in the sea, the angels rejoiced, but God rebuked them: “My children are drowning, and you sing?”
These beautiful stories and their like have shaped our Jewish souls. We share with Tibetans an ideal of human compassion that bonds us to the Dalai Lama’s religion of kindness. Over the past 50 years, however, Jewish history seems to have taught a very different lesson.
The State of Israel was born not long before the invasion of Tibet. For many years now our trust has been in military power for Israel, and in personal aggression for ourselves that we praise as chutzpah. But as the Dalai Lama implicitly asked those of us who traveled to Dharamsala in 1990 for Jewish-Tibetan dialogue, what happens if a people survives but loses its ideals?
There is no easy answer to that very Buddhist question. Nor to the very Jewish one we asked him in reply: What happens to the ideals if the people fail to survive?
Rodger Kamenetz is the author of “The Jew in the Lotus” (HarperOne, 1995) and “The History of Last Night’s Dream” (HarperOne, 2007).
http://www.forward.com/articles/12975/
By Rodger Kamenetz
The Forward opinion editorial
Thu. Mar 20, 2008
Next month at Seder, we will recall how Egypt made the lives of the Children of Israel “bitter.” We will remember how “the children of Israel groaned… and cried out” and that “God heard their moaning.”
But this week we heard the groaning of the Tibetan people.
The Tibetans have no Seder, but they commemorate their history of oppression every year by remembering March 10. On that date in 1959, more than 100,000 Tibetans spontaneously demonstrated to protect the Dalai Lama from a death threat. He barely escaped the capital of Lhasa with his life, and in the uprising that followed it is believed that more than 10,000 Tibetans died.
Every year since, Tibetans remember March 10 with mostly peaceful demonstrations. This year in Lhasa was no different, until riots broke out and furious young Tibetans burned shops and murdered ethnic Han Chinese shopkeepers.
What happened that drove the Tibetan people to violence?
Theirs is a tragic history of cultural genocide. First the Chinese came with troops in 1949. Later they shelled the ancient Buddhist monasteries, which they’ve more recently rebuilt to serve as tourist traps.
Today’s Tibetan monks are tightly controlled and humiliated Ρ they must publicly disavow the Dalai Lama, which is like asking rabbis to renounce the Torah. The government has reached deep into the religious life of Tibet with clumsy hands, yet somehow the old religion of Tibet still lives.
Along with cultural destruction has come a massive influx of Han Chinese immigrants, who now far outnumber native Tibetans in Lhasa. The political and economic systems favor the immigrants, and Chinese rule has made the lives of today’s young Tibetans bitter.
Every people, if their groaning is never heard, has a breaking point, and this past week’s dramatic outburst of violence should be put in the context of 50 years of patient nonviolence.
From his home in exile in the northern Indian city of Dharamsala, the Dalai Lama has loudly and clearly condemned the violence. But he has no power at this point to control it.
The Chinese know this very well, but to cover up the harshness of their treatment of Tibetans they have trotted out the tired old propaganda of a “Dalai clique” fomenting an uprising. The fact is that the anger that has spilled over in Lhasa is a heartfelt response by a genuine popular movement — and it is spreading to neighboring provinces, where more than three-fourths of ethnic Tibetans now live.
The Dalai Lama is not behind the violence, he grieves over it, for he knows as a Buddhist that it only begets more violence — and that chapter is now unfolding.
The Chinese government has shut down the phone lines and Internet connections in Tibet, shut out the press and expelled tourists. Now the army has moved in.
What happens next — the roundup of civilians, the imprisonments, the killings — will take place in the dark. When the lights come back on, just as after Tiananmen Square, the victims will be out of sight, killed or hidden away in dank prisons.
As Jews we know in our bones how it feels to be oppressed and murdered while the whole world stands silent — and we ought to cry out for the fate of the Tibetan people.
In 1997, the Dalai Lama and I sat together over matzo with Rabbi David Saperstein and a table full of Washington dignitaries for a Passover “Seder for Tibet.” We shared the great promise of the Seder — that someday all people will be liberated from oppression. We heard the four questions and wept at the unforgettable voices of teenage Tibetan nuns singing of freedom, in a recording smuggled out of the dreadful Drapchi Prison.
We concluded the Seder in solidarity: “Next year in Jerusalem! Next year in Lhasa!”
For decades, the Dalai Lama has maintained his religious ideals while struggling to negotiate with the Chinese superpower. It’s hard not to think of Moses negotiating with Pharaoh.
As I listened to him recently on the news, pleading with his own people for an end to their violence, I felt how poignant and difficult his position is: The world praises him, but has given him no usable power.
The groaning of the Tibetans is not heard. It feels as if his dream is broken.
Our “Seder for Tibet” in 1997 was a Seder of hope — hope that the Dalai Lama’s inspiring message of nonviolence would be heard, that just this once another miracle would happen. I thought back then we did it for the Tibetans. I think now we did it also for us, because our hope for Tibetan freedom resonates deeply with our own deepest hopes.
The liberation from Egyptian bondage was not a Jewish military operation or armed resistance struggle. It was a demonstration of divine grace.
One midrash tells us that God liberated us by miracle, so our people would not learn to rely on the way of the fist. Another teaches universal compassion. When the Egyptians drowned in the sea, the angels rejoiced, but God rebuked them: “My children are drowning, and you sing?”
These beautiful stories and their like have shaped our Jewish souls. We share with Tibetans an ideal of human compassion that bonds us to the Dalai Lama’s religion of kindness. Over the past 50 years, however, Jewish history seems to have taught a very different lesson.
The State of Israel was born not long before the invasion of Tibet. For many years now our trust has been in military power for Israel, and in personal aggression for ourselves that we praise as chutzpah. But as the Dalai Lama implicitly asked those of us who traveled to Dharamsala in 1990 for Jewish-Tibetan dialogue, what happens if a people survives but loses its ideals?
There is no easy answer to that very Buddhist question. Nor to the very Jewish one we asked him in reply: What happens to the ideals if the people fail to survive?
Rodger Kamenetz is the author of “The Jew in the Lotus” (HarperOne, 1995) and “The History of Last Night’s Dream” (HarperOne, 2007).
http://www.forward.com/articles/12975/
Thursday, February 21, 2008
Review in The Christian Century
Amy Frykholm, writing in the February 26, 2008 issue of
The Christian Century, writes:
"Rodger Kamenetz's vividly honest and well-reswearched book on dreams
in Western culture is extraordinary--
in part for its defiance of genre...Before I read it had heard
Kamenetz refer to it as a memoir, but it as much
an argument for a paradigm shift in dream interpretation. It is also
part self-help book and part detective
story about the lost dreams of the monotheistic traditions And none of
these categorizations touches on the
fact that it is also a study of human heart and an appeal for its
transformation."
Here's the whole review on line:
THE CHRISTIAN CENTURY REVIEW
The History of Last Night's Dream: Discovering the Hidden Path to the Soul.(Book review)
From: The Christian Century | Date: 2/26/2008 | Author: Frykholm, Amy
The History of Last Night's Dream: Discovering the Hidden Path to the Soul. By Rodger Karnenetz. HarperCollins, 272 pp., $24.95.
Rodger Kamenetz's vividly honest and well-researched book on dreams in Western culture is extraordinary--in part for its defiance of genre, a defiance that will no doubt make some readers uneasy. Before I read it, I had heard Kamenetz refer to it as a memoir, but it is as much an argument for a paradigm shift in dream interpretation. It is also part self-help book and part detective story about the lost dreams of the monotheistic traditions. And none of these categorizations touches on the fact that it is also a study of the human heart and an appeal for its transformation.
Kamenetz is known for his 1995 book, The Jew in the Lotus, about his physical and spiritual journey as part of a historic visit between Jewish rabbis and a Tibetan delegation that included the Dalai Lama. Some years later, Kamenetz, who has been called a formidable Jewish poet, began to research dreams in the Western tradition, starting with Genesis and every commentary ever written on it. Meanwhile, he encountered Colette Aboulker-Muscat, whose dream work for healing purposes in Jerusalem had become legendary.
As Kamenetz worked on dreams, he discovered the transformative power of images. In the first part of the book, he sets dreams in the context of art, religion, psychology and science; as well as personal experience. Kamenetz argues that though Judaism, Christianity and Islam have been known as "religions of the book," there is another aspect of these faiths that has had many episodes: the conflict between words and images. Words--which represent orthodoxy and inherited certainty--have almost always won.
In the second part of the book, "Interpretations," Kamenetz hits his stride. He begins with what he calls the three seminal dreams of Genesis: Abimelech's warning dream, Jacob's promise dream and Joseph's identity dream. He devotes a chapter to each one, exploring the dimensions of each kind of dream. He then turns to how the dream is lost through interpretation, making the figure of Joseph fundamental to this shift. When Joseph, as a young man, dreamed of a shaft of wheat standing erect while 11 other shafts bowed, Joseph's brothers did the malicious interpreting and the image remained ambiguous. But later, Joseph was the dream interpreter extraordinaire and all dreams became formulas.
As Kamenetz traces the religious tradition of dream interpretation, he finds an anxiety about the disturbing nature of dreams and a desire by religious authorities to overwrite and ameliorate dreams through various kinds of textual and ritual performances. To explore this, he looks at the rabbinic tradition, considers the Gnostic conflict in Christianity and-in what was for me one of the most fascinating chapters of the book--boldly takes on Freud, the father of modern dream interpretation, and rereads Freud's own dreams.
The third part of the book, called "Dreams," is the most deeply personal exploration as Kamenetz takes the reader through images in his own dreams that had powerfully transformative effects. Kamenetz repeatedly says that his own relationship to dreams stems from a 2001 encounter with a particular teacher, and he now brings that relationship into full focus. When Kamenetz met Mark Bregman, Bregman was a rural Vermont postman by day and a dream teacher by night. Bregman's theories of dreams owe a great deal to Jung, and Kamenetz explores this relationship in some detail, but they are also uniquely Bregman's own. For Kamenetz, the process of working through dreams becomes a very individual, religious sort of practice. "This dream practice has no fixed ceremonies, no creeds or beliefs--just dreaming and waking, and learning what is in the heart."
This comment suggests a familiar anticlerical and self-focused practice that we know perhaps too well from a multitude of self-help literature. But it conceals the metaphysics that lurk in the background. By the time the full metaphysics of this dream work arrives in the text, the reader is mostly prepared. I was surprised to see that the themes of divine grace, dying to self, and compassion still play prominent roles in the dream work laid out by Bregman. The purpose of dream work, according to Bregman, is not self-actualization but to demonstrate the state of the soul in relation to God and to teach the soul through an increasingly open and compassionate heart how to enter into a relationship with God. Besides offering that insight (and here Bregman will no doubt make many a modern reader uncomfortable), the main purpose of dream work is obedience: "Obedience means to be. To be what? To be other than your ego. To have died." That is what our dreams teach us.
At this point, Kamenetz returns to the three dreams of Genesis. Through Abimelech, Jacob and Joseph, we see the three main kinds of dreams at work in Bregman's theory: dreams reveal our predicament (Abimelech), teach us who we are (Joseph) and help us explore the realm of the soul (Jacob). All of this exploration requires a lot of hard work and sustained attention, and Kamenetz is honest about his own struggle to have faith. He also confesses that dreams have worked on him and transformed him. Readers are left to struggle with the implications, but no one who reads this book will ever understand dreams the same way again.
Reviewed by Amy Frykholm, special correspondent for the CENTURY.
The Christian Century, writes:
"Rodger Kamenetz's vividly honest and well-reswearched book on dreams
in Western culture is extraordinary--
in part for its defiance of genre...Before I read it had heard
Kamenetz refer to it as a memoir, but it as much
an argument for a paradigm shift in dream interpretation. It is also
part self-help book and part detective
story about the lost dreams of the monotheistic traditions And none of
these categorizations touches on the
fact that it is also a study of human heart and an appeal for its
transformation."
Here's the whole review on line:
THE CHRISTIAN CENTURY REVIEW
The History of Last Night's Dream: Discovering the Hidden Path to the Soul.(Book review)
From: The Christian Century | Date: 2/26/2008 | Author: Frykholm, Amy
The History of Last Night's Dream: Discovering the Hidden Path to the Soul. By Rodger Karnenetz. HarperCollins, 272 pp., $24.95.
Rodger Kamenetz's vividly honest and well-researched book on dreams in Western culture is extraordinary--in part for its defiance of genre, a defiance that will no doubt make some readers uneasy. Before I read it, I had heard Kamenetz refer to it as a memoir, but it is as much an argument for a paradigm shift in dream interpretation. It is also part self-help book and part detective story about the lost dreams of the monotheistic traditions. And none of these categorizations touches on the fact that it is also a study of the human heart and an appeal for its transformation.
Kamenetz is known for his 1995 book, The Jew in the Lotus, about his physical and spiritual journey as part of a historic visit between Jewish rabbis and a Tibetan delegation that included the Dalai Lama. Some years later, Kamenetz, who has been called a formidable Jewish poet, began to research dreams in the Western tradition, starting with Genesis and every commentary ever written on it. Meanwhile, he encountered Colette Aboulker-Muscat, whose dream work for healing purposes in Jerusalem had become legendary.
As Kamenetz worked on dreams, he discovered the transformative power of images. In the first part of the book, he sets dreams in the context of art, religion, psychology and science; as well as personal experience. Kamenetz argues that though Judaism, Christianity and Islam have been known as "religions of the book," there is another aspect of these faiths that has had many episodes: the conflict between words and images. Words--which represent orthodoxy and inherited certainty--have almost always won.
In the second part of the book, "Interpretations," Kamenetz hits his stride. He begins with what he calls the three seminal dreams of Genesis: Abimelech's warning dream, Jacob's promise dream and Joseph's identity dream. He devotes a chapter to each one, exploring the dimensions of each kind of dream. He then turns to how the dream is lost through interpretation, making the figure of Joseph fundamental to this shift. When Joseph, as a young man, dreamed of a shaft of wheat standing erect while 11 other shafts bowed, Joseph's brothers did the malicious interpreting and the image remained ambiguous. But later, Joseph was the dream interpreter extraordinaire and all dreams became formulas.
As Kamenetz traces the religious tradition of dream interpretation, he finds an anxiety about the disturbing nature of dreams and a desire by religious authorities to overwrite and ameliorate dreams through various kinds of textual and ritual performances. To explore this, he looks at the rabbinic tradition, considers the Gnostic conflict in Christianity and-in what was for me one of the most fascinating chapters of the book--boldly takes on Freud, the father of modern dream interpretation, and rereads Freud's own dreams.
The third part of the book, called "Dreams," is the most deeply personal exploration as Kamenetz takes the reader through images in his own dreams that had powerfully transformative effects. Kamenetz repeatedly says that his own relationship to dreams stems from a 2001 encounter with a particular teacher, and he now brings that relationship into full focus. When Kamenetz met Mark Bregman, Bregman was a rural Vermont postman by day and a dream teacher by night. Bregman's theories of dreams owe a great deal to Jung, and Kamenetz explores this relationship in some detail, but they are also uniquely Bregman's own. For Kamenetz, the process of working through dreams becomes a very individual, religious sort of practice. "This dream practice has no fixed ceremonies, no creeds or beliefs--just dreaming and waking, and learning what is in the heart."
This comment suggests a familiar anticlerical and self-focused practice that we know perhaps too well from a multitude of self-help literature. But it conceals the metaphysics that lurk in the background. By the time the full metaphysics of this dream work arrives in the text, the reader is mostly prepared. I was surprised to see that the themes of divine grace, dying to self, and compassion still play prominent roles in the dream work laid out by Bregman. The purpose of dream work, according to Bregman, is not self-actualization but to demonstrate the state of the soul in relation to God and to teach the soul through an increasingly open and compassionate heart how to enter into a relationship with God. Besides offering that insight (and here Bregman will no doubt make many a modern reader uncomfortable), the main purpose of dream work is obedience: "Obedience means to be. To be what? To be other than your ego. To have died." That is what our dreams teach us.
At this point, Kamenetz returns to the three dreams of Genesis. Through Abimelech, Jacob and Joseph, we see the three main kinds of dreams at work in Bregman's theory: dreams reveal our predicament (Abimelech), teach us who we are (Joseph) and help us explore the realm of the soul (Jacob). All of this exploration requires a lot of hard work and sustained attention, and Kamenetz is honest about his own struggle to have faith. He also confesses that dreams have worked on him and transformed him. Readers are left to struggle with the implications, but no one who reads this book will ever understand dreams the same way again.
Reviewed by Amy Frykholm, special correspondent for the CENTURY.
Friday, February 01, 2008
REVIEWS AND INTERVIEWS QUICK LIST
REVIEWS AND INTERVIEWS FOR THE HISTORY OF LAST NIGHT'S DREAM
PRINT INTERVIEWS
TIME
TIMES PICAYUNE INTERVIEW
NEXTBOOK
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY INTERVIEW
SOUTH FLORIDA SUN-SENTINEL
CHICAGO JEWISH NEWS
J-- NORTHERN CALIFORNIA
PHILADELPHIA JEWISH EXPONENT
RADIO INTERVIEWS AND PODCASTS
WHYY VOICES IN THE FAMILY
GREEN 960 RADIO SAN FRANCISCO
Philadelphia Free Library Podcast
TV INTERVIEWS
WGBH CAMBRIDGE FORUM
REVIEWS
LOS ANGELES TIMES
NEW ORLEANS TIMES PICAYUNE
THE FORWARD
THE CHRISTIAN CENTURY
BOOK LIST
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
JERUSALEM REPORT
SPIRITUALITY AND PRACTICE
JBOOKS.COM
BATON ROUGE ADVOCATE
PRINT INTERVIEWS
TIME
TIMES PICAYUNE INTERVIEW
NEXTBOOK
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY INTERVIEW
SOUTH FLORIDA SUN-SENTINEL
CHICAGO JEWISH NEWS
J-- NORTHERN CALIFORNIA
PHILADELPHIA JEWISH EXPONENT
RADIO INTERVIEWS AND PODCASTS
WHYY VOICES IN THE FAMILY
GREEN 960 RADIO SAN FRANCISCO
Philadelphia Free Library Podcast
TV INTERVIEWS
WGBH CAMBRIDGE FORUM
REVIEWS
LOS ANGELES TIMES
NEW ORLEANS TIMES PICAYUNE
THE FORWARD
THE CHRISTIAN CENTURY
BOOK LIST
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
JERUSALEM REPORT
SPIRITUALITY AND PRACTICE
JBOOKS.COM
BATON ROUGE ADVOCATE
Thursday, January 24, 2008
The Forward-- Jay Michaelson
If Ostriker’s book rails against the flattening of biblical consciousness into stark, fundamentalist myth, then Kamenetz’s new volume, “The History of Last Night’s Dream,” makes the same argument about our souls — particularly, the parts of ourselves that dream. For Kamenetz, the Freudian tendency to reduce dreams to certain basic, usually sexual symbols — and, perhaps by extension, the neuroscientific one to reduce them to meaningless chatter — denies the fullness of dream life, and its potential to unlock deep secrets of the mind. Dreams are, in a way, nonsense — but as non-sense, they gesture to the inexpressible in a way that words cannot.
As Kamenetz acknowledges, this is a quintessentially poetic task. The poet, too, seeks to speak what cannot be spoken; the literal “meanings” of poetry are, as the Zohar says of the Bible, but the outer garments of the truth. For Kamenetz — who boldly asserts what others might term an idolatrous passion for the image — dreams do it even better, bypassing language entirely to give us visions of prophecy, even of God. They allow us to imagine, literally; to make image. And, Kamenetz argues, they have played a role in the history of religions for millennia, which he describes in (partial) detail.
Kamenetz may be familiar to readers as the author of the book “The Jew in the Lotus: A Poet’s Rediscovery of Jewish Identity in Buddhist India” (1997). Like that book, “Dream” is at once affable and audacious; Kamenetz is a reliable narrator in unreliable territory. But I want to suggest that Kamenetz’s poetic eye is alive and well in this work of nonfiction. Not only is its subject ultimately the imagination; it locates the ground of spirituality within the imagination, and dares to posit religion itself as a product of the imaginal faculties. What more poetic gesture could there be than that?
http://tinyurl.com/2erqrj
As Kamenetz acknowledges, this is a quintessentially poetic task. The poet, too, seeks to speak what cannot be spoken; the literal “meanings” of poetry are, as the Zohar says of the Bible, but the outer garments of the truth. For Kamenetz — who boldly asserts what others might term an idolatrous passion for the image — dreams do it even better, bypassing language entirely to give us visions of prophecy, even of God. They allow us to imagine, literally; to make image. And, Kamenetz argues, they have played a role in the history of religions for millennia, which he describes in (partial) detail.
Kamenetz may be familiar to readers as the author of the book “The Jew in the Lotus: A Poet’s Rediscovery of Jewish Identity in Buddhist India” (1997). Like that book, “Dream” is at once affable and audacious; Kamenetz is a reliable narrator in unreliable territory. But I want to suggest that Kamenetz’s poetic eye is alive and well in this work of nonfiction. Not only is its subject ultimately the imagination; it locates the ground of spirituality within the imagination, and dares to posit religion itself as a product of the imaginal faculties. What more poetic gesture could there be than that?
http://tinyurl.com/2erqrj
Thursday, December 27, 2007
Tuesday, December 25, 2007
Monday, December 17, 2007
CAMBRIDGE FORUM AUDIO AND VIDEO
A one hour audio and video from WGBH of my recent talk at the CAMBRIDGE FORUM
Saturday, December 15, 2007
NEXTBOOK INTERVIEW
NEXTBOOK INTERVIEW
Nextbook.org
Dreams of the Father
Rodger Kamenetz's latest spiritual trip is into the subconscious
by Jascha Hoffman In 1990, Rodger Kamenetz traveled to Tibet with a group of American Jews to meet the Dalai Lama. On that trip, which he describes in The Jew in the Lotus, he happened to learn that some Buddhists meditate within their dreams. He began to wonder how dreams had been understood in Jewish texts and found that, while they had once been considered a source of revelation, dreams had been all but exiled from the tradition because they were deemed too disturbing or difficult to understand. As Kamenetz went deeper into his own dreams, which he calls “the oldest spiritual technology on the planet,” he found that they did not have any explicitly Jewish content. But in their own strange way—as he recounts in his new book A History of Last Night’s Dream—they did, over the years, begin to lead him back to something like God.
You say that dreams have been exiled from Judaism since Genesis.
There is a twin tradition. One is of the dream as direct revelation that requires no interpretation. That’s embodied in the dreams of Joseph as a boy, and in Jacob’s dream of a ladder between earth and heaven. And then there is the whole tradition of interpretation which actually begins with Joseph’s brothers, who have been quite correctly identified as the first dream interpreters. Their interpretation is full of anxiety and rage.
And you see that same mistrust reflected in the Talmud?
To give them credit, I think the rabbis were concerned for the average person who may not want to take a mystical venture into dreams, or who may not be equipped, or who may be fearful. They also wanted to assert that the Torah is the primary spiritual guide. They limit the scope of the dream very severely based on a passage in Deuteronomy essentially saying that no dream can contradict the Torah.
How has this affected the way we understand dreams now?
Our own response to dreams is often that they’re painful or that they are difficult. They bring up feelings we don’t want to face and we call out for an interpreter who will remove the sting of the dream and soothe us. One can find this not only in the rabbinic project but in the Freudian project, which says that the real meaning of the dream is hidden. But in my view the real meaning of the dream is right on the surface.
You once dreamed of an enormous book that was keeping you from writing.
I walk into my study and I have this feeling I’m going to write something. But in front of the computer monitor is this very large blue book with the letters “K de G” on the cover. The author is the Rabbi K de G, which seems to stand for “Kamenetz on Genesis.” The book reads from back to front and it appears to be a commentary on Genesis. As the dream ends, I’m thumbing through the pages from back to front and have completely missed the fact that behind the book, at a distance, was my father who had given it to me.
So the problem wasn’t so much that this holy book was keeping you from writing, but that it was standing between you and your father?
The book was a gift from my father that could have brought me closer to him. A few years ago I had a dream where my house is falling down and I just call my dad and ask for help. And he comes with a bunch of painters and carpenters and suddenly the house is repaired. It was just the first in a series of dreams that helped to lead me closer to him. One of the great gifts for me was to have this different relationship with my father in the last years of his life.
And what was coming between you and your father in waking life?
My pride. There’s another dream where we’re sitting at a kind of Talmud study. My father knows what a certain word means and I don’t. But I don't ask him; I think I can figure it all out for myself. I don’t want to be the vulnerable son who needs help. But at a deeper level, this was not just about my relationship to my father, but about my relationship to the Father.
You hear people talk that way in church, but not as often in synagogue.
My answer would be two words: Avinu Malkeinu. Our Father, our King. Obviously Jesus said stuff like that because he also went to Rosh Hashanah services. There’s a whole Yiddish tradition of referring to God as tateynu, as “dear Father.” Our ancestors were very comfortable with the idea that God was a father and a king and a shepherd. But now if we have an emotional relationship to God, that’s immediately seen as goyish. We have drained the feeling level out of our liturgy and then we wonder why people can’t connect. They’re not just words. If God is a father, then I must be like a child.
So how does God appear to you in your dreams?
At the end of the book, I describe a dream where an orphan boy is being visited by his father. The father shows him his hand and says, “My hand is the same as yours.” Then the father leaves and the boy starts sobbing and looks in the mirror. And he’s me: I see my face. That sadness of having lost the Father, in this case not my father but the Father, that yearning to reconnect, not to be an orphan but to be his son—that’s the quest. It’s rather like what Rabbi Nachman said: You have to connect to God from your broken heart. The dream reawakened the feeling of loss, the pain of the separation from God. It’s a tremendous gift to feel that.
You’ve been studying under Marc Bregman, a self-styled "dreamworker" in Vermont.
Marc Bregman grew up as a Jewish kid in Philadelphia in a kind of anti-Semitic environment. He had a strict Jewish father and he rebelled in the 1960s. After he moved to Vermont he was working in the post office by day and seeing clients about their dreams at night. He’s certainly not a traditional Jew or even a nontraditional one. But I know that he is a man of God.
And you have your own clients now. How do you work with their dreams?
We meet once a week for an hour. We try to find the feelings in the dream, the belly button, as Marc calls it. Then we have homework, which is to visualize a moment from one of the dreams that needs change. There’s a rhythm back and forth from night dream to daydream and from daydream to actual life. Usually people come with a problem they’re trying to wrestle with but the dreams often point to some underlying predicament. It could be other people’s expectations. It could be family obligations, guilt, or a sense of duty. We just keep going deeper and over time there’s a shift. The dream becomes a live rehearsal. The changes you make in dreams can change how you behave.
In what sense is this approach to dreams Jewish?
When you’re taking a dream seriously it becomes a spiritual practice. How does that connect to what’s offered by this tradition we belong to where we have Torah and commentary and rabbinic authority and services and holidays and all of that? We struggle with a feeling of loss of connection to God. Religion tries to give us intellectual or ritual answers. People often outsource their spiritual struggles to the experts. Hence the tremendous pressure on rabbinic figures in our community. If we don’t have a personal feeling of a quest, at least if some of us don’t, then it makes the rabbi’s job very, very hard.
Could you have understood your dreams without coming to them from a Jewish angle?
It seemed necessary for me to go through the books, to go through Genesis, to go through the rabbis. And yet it’s true that having done that, it no longer seems quite as relevant. You can find the gift of the dream without Genesis. But it’s promised there.
You had a series of dreams in which men kept trying to feed you meat.
I had alternated between various dietary restrictions from semi-kosher to vegetarian and wasn’t too faithful to any of them. And all of a sudden these guys are showing up in my dreams serving meat. It started as hors d’oeuvres and ended with giant hunks of beef thrown on a grill by bare-chested Mexican chefs. It was obvious that these were good guys and that they were challenging me with a kind of a male generosity of spirit.
What did you dream last night?
Recently I dreamed I woke up and went to the window. I looked outside and the ground was covered with snow and I felt such joy. It took me back to being a kid in Baltimore thinking, I’m going to spend the whole day playing and I won't have to go to school. You worry and you plan, you try to make yourself happy, you try to make other people happy and then the snow just falls, you know? It falls on its own.
Jascha Hoffman is on the editorial staff of The New York Review of Books.
Copyright 2003-2007, Nextbook, Inc.
Nextbook.org
Dreams of the Father
Rodger Kamenetz's latest spiritual trip is into the subconscious
by Jascha Hoffman In 1990, Rodger Kamenetz traveled to Tibet with a group of American Jews to meet the Dalai Lama. On that trip, which he describes in The Jew in the Lotus, he happened to learn that some Buddhists meditate within their dreams. He began to wonder how dreams had been understood in Jewish texts and found that, while they had once been considered a source of revelation, dreams had been all but exiled from the tradition because they were deemed too disturbing or difficult to understand. As Kamenetz went deeper into his own dreams, which he calls “the oldest spiritual technology on the planet,” he found that they did not have any explicitly Jewish content. But in their own strange way—as he recounts in his new book A History of Last Night’s Dream—they did, over the years, begin to lead him back to something like God.
You say that dreams have been exiled from Judaism since Genesis.
There is a twin tradition. One is of the dream as direct revelation that requires no interpretation. That’s embodied in the dreams of Joseph as a boy, and in Jacob’s dream of a ladder between earth and heaven. And then there is the whole tradition of interpretation which actually begins with Joseph’s brothers, who have been quite correctly identified as the first dream interpreters. Their interpretation is full of anxiety and rage.
And you see that same mistrust reflected in the Talmud?
To give them credit, I think the rabbis were concerned for the average person who may not want to take a mystical venture into dreams, or who may not be equipped, or who may be fearful. They also wanted to assert that the Torah is the primary spiritual guide. They limit the scope of the dream very severely based on a passage in Deuteronomy essentially saying that no dream can contradict the Torah.
How has this affected the way we understand dreams now?
Our own response to dreams is often that they’re painful or that they are difficult. They bring up feelings we don’t want to face and we call out for an interpreter who will remove the sting of the dream and soothe us. One can find this not only in the rabbinic project but in the Freudian project, which says that the real meaning of the dream is hidden. But in my view the real meaning of the dream is right on the surface.
You once dreamed of an enormous book that was keeping you from writing.
I walk into my study and I have this feeling I’m going to write something. But in front of the computer monitor is this very large blue book with the letters “K de G” on the cover. The author is the Rabbi K de G, which seems to stand for “Kamenetz on Genesis.” The book reads from back to front and it appears to be a commentary on Genesis. As the dream ends, I’m thumbing through the pages from back to front and have completely missed the fact that behind the book, at a distance, was my father who had given it to me.
So the problem wasn’t so much that this holy book was keeping you from writing, but that it was standing between you and your father?
The book was a gift from my father that could have brought me closer to him. A few years ago I had a dream where my house is falling down and I just call my dad and ask for help. And he comes with a bunch of painters and carpenters and suddenly the house is repaired. It was just the first in a series of dreams that helped to lead me closer to him. One of the great gifts for me was to have this different relationship with my father in the last years of his life.
And what was coming between you and your father in waking life?
My pride. There’s another dream where we’re sitting at a kind of Talmud study. My father knows what a certain word means and I don’t. But I don't ask him; I think I can figure it all out for myself. I don’t want to be the vulnerable son who needs help. But at a deeper level, this was not just about my relationship to my father, but about my relationship to the Father.
You hear people talk that way in church, but not as often in synagogue.
My answer would be two words: Avinu Malkeinu. Our Father, our King. Obviously Jesus said stuff like that because he also went to Rosh Hashanah services. There’s a whole Yiddish tradition of referring to God as tateynu, as “dear Father.” Our ancestors were very comfortable with the idea that God was a father and a king and a shepherd. But now if we have an emotional relationship to God, that’s immediately seen as goyish. We have drained the feeling level out of our liturgy and then we wonder why people can’t connect. They’re not just words. If God is a father, then I must be like a child.
So how does God appear to you in your dreams?
At the end of the book, I describe a dream where an orphan boy is being visited by his father. The father shows him his hand and says, “My hand is the same as yours.” Then the father leaves and the boy starts sobbing and looks in the mirror. And he’s me: I see my face. That sadness of having lost the Father, in this case not my father but the Father, that yearning to reconnect, not to be an orphan but to be his son—that’s the quest. It’s rather like what Rabbi Nachman said: You have to connect to God from your broken heart. The dream reawakened the feeling of loss, the pain of the separation from God. It’s a tremendous gift to feel that.
You’ve been studying under Marc Bregman, a self-styled "dreamworker" in Vermont.
Marc Bregman grew up as a Jewish kid in Philadelphia in a kind of anti-Semitic environment. He had a strict Jewish father and he rebelled in the 1960s. After he moved to Vermont he was working in the post office by day and seeing clients about their dreams at night. He’s certainly not a traditional Jew or even a nontraditional one. But I know that he is a man of God.
And you have your own clients now. How do you work with their dreams?
We meet once a week for an hour. We try to find the feelings in the dream, the belly button, as Marc calls it. Then we have homework, which is to visualize a moment from one of the dreams that needs change. There’s a rhythm back and forth from night dream to daydream and from daydream to actual life. Usually people come with a problem they’re trying to wrestle with but the dreams often point to some underlying predicament. It could be other people’s expectations. It could be family obligations, guilt, or a sense of duty. We just keep going deeper and over time there’s a shift. The dream becomes a live rehearsal. The changes you make in dreams can change how you behave.
In what sense is this approach to dreams Jewish?
When you’re taking a dream seriously it becomes a spiritual practice. How does that connect to what’s offered by this tradition we belong to where we have Torah and commentary and rabbinic authority and services and holidays and all of that? We struggle with a feeling of loss of connection to God. Religion tries to give us intellectual or ritual answers. People often outsource their spiritual struggles to the experts. Hence the tremendous pressure on rabbinic figures in our community. If we don’t have a personal feeling of a quest, at least if some of us don’t, then it makes the rabbi’s job very, very hard.
Could you have understood your dreams without coming to them from a Jewish angle?
It seemed necessary for me to go through the books, to go through Genesis, to go through the rabbis. And yet it’s true that having done that, it no longer seems quite as relevant. You can find the gift of the dream without Genesis. But it’s promised there.
You had a series of dreams in which men kept trying to feed you meat.
I had alternated between various dietary restrictions from semi-kosher to vegetarian and wasn’t too faithful to any of them. And all of a sudden these guys are showing up in my dreams serving meat. It started as hors d’oeuvres and ended with giant hunks of beef thrown on a grill by bare-chested Mexican chefs. It was obvious that these were good guys and that they were challenging me with a kind of a male generosity of spirit.
What did you dream last night?
Recently I dreamed I woke up and went to the window. I looked outside and the ground was covered with snow and I felt such joy. It took me back to being a kid in Baltimore thinking, I’m going to spend the whole day playing and I won't have to go to school. You worry and you plan, you try to make yourself happy, you try to make other people happy and then the snow just falls, you know? It falls on its own.
Jascha Hoffman is on the editorial staff of The New York Review of Books.
Copyright 2003-2007, Nextbook, Inc.
Tuesday, November 13, 2007
BOOK LIST /DONNA SEAMAN'S REVIEW
The History of Last Night's Dream: Discovering the Hidden Path to the Soul. By Rodger Kamenetz. Oct. 2007. 272p. HarperOne, $24.95 (9780060575830). 154.6.
After delineating connections between Judaism and Buddhism in The Jew and the Lotus (1994) and reporting on contemporary Jewish mysticism in Stalking Elijah (1997), Kamenetz continues his heady and unusual spiritual chronicle by examining the role dreams play in the Judeo-Christian tradition and in psychoanalysis. Kamenetz keenly investigates the interpretation of dreams from Jacob and Joseph to Freud and Jung and neatly elucidates relevant aspects of gnosticism and kabbalah. In some of the book's most probing passages, Kamenetz analyzes the triumph of the word over the image and the elevation of sacred texts over direct experience in monotheism (a fascinating corollary to Leonard Shlain's Alphabet and the Goddess, 1998). Then there are Kamenetz's dramatic adventures in dream work. He first consults with Colette Aboulker-Muscat, an 87-year-old Algerian practitioner of "kitchen kabbalah" in Jerusalem, then finds his true dream teacher in Marc Bregman, a Vermont postman turned shaman. Kamenetz's hard-won and provocative insights into "how exquisitely made" dreams are, and how dreams "reveal us to ourselves," profoundly alter our perception of what goes on while we sleep.--Donna Seaman
After delineating connections between Judaism and Buddhism in The Jew and the Lotus (1994) and reporting on contemporary Jewish mysticism in Stalking Elijah (1997), Kamenetz continues his heady and unusual spiritual chronicle by examining the role dreams play in the Judeo-Christian tradition and in psychoanalysis. Kamenetz keenly investigates the interpretation of dreams from Jacob and Joseph to Freud and Jung and neatly elucidates relevant aspects of gnosticism and kabbalah. In some of the book's most probing passages, Kamenetz analyzes the triumph of the word over the image and the elevation of sacred texts over direct experience in monotheism (a fascinating corollary to Leonard Shlain's Alphabet and the Goddess, 1998). Then there are Kamenetz's dramatic adventures in dream work. He first consults with Colette Aboulker-Muscat, an 87-year-old Algerian practitioner of "kitchen kabbalah" in Jerusalem, then finds his true dream teacher in Marc Bregman, a Vermont postman turned shaman. Kamenetz's hard-won and provocative insights into "how exquisitely made" dreams are, and how dreams "reveal us to ourselves," profoundly alter our perception of what goes on while we sleep.--Donna Seaman
Sunday, November 11, 2007
WORDS AND MUSIC FESTIVAL NEW ORLEANS NOVEMBER 18
9:45 a. m. Hotel Monteleone Nouelle Orleans East/West Ballroom
Spiritual Journeys
Rodger Kamenetz, author of The History of Last Night’s Dream will introduce this year's Spiritual Journeys Program.
Master Class, Dreams:
How they Inform the Creative Process
Led by Pulitzer Prize-winning writer Robert Olen Butler, author of From Where We Dream. With art photographer Josephine Sacabo, whose new collection of images, Nocturnes, is informed by dreams.
10:45 a. m. Hotel Monteleone Nouvelle Orleans East/West Ballroom
Getting in Touch With Your Soul
Dreams: Signposts to the Soul
Led by bestselling author of The Jew in the Lotus and Stalking Elijah, Rodger Kamenetz, whose newest foray into the spiritual world is The History of Last Night’s Dream. Rodger will call on other artists to tell personal dreams as examples of the unique ways in which each person’s dreams are signals to us to pay attention and get in touch with our inner selves, our souls. Among those he is inviting to participate are Brenda Marie Osbey, Poet Laureate of Louisiana; visiting Palestinian poets Ibtisam Barakat and visual artist Jana Napoli, who created a unique tribute to the victims of Katrina with her recent installation in New York and Louisiana, Floodwall, composed of bureau drawers which once belonged to Katrina victims.
WORDS AND MUSIC FESTIVAL SCHEDULE
Spiritual Journeys
Rodger Kamenetz, author of The History of Last Night’s Dream will introduce this year's Spiritual Journeys Program.
Master Class, Dreams:
How they Inform the Creative Process
Led by Pulitzer Prize-winning writer Robert Olen Butler, author of From Where We Dream. With art photographer Josephine Sacabo, whose new collection of images, Nocturnes, is informed by dreams.
10:45 a. m. Hotel Monteleone Nouvelle Orleans East/West Ballroom
Getting in Touch With Your Soul
Dreams: Signposts to the Soul
Led by bestselling author of The Jew in the Lotus and Stalking Elijah, Rodger Kamenetz, whose newest foray into the spiritual world is The History of Last Night’s Dream. Rodger will call on other artists to tell personal dreams as examples of the unique ways in which each person’s dreams are signals to us to pay attention and get in touch with our inner selves, our souls. Among those he is inviting to participate are Brenda Marie Osbey, Poet Laureate of Louisiana; visiting Palestinian poets Ibtisam Barakat and visual artist Jana Napoli, who created a unique tribute to the victims of Katrina with her recent installation in New York and Louisiana, Floodwall, composed of bureau drawers which once belonged to Katrina victims.
WORDS AND MUSIC FESTIVAL SCHEDULE
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