The Realm of the Imagination is not Imaginary

Kamenetz pens a new chapter in his long journey of discovery
Monday, October 25, 2010
By Chris Waddington
Staff writer
Rodger Kamenetz really gets around.

The poet and just-retired LSU professor showed up on Oprah in 2007, plugging a nonfiction book about dreams.

He first achieved bestseller status in 1994 with a book about the growing interfaith dialogue between Jews and Buddhists -- a volume that has never gone out of print.

When not at his desk, the writer bikes on the levee near his Uptown New Orleans home.

He's a dance floor regular at Frenchman street clubs, and, in 2009, Kamenetz and his wife, novelist Moira Crone, served as King and Queen of the Krewe de Jeux Carnival organization. The pair presided over a klezmer-driven bacchanal that included some the city's most celebrated burlesque dancers.

For his latest volume, "Burnt Books: Rabbi Nachman of Bratslav and Franz Kafka," the 60-year-old Baltimore native went to similar extremes. He walked the cobbled streets of Prague, seeking traces of the modernist literary icon who wrote "The Metamorphosis" and "The Trial." Kamenetz also joined thousands of Jews who make an annual pilgrimage to the grave of Rabbi Nachman in the Ukraine. The 19th century religious leader was a writer, too. His mystical narratives cloak Torah teachings in a fairy tale atmosphere akin to that of the Brothers Grimm.

"Burnt Books" deftly blends a travel narrative with literary criticism, a double biography, and speculations about the parallel spiritual lessons of Nachman and Kafka. At one point, Kamenetz quotes an observation, by philosopher Gershom Sholem, that Kafka leads readers to "those mystical theses that lie on the narrow boundary between religion and nihilism." That's a pretty good description of "Burnt Books," too -- although Kamenetz insists, with a hearty laugh, that "this book is very much an autobiography."

Kamenetz will discuss "Burnt Books" at the New Orleans Jewish Community Center on Monday and at Maple Street Book Shop on Saturday. In November he begins a multi-city promotional tour that takes him across the U.S. and Canada -- and on to Britain where he will be featured at the London Jewish Book Fair.

Wherever Kamenetz goes, he'll have some explaining to do -- and he knows it.

"I'm not a conventional religious person, so my interests are baffling to a lot of people," he said. "What interest me is how very different people understand the search for God and for meaning. I'm looking for the energy behind the outward forms of religion, the force that makes people seek."

Kamenetz sees that same force working in both Kafka and Nachman.

"Both men lived with an incredible seriousness and intensity," he said. "They are forbidding and admirable -- and otherworldly in a good sense."

"Burnt Books" argues that the secular 20th-century writer and the Hasidic holy man were both wrestling with modernity, with the sense that the materialistic world view of science is as unsatisfying as the old forms of religion. For Kamenetz, its no surprise that both men used stories to get at metaphysical truths.

"The realm of the imagination is not imaginary," Kamenetz said. "Dreams and stories are a way to provide felt metaphors for our experiences. It's the place we go to restore our capacity to create and feel deeply. That's the place I want to find in my work, too."

. . . . . . . .

Staff writer Chris Waddington can be reached at cwaddington@timespicayune.com or 504.826.3448. Comment and read more at nola.com/living.

What Do I Know?

Marian Gay writes a wonderful guest post on Kathy Samworth's blog, about the question that opens us up to hidden feelings and opportunities in life and in dreams,"What do I know?"

EXCERPT: INTRODUCTION to BURNT BOOKS

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
INTRODUCTION

Parallel Lives

Rabbi Nachman of Bratslav and Franz Kafka. A nineteenth-century rebbe. A twentieth-century literary master. Two Jewish souls. When I hear the voice of one, I can’t help but hear the other. Kafka is thoroughly secular and Rabbi Nachman is deeply religious. Kafka is a master of irony and Rabbi Nachman is a master of faith. Yet I feel a secret con­versation between them and want to know how this can be.MORE

THE FIGHT OVER KAFKA

Franz Kafka


In a bank vault in staid Zurich an episode of high literary drama unfolded recently. A safety deposit box was opened and inside was revealed a handwritten manuscript of a story by Franz Kafka. At that same moment, an Israeli woman named Eve Hoffe ran into the bank building seeking to prevent the box from being opened, shouting: "It's mine, it's mine."

Who does Kafka belong to? Read on..

An Italian dream colleague

I was delighted to read this response to my NY Times article on Nightmares from an Italian colleague, Marzia Mazzavillani.

Perchance 2 Dream

My client Stacey Simmons has started up a new blog, recounting her experiences in the dreamwork and in life. It's a great read.

She writes,
In 2008 my life started to change dramatically. The changes started with very strange dreams, and concurrent unexplainable events in my waking hours. I began a search... into my inner life.

Here's the door to her
blog.

DREAMFORYOUR LIFE

My dreamwork client, Kathy Samworth, has been recording her thoughts and feelings about the process on her blog,
DREAM FOR YOUR LIFE

It's a great exploration of the process and the struggles and triumphs of changingy our life from the inside out.

Interview on NPR's ON POINT: The Nightmare Debate 8/17/10

Discussion of my NY TIMES ROOM FOR DEBATE article about nightmares On NPR's ON POINT:

PERFECT CURE: IN REBBE NACHMAN'S TZIUNE

In Rebbe Nachman's Tziune
An excerpt from BURNT BOOKS

I was coming to the destination. I was going to fetch my portrait of the Rebbe. My fantasy was a personal quiet meditative event. Me and the Rebbe, the Rebbe and me. But it was a seething hive of Jews. Near the entrance is a washstand, as it’s customary to wash hands on returning from a grave. But any sense of actually being at a grave is overwhelmed by the crowd. I’d come at the peak hour, just before Rosh HaShanah. Last chance to have a special conversation with Rebbe Nachman. For me, it would have to be a sort of shouting conversation and at a distance...please read on

Let's learn from our nightmares, not eliminate them

Blake, The house of death

From my piece in the NY TIMES:

The history of last night's dream begins with a nightmare. Our oldest dream story, inscribed in cuneiform millennia ago, tells of the Sumerian shepherd king Dumuzi. He sees his sheepfold abandoned, his shepherd’s staff disappears, his sacred cup falls off its peg. This vision of destruction so terrifies him, he runs to his sister, Geshtin-anna, the first dream interpreter, for solace. But she is an honest therapist. She does not dismiss the reality of his dream, but tells him to face its truth....read on...

Interested in working one on one with your dreams,see my dream page.

Kafka and the oil spill

Here in New Orleans, faith and doubt wrestle daily.

This has always been true for our vulnerable city, but in the nearly five years since Hurricane Katrina, the wrestling has gotten more furious. And all this time, I’ve been living with Franz Kafka in my head, writing a book about a man of doubt who lived at the border of faith. More than anyone Kafka brings a strange sense of humor to our search for meaning. In fact, according to Google, Kafka is invoked about 75 times per day. But during and after Katrina, I came to wonder if the haunted, angel-eared prophet had become a permanent New Orleans resident... Read on...

Interview on Shrink Rap Radio

A SHRINK RAP RADIO interview with Dr. Dave about archetypal dreaming and whatever else came to mind...

THE HISTORY OF LAST NIGHT'S DREAM

The History of Last Night's Dream is available at Amazon
or Barnes and Noble or
your friendly local INDEPENDENT book store.

Read more about the book or Rodger on his website.

GIFT OF THE DREAM CONFERENCE VIDEOS

My friends at North of Eden have posted the complete video of the
recent Gift of the Dream Conference in Philadelphia. If you missed it,
there's video you can see: a keynote by me, an interview with Marc Bregman
and Christa Lancaster who are co-directors of North of Eden, and two
string sessions.

Gift of the Dream VIDEO

Mardi Gras Purim and Dreams

At Purim, Unmasking God by Way of Dreams
March 05, 2009

Rodger Kamenetz

Purim is one of my favorite holidays. Living in New Orleans, where Mardi Gras takes over the city for two weeks every year, we know how to do Purim right. Masking is a fun part of Purim, but the fun also masks a serious point: The book of Esther, the last of the five scrolls, never mentions God by name. "Esther" alludes to "nistar," the hiddenness of the divine.
God ultimately has no "face" in human terms -- our Jewish theology tells us that. Yet images are how we feel relationships. It is difficult to pray to an abstract God, which is why our prayer books give us "masks" of God, when we use names such as "father" "king" or "Shekhinah."

We can contrast how God appears to human beings in Genesis with the more hidden quality in Esther. While Esther seems closer to our more abstract concept of a world where God seems remote, Genesis represents the dreamland of Jewish consciousness. In its stories, men and women see angels, hear voices, find a personal name of God. Some even see God's face, as Jacob does in his dream of the ladder.

The dream is how we give face to God, through images. In Genesis, the dream works to communicate between the divine realm and ours. The dream is itself a ladder between heaven and earth.


Yet, after Genesis, the dream disappears from the Torah, the five books of Moses. When we lose the dream, we lose a direct revelation, a felt personal connection, between the individual and God.

Several years ago, I set out to find out what this meant. I knew that dreams still have the power to move us emotionally and spiritually. By neglecting our dreams, we throw away great gifts. As our rabbis said: A dream not interpreted is like a letter unopened.

One gift in Genesis provides a warning about our destructive behavior. I see this in the story of Avimelech, a king who takes Sarai to him and is warned in a dream that he will die for it. He heeds the warning and gives her back to Avram. But do we heed the warnings in our dreams, which often display our pathological behavior? Or do we just say, "It's only a dream"?

A second gift comes with two dreams of Joseph, who sees sheaves of wheat bowing down to his sheaf, and the moon, sun and stars bowing down to his star. His brothers interpret these dreams as pure arrogance, but Joseph comes to understand that the dream describes his true essence as a leader, who he is in God's eyes. I call this the "essential image" dream -- and when such dreams show us who we are -- despite what others think of us -- they can be a powerful source of strength.

The third gift of the dream, as I mentioned, is the gift of Jacob's dream of the ladder. Such dreams confirm, often in a very mysterious way, that there is much more to life than the rough ground of the material world where we live. There is another dimension that Jacob's ladder reaches into. Through our dreams, we can climb into that dimension; this is a tremendous gift.

At Purim, we can masquerade however we want -- as beautiful Esther, wicked Haman, pious Mordechai and the proto-feminist Vashti. The masks are fun, but the masquerades in our dreams go deeper.

We can learn how to receive their gifts. There is a ladder between our deepest feelings and our theology. So often a rung of that ladder is completely broken for us -- the rung between our feelings and our abstractions. Our dreams can restore that broken rung. Ignoring them is wasting their gifts.

Rodger Kamenetz, author most recently of The History of Last Night's Dream, will keynote a conference on dreams at the Germantown Jewish Centre on March 15.

THE GIFT OF THE DREAM CONFERENCE

Dreams are a gift: perhaps from God, the great common soul or some great unknown that we can only hold in reverence. Often dreams feel deep and awesome, other times they are tedious reproductions of our tedious days.
How do we gain access to the gift of the dream? Dreams have fascinated humankind since the Bible, challenged religious authority, regained their magnetic pull for Freud and Jung, and have become the subject of therapy, healing and even media discussion.

Rodger Kamenetz, the author of The History of Last Night's Dream: Discovering the Hidden Path to the Soul, has a very specific path to suggest. Find out more at kamenetz.com or talkingdream.com. In his search, he takes us through the Bible, Rabbinic thought, Christianity, modern psychoanalysis, contemporary religious seekers, Tibetan Buddhism and finally a very specific path of archetypal dream work which he discovered and embraced on his journey through dream work. Kamenetz will give a keynote address as a launch to this day-long exploration of dreaming that will allow each person to encounter and explore new physical, emotional, intellectual and spiritual horizons through encountering the gift of the dream.

World class professionals and scholars in each field will present a variety of opinions and worldviews that promise to challenge and shape whole new ways of looking at dreaming.

Coast to Coast AM

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.

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

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.

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.