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Ties with India
ARTS&LIFE
BOOKS
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Ties with India
New book looks at synergies between Judaism and Indian religions.
SUZANNE CHESSLER CONTRIBUTING WRITER
Experiences gained during 20 trips to India and more times to Israel, joined with research gleaned from dozens of texts, enter into the pages of Susan Adelman’s third book, From Jerusalem to Delhi, through Persia (Gorgias Press), published this March. Adelman, a Southfield resident active with Adat Shalom Synagogue, is scheduling presentations to introduce her book-expressed impressions exploring interreligious connections — from legends, through customs and into languages.
Two speaking/book-signing engagements represent the religious reach of her chapters: 3:30 p.m. Sunday, March 27, at Adat Shalom in Farmington Hills and 2:30 p.m. Sunday, April 3, at the Bharatiya Temple in Troy.
“I’ve allowed myself to tell personal stories and to express my feelings about India, as well as spiritual and mystical experiences, in a way that I’ve never allowed myself to express before,” Adelman said.
“My first book, The Rebel: A Biography of Ram Jethmalani, is about an extremely famous Indian lawyer and friend, and I felt my job was to tell his story and not intrude with my own thoughts. My second book, After Saturday Comes Sunday, is the history of the last living people who speak Aramaic.”
Adelman, 80, a retired pediatric surgeon who continues a longtime professional sideline of
artistry — painting early on and making silver jewelry now — became curious about India in the 1970s. A neighbor working with traditional Indian textiles stirred her interest in seeing more authentic artistry. “I had no exposure to the Indian religions until my husband, Martin, and I went to India,” Adelman said. Initially impressed with the architectural artistry of the temples, she made a point of getting to know about the beliefs expressed inside and the people who expressed them. Describing herself as “scholarly by nature,” Adelman Susan launched her own book Adelman studies back home, and as her learning expanded, she became engrossed with new notions of religion, spirituality and mysticism.
Susan Adelman will discuss From Jerusalem to Delhi, through Persia and sign discounted copies ($30) at 3:30 p.m. Sunday, March 27, at Adat Shalom Synagogue in Farmington Hills (masks required) and 2:30 p.m. Sunday, April 3, at the Bharatiya Temple, 6850 N. Adams Road, Troy. For information, call Michael Kuper at the Jewish Community Relations Council (248) 642-5993.
COURTESY OF SUSAN ADELMAN
“This new book really is, in many ways, a meditation on the experiences I’ve had through many years of traveling back and forth to India and back and forth to Israel,” said the author, whose husband twice yearly teaches aspects of patent law in Israel. “It also draws on the first two books because I learned a great deal about India in the course of all that time.”
The time frame covered in the book dates back 2,500 years and reaches into the present as the author explores reasons why Israelis and young Jewish adults from America travel to India and adapt some spiritual practices encountered during their journeys.
Adelman visits an Indian temple.
A meeting of people representing different religions.
— SUSAN ADELMAN
BORROWING EASTERN PRACTICES
Besides chapters that describe the specifics of religions that include Buddhism, Hinduism and Zoroastrianism, Adelman considers the thinking behind the large numbers of Israelis traveling to India and what she describes as the “modern
wandering Jew.”
“When I began studying Hinduism and Buddhism, I feared I was betraying my Judaism only to find out on later visits to Israel that my attraction to India made me a typical Israeli,” said Adelman, who attends synagogue services every week, studies Hebrew and has regular one-to-one rabbinical learning sessions.
The book presents annotated statistics about Jewish travelers to India and Jews who take on the practices of other religions — from meditation to yoga — while maintaining their Jewish identity. Adelman delves into the search for spirituality outside of Judaism.
“The more I learned, the more I came to believe that there’s no need to have concerns about studying other religions,” she said. “My research actually enhanced my understanding of my own religion.”
In explaining her understanding of that concept, she tells a rabbinical allegory about a Jewish man looking for gold in a distant land and finding it in his own home with the help of an individual representing another religion.
“Tzaddiks (Jewish spiritual leaders) and gurus (Hindu spiritual leaders) have a lot in common,” she said. “We watched Sikhs read from the Granth, their holy writings, with the same reverence Jews read Torah.”
Completing her third book took one year for Adelman as she did research on the web and ordered referenced volumes —nearing 50 — for her direct review.
“I got guidance and assistance from friends in Israel and India,” she explained. “One particular friend has a degree in Jewish studies and is very much interested in Buddhism.
“With this guidance, the book shows how Jews and Indians were linked by the ancient Persian empires and their religions, and I make the argument that these connections have remained in the collective Jewish memory.”
Adelman shows how the early Zoroastrian and Hindu works lean back to the same times and a later compilation of the Zoroastrian work and the Babylonian Talmud go back to the same time and place.
“The majority of the people that I read about and wrote about who were Jewish remained Jewish as they became involved with Indian Ashrams and Buddhist centers,” she said. “One of the beauties of Eastern religions is that Jews can recast most of the meditation and mindfulness as therapy, and that’s been extremely successful.”
