Shabbat with The Guru

Considering all the pouring rain Jerusalem has gotten over the last couple days, it is very fortunate that I had my Shabbat Dinner with the Guru last week.

Several weeks ago Brett mentioned to me there was a man I really ought to call. He described this man who, born Jewish, spent some 20 years as a Guru, meditating for 23-hour-a-day-sessions in Ashrams throughout India for several years before becoming The Central Park Guru of the late 1970s. Over the last 20 plus years, he has become a Frum Jew living in the Old City, and he likes young Yeshiva guys as Shabbat guests. With that, Brett gave me Gil Locks’ number.

I put off calling Gil for several weeks for varying reasons. For example, if it were already midweek, I figured it was probably too late to ask for plans. Or if there was bad weather earlier in the week, I figured it would be a bad week to have to walk an hour and a half back from the Old City to Har Nof. Ultimately though, if I’m being honest with myself, I was probably more intimidated than anything else. This is the Central Park Guru we’re talking.

Plus, Brett did no small part in building up the Guru’s reputation. Brett intimates that the dinner will be intense. Gil sets strict rules for his table. You are only allowed to talk Torah, or Jewish spirituality. All speech and actions must be directed toward this; any unnecessary movements will be chastised. As soon as questions run out, dinner is over and you have to leave.

I mentioned my intentions of calling Gil up to the guys here on few occasions, and sure enough they too had heard stories and half-truths. Dan Menasha is interested, and the two of us make plans to go. I reach Gill on the phone not truly knowing how I expected his voice to sound. He has a muffled voice, and he is very direct.

“OK. Dinner starts at 6:30. Do you know your way around the Old City?”

“No, but I can figure-”

“I live at 24 Chabad. Do you know Chabad Street?”

“Shouldn’t be too hard to find”

“No. You’ll get lost around the city and turn up an hour late. I start directly at 6:30.”

“OK I’ll-“

“Meet me at the Kotel for Davening. Ask anyone for Gil. They’ll point you my way.”

And it was settled. Dan and take the bus down to the Old City. Despite living the last four months in Jerusalem, its easy to forget precisely where we are: this is the spiritual center of the entire world, behind the Kotel is the spot of the holiest of the holies. This is the cite where Abraham took Isaac to sacrifice him. This is the holiest of the holies, and it is in my backyard. The bus ride is long and completely stuffed; Dan and I try and think of topics to bring up to Gil. After an hour or so we see the walls of the Old City through the windows and for me it is awe-inspiring.

Dan and I walk up to the Kotel, track down some Sidurim, and start asking people for Gil. Sure enough the third guy I asked pointed me his way. The only pictures I had seen of Gil were those of his youthful Guru days, flowing brown beard with long hair tied into a knot on top of his head. Here now is Gil, long white beard, white paises down to his shoulder. He looks like kind, and blends in with everyone else. Dan and I join his minion. The Kotel fills up with dozens of others, and the noise builds upon itself making it difficult to follow the group. As soon as prayer ends Gil tells his guests to follow close behind, that stragglers would be left behind, and with that, he dashes and weaves through the masses.

Five of us in all follow Gil to his apartment and sit down around the table. Gil makes Kaddish, has us wash our hands (Natilas Yadiyum) and before he makes Hamotzi over the bread (this is a no-talking zone) he quips that he, having not yet washed, can say anything he wants without interruption. He then goes into an opening monologue about how every prayer, custom, and action in Judaism has intrinsic meaning and conveys very particular idea. Why two loaves of Challah? Why dip it in salt? Why cut a shallow cut before reciting Hamotzi? He then spots me sitting with my fingers crossed and admonishes me for doing so. There’s a reason for that, too. Gil lays out the rules of the table and they are exactly as they were rumored to be. Only Torah, and nothing else.

The initial topics were across the board: questions of the true nature of the sin in the Garden of Eden; the hallachah of the mamzir (the bastard child who is permitted only to marry another mamzir); the language of particular prayers (what does it mean when we say “asher kidishanu b’mitzvotah”); and so on. Using classical Socratic method, Gil weaved around this collage of questions, disproving every understanding that those of us with “low-functioning brain power” had held.

Gil was neither tranquil nor meditative as a guru might be, but instead cunning and brutally blunt. When one of the fellow guests mentioned that he did not wear tzi tzis when he slept, Gil exploded “why would you do that?”

“My rabbi told me not to.”

“Who told you not to?!? Or he told you you didn’t have to?”

“My rabbi told me not to wear tzi tzis when I go to sleep.”

“I would run away from that rabbi right now! Don’t sleep in your tzi tzis!?!”

For the rest of the night, whenever this particular guest said something displeasing, Gil would torment the guy about the tzi tzis (“this coming from someone who DOESN’T WEAR HIS TZI TZIS TO BED!?!?!?!?”). I on the other hand got off easy. Gil took a liking to me, not so much because I asked articulate questions (they were not particularly articulate at all) but because I was a good guest: I drank a lot of his wine, asked for seconds on his salads and lasagna, and was largely amused by the conversation that so frustrated our No-Tzi-Tzis-in-Bed friend.

Gil knew where he ultimately wanted the conversation to go, and as he surely does every week, he lead the conversation to the complete oneness of G-d. This is Gil’s big sticking point, and the extent to which he holds this is pretty controversial. Quite simply, there is one G-d, and nothing else. If G-d was not everywhere and everything, then he would by definition be limited, which is impossible. One G-d, and nothing else.

Most rabbis would retort “is G-d in the bathroom?” They hold that no, G-d does not dwell in the bathroom, a place of inherent filth and impurity. The Vilna Goan sees this as an inseparable dichotomy of G-d’s nature, but Gil sees this as hogwash. Of course G-d is in the bathroom. If he’s not, then he’s a limited G-d. I don’t want to go in no bathroom where there’s no G-d!

Gil had several other ways of trying to conceptualize his way of thinking:

-If you have a pie cut into pieces, is it the pieces that make up the pie, or the pie that makes up the pieces?

-If you have a cotton shirt, is it cotton made into a shirt, or a shirt made from cotton?

Or how about this gem:

-If all matter is made up of matter, which is made up of molecules flying in 99% empty space, which themselves are made of atoms flying around in 99% empty space, which themselves are made of quartz flying around in 99% empty space, which themselves are made of glutons flying around in 99% empty space, then what do we have here? We see G-d creating the world from nothing in every moment of every day.

At the root of everything, Gil worries that yeshiva students are too focused on technical Halachah issues, too much on the details, and not enough on the spiritual aspects of Judaism. G-d is awesome, Gil feels, and every chance that we get to perform mitzvahs for Him should be seen as a pleasure.

On our way out, Gil handed me a copy of one of his books and thanked us all graciously for coming (Gil acts tough but really is an old softie inside) and insisted we all come again. Dan and I walk back the hour and a half to Har Nof dissecting Gil and his arguments every step of the way.

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~ by ericrosenbloom on 26/02/2010.