Love, Sexuality, Prayer, and the Death Camps
Most people in the world treat all physical expressions of love, sexuality in particular, as dishonorable, something that should be kept away from respectable spaces or holy sites. However, for thousands of people who practice Tantra and engage heartfully in Sacred Sexuality in its various branches, love and sexuality can be one of the most profound expressions of sacredness and respect.
The ancient Book of Zohar claims that the word "Love" (AHAVA in Hebrew) is the supreme root of all holy names (including YHWH). According to Kabbalah, prayer causes lovemaking of the masculine and feminine aspects of the divine in the supreme worlds. Hasidic mysticism taught that a prayer is an act of lovemaking with the Shekinah; therefore, as in an equation that can be reversed and still remains valid, a connection of love in the lower worlds could also be a sacred act of prayer. I notably said "could be" simply because, many times, human lovemaking is done without a heart. Then, like in any other ritual that has been corrupted, it has no sacred meaning.
The prophets of the Bible protested against the corruption that took place in their time in the field of sacrificial work. Jesus overturned tables in the Temple of Jerusalem for the same reason - the corruption of religious worship. In all religions and generations, mystics pointed to how foreign interests penetrated and defiled every form of sacred worship and ritual. Clearly, sacred sexuality is no different from any other path of worship. Like any other expression of the sacred, sexuality may as well be disconnected from the heart, unconscious, empty of any actual dimension of transcendence, and sometimes even abusive. Unfortunately, this is how most people know and experience sexuality. We all experience an incessant bombardment of disconnected and painful expressions of sexuality through movies, television shows, billboards, and the internet. Even the so-called "sex education" in schools usually refers only to how one should protect from sexual harassment, sexually transmitted diseases, and unwanted pregnancies. Good sexuality is indeed perceived as pleasurable and as an act that may connect partners in love, but sexuality as an expression of the sacred?
For most people, the idea that sexuality can be an authentic expression of worship, devotion, and spiritual transcendence sounds strange, if not absurd, and disturbing. I completely understand this approach, and at the same time, I want to say that for the devoted practitioners of sacred sexuality, both in the ancient and modern worlds, sexuality is perceived in a totally different way. For us, sexuality is not only a space for a romantic connection between lovers but also a space of connection to the divine, a space of magic, transcendence, and intense devotional emotion. The currents of life force that flow through the body and mind in a loving sexual connection hold possibilities for physical and mental healing as well as for spiritual transformation.
Things in this spirit were written by the Jungian psychologist Dr. Gadi Maoz in an article about the Mysteries of Dionysus, where sacred orgies were held as part of the religious rituals:
“The ‘Orgy’ has sometimes received a negative perverted image in modern culture since it was taken out of its symbolic context. In a symbolic sense, it means reaching a state of ecstasy and union with the divine. In psychological terms, it is about the union of internal contradictions or divisions and integration between ego and Self." https://www.israjung.co.il/my-post605a5bab
Auschwitz
Between 2001 and 2014 I came every year for a week of prayer and meditation at the Auschwitz-Birkenau death camps in Poland. My Zen master - Roshi Bernie Glassman - took the practice of Zen out of traditional temples and monasteries and into the life of homeless people when he founded the “Street Retreats”, and into places where terrible tragedies happened to humanity, such as Auschwitz. Bernie wanted meditation to take place not only in well-kept Zen gardens, where the gravel is raked in aesthetic patterns but also on the gravel supporting the railroad tracks, which brought hundreds of thousands of our people (yes, Bernie was a Jewish Zen teacher) to the gas chambers.
Roshi Bernie Glasman in front of one Marian’s drawings
For 14 consecutive years, I sat on this gravel for a week of meditation and prayer. I sat there with Roshi Bernie Glassman and dozens of people of different nationalities who came from all over the world. As a Kabbalist Rabbi, I was part of the “spirit holders” team of those retreats, alongside leaders from other paths (Christian and Buddhist priests, etc.) Survivors from the death camps joined us in the bearing witness meditation along with Germans, some of them descendants of Nazis, who served in the Third Reich. Sometimes Palestinian peace workers joined our retreat. They were eager to better understand the national trauma that affects the psychology of Israeli Jews.
These 14 years were so significant for me. Prayers, tears, deep silence, endless chanting of the endless name list of the victims, singing Hasidic melodies with a broken heart, melodies which were probably on the lips of some of the victims till their last breath. We wrote together a revised version of the Kaddish that was chanted every day of the retreat in Hebrew, English, German, Polish, and sometimes even in Arabic (I will attach the version of this special Kaddish at the end of the article).
Around the ashes pond
Auschwitz is engraved in the depths of my heart. The ruins of the gas chambers, the "sauna" where people like you and me were stripped of everything they had and became slaves without a personal identity, just a serial number tattooed onto their arms. The torture chambers in block 11, the execution wall (the Jews were not brought to court, but the Poles who resisted the Nazi occupation were tried and immediately executed in the nearby yard), the piles of equipment robbed from the murdered: thousands of pairs of glasses, thousands of pairs of shoes, suitcases with names, and piles of human hair that was cut and used as raw material for the German textile industry. One blonde braid that stands out to this day from the pile of hair in the museum can't get out of my head.
However, thanks to those retreats, Auschwitz is engraved in the depths of my heart not only as a place of terrible trauma but also as a place that invites global healing for humanity. Auschwitz, to me, is a sacred spot on earth, a place that can become an acupuncture point for healing the most terrible wounds and the most painful traumas of humanity.
One of the things I learned in Auschwitz (and I can say this, perhaps precisely because I am a Jewish Rabbi) is that this place is not limited to the relationship between Germans and Jews. No. Auschwitz belongs to all humanity. Not only because Gypsies were also exterminated there, only because they were Gypsies, and not because homosexuals were murdered there just because of their sexual orientation, but because under certain conditions, any group of people could degenerate into violent Nazi racism and any other group could suddenly find itself in the role of the helpless victim.
Auschwitz is an extreme and terrible example of what human beings (not "monsters" and not "aliens" but human beings) may do to one another. That is why Auschwitz is a place of pilgrimage. The ashes of more than a million murdered people, still scattered outside the crematoria, cry out to the sky, cry out to our hearts, so that we listen, so that we learn.
Love as a healing power
2014 was my last year of service in the Zen Peacemakers bearing witness retreat. Meditating on the “Juden Ramp” of the railroads, I heard a new call from the spirits of the place. I listened carefully and heard the call to bring the unique healing only Love can generate. I was called to bring love as a healing power to a place where love was forbidden, where love was dangerous, to a place where lovers were violently separated from each other, tortured, and murdered. To a place where children were taken away from their parents forever, to a place where women were raped and murdered, to a place where children were murdered in front of their parents, parents in front of their children, and lovers in front of their loved ones. To bring the healing of love to a place where, against all odds, several love stories have also taken place, epic and impossible love stories. To this place, I was called to bring love as a healing force.
It might have taken me too long to answer the call. Only in 2020, I found myself talking about this vision with close friends, gifted facilitators who have been teaching with me for a decade in the international school of temple arts, known as ISTA. I trusted them to be able to hold such a deep and delicate retreat around the area of Auschwitz.
The retreat, called “Love from the Ashes,” was planned for the summer of 2020 and was supposed to be open only to graduates of ISTA level 2 seminars, that is, to people who were already exposed to transpersonal aspects of love and deep shadow work. The plan was to enter the memorial site, like any other group, with official guides from the museum, who would explain the factual details to our group. We wanted to stop from time to time for quiet meditation in places where it is appropriate to hold a vigil and feel deeply. Then at the end of the day, we would return to our hotel, gather as a group, share insights and feelings, and move energy through the body. Together we would penetrate the darkest shadows of the human condition and explore how love meets these difficult places. We were exploring what exercises and rituals could be performed in the workshop space to move stuck energy and enter deep layers of the collective unconscious in the transpersonal spaces that Auschwitz calls to explore.
As we all know, the Covid pandemic changed everybody’s plans, and the retreat needed to be canceled before we even started registration. When the time is right, I still hope to hold it in the future with the right people.
love and fear
Auschwitz is an extreme result of a culture based on fear. Fear of the other, the odd and the different, fear which goes as far as denying the humanity of the other and their right to exist. The mass murder of Auschwitz resulted from the paralyzing fear that prevented many citizens from opposing their government. It is fear that even today allows tyrants to commit terrible atrocities. Fear and terror served the Third Reich.
Marian, one of the camp survivors who sat with us in bearing witness retreats until he too left the world, once placed his bony hand on my head and said: "Hitler and Mussolini motivated millions by fear. But we need new leadership in the world. A leadership that will move millions with the power of love. Is it possible? Is it possible to lead from love? Do you agree to be part of the leadership of love?" he asked with a twinkle, and I nodded “yes.”
Marian and his beloved wife Helena
Will you, my friends, agree to Marian's will?
~ Ohad Pele. Jan 2023
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The revised Kaddish prayer
from the Zen Peacemakers liturgy book of the Auschwitz-Birkenau Bearing Witness retreats
May the Great Name whose Desire gave birth
to the Universe Resound through the Creation
Now.
May this Great Presence rule your life and
Your day and all lives of our World.
And say, Yes. Amen.
Throughout all Space, Bless, Bless this Great Name,
Throughout all Time.
Though we bless, we praise, we beautify,
we offer up your Name,
Name That Is Holy, Blessed One,
Still, you remain beyond the reach of our praise, our song,
Beyond the reach of all consolation. Beyond! Beyond!
And say, Yes. Amen.
Let God's Name give birth to Great Peace and Life for us and all people.And say, Yes. Amen.
The One who has given a universe of Peace gives peace to us, to all sentient beings. And say, Yes, Amen.
