Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi and the Origins of Post-Holocaust American Judaism
Title
Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi and the Origins of Post-Holocaust American Judaism
Creator
Post-Holocaust American Judaism Collections at the University of Colorado Boulder
Date
2013
Contributor
Stephanie Yuhas, Netanel Miles-Yepez, Deborah Fink, Sue Salinger, David Shneer, Andrew Violet, and Jacob Flaws
Rights
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Format
Portable Document Format
Language
English
Text
This exhibition explores the life and work of Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi (b. 1924, Poland) and his role in shaping contemporary Judaism as a religion, social movement, and philosophy of spiritual transformation. The rise of Nazism and outbreak of World War II drove the Schachter family from Europe to the United States in 1940. Schachter-Shalomi was ordained in New York as a Habad-Lubavitch rabbi in the Hasidic movement in Orthodox Judaism. During the 1940s and 1950s, Schachter-Shalomi served Jewish communities as one of the rst Habad emissaries, whose goal was to bring traditional Judaism to American Jews.
Schachter-Shalomi envisioned a Judaism proud of its mystical, embodied, and esoteric traditions and unafraid of deep engagement with other religions. He imagined a Judaism that saw American egalitarianism and ecumenism as a source of creativity rather than a threat to traditional Jewish values. Although his ideas were marginalized in the 1960s as “counter culture Judaism,” over the past forty years, he and other Jewish religious leaders revitalized Judaism in the U.S. and around the world. This movement launched Post-Holocaust American Judaism.
Schachter-Shalomi taught Jewish mysticism and psychology of religion at several universities and founded the influential Jewish Renewal and Spiritual Eldering movements. He is widely considered one of the most significant
Jewish spiritual leaders of the 20th and 21st centuries.
Many of the images and artifacts in the exhibition come from the Zalman M. Schachter-Shalomi Collection (http://libcudl.colorado.edu/zss/index.htm), which anchors the Post-Holocaust American Judaism Archive at the CU-Boulder Libraries Archives and Special Collections. The Schachter-Shalomi Collection includes personal papers, manuscripts, publications, as well as a wealth of audio and visual materials that cover the historical trajectory of his life. The collection includes materials on Jewish Renewal, Hasidism, Kabbalah, Deep Ecumenism, Psychology of Religion, and Spiritual Eldering.
The Post-Holocaust American Judaism Archive includes collections that document Judaism as a religion, social movement, and philosophy of spiritual transformation in America from the late 1940s to the present. It is housed within Archives and Special Collections at the University of Colorado Boulder Libraries, which holds more than 65,000 feet of print, digital, and audio/visual material. Unique archives include experimental filmmakers, media artists, musicians, literary authors, and photographers, as well as human rights, labor, domestic terrorism, the American West, nuclear weapons facilities, and various U.S. social and political movements. The Program in Jewish Studies is an active collaborator on the development of the Post-Holocaust American Judaism Archive. The Program is an interdisciplinary unit of the College of Arts & Sciences, offering a Bachelor of Arts degree in Jewish Studies as well as minors in Jewish Studies and Hebrew Studies.
This exhibition was curated by Stephanie Yuhas, Netanel Miles-Yepez, Deborah Fink, Sue Salinger, and David Shneer. Exhibition designed by Andrew Violet.
The curators would like to thank the Bender Family Foundation, the Yesod Foundation, University of Colorado College of Arts and Sciences, the University of Colorado Libraries, and Donors to the Program in Jewish Studies for their support.
Schachter-Shalomi envisioned a Judaism proud of its mystical, embodied, and esoteric traditions and unafraid of deep engagement with other religions. He imagined a Judaism that saw American egalitarianism and ecumenism as a source of creativity rather than a threat to traditional Jewish values. Although his ideas were marginalized in the 1960s as “counter culture Judaism,” over the past forty years, he and other Jewish religious leaders revitalized Judaism in the U.S. and around the world. This movement launched Post-Holocaust American Judaism.
Schachter-Shalomi taught Jewish mysticism and psychology of religion at several universities and founded the influential Jewish Renewal and Spiritual Eldering movements. He is widely considered one of the most significant
Jewish spiritual leaders of the 20th and 21st centuries.
Many of the images and artifacts in the exhibition come from the Zalman M. Schachter-Shalomi Collection (http://libcudl.colorado.edu/zss/index.htm), which anchors the Post-Holocaust American Judaism Archive at the CU-Boulder Libraries Archives and Special Collections. The Schachter-Shalomi Collection includes personal papers, manuscripts, publications, as well as a wealth of audio and visual materials that cover the historical trajectory of his life. The collection includes materials on Jewish Renewal, Hasidism, Kabbalah, Deep Ecumenism, Psychology of Religion, and Spiritual Eldering.
The Post-Holocaust American Judaism Archive includes collections that document Judaism as a religion, social movement, and philosophy of spiritual transformation in America from the late 1940s to the present. It is housed within Archives and Special Collections at the University of Colorado Boulder Libraries, which holds more than 65,000 feet of print, digital, and audio/visual material. Unique archives include experimental filmmakers, media artists, musicians, literary authors, and photographers, as well as human rights, labor, domestic terrorism, the American West, nuclear weapons facilities, and various U.S. social and political movements. The Program in Jewish Studies is an active collaborator on the development of the Post-Holocaust American Judaism Archive. The Program is an interdisciplinary unit of the College of Arts & Sciences, offering a Bachelor of Arts degree in Jewish Studies as well as minors in Jewish Studies and Hebrew Studies.
This exhibition was curated by Stephanie Yuhas, Netanel Miles-Yepez, Deborah Fink, Sue Salinger, and David Shneer. Exhibition designed by Andrew Violet.
The curators would like to thank the Bender Family Foundation, the Yesod Foundation, University of Colorado College of Arts and Sciences, the University of Colorado Libraries, and Donors to the Program in Jewish Studies for their support.
Files
Citation
Post-Holocaust American Judaism Collections at the University of Colorado Boulder, “Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi and the Origins of Post-Holocaust American Judaism,” IJL Digital Exhibits, accessed May 17, 2024, https://embodiedjudaism.omeka.net/items/show/86.