Two Warsaw Heroes & the Thisness of What Is
Posted by mu on January 19, 2008
Diane Ackerman writes in an article in the March 2008 Shambhala Sun magazine: “Most people know that six million Jews were killed during World War II, but most don’t know that nearly all of the Orthodox community perished. Among them were many who had kept alive an ancient tradition of meditation and mysticism reaching back to the Old Testament world of the prophets.”
While many thousands of Jews managed to escape from the Warsaw Ghetto before the war began, some chose to stay, including two men highlighted in Ackerman’s article; Henryk Goldzmit a pediatrician and author, and Kalonymous Kalman Shapira, the ghetto’s Hasidic rabbi.
“Shapira’s Hasidism includes transcendent meditation—training the imagination and channeling the emotions to achieve mystical visions. The ideal way, Shapira taught, was to ‘witness one’s thoughts to correct negative habits and character traits…’ He also preached ‘sensitization to holiness’, a process of discovering the holiness within oneself and the natural world.”
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[Source: Diane Ackerman - Shambhala Sun Magazine, March 2008]
