Alexander Weinstein is the author of Children of the New World, a provocative collection of science fiction stories of the near-future. With the release of the book this Tuesday, Alexander is guest blogging for the Jewish Book Council all week as part of the Visiting Scribe series here on The ProsenPeople.
I was twenty-two years old, and finishing my BA in creative writing at Naropa University’s Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics, when I first met Reb Zalman.
The Kerouac School was a fantastic program, one which taught me to take risks in my writing and revealed the intersection between spirituality and literature. There was a free community class on The Search for Enlightenment, led by a man named Rabbi Zalman. The idea of learning from a rabbi was intimidating. For one — in spite of the fact that as a little boy I had accompanied my father to hear my grandfather sing as the cantor of his small synagogue — I was never a very religious person. And secondly, I worried that Reb Zalman would be judgmental, and sternly rabbinical. But, I was also young, searching for answers (in the best Talmudic tradition), and drawn to the topic. And so I went. Zalman was in his late seventies at the time, and surprisingly laid back in his black shirt and yarmulke, his face beaming with warmth. He welcomed us to the session, and then asked us to stand up and walk the space leisurely.
“As you walk, I want you to look for enlightenment,” he instructed. “Ask everyone you meet: ‘Are you Moksha?’” And so we walked around the room, and with every person we passed, we asked the same question: “Are you Moksha?”
“Moksha,” it turns out, was not a person, but rather a state of being. I experienced two specific emotions during this experience. The first was that I didn’t believe myself to be enlightened, nor to have the answer of enlightenment for those who came asking for moksha. More importantly, as I watched myself searching the faces, I realized I’d been searching for enlightenment since I was sixteen. I’d been fascinated by the idea of spiritual liberation and findingenlightenment. With every new person I asked about moksha, I understood that this was how I’d been living: I was looking everywhere for the secrets of spirituality, and constantly searching for the wise men and women who had a grasp on liberation. Little did I know, I was in a room with a man who was as close to enlightenment as I’d ever meet.
“So,” he asked us, putting his hands together and smiling, “Did you find it?”
After that first session, I enrolled in Rabbi Zalman’s Intro to Judaism class. It wasn’t my interest in the subject matter that compelled me — I simply wanted to be in the rabbi’s presence. He was a wisdom keeper in the truest sense of the word, and had prayed with all faiths. From Native American ceremonies to Hindu deities, from the great Buddhist masters to his encyclopedic knowledge of Judaism, he believed in a human spirituality. And it was through his belief in inter-spirituality that he opened the Jewish faith to me. He shared wisdom tales of the old rabbis, and was able to unpack the Old Testament, often agreeing with our critiques, knowing that it was through our questioning that we might better come to understand the sacred. Within his laughter, which rolled from him naturally, I began to understand what it meant to be holy, and in turn, I grew interested in the spiritual wealth of Judaism.
Reb Zalman wasn’t a creative writing teacher, but nearly two decades later, I recognize his humor within my writing. In my recent collection, Children of the New World, there’s a story entitled Moksha. The main character, Abe, is engaged in a spiritual search, and he travels to Nepal to find electronic enlightenment, which they have on the cheap in Kathmandu. 
He’s looking for an easy spiritual fix, and everywhere he goes, he’s hoping to find the secret. It was Zalman who first taught me the word moksha, and who helped me understand the humor in Abe’s (and my own) search. Like most humans, I still long for things, still wonder about enlightenment, and I work to cultivate peace, happiness, and love with those around me. In my stories, I attempt a similar feat: to write characters who have good hearts, who hurt in the ways we all do, who love as best they can, and who, in their struggles, are seeking to make things better. Whether it be enlightenment, happiness, or love, we are all searching for ways to improve our lives. And there’s a great cosmic humor in this search, one which Zalman understood as he watched us wandering that small room at Naropa so many years ago, fully enjoying the sacred dance we were reenacting.
Alexander Weinstein is the director of the Martha’s Vineyard Institute of Creative Writing. He is the recipient of a Sustainable Arts Foundation Award, and his stories have received the Lamar York, Gail Crump, and New Millennium Prizes. He is an associate professor of creative writing at Siena Heights University and leads fiction workshops in the United States and Europe.
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Alexander Weinstein is the author of Universal Love and Children of the New World, which was named a notable book of the year by The New York Times, NPR, and Electric Literature. He’s a recipient of a Sustainable Arts Foundation Award, and his stories have appeared in Best American Science Fiction & Fantasy and Best American Experimental Writing.
