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Jewish World Review Sept. 28, 1998 / 8 Tishrei, 5759
Naomi Geschwind
Peppered with wisdom that can only be gained by the relentless pursuit of
internal emotional and spiritual truth, Roots is the tale of how an Orthodox
day school graduate ended up becoming a rabbi while married to an ordained
Christian minister.
Although Firestone is no longer married to the minister—she is in fact
engaged to be married next April to a man who, like her, is a Jewish single
parent--just mentioning that she was granted smicha while in an
intermarriage may lead many readers to ask if the law of gravity will be
suspended next.
How can such a thing be? Roots gives the answer in almost excruciating
detail.
During a recent telephone interview Firestone referred to the early part of
her life as “the lost years.”
That was the time when she drifted from one alien and demanding spiritual
practice to the next while chastising herself for an inability to disconnect
completely from the material world.
Her lowest points included experiences both with other religions and with
her own. For example, a midwinter sojourn in rural Minnesota with a guru
called “Beloved” and his three wives indirectly led to a disastrous yachting
trip with a man whom she wryly describes as “as good at sailing as he was at
being a rabbi.”
Yet Firestone survived those events as well as brushes with drugs and other
dangers along the path that took her to Boulder, Colorado where she still
lives today.
“It is a very unusual situation in Boulder,” she says describing a Jewish
population that today numbers some 12,000 persons and includes such notables
as Schacter-Shlomi and the mystic Rabbi David Cooper.
“I moved over 20 years ago because I was fleeing my Yiddishkeit,” Firestone
explains citing the attraction of Boulder’s alternative healing community as
well as the various spiritual organizations and groups centered there.
Those were exactly the same things the friends she met there were seeking at
the same time. Then, at some point in the ‘80s, Firestone says that “I
turned around and they were all Jews! It was like this collective
phenomena.”
A collective phenomena to which her teacher, Schachter-Shalomi, or as she
calls him, “Reb Zalman” gave a form which has become Jewish renewal.
The holistic nature of Renewal was what brought Firestone all the way back
to her Jewish core, finally resolving the less than perfect relationship she
had with it even after accepting that it was there.
Those on spiritual journeys of their own will find Firestone’s book
inspiring because its emphasizes that reaching such a sense of completion
results only from accepting all portions of the self, however out of place
they may seem in the present.
Her introduction in fact opines that “divine force beckons each one of us
throughout our life to discover the fullness of our being, to arrive at our
own secret destiny.”
Firestone points out that her secret destiny has -- in part because of this
book which she felt “compelled” to write -- led to a better relationship with
her troubled family. When her siblings read the manuscript she says “There
was great tikkun, healing.”
Healing is central to Firestone’s mission both as a congregational rabbi and
as a therapist. She counsels other seekers to “have a practice of listening
inside to the ‘still small voice,’” and to revitalize their Jewish practice
by adopting “one mitzvah that you have a passion for.”
And she stills draws quite heavily upon all that body-oriented training in
massage, nutrition and the like. “It’s all connected,” says Firestone, “I
have been known to ask ‘What’s going on with your B vitamins?’ If you’re
not doing all that, it’s going to affect you in your spiritual
Taking the long-road home
RABBI TIRZAH FIRESTONE’S NEW BOOK,
With Roots In Heaven
(Dutton, 348 pp.) is
not the standard tale of disaffection from her birth religion and successful
return to it. Nor is it about a “feelgood” version of Judaism without a
basis in knowledge.
Naomi Geschwind is a Philadelphia-based writer.
