More in ‘Buddhism’

Reading Israeli writer Yoel Hoffmann’s newly published autobiographical novel Curriculum Vitae (New Directions) caused me to think about the Two Easts, about Zen Buddhism and Hasidism. Hoffmann’s books, five out of nine of which have been translated from Hebrew into English, represent a polyglot’s synthesis: his commingling of these two mystical traditions begins with a delight in paradox, and darkens as both Zen and Hasidism concern themselves with life’s futility and human powerlessness.

In 1990, Rodger Kamenetz traveled to Tibet with a group of American Jews to meet the Dalai Lama. On that trip, which he describes in The Jew in the Lotus, he happened to learn that some Buddhists meditate within their dreams. He began to wonder how dreams had been understood in Jewish texts and found ...