Everything Is God: The Radical Path of Nondual Judaism

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Everything Is God: The Radical Path of Nondual Judaism

by Jay Michaelson (Goodreads Author)

3.84 of 5 stars 3.84 · rating details · 31 ratings · 7 reviews

This exploration of the radical, yet ancient, idea that everything and everyone is God will transform how you understand your life and the nature of religion itself. While God is conventionally viewed as an entity separate from us, there are some Jews—Kabbalists, Hasidim, and their modern-day heirs—who assert that God is not separate from us at all. In this nondual view, e...more

Paperback, 304 pages

Published October 13th 2009 by Trumpeter (first published 2009)

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Sep 21, 2012 Linda rated it 2 of 5 stars

There's a lot of good stuff in here, but one line seems to sum up the author's approach, "If we only perform rituals that give us a certain feeling, then we are mistaking a certain feeling for God."

Isn't that what Jay Michaelson does? It seems to me that he models his observance level, not on Hasidic masters like the Baal Shem Tov or the Lubavitcher Rebbe, but on writers like Martin Buber and Abraham Joshua Heschel (beautiful writers and profound intellects) who made compromises with the modern...more

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Jan 08, 2013 Greg Nigh rated it 4 of 5 stars

Writing about non-duality is akin to giving a speech about the power of silence. To do either well requires a rare blend of eloquence, experience, imagination and patience. Ivan Illich managed to speak about the power of silence in just this way, which is transcribed and published in his excellent book In the Mirror of the Past: Lec. Michaelson writes about non-duality with equal deft.

"Everything is God" beautifully spans a distance between scholarship and personal journey. Michaelson writes fro...more Writing about non-duality is akin to giving a speech about the power of silence. To do either well requires a rare blend of eloquence, experience, imagination and patience. Ivan Illich managed to speak about the power of silence in just this way, which is transcribed and published in his excellent book In the Mirror of the Past: Lec. Michaelson writes about non-duality with equal deft.

"Everything is God" beautifully spans a distance between scholarship and personal journey. Michaelson writes from a point of view that triangulates an academic institution, a temple and a meditation mat. Based only on his ability to articulate the unspeakable ground of being known to non-dualists as God, Michaelson's book is a great accomplishment. In a world where passionate allegiances to various personal Gods are dividing cultures and peddling absolutes, non-dualism is a welcome reinterpretation of every religious tradition.

But there is much more to this book. Michaelson acknowledges that a non-dual God is difficult to embrace, both intellectually and emotionally. The Ground of All Being That Stands Outside of Time and Space is not the kind of lover that you bring home to meet the parents, or that inspires poetry and passion. This is where Judaism comes in. A "practicing non-dualist" must confront the paradox of a human desire to connect with the Other, and the understanding that Other is ultimately a ruse, an illusion.

For the non-dualist, the personal God found in religions is simply a useful tool, something to hang one's devotional hat on. Michaelson's use of Judaism in this respect has nothing to do with Judaism representing any absolute Truth. It is a matter of going to the closet and wearing the shirt that's there. He is Jewish and grew up in Jewish culture. He knows it's traditions. Why not use it as a way of channeling the passion and awe that awareness of God brings?

He adopts those Jewish traditions, though, with lightness and even humor:

[M]y own religious path has man traditional elements in it. I still keep Shabbat in the halachic way, still am so shomer kashrut that I won't eat most foods in a nonkosher restaurant. But I see these ritual practices as acts of love. I abstain from bacon not because I am afraid of punishment, not because I think it unhealthy, and not because it is part of the folkways of my people. I do it because I love God, and when you love someone, you do stupid things for them. There is nothing essentially sensible about bringing your lover flowers. So I don't mind that avoiding bacon makes no sense either.

Michaelson has given voice to nondualism as a system of thought, and has brought that ineffable realm into the muck and clang of life, into our dualist perceptions, even into the temples, chapels, synagogues and other centers of daily religious pomp and circumstance. None of those religious centers is special or closer to Truth. Nonduality is an equal opportunity transformative awareness. The specifics of the journey toward that awareness are simply matters of preference.

I gave this book 4 stars instead of 5 because he spends a significant portion of the book reviewing the various "brands" of nondualistic thought and practice, from Buddhist to Hindu to American Beat. However, I think that one of the most unique and internally consistent explications of a nondualistic metaphysics is laid out in A Course in Miracles. It is unfortunate that it is not included in this or other books that review nondualistic writings and thought. While the Christian-based language of The Course likely puts off many, the text has virtually nothing to do with Christianity, and in fact would be considered quite heretical to most practicing Christians (or at least to those who could understand it at all).

I suspect it is not included in Michaelson's review because he is not familiar with the text. If so, then its exclusion is doubly unfortunate.

I highly recommend "Everything Is God" to anyone with an interest in nondualistic thought. Those who are not Jewish should not be put off by the "Judaism" in the title. I have only a passing understanding of Judaism, personally, and found Michaelson's review of Jewish thought to be fascinating and very informative. The reader comes away from this text with a deeper understanding of both the theory and the practice of nondualism, and I think more importantly with a new understanding of God, whatever that term may mean to the reader.(less)

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Jun 16, 2012 Michael Doyle rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: judaica

This is such a great and a "meh" book at the same time. The nondual religious perspective will be no surprise to anyone with a background in the practice or study of eastern traditions like Buddhism or Hinduism. I have that background, and I ended up a Jew-by-Choice because at one point my inner sense of a somewhat intercessionary Deity no longer jibed with the God-absent (or at least, intercessionary God-absent) nondual perspective.

From my point of view--which I still hold to be a nondual view,...more This is such a great and a "meh" book at the same time. The nondual religious perspective will be no surprise to anyone with a background in the practice or study of eastern traditions like Buddhism or Hinduism. I have that background, and I ended up a Jew-by-Choice because at one point my inner sense of a somewhat intercessionary Deity no longer jibed with the God-absent (or at least, intercessionary God-absent) nondual perspective.

From my point of view--which I still hold to be a nondual view, it's entirely possible for everything in the universe--including us--to be part of God. That's the classic nondual perspective that the universe is, basically God's mind and everything and every being is just a solidifying of a small piece God's own conscious awareness. Meaning, we're not the discrete individuals we think we are, but we really all are "echad"--one.

Radical nondualist perspectives like Michaelson's and the more esoteric teachings of Buddhism and Hindusim take that to mean we are absent of any reality, merely the product of external causes and knee-jerk behavioral programming from interacting with other essentially unreal beings. Michaelson finds this a comfort--if everything is God and we don't really exist, then there's no one really to cause or experience pain, and ultimately no one to blame. This can cause a well of compassion for our other, fellow beings to arise, as well as a sense of love for those beings and for God, of which we are all a part.

Michaelson is pretty strident about this. Much like the rock-solid surety about "the way things are" that atheists often profess, Michaelson lays down the law--this is who we are and the way the universe works, and that is that. I always find attitudes like that suspect, and that kind of surety totally undermines Michaelson's arguments for me.

For me, if God is infinite and we are part of God, not only can't we be sure about the nature of God--we can't be sure about the nature of us, either. My sense is that we may be only concretized thoughts of God's, but that we exist that way for a reason, not by accident. There is a thing (a pleasure? a sense of companionship?) experienced by God from reflecting a bit of God-stuff into creating us and letting us think we're separate. It's an easy out to say "we should be good to each other because, how sad, we don't really exist," like Michaelson does. But the other side of that coin is the compassion and love that can flow from supposing that we actually exist for a reason--and maybe we don't know as much as we think we do.

In terms of an easy out, Michaelson's own words betray him here. He labels dual-perspective Judaism (i.e. humans have some reality and God is more than a mere force of nature)a "patronizing allegorization of myth and narrative" (p 143), says that he doesn't "like rules, morals, and oughts," and "can't will [himself] to be compassionate or patient" (p 157.) So much of this book to me seems like Michaelson rationalizing his way around his own personality flaws.

He also misreads Torah while justifying the nondual emotional "ecstasy" that he believes Jewish tradition may really mean by "avodah sh'balev", or service of the heart(p 173). At the time of the writing of the Torah, humans considered thought to reside in the heart, not emotions. This phrase really means intellectual devotion, not emotional devotion, but Michaelson is unaware.

Overall, this is a good introduction to the non-dual perspective. But it's also a closed-minded, overly sure-of-itself take on both Judaism and the nature of God and reality.

My sense is, if given the chance to rewrite this book 10 or 20 years from now, when Michaelson has a better handle on his lack of natural compassion and love for his fellow humans--and perhaps works on those issues in more ways than just meditation retreats, he might write it a bit less self-servingly.(less)

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Mar 11, 2012 Chavi rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: jewish

Early in the book, the author poses a startling question: If everything is God, why be Jewish?

A good question, once you’ve accepted the premise of nonduality, which is:

What we call God is simply a name for Existence. If you strip away the layers, at the core of everything you will find Him, It, You, God. Name it what you will, it is simply Being. It is Oneness. It cannot be defined, or delineated, and it definitely cannot be attributed desires, expectations, and moods.

The God we’ve come to know...more

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Feb 15, 2010 Jsavett1 rated it 5 of 5 stars

One of the most amazing books about nondual/neo-Hasidic judiasm I've ever read. If you know nothing about this ancient strain of Jewish thought, this book will blow your mind; if you're familiar with these ideas, it is a wonderfully written summation of the non-dualist philosophy and how it can inform, revolutionize, and imbue traditional Jewish practice.

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Dec 20, 2012 Peter G rated it 4 of 5 stars

Ayn od milvado.

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Oct 02, 2009 Itai rated it 4 of 5 stars

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Review of the book appeared in the Forward, Erev Sukkot, 2 October 2009. The book comes out in pb on 13 Oct (Amazon.com, $12.78)

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About Jay Michaelson

Jay Michaelson is the author of Everything is God: The Radical Path of Nondual Judaism (Shambhala), as well as two other books and over 200 articles. A columnist for the Forward, Huffington Post, and Tikkun, Michaelson was recently named to the Forward 50 list of the most influential Jewish leaders in America. He is also executive director of Nehirim, a national nonprofit organization of GLBT Jews...more

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God vs. Gay?: The Religious Case for Equality

God in Your Body: Kabbalah, Mindfulness and Embodied Spiritual Practice

Az Yashir Moshe: A Book of Songs and Blessings

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