Abstract
In this chapter the author utilizes the findings presented in this study to begin to address several issues in the research on the Jewish-Buddhist encounter, both in a German context and beyond. The conclusion ends by setting out the limits and challenges we face when applying lessons from the German-Jewish response to Buddhism beyond that narrow historical and geographical framework.
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Notes
- 1.
See, for example, this extremely interesting (and moving) account about meetings with German Jews, among them Nyanaponika (Siegmund Feniger), in Sri Lanka: Nathan Katz, “From JUBU to OJ,” in Beside Still Waters: Jews, Christians, and the Way of the Buddha, edited by Harold Kasimow et al. (Boston: Wisdom Publications, 2003), 31ff. The classical account of the JuBu phenomenon is: Roger Kamenetz, The Jew in the Lotus: A Poet’s Rediscovery of Jewish Identity in Buddhist India (New York: HarperCollins, 1994).
- 2.
Cf.: Sigalow, American JuBu: Jews, Buddhists, and Religious Change. See further: Judith Linzer, Torah and Dharma: Jewish Seekers in Eastern Religions (New Jersey: Jason Aronson, 1996).
- 3.
See Michael Löwy, Redemption and Utopia: Jewish Libertarian Thought in Central Europe. A Study in Elective Affinity (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1992), esp. chapter 2.
- 4.
Quoted in: Marion A. Kaplan, The Making of the Jewish Middle Class: Women, Family, and Identity in Imperial Germany (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991), 231.
- 5.
Jean-Paul Sartre, Anti-Semite and Jew, translated by George J. Becker (New York: Schocken and Grove Press, 1948), 89. I owe much to the insightful essay “Between Existentialism and Zionism: A Non-Philippic Credo” by Paul Mendes-Flohr, in: Paul Mendes-Flohr, Divided Passions: Jewish Intellectuals and the Experience of Modernity, 424–433.
- 6.
Jonathan Skolnik, Jewish Pasts, German Fictions: History, Memory, and Minority Culture in Germany, 1824–1955 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2014), 2f.
- 7.
Skolnik , Jewish Pasts, German Fictions, 4f.
- 8.
See Gabriele Shenar, “Bene Israel Transnational Space and the Aesthetics of Community Identity,” in Between Mumbai and Manila: Judaism in Asia since the Founding of the State of Israel, edited by Manfred Hutter (Bonn: Bonn University Press, 2013), 24.
- 9.
German Jewish historian Heinrich Graetz maintained that Jews arrived in China in 213. That claim stands on shaky ground. The exact date remains speculation. See Xin Xu, The Jews of Kaifeng, China: History, Culture, and Religion (Jersey City: Ktav Publishing House, 2003), 18f and 144.
- 10.
See Yulia Egorova, Jews and India : Perceptions and Image (London: Routledge, 2006). See also: M. Avrum Ehrlich (ed.), The Jewish-Chinese Nexus: A Meeting of Civilizations (London: Routledge, 2008).
- 11.
See for more on the influence on academia: Vanessa R. Sasson, “A Call for Jewish-Buddhist Studies,” The Journal of Indo-Judaic Studies 12 (2012), 7.
- 12.
See the multiple accounts in Harold Kasimow et al. (eds.), Beside Still Waters: Jews, Christians, and the Way of the Buddha (Boston: Wisdom Publications, 2003). The most popular publications, besides the aforementioned book by Kamenetz, are: Sylvia Boorstein, That’s Funny, You Don’t Look Buddhist: On Being a faithful Jew and a Passionate Buddhist (New York: HarperCollins, 1997). Alan Lew, One God Clapping: The Spiritual Path of a Zen Rabbi (Woodstock: Jewish Lights Publishing, 2001).
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Musch, S. (2019). Conclusion: Toward the Study of Jewish-Buddhist Relations. In: Jewish Encounters with Buddhism in German Culture. Palgrave Series in Asian German Studies. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-27469-6_6
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