Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi and Sufism

One of the more unusual Western Sufis of the 1970s was Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi (1924-2014, pictured), a Hassidic rabbi who became close to the successor of Sam Lewis (1896-1971), Moineddin Jablonski (1942-2001), and was initiated into the Sufi Order by Pir Vilayat Khan (1928-2004). "Reb Zalman" was more rabbi than Sufi, but he was a very universalist rabbi, and during the height of the New Age he taught much the same population in California as did the Western Sufis of the time.

A new book on Reb Zalman has just been published by Gregory Blann: When Oceans Merge: The Contemporary Sufi and Hasidic Teachings of Pir Vilayat Khan and Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi (Rhineback, NY: Adam Kadmon, 2019).

Blann is not a professional historian, but rather a Western Sufi, a follower of Shaykh Nur/Lex Hixon (1941-95) and his Turkish shaykh, Muzaffer Ozak (1916-85). He became a Halveti shaykh, and wrote two very useful books on Muzaffer Ozak, Lifting the Boundaries: Muzaffer Efendi and the Transmission of Sufism to the West (2005) and The Garden of Mystic Love: Sufism and the Turkish Tradition (2005). Before following Hixon and Muzaffer, he followed Vilayat Khan, and his new book brings comparable light to bear on another stage of the history of Western Sufism that he observed.

Blann's book is divided into two sections, one on Vilayat Khan (in which Reb Zalman makes some appearances) and one on Reb Zalman. These are followed by some appendices, one containing "Kabbalistic meditations" by Vilayat Khan and one containing wazifas by Reb Zalman.

A useful complement to Blann's When Oceans Merge is Reb Zalman's own autobiography, My Life in Jewish Renewal: A Memoir (Lanham, Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield, 2012).

My thanks to BH for drawing When Oceans Merge to my attention.