CUBA, N.M. — They participated in sweat-lodge ceremonies. They toured sites sacred to Native Americans in the Southwest. They visited the Walking Stick Foundation, run by a maverick rabbi.
They weren’t Jewish Renewal enthusiasts from the Bay Area — but average Israelis on a spiritual tour of New Mexico and Colorado.
After responding to an ad in an Israeli alternative spiritual publication called Different Life, the group of eight Israelis came together “On the Path of the Shaman” for two weeks this fall.
The youngest was Tzafi Netanelov, a 22-year-old just out of the Israeli army; the oldest, his mother, Miri Netanelov, a 55-year-old grandmother of three.
They learned that Jews and Native Americans have more in common than being ancient tribal people with a history of struggle for spiritual and cultural survival.
For example, both have earth-honoring rituals.
At Sukkot, Jews shake the lulav and etrog in the four directions, as well as earth and sky, to show that God is everywhere. The pattern is the same one used by the Indians. And in Kabbalah, the colors associated with east, west, north and south are the same colors and directions used by the Lakota Sioux in their medicine wheel.
For the participants, the relief of separating religion from state was palpable.
“In Israel, religion and state are one,” said 48-year-old Noga Spitzer, one of the participants. “We have a lot of religious impositions and it makes me angry that I’m told what to do and how to do it.”
Miri Netanelov agreed.
“The Orthodoxy’s very tough rules bother us,” she said. “I believe traveling this path here, I’ll return to my roots with more connection and understanding. I don’t want to leave Judaism and take up some other religion. This journey is to bring knowledge back and return to Israel more open and wise.”
While the seven women in the group had strong spiritual yearnings that compelled them to take this trip, Tzafi Netanelov, the only man, said he just wanted to meet Native Americans.
“Spiritually, I feel locked down,” he said. “I guess I’m opening up a bit on this trip, but I’m in no hurry.”
The tour is the brainchild of 44-year-old Dorit Rivlinrak, who teaches social work in Israel. She felt called to the Southwest three years ago when she had her first brush with the earth-honoring traditions of Indian spirituality.
“I realized in Israel there is a yearning, a longing among the people,” she said. “The remembrance of earth-keeping can help with the pain, anger and frustration that we feel daily.”
Rivlinrak said she hopes this will be the first of many expeditions to help bring Israelis closer to their land and its spirituality.
Tour participants started with a visit to the Garden of the Gods in Colorado, then went on to sacred sites in Taos and on the Laguna Reservation’s mountainous east flank where they saw the Ten Commandments carved on stone in ancient Hebrew characters.
They did sweat-lodge ceremonies with Dennis Miranda, a Mescalero Apache storyteller and sun dancer, and David Carson, a Choctaw pipe carrier and co-author of the best-selling “Medicine Cards: The Discovery of Power Through the Ways of Animals.”
The group ended up at the Walking Stick Foundation up near Cuba, N.M. The retreat is run by Rabbi Gershon Winkler, a former adherent to Orthodoxy who left city life in New York years ago.
Through Winkler — the only non-Native American teacher on the tour — they discovered a path that could lead them back to Judaism.
“Living in the wilderness for 17 years, I’ve focused extensively on land-based teaching, so when I met the Indians, we clicked immediately,” he said.
At Winkler’s home on 83 acres next to the San Miguel Mountains, the group settled down for some al fresco talmudic teaching. Alternating between Hebrew and English, Winkler talked about the importance of the land — respecting it, giving it rest, communing with it.
Winkler sang an ancient Hebrew chant that sounded remarkably like the keening of Native American prayers.
“The old songs are different from those chants written in the ghetto,” he said, referring to centuries-old melodies traditionally used in synagogues.
While he said he respects and honors his Native American colleagues, Winkler said he is leery of “New Age shamanism” and disdains non-Native Americans who perform Indian ceremonies.
“Yeah, I know how to do a sweat lodge, but I wouldn’t conduct one,” he said, adding that “I wouldn’t ask an Indian to do a bris or a Passover seder.”