Rabbi Lawrence Kushner is a Reform rabbi fascinated with traditional Judaism. Rabbi Nehemia Polen is an Orthodox rabbi fascinated with liberal Judaism. The two became close friends, and that friendship turned into the collaboration “Filling Words with Light: Hasidic and Mystical Reflections on Jewish Prayer.”
Kushner, who befriended Polen in Boston, has lived in San Francisco for the past few years, as a scholar-in-residence at Congregation Emanu-El.
This is Kushner’s second collaborative effort in a row. His last book, “Cities of Refuge,” was written with renowned playwright David Mamet, also a good friend.
Polen was raised in a world so insular and Orthodox that he once told Kushner the story of meeting a man named George. The rabbi said the name over and over again because he had never met anyone with a non-Hebrew name, said Kushner.
For that matter, he’d probably never before met a rabbi named Larry, either.
The two, both living in Boston at the time, became fast friends, and in so doing were able to provide insights into worlds that were completely foreign to the other.
Kushner said as someone coming out of a classical Reform background, “I was fascinated by traditional Judaism and wanted to learn more about it as part of my own explorations on Jewish authenticity.”
The two became study partners, as well as “guides to one another’s different dimensions of Judaism,” according to Kushner.
Kushner was invited to contribute to an eight-volume set by Jewish Lights Publishing, called “My People’s Prayerbook,” in which different scholars share their commentaries on Judaism. He thought Polen could help, since he was writing about Jewish mysticism.
Polen agreed to do so. Their effort took between 10 and 12 years. They would dig up various pieces of Jewish liturgy, translate them and then come up with various commentaries on them.
When they were finished, they realized they were onto something. Their collaboration was not just commentary, but more a series of essays based on Chassidic insights and responses to Jewish liturgy.
“It was a stand-alone book of meditations and questions and observations,” said Kushner. They did some reorganizing and editing, and their book was the result.
“Judaism is a revealed tradition,” the rabbi explained. “Everything worth knowing has already been said, and revealed by God.” Because of this, “the novelty in a revealed tradition has to masquerade as commentary.”
Commentaries were methods of coming up with new ideas on the original text. For this book, the two rabbis looked through Chassidic texts and found commentaries they thought appropriate. Then, “we would pick ones they thought often searingly relevant to our contemporary situation.”
Kushner and Polen do not engage in debate in their book. Kushner said someone told him: “The reason you two can write a book together is because Polen is as much an Orthodox rabbi now as you are a Reform rabbi.”
Both of us, said Kushner, “think of ourselves as transdenominational.”
The collaboration was easy, too, Kushner said, because each rabbi is profoundly secure in his own beliefs.
“Your tolerance of other forms of religious expression other than your own is a precise barometer of your own security,” said Kushner, “and he’s very secure. He’s not afraid he’ll be threatened or challenged and neither am I. We both bring to our joint efforts a great deal of self-respect.”
“Filling Words With Light: Hasidic and Mystical Reflections on Jewish Prayer” by Lawrence Kushner and Nehemia Polen (154 pages, Jewish Lights Publishing, $21.99).