Images of Chassidic rabbis and kabbalistic diagrams were beamed throughout the darkened room. A gray-bearded man — tallit draped around his shoulders — mounted the altar and blew the shofar and shook the lulav to the sound of drums and Hebrew chanting. A woman in a flowing skirt and glittering shawl spun around in circles.
Welcome to the Techno Cosmic Mass, a monthly “service” that has been called a “religious rave” and combines elements of Christian ritual with trance music and technology. Each service incorporates elements of another spiritual tradition. At this past Sunday’s gathering in downtown Oakland’s Sweets Ballroom, about 200 worshippers learned about Kabbalah and the Jewish festival of Sukkot.
According to its Web site — www.technocosmicmass.org — the Techno Cosmic Mass is about art as meditation and community building. “The process of creating ritual and sharing it with our community takes us deeper into our souls and keeps us in touch with the presence of the divine in one another and ourselves.”
The ritual is the brainchild of Matthew Fox, a former Catholic priest who was excommunicated for his unorthodox views; for example, unlike the Catholic Church, which holds the doctrine that people are born in original sin, Fox believes people are born in blessing. He now identifies as an Episcopal priest and is the founder and president of the University of Creation Spirituality in Oakland.
Deducing that many of those attracted to the rave scene were seeking some kind of spiritual connection, Fox became a proponent of prayer through ecstatic dancing, which came through on Sunday night.
While such rituals as the Eucharist and the Kiddush were incorporated into the evening, the main point of it seemed to be — as at a rave — for people to experience the divine through freeing their bodies and thereby freeing themselves.
Worshippers at the Techno Cosmic Mass were not only the young. On hand Sunday were some members of Berkeley’s Chochmat HaLev community, though Avram Davis, one of the Jewish meditation center’s spiritual leaders, emphasized that they were there as individuals, and Chochmat itself was not involved in the event in any way.
The ballroom, which has hosted bands in the past, was turned into a religious space with one altar in the center and several others in the corners. One altar held a copy of the Talmud. Another held a chart showing the tree of life and Sephirot. A sukkah stood in one corner, though it was not truly a sukkah since it was indoors and was decorated with plastic leaves.
“We are here to enter mystery together,” said Fox, in the way of welcome. “We invite everyone to participate, no matter what their ancestral tradition.”
Davis gave a brief introduction of Kabbalah, joking that it was impossible to do so in the five minutes he was allotted. “Kabbalah is about trying to see with the eyes of the heart and hearing with the ears of the heart.”
An Israeli folk dance morphed into tribal rhythms. Cyrise Beatty, a vocalist at Chochmat HaLev, led a chant in Hebrew. Live oud (Arabic lute) and drumming were followed by the pounding beats of trance music.
In the segment called “Via Negativa,” Eva Way Konigsberg, wearing a “Shechina’s Lover” T-shirt, asked worshippers to feel the emotions of being in exile.
Fox spoke of the Holocaust, the pogroms, the expulsions, the proselytizing Jews as a people have endured. “We grieve for the unmentionable suffering,” he said.
As per Fox’s instructions, worshippers prostrated themselves, foreheads touching the floor, to grieve out loud. “Listen to yourself and to your neighbor,” Fox instructed. “Your grief is shared.”
Participants joined in a Hebrew chant of healing as well as a communion ritual, which is a regular part of the Techno Cosmic Mass. Davis distanced himself from the latter, saying that while rituals of the different faiths are each to be respected, they should not be mixed together.
After Fox led communion, Davis retreated to the corner with the sukkah, and told those who wished to gather around to do so while he blessed the challah.
Davis later remarked that he chose to participate in the Mass because “in these troubled times of war and rumors of war, it behooves all men and women of good heart to be supportive of all rituals for peace unless it contradicts Jewish law.”
Furthermore, Davis said a large number of unaffiliated Jews and Israelis were known to come to the monthly events, and he felt it was a good way to reach them with something Jewish.
Non-Jews seemed to appreciate the Jewish aspects of the evening. Anya Burckhard of Berkeley, who was at her first Mass said she liked the “perspective on the oneness of humanity.”
Interestingly, the communion sparked a lively post-Mass e-mail discussion among some members of the Chochmat community who were there. Though Chochmat is known for its openness, some people thought this was going a bit too far.
One Jewish woman left because she felt so uncomfortable. David Miller of Oakland, another Chochmat community member who attended, wasn’t offended, but “I have a very rich Jewish tradition in my life already, and the juxtaposition of a Mass with Jewish/kabbalistic elements, while beautiful and well-intentioned, felt contrived and did not reach me on an emotional level.”
Arthur Ash of Berkeley, a member of the Chochmat Band who played cello and oud at the Mass, expressed frustration at some of the more negative reactions: “All of this ‘too Christian’ stuff comes, I feel, from a very fearful and insular kind of place, that, I’m sad to say, seems to be very deeply ingrained in our tradition and particularly its recent history…We should be embracing possibility and not just acting out our acculturation as an exiled, persecuted minority culture.”