I’ve found it curious that many of the pioneers of Western Buddhism – those who brought Buddhism to the West and helped popularise it – are Jewish. Frank Descher details this phenomenon in his 2017 essay ‘Jewish Converts to Buddhism and the Phenomenon of “Jewish Buddhists” (“JuBus”) in the United States, Germany and Israel’. Rodger Kamenetz, the author of The Jew in the Lotus, notes, “A third of all Western Buddhist leaders come from Jewish roots.” The term ‘JuBu’ (or ‘JewBu’) arose precisely because of how many Jews adopted Buddhism during its rise in the West.
Buddhism owes its growth to the West (partly) to Jewish figures such as Bernie Glassman, Jack Kornfield, Joseph Goldstein, Sharon Salzberg, Jon Kabat-Zinn, Lama Surya Das (born Jeffrey Miller), Bhikkhu Bodhi (born Jeffrey Block) and – to a lesser extent, since he promoted Eastern spirituality more generally – Ram Dass (born Richard Alpert).
Why does Western Buddhism have such a significant Jewish contribution? I was trying to consider some plausible reasons why, and some stand out.
Jewish Secularism
One is that it is common for Western Jews to be highly secular, not identifying as practising Jews and, instead, often identifying as atheists. Ram Dass, for example, found no spirituality in the religion, describing it as “hollow” (which he felt his Bar Mitzvah to be: “What I mostly remember about my bar mitzvah was that it was an empty ritual. It was flat. Absolutely flat. There was a disappointing hollowness to the moment. There was nothing, nothing, nothing in it for my heart.”). He quipped, “I’m only Jewish on my parents’ side.”
However, eschewing Judaism does not mean that one, therefore, lacks any spiritual (or even religious) impulses. For the same reason that many non-Jewish atheists become attracted to Buddhism, so too do many Jews. Many of the Jewish pioneers of Western Buddhism were American and not very religious (or religious at all). In contrast, in the 60s and 70s, when Western Buddhism took off, the US was predominantly made up of self-identified and practising Christians (which is still true today). So perhaps, demographically, it was just more likely that Jews, including those who did the ‘hippie trail’ back in the 60s and 70s, would be more prone to adopt and promote Buddhism when they discovered it.
On a Reddit thread about this very question, the top comment also offers this kind of explanation:
When I was taking an intro to Hebrew class the Rabbi actually addressed this. According to the Rabbi, in the 60s and 70s there was a shift towards secularism in Reform Synagogues. Many members and potential members looked East for their spiritual needs.
After the Holocaust, the Jewish faith, understandably, took a massive hit. This is encapsulated in the 2008 film God on Trial, in which we see a group of Jewish prisoners in Auschwitz create a rabbinical court to pass judgement on God for allowing the Holocaust to happen. Following the loss of faith and connection to Judaism after World War II, many Jews were still looking for some form of spirituality. Many of the Jewish pioneers of Western Buddhism had the means to travel to the East, thus exposing them to Buddhism and meditation, wherein they found a fulfilling sense of spirituality.
Links Between Judaism and Buddhism
On the other hand, many non-Jewish people who travelled to the East, like the Jewish pioneers of Western Buddhism, embraced Eastern spirituality instead of the Christian beliefs they grew up with. Moreover, many would’ve also had the academic, class, and financial background shared by the Jewish figures of Western Buddhism, meaning opportunities existed to shift towards a career as a teacher of meditation and Buddhism. (This is not ignore the non-Jewish popularisers of Western Buddhism, for instance, such as Alan Watts and Sangharakshita; but it still needs to be explained why Jews, who make up less than 3% of the US population, were overrepresented in the founding of Western Buddhism.) There might be something inherent to Jewishness and Judaism, therefore, that makes it compatible with Buddhism.
While many of the Jewish figures of Western Buddhism were not practising Jews and only identified as ethnically Jewish, they would’ve still grown up in a Jewish household (sometimes quite a religious one), and some still found value in Judaism. In an article for Embodied Philosophy, Peter Aronson highlights some similarities between Jewish and Buddhist beliefs and practices (some of these similarities are between Buddhism and Kabbalah, the mystical tradition of Judaism). Nevertheless, in an article for Aish, Sara Yoheved Rigler emphasises that Judaism and Buddhism are diametrically opposed to each other in their teachings, too. A key difference is that Buddhism is non-theistic, whereas Judaism is not (God takes centre stage). Thus, the links between the two religions may offer only quite a limited explanation as to why Western Buddhism has such strong Jewish roots.
Inquisitiveness in Judaism and Jewish Culture
Inquisitiveness and intellectual curiosity have long been part of Judaism and Jewishness. These cultural values emphasise questioning, debate, and the pursuit of wisdom and knowledge. The value placed on education, studiousness, and intellectualism has been offered as one reason for Jewish success (e.g. 22% of all Nobel Prize winners have been Jewish, despite making up only 0.2% of the global population). The emphasis on achievement in Jewish culture can, however, be a source of anxiety and emotional distress for Jews, as it was for Ram Dass.
Through inquisitiveness, many Jews are encouraged to challenge their religious beliefs and study other ones, which can help explain both the high rates of secularism and atheism among ethnic Jews and their embracing of other religious/spiritual beliefs and practices. Indeed, many Jews do not consider their Judaism to be in conflict with other religious or spiritual beliefs. Eastern teachings can be seen to complement Jewish ones. (Nonetheless, as Rigler explains in her article, there are sometimes fundamental conflicts between Judaism and an Eastern tradition like Buddhism.)
The emphasis on curiosity and success in Jewish culture could help explain why many Jewish leaders of Western Buddhism had strong academic backgrounds. Many of them gained PhDs before their conversion to Buddhism. They would’ve had an interest in exploring other spiritual traditions during their travels, and this, alongside their academic training, equipped them for the study of other belief systems. Coming from a middle-class or wealthy background also gave them the means to travel and stay for extended periods of time in the East.
However, this doesn’t explain why many Jewish leaders of Western Buddhism were attracted to Buddhism specifically. Of course, some Jewish Western teachers of spirituality helped promote other spiritual beliefs: Ram Dass is an example; he identified as a “HinJew”, but there’s also Krishna Das (born Jeffrey Kagler), who brought Hindu spirituality to the West, and the ‘HinJew’ scene is also a much larger phenomenon. But is there perhaps some deeper reason why people with Jewish roots found a home in Buddhism?
Psychology, Psychotherapy, and the Need for Healing
Many of the Jewish leaders of Western Buddhism studied and taught psychology and psychotherapy. Jack Kornfield gained his PhD in psychology from Saybrook University. Sylvia Boorstein – who, along with Kornfield, Goldstein, Salzberg, and James Baraz, founded the Spirit Rock Meditation Center – gained her PhD in psychology from Saybrook University, too. Mark Epstein, a psychotherapist who often writes about the intersection between Buddhism and psychotherapy, is a Harvard graduate and currently a clinical assistant professor of psychiatry at New York University School of Medicine. He has practised insight (vipassana) meditation since 1974. And Ram Dass gained his PhD in psychology from Stanford and then became a clinical psychology professor at Harvard; he likewise consistently practised, promoted, and taught meditation.
Many of the key figures in psychology and psychotherapy have been Jewish: Sigmund Freud, Abraham Maslow, Viktor Frankl, Alfred Adler, Irvin Yalom, John Gottman, Erich Fromm, Anna Freud, Bruno Bettelheim, Daniel Kahneman, and Francine Shapiro. In an article for Psychology Today, the therapist Jason N. Linder (who is Jewish himself) explains why this has been the case:
Freud’s development of psychoanalysis was influenced by the Jewish intellectual tradition of questioning, interpreting, and exploring the human psyche. Jewish scholars had studied human behavior, ethics, and morality, which are key themes in both religious and secular Jewish texts….
One aspect of Jewish culture key to psychotherapy is the concept of *tikkun olam* (“repairing the world”), which emphasizes healing, both individually and collectively. This idea parallels the goals of psychotherapy, which seeks to heal and improve mental and relational well-being. The emphasis on self-reflection, moral responsibility, and pursuing knowledge in Jewish culture also aligns with principles of psychotherapy that encourage us to explore our inner lives and make conscious efforts to improve our mental health and relationships….
These thinkers brought their own perspectives to the field, often influenced by their Jewish heritage and experiences.
Alfred Adler’s emphasis on social interest and community reflects the Jewish value of communal responsibility, while Viktor Frankl’s logotherapy was deeply influenced by his experiences as a Holocaust survivor and his reflections on human resilience and the “search for meaning.” These contributions have had a lasting impact on psychotherapy….
The Jewish tradition of *Midrash*, which involves interpreting and finding deeper meanings in religious texts, relates to interpretive work in psychotherapy, where clients and therapists explore the deeper meanings behind thoughts, behaviors, and experiences. This interpretive approach is central to many forms of psychotherapy, particularly psychoanalysis and psychodynamic therapy.
Similar to psychology and psychotherapy, Buddhism emphasises understanding the mind in order to unburden oneself from suffering. Buddhism and psychology have long been linked. Indeed, the Buddha’s teachings can be referred to as ‘Buddhist psychology’, and many Western psychotherapeutic approaches incorporate practices from Buddhist meditation, including mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR, developed by Goldstein), mindfulness-based cognitive therapy (MBCT), acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT), compassion-focused therapy (CFT), and dialectical behaviour therapy (DBT). These modalities often use principles like mindfulness and compassion to aid psychological healing.
I would argue that a crucial reason why Western Buddhism has had so many Jewish leaders is because of the pre-existing propensity of Jews to become attracted to psychology and psychotherapy. Linder has underscored some reasons why Judaism and Jewish culture can explain this. I think the point about processing, making sense of, and overcoming suffering deserves emphasis. Many Jews experience mental health issues as a result of generational trauma (this may be one reason why the stereotype of the anxious, neurotic Jew exists, although this stereotype fails to capture the diversity and complexity of Jewish mental suffering).
Inherited trauma from the Holocaust and little spiritual sustenance to deal with it created fertile ground for the embracing of an alternative (and therapeutic) spiritual belief system. Buddhism provided precisely that. Indeed, Jack Kornfield has talked about growing up with a violent and abusive father, Mendel Rubin, who was a Holocaust survivor. Sharon Salzberg’s father, also a Holocaust survivor, abandoned the family when she was a child, and shortly after returning, he tried to kill himself, leading to psychiatric hospitalisation – never to be seen again.
The Jewish children of parents who suffered persecution during World War II often had to suffer the aftereffects of their parents’ unresolved trauma. This story repeats for all ethnicities who have been persecuted and victimised. We see this, for example, in the deeply unsettling New Zealand film Once Were Warriors (1990), which depicts the Hekes family bearing the brunt of Jake’s, the father’s, violent temper. The impoverishment, domestic abuse, violence, and alcoholism experienced by the Maori family in the film don’t occur in a vacuum; they are tied to the history of colonialism in the country.
It makes sense that many Jews would be attracted to belief systems that focus on the causes of, and solutions to, human suffering. Buddhism is precisely this kind of belief system. The Four Noble Truths of Buddhism are all about suffering: the fact of it, its cause, its solution, and how to achieve its solution. Judaism and the experience of Jews throughout history are, likewise, marked by suffering. The Jewish holiday of Passover is a remembrance of suffering – of the enslavement experienced by ancient Israelites in Egypt, and the persecution of Jews has taken many forms throughout history: scapegoating, discrimination, pogroms, expulsions, forced conversions, religious persecutions, ghettoisation, and ethnic cleansing. While the Jewish figures discussed here did not endure these harms directly, they were still exposed to those ripple effects, to some extent. Buddhism is well-equipped to tackle the suffering that becomes a focal point of the lives of many Jewish people.
Buddhism promotes a wise and well-supported understanding of mental suffering – in a way that aligns well with Western psychology and psychotherapy. Since many of the Jewish figures central to Western Buddhism were trained in psychology and psychotherapy, disciplines that also seek to address human suffering, it makes sense that Western Buddhism would have such strong Jewish roots. There’s a saying in academia that ‘research is me-search’: what one studies is personal; it is tied to the desire for greater self-understanding. This may apply in the case of Western Jewish Buddhists. The reason many Jews have become so attracted to Buddhism could relate to the need to understand their own suffering and find an effective way to heal from it, but, as noted earlier, the appeal of Buddhism is that it’s also a spiritual form of healing. Furthermore, it is non-theistic in nature: the Buddha was not divine; he was human. Buddhism can be secularised. Given the high rates of secularism and atheism in the Jewish community, Buddhism can be easily accommodated into the worldview of many Jews.
The factors underlying the Jewish roots of Western Buddhism are fascinating, and I think there’s definitely a lot more room for discussion as to which factors are relevant, as well as which ones have more explanatory weight than others. By considering these factors, Jewish Buddhists (or JewBus) – or simply Jews deeply interested in Buddhism and meditation – may discover how their identity, culture, and inner experience shape the worldview and practices they come to view as most helpful in their lives.
