INSIPID LUTES NEED NOT APPLY: THE HOLIDAYS

I have always considered myself a seeker. The path to enlightenment is a jagged thicket of possibilities. For a while I dabbled in Sufi mysticism. Later I joined an ashram near Seattle where all the female acolytes were expected to offer themselves to the residing guru, a hairy former drummer for the short-lived country western band The Devil You Know. When I finished graduate school I had a lot of time on my hands and I started taking classes on Zen Buddhism at the local community college. That led me to a trip to Japan where I stayed for over ten months retracing the Tokaido Road and meditating of the transitory nature of our lives.

By far, the most serenity and the greatest wisdom that I have found to date was in the Kabbalistic speculations of the ecstatic Los Angeles rabbi Malkizedek Obah Rivli. I have, what you might call, your typical history of drug use – I was particularly fond of Peyote buttons, crushed into a gummy paste and smoked through a hookah – but I have never experienced a high so blissfully profound as the one I get humming a Hasidic niggun with Reb Malki.

The ecstatic Los Angeles Rabbi Malkizedek Obah Rivli, 2011

Coupled with the intense study of Midrash and the Zohar, the mesmeric singing of Eastern European Jewish melodies have elevated me to an entirely new plane of existence. What I love about Reb Malki’s approach is that he is completely uninterested in the religious taboos typically associated with the major faiths. He somehow finds in the Scripture justification for all the pleasures one associates with contemporary life. He is extremely articulate, charming, charismatic and cute and I simply love being around him.

Happy Hanukka!!