Spiritual Journey Home: Eastern Mysticism to the Western Wall »

NATHAN KATZ is professor of Religious Studies and founding chair of the department of The Study of Spirituality at Florida International University. He is the author of fifteen books about Buddhism, Hinduism and Judaism and more than one hundred scholarly and popular articles. He has won four Fulbright awards for research and teaching in South Asia, where he has lived for more than seven years. He has been named a "Master Teacher" by the Florida Humanities Council an unprecedented eleven times, and in 1994 his classroom excellence was recognized with a Florida State University System Teaching Incentive Program award. In 1999 he won the President's Award for Achievement and Excellence, the most prestigious distinction awarded by FIU. His book, Who Are the Jews of India?, was a Finalist for the 2000 National Jewish Book Award in Sephardic Studies. He was awarded the 2004 Vak Devi Saraswati Award for bringing the study of Indian Jewish communities into the framework of Indology.

Dr. Katz first met the Dalai Lama in New Delhi in 1973. He was a researcher at the Library of Tibetan Works and Archives in Dharamsala during 1978, during which time he studied with the Dalai Lama, who was gracious enough to write an introduction for Katz's first book, Buddhist and Western Philosophy, published in 1981. The two renewed their acquaintance on a number of occasions, most substantially in 1990 when Dr. Katz was part of an eight-person delegation of Jewish scholars and rabbis who journeyed to Dharamsala to attempt to answer the Dalai Lama's question about the "Jewish secret" for preserving a religion and a culture while living in Diaspora. This extraordinary meeting was chronicled in thebest-seller, The Jew in the Lotus, in which Katz figures prominently. He also made a cameo appearance in the film of the same title.

Dr. Katz has been interviewed on numerous television and radio programs, including PBS's "Religion and Ethics Newsweekly," NBC's "Today," and NPR's "All Things Considered." He is featured in a 5-part video series, "Reconnecting West and East: Judaism and Eastern Religions."

Spiritual Journey Home is a unique memoir by Professor Nathan Katz, of Florida International University, portraying his intense lifelong spiritual odyssey in search of religious enlightenment. Beginning as an ambivalent Conservative Jewish youth in 1950s Camden, New Jersey, and ending as a confirmed Orthodox Jew in Miami Beach, Katz devoted his professional life to study of the traditions of the mysterious East, including India, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Tibet, and Afghanistan, learning rich and closely held secrets of thought and meditation at the feet of Oriental masters and mentors like the Dalai Lama as well as from living among the Jews of Cochin, India.

It is indeed a long, strange trip, as the reader weaves back and forth between the holy places of the subcontinent and the academic halls of the United States, where Katz also studied and then taught, a narrative of soaring deeds and searing disappointments. The reader enters into a world of mysticism in the throes of rationality that few besides Katz have been privileged to access. Told with an infectious wit and in a forthright style, Spiritual Journey Home is a profound and unpretentious exertion in religious passion with many unexpected turns, none of which could be more unexpected than the author's ultimate return to Judaism.

Shattering preconceived notions, eliciting novel parallels, and bridging false dichotomies as history unfolds around him, Katz finds his place in the Torah because of-and not despite-his vast experience. This is a very personal story, but one that will be immediately familiar, regardless of background, to every seeker of truth.

Publishers Weekly

In this remarkable narrative, author and religious studies professor Katz chronicles his seemingly contradictory achievement of expertise on Eastern religions and his membership in Miami Beach's Orthodox Jewish community, where he attends synagogue every morning and is a pious practitioner of Judaism. He started his journey in Camden, N.J., growing up in a "lukewarm" Conservative Jewish family and learning to love jazz. Fascinated by India as a youngster, Katz made his first trip there at the age of 20. On numerous subsequent occasions, he extensively visited India, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Tibet, Afghanistan and Israel, learning from gurus, swamis, rabbis, imams, and becoming friendly with the Dalai Lama. He taught at Naropa University in Boulder, Colo., Williams College, the University of South Florida and Florida International University, where he is now chairman of religious studies. Along the way, Katz embraced Jewish mysticism and Jewish spirituality, while maintaining his connection to Hinduism and Buddhism. How he achieved and maintains these varied associations is explained in this fascinating memoir. (May 4)

Davenen in Rishikess: a prologue

1 The light of childhood: Camden, New Jersey 3

2 Meeting the Dakini: Kathmandu 11

3 The sixties spiritual salad bar: Philadelphia 19

4 Mullas in the city, Sufis in the mountains: Kabul 28

5 Visualizing the Buddha: Gangtok, Sikkim 33

6 Becoming a Hindu in Benares 41

7 A concentration camp in tea country: Sri Lanka 49

8 The Lama and the Rebbe: Boulder, Colorado 63

9 White bread land: Williamstown, Massachusetts 70

10 Terrorism up (too) close: Sri Lanka 77

11 Pukkha Cochinites: Cochin 89

12 The Dalai Lama's "Jewish secret": Dharamsala 99

13 A black hat affair: New York 117

14 Life as a mindful OJ: Jerusalem and Miami Beach 121

Glossary 139