Faith & the Summer of Love

October 1967: The "Death of Hippie" celebration. We wheeled an empty, open coffin down San Francisco's Haight Street and thousands of people threw symbolic items into it -- beads, swatches of long hair, patchouli-scented incense, tabs of LSD.

For me, the burial of the media-created concept of "hippie" -- exactly 40 years ago -- signaled the end of the "Summer of Love" and the beginning of a new phase: looking for ways to recreate, without drugs, those intense, life-changing experiences I'd had.

During the next few years, I, like many others -- including lots of Jews -- embarked on a search. I breathed deeply at yoga ashrams, meditated at Buddhist retreats and lived in communities where I hoped to be spiritually nourished. If these places had at their core a faith that was alien to me, it didn't matter. What mattered was whether or not they brought me closer to what I was looking for: wonder, mystery, connection....

For me, the itch for mystery and connection never waned. At 67, I find myself still yearning for a real-life place of stories and myths that reveal life's hidden depths; a place intent on repairing the world and repairing ourselves; a place of music and healing, of connection to others and to something larger than ourselves. A place where I would feel my soul resonate, where I could experience a current version -- a Jewish version -- of that individual and communal joy I remember from 40 years ago.

Warning: this article contains an intelligent, in-depth analysis of this individual's approach to his evolving Jewish faith. If you're one of those people who bristles at all things religious or spiritual, this isn't the article for you. But if you're on your own quest, or if, like me, you're simply interested in good descriptions of other people's mystery quests, then you might just be interested in this lovely piece.