From Tolkien to Torah

How science fiction and fantasy helped me discover Judaism

Today I may look like a typical frum Rabbi, but I actually come from a totally secular background. And by that I mean totally: no Shabbat, no holidays, no Bar Mitzvah, no mezuzah (my parents made a point of it).

My substitute religion, what filled the God-shaped hole in my soul, was to a large extent my love for science fiction and fantasy.

I still vividly remember the image of the star-studded sky that opened the movie Star Wars, and how that held for me the promise of distant hidden worlds I might one day discover. The same goes for the magical book in The Neverending Story and the mystical wardrobe in The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe.

A contributing element was that my name growing up wasn’t Nir but Neil—a fact that, in my young impressionable mind, forged a strong mental bond between me and famed astronaut Neil Armstrong, the first man on the moon. Like my distant namesake, I too wanted to be the first to land on some unexplored planet.

Outgrowing & Ingrowing

When I grew up, I abandoned these fantasies, but not my love for the otherworldly. My passion for fantasy was replaced by a fascination with mythology, and the role of science fiction was taken up by philosophy. At some point, I also discovered the work of C.G. Jung—the concepts of the collective unconscious and universal archetypes—and that helped bring home just how much those distant worlds existed within me, within us.

However, I was also heavily influenced by many materialistic philosophers like Richard Dawkins and Daniel Dennett. They convinced me there was nothing more to the universe than matter and the laws of physics governing it. Whatever “other worlds” existed, they were only “in here,” in our (brain-generated) consciousness, nowhere “out there” in some metaphysical realm.

Fortunately, at some point, I discovered thinkers who were both men of rigorous science and possessed a mystical outlook, like physicist David Bohm and biologist Rupert Sheldrake. How could these two things go together? Didn’t they know consciousness is just a byproduct of the physical brain?

The answer came in the form of a parable I came across:

Imagine a tribe living on some isolated island who have never encountered modern civilization. One day, as they’re walking on the beach, they stumble upon a small transistor radio that somehow fell there. They switch it on and hear people talking, singing, and playing music. They open the device but only see little chips and wires carefully put together. “A-ha,” they exclaim, “the chips and wires must be built in such a way that they generate all those sounds and voices!” Little do they know, however, that the device in their hands is but a receiver of invisible radio waves that are transmitted from someplace else—a distant world they have not yet discovered.

Modern materialistic scientists, the parable concludes, are like those tribesmen. Since consciousness appears in the brain, they reason, it must be generated by the brain. But there’s another possibility: that just like the radio, our brain is receiving “mind waves” from another level or dimension of reality. The mystical and mythological realms that are “in here” in our minds may very well also be somewhere “out there.”

Stuck In the Entry Hall

Sometime around this time, I had my first mystical experience, which brought me full circle to my childhood love of science fiction and fantasy.

It came in the form of a dream. I was in the university where I was spending most of my time, and all of a sudden noticed a strange elevator that wasn’t there in real life. Curious, I entered it with some other people, but to my surprise, the elevator didn’t just go down—it plummeted down for minutes on end. When it finally stopped, I came out dizzy only to find myself in an alternate, fantasy-like world! I saw green hills and blue skies, and could only imagine what strange places and beings were waiting to be discovered.

Unfortunately, the elevator was located within a small, fenced, and guarded compound, like a kind of train station. I approached the guards, asking to be taken out, but they said I couldn’t leave without a permit, which they weren’t able to provide.

I arrived at another world, but could get no farther than its entry hall.

I made the trip several more times in the dream, until I finally awoke… and ran to the bathroom to vomit, literally, from the elevator sickness I got in the dream!

I’ve had countless dreams in my life, before and after. But this one was different. It had a profound, transformative influence on me, and overnight changed my life radically. From being a staunch anti-mysticism materialist, I suddenly found myself siding with the mystics. Terms like “spirit,” “soul,” “hidden worlds,” and even “God” suddenly came alive for me. I could sense them just as I could the material world around me.

The circle was now complete: I became the world-discovering astronaut I had dreamt of becoming, except it wasn’t physical worlds I was discovering but spiritual ones, and instead of using a spaceship, I was journeying with my mind.

It didn’t happen at once, but gradually my exploration brought me to Judaism and the Torah. For as much as I was fascinated by the mystical and the mysterious, it was also important to me to remain grounded. I wanted to bring the light of the upper worlds here, not get lost in them there. And it was only in Judaism where I found a true balance between the mystical and the practical, the otherworldly and the this-worldly.

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Later I’m going to share how these explorations led me to focus a great deal of my studies on Genesis, and particularly its first two parashot, chapters 1-11.

In the meantime, you’re most welcome to check out my new course, Genesis: The Heart of Creation. It’s a 20-week journey into the depths of the Genesis creation stories using Jewish spirituality and psychology as guide. We’ll explore the many layers of these stories and how they can illuminate and enrich our lives.

Note: I’ll be teaching this course LIVE only once, and after that it’ll just be the recordings. So it’s not a chance to be missed.

Also, if you signup before Passover you even get a special early bird price—10% off.

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