"My Family Origins and Early Education" - Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi (April 27, 2010)

On April 27th, 2010, Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi (1924-2014) was interviewed in the prayer room of his home library by documentary filmmaker Llewellyn Smith.
Transcript:
I’m now about 86 years old, and I was born in 1924 in a small town... not so small town, in what is known as Galicia in the Ukraine now. It was then part of Poland. And, on both sides, there were Hasidic families. And in those days, you didn't go and meet someone at a date. Someone, a shadkhan, someone came and suggested a match, a 'matchmaker.' And when there were two families that honored each other, that were considering each other 'the real McCoy,' then that was how they got the couple together.
So my grandfather, on my father's side, was a religious functionary. And if I tell you what he did, it would sound funny. 'What is so special about him? He slaughtered animals for kosher.' But in our tradition, that meant that you wanted to have someone who is really very meticulous, pious, and compassionate to the animals. And there is an amazing story about an animal that wanted to be slaughtered for kosher [that] came [to be slaughtered] through him. So he was that.
On my grandmother's side, from father, they also came from a family of people who did this kind of work. They were just one step below rabbi - shoḥet. And my name, Schachter, comes from that [word], meaning someone [whose] family did that [work], like Taylor would come from a tailor. So, Schachter is for someone who was a shoḥet - then he was 'schechting.'
On the other side, there were people who were Hasidim of the Belzer court, the same way as my grandfather, on my father's side. And they had some real estate and did some textile work, and so on and so forth. So they brought these two families together. Neither my mother, nor my father were that much interested in staying in that [small town] environment.
And so they went to Austria, to Vienna. And my dad had some dowry money, which he invested in soap, and in candles, figuring 'light and cleanliness' for people, was a good thing for a person to do. He 'lost his shirt' during the first [stock market] crash that happened in 1928.
So I grew up in Austria, in Vienna, and that was at that time, very Socialist. And, gradually, it turned more and more to the 'right.' And I got interested in Zionism, because of the hope that we would have a Homeland of our own. And I went around collecting money for the Jewish National Fund, you know, little boxes [for] donations that people would give, because I felt that if we would have land, which we didn't have in Europe and other places, then we'd be able to grow things and raise animals, and so on and so forth. That was a great dream.
And I also went to a liberal school. They called it a gymnasium. It's not a 'gymnasium,' but gymnasium meant that you learned Hebrew, Latin - you know, all these languages, and a lot of liberal arts subjects. And Hebrew was the language that they offered there. And that was very much a 'leftist' Zionist school, as far as the culture was concerned.
In the afternoon, on the other hand, I went to a yeshiva, where we were studying Talmud, and these people were on the other end of the spectrum. So here you have the contradictions built into me - that on the one hand, I want to have the most intense religion that I can get to without fanaticism. This is very important, because most of the time, when you go to intense spirituality and religion, you get a lot of fanaticism. So I want to get that without fanaticism. And, on the other hand, I want to be an early adapter of technology, and the cosmology of the world. So I'm interested in quantum mechanics and stuff of that sort.
Suggested Reading:
Zalman Schachter-Shalomi with Edward Hoffman. My Life in Jewish Renewal: A Memoir. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2012: 7-17.
This video was filmed by Llewellyn Smith, edited by Alec Arshavsky and Netanel Miles-Yépez, and produced by the Yesod Foundation
(www.yesodfoundation.org)
in association with
Blue Spark Collaborative
(www.bluesparkcollaborative.com)
, (C) 2022.