Where American Jews Stand in the Great Tangle of Yoga

“Should Religious Jews Practice Yoga?” So asks Menachem Wecker in the title of his deliberately provocative essay in Mosaic. His answer is that they definitely should not—because, however diluted it may be in its present-day American form, yoga in its essence remains a form of idolatry.

In what follows, rather than debating directly with Wecker, I’ll offer a corrective to his assumptions and analysis that reflects both my own extensive research into parallels (and dissimilarities) between Jewish and Hindu religious philosophy and my personal experience as a rabbi encountering contemporary Hinduism in India. Much of what I’ll have to say here is adapted for the occasion from my recently published book, Rabbi on the Ganges.

To begin with, and perhaps most important, yoga is the very opposite of a single, easily categorized phenomenon. Rather, it is a broad Hindu tradition of ethics, meditation, science, and worship.