• Source: Jacob Raz

Jacob Raz (Hebrew: יעקב רז; born in 1944) is a professor emeritus in the Department of East Asian Studies at Tel Aviv University, a researcher of Japanese culture and a translator of Zen writings, a writer and a poet who writes, among other things, haiku poetry in Hebrew. Zen meditation teacher and Israeli social activist.
Raz defines himself as a Buddhist.




Biography


Jacob Raz was born in the south of Tel Aviv, and grew up in the city center, on King George Street. He is a member of a family that originates in Thessaloniki. His father was a theater director in Greece, and Jacob often went to the theater with his parents as a child, and that's where his love for the theater came from later. Jacob Raz studied at the 'Ahad Ha'am' elementary school and later studied the realism major at Urban High School A. Raz learned to play the piano starting at the age of six with private teachers and at the Israel Conservatory of Music in Tel Aviv, and played a lot of classical music and jazz until his late twenties. Raz was an apprentice in the scout movement in the tribe "Gosh Scofus Kishishim" in Tel Aviv, in the army he served in the Nahal Brigade and was a member of Kibbutz Hatzerim for several years.
He studied philosophy and theater for a bachelor's degree at Tel Aviv University. Most of the classes in the philosophy department were on Western philosophy, with the exception of two classes on Eastern philosophy and comparative philosophy, which were taught by Prof. Ben-Ami Sharpstein. At the same time, a seminar on classical Chinese philosophy was held in the department, which was given by Prof. Daniel Leslie from Australia. It was there that Raz was first exposed to issues that would later become the center of his life. So he began to study classical Chinese, and later, Japanese. During his academic studies, he became interested in theater, and began to direct. In the theater department, he was among the founders of a small group, the 'University Theatre', which produced plays that were also presented outside the university. The theater was a hobby for him then. The first play he directed was "Escorial" (1970) by the Belgian playwright (whose parents were Flemish) Michel de Galderud. The play was staged at the university and outside, and received good reviews. The second play he directed was "Michael Koolhaas", based on the novel of the same name by Heinrich von Kleist, adapted by Aliza Aliyon-Israeli.
In his academic studies, he continued to show a growing interest in Eastern cultures, encouraged by Prof. Ben-Ami Sharpstein. The interest he discovered was in Daoist philosophy, Buddhism - especially Zen, aesthetics, and literature of China and Japan. He wrote his master's thesis on the Irish poet W.B. Yeats and the interest he discovered in the East, focusing on the Japanese 'no' theater. In this work he combined research in aesthetics, theater and intercultural translation. The work was submitted in 1972 under the title "William Butler Yeats and the Japanese No Theater". At the same time, he began studying with the Japanese Zen teacher Kyodo Roshi, who lived in Israel for ten years, and was a student of Nakagawa Suen, one of the greatest Zen teachers of the twentieth century. Ya'akov Raz then also began studying the Japanese language, with the Inka Piateli.
In his earlier studies, Raz was mainly interested in Zen aesthetics and Japanese aesthetics, which differ to a large extent from Western concepts. Later he expanded his interest to the philosophies of Asia in general, and the Chinese and Japanese varieties in particular. The academic studies of Eastern thought and the practical training in meditation slowly led him to delve deeper into these subjects to the point that they became central to his academic pursuits, his worldview, and his lifestyle.
In 1972 Raz went to study in Japan on a scholarship from the Japanese Ministry of Education. He studied at Waseda University in Tokyo between 1972-1977. His doctoral thesis dealt with the connection between aesthetics and anthropology and his subject was the audience of the Japanese theater.
When Raz returned to Israel, he began teaching in the theater department at the Faculty of Arts at Tel Aviv University. Later, since his interest in the world of Asia was multidisciplinary - philosophy, anthropology, art and aesthetics - he moved to teach in the Department of East Asian Studies at the Hebrew University. At the same time he would travel from time to time to the East, and apart from his academic pursuits he stayed in monasteries and others for practical Zen training. After five years at the Hebrew University, he returned to Tel Aviv University, where he co-founded the Department of East Asian Studies, and where he still teaches today.
Apart from dealing with philosophy and aesthetics, Raz was interested in the figure of the other and the marginal cultures in Japanese culture and researched the subject with the tools of cultural research and anthropology. In the late 1980s he received a large research grant from the Toyota Foundation and headed a team of American-Japanese researchers who studied the subject. Later on, the research focused on the anthropological aspects of the Japanese crime world, the yakuza, which Raz studied for about five years. During these years he formed a close relationship with some of the heads of the organization in Tokyo. The research yielded three books: a book of a collection of studies on the figure of the other in Japanese culture, and two books on the Japanese crime organization, the yakuza: one book is research and the other is a fictional novel.
Since the nineties, Raz's main interest is Buddhism, both as a subject for research and as a possible way of life for the modern Western man. His main occupation is the Chinese and Japanese variety, from its beginnings to the present day. He also deals with the interaction of Buddhism and the West, in various fields such as psychology, society, social involvement, ecology, peacemaking and more. He teaches Buddhism, Buddhism and psychology, Buddhism and aesthetics, Japanese literature, and mutual images between the East and the West. Raz held many academic positions, and over the years he mentored and still mentors a large number of doctoral students in diverse subjects, especially in the fields of Buddhism.
In 2006, Raz was awarded the "Order of the Rising Sun" by the Japanese government, in recognition of his research work and his contribution to the spread of Japanese culture.
In 1978, Yoni, Raz's only son, was born, a child with special needs, who completely changed his life, and added a deep meaning to his understanding of the Buddhist teachings.




Research






= The Japanese theater - Japanese aesthetics

=
For several years, Raz studied various aspects of Japanese theater, and Japanese aesthetics in general. At first he was attracted by the contact between the Japanese theater and the Western world, especially the strong influence of the Japanese 'no' theater on the Irish poet and playwright W.B. Yates. Later he studied the special relationship between audience and actors in traditional Japanese theater, in a study that combined history, aesthetics and anthropology. In several articles he wrote, he dealt with various aspects of the aesthetics of Japanese theater and Japanese art in general, while reading Japanese classical writings. From the 11th to the 19th centuries.
He continued the study of Japanese aesthetics many years later by teaching and writing about what he called 'the beauty of the flawed' in Japanese culture.
"Audience and actors: a study of their relationship in traditional Japanese theater" (1983) The book is based on Raz's doctoral thesis, and is a historical-anthropological-aesthetic review of the place of the Japanese audience in the theatrical event. For the purpose of the research, Raz researched many historical documents from the tenth century to the present day, and in his conclusions he describes the Japanese audience as an active artist who takes part in the performance and not just observes it.




= Aspects of the other in Japanese culture

=
Continuing his research project, Raz turned to dealing with the figure of the other in Japanese culture. He headed a team of researchers from the United States and Japan who studied the subject from an interdisciplinary perspective. He published the collection of his research on the subject in a book published in Japan called Aspects of the Other in Japanese Culture (1992). The book was published in Japan in the English language (see list below). In these studies he dealt with characters and marginalized groups in Japanese culture, past and present, as well as literary works that dealt with the subject.
The studies included cults and groups that were perceived as other and in which there are marginal people, rituals that are related to the ambivalent figure of the other, the attraction-repulsion attitude of Japanese society and these marginal groups towards such figures, and more. One of these groups is "Goza" - a sect of blind shamanic hairdressers, with whom he also spent a lot of time. Another group were gangs of peddlers, spies, smugglers and vagabonds, who belonged to the yakuza, the groups of Japanese criminal organizations. These studies led him to a topic that occupied him for several years - the yakuza organization, the world of organized crime in Japan.




= Yakuza - the world of organized crime in Japan

=
Beginning in 1987, Raz began investigating the yakuza, the world of Japanese organized crime. He managed to get in touch with one of the big yakuza bosses in Tokyo, and for five years he traveled between Japan and Israel and held hundreds of interviews with Japanese mafia members, lived with them, and formed friendships with some of them. All these produced two books: an anthropological research book, "The Anthropology of the Yakuza: Japan as Seen from the Back'" [1996]. The book was published in Japanese. Raz is one of the only two researchers in the world who succeeded in close and prolonged fieldwork with the yakuza.
The other book is "Yakuza My Brother" (2000), which is a fictional novel based on Raz's encounter with the yakuza, and a friendship forged between him and one of them, Yuki Shimo. The man, who was a junior member of the yakuza, disappeared one day, and Raz went on a search for him. The novel tells the story of the ten-year search after Yuki, who had in the meantime risen to prominence in the yakuza organization, fell and disappeared. The book was published in Hebrew (and was a bestseller), as well as in Japanese, Russian and English. It will be published soon in German.




= Buddhism

=
Beginning in the early 1990s, Raz concentrated his writing and teaching on Buddhism, especially the Chinese and Japanese varieties. It deals with interpretations and dialogue with texts of classical Buddhism - Indian, Chinese and Japanese - as well as with aspects of the dialogue between Asian Buddhism and the Western world. Among the doctoral studies he directs, many deal with the dialogue between Buddhism and psychology, Buddhism and social engagement, conflict resolution, and peace activism. This field of activity has produced a large number of articles and books, among them:
Zen Buddhism - Philosophy and Aesthetics (2006). A book in which Raz reviews various issues in history, thought, poetry and Zen-Buddhist aesthetics. The book was a great success.
The Rise and Disappearance of Conditional Emergence (2012). An article in which Raz examines one of the central ideas of Buddhism - the idea of conditioned existence - and offers to look at it in a new-old light. Raz claims that this idea itself, like any other phenomenon according to the Buddhist point of view, is transitory, and that the culmination of Buddhist training is the elimination of one's own ideas.
[Kill the Buddha" - Quietism in Action and Quietism as Action in Zen Buddhist Thought and Practice 2010"] is an article in which Raz examines Zen's approaches to the apparent contrast between sitting quietly while withdrawing from life, and active action in the world, and offers a unified approach according to which There is really no contradiction between the two.
One of the interesting points of contact between Buddhism and the Western world was Martin Buber's many years of dialogue with Buddhism, starting in the 1920s - in his book "I and You" - until his famous article on "Hasidism and Zen" in the 1950s. In 2011, Raz held a seminar on Buber and Buddhism, the main focus of which was a comparative discussion between Dōgen, a 13th century Japanese Zen monk and one of Japan's leading thinkers, and Buber's thought. Following this, he wrote an article called The Dew Drop and the Peach Sprout: Buber, Buddhism and the Mysticism of the Concrete, [2013] which appeared in the new Hebrew translation of "I and You" (translator: Avraham Fleshman, published by Mossad Bialik). In the article, Raz reviews the various modes of Buberian dialogue with Buddhism, and creates a fictional dialogue between Dogan and Buber, recognizing in both of them what he calls two characteristics: the possibility of concrete mysticism, and the foundations of an ecological philosophy.




= Madness and spirit

=
Another topic that Raz has been researching for several years in preparation for writing a book is 'madness and spirit', or as he calls it 'mad Buddhism'. Phenomena of 'crazy' behavior are known in the history of all major religions, including Buddhism. The Buddhist tradition is replete with many stories of Tibetan, Chinese and Japanese teachers whose practice was strange to the point of madness. One of the great teachers, Ikkyo, who lived in the fifteenth century, called himself 'Mad Cloud', and while serving as the head of one of the largest orders in Japan, he spent time in taverns, brothels, wore sackcloth, lived in a simple cabin, and wrote, besides deep philosophical poetry, also poetry Daring erotic until his last days at an extreme age. It can be assumed that a large part of these teachers would be diagnosed nowadays as psychiatric cases. This launch between 'getting out of mind', and the possibility of experiencing the world at different levels of consciousness than the usual, has fascinated Raz for a long time. He gave seminars on the subject and deals with translations of poetry and thoughts of some of these 'crazy' teachers.
One of the results of Raz's many years of dealing with Buddhism in its practical and theoretical aspects is a called So I Heard (2013). This is a book of personal thoughts on Buddhism, based on conversations that Raz has had with meditation groups since 2010. The book was published in August 2013 by Moden.




Translations


Along with Yoel Hoffman, Raz is considered the best translator of haiku poetry into Hebrew. Among his translations are beautiful literature ("Kokoro" and "Volcano"), classic and modern tanka and haiku poetry ("Salad Anniversary", "The Narrow Road to Oko"), Zen stories and Zen poetry. In his various books he combines many translations from Chinese and Japanese thought.
"Crazy Conversations - Zen Acts" is a collection of Chinese and Japanese Zen stories. In the book, Raz conducts a dialogue with the stories through his own comments and reactions. The book was a bestseller.
"A man looking for an ox" - a translation of a Chinese Zen text with articles, together with Dan Daur. The book is based on a series of paintings accompanied by poems published in China in the 12th century, from the brush of the Zen teacher Guo-en.
"The Narrow Road to Oko" is a travel diary of Matsuo Bashō, one of the greatest Japanese haiku poets. The book is a translation of a nine-month diary that Basho kept at the end of the 17th century. Raz added comments and comments.




= Other books

=
"Japanese Mythology" - a selection of Japanese mythology stories in Hebrew.
"The Return to Tokyo" - is a personal, partly autobiographical travel diary that describes an actual journey and also a series of encounters with various characters in Japan, some real and some fictitious. The axis of the book is a journey he made in 1989 following Basho, exactly three hundred years after Basho's well-known journey, made in 1689.
"So I Heard - Zen Notes" is a book of poetry written by Yaakov Raz. It is described by its author as "a journey of observation, records, and conversations with life and with Buddhism." Among the poems, which weave the Buddhist world of the soul into Raz's life story (for example, treatment of his son with Down syndrome), famous koans, Japanese calligraphy and rabbinic wisdom are interspersed. The book came out in 2013 and was received positively.




Theater directing


In 1970 Raz founded the "University Theater" with a group of friends, an experimental group that produced several plays. Raz translated, designed and directed the first play, "Escorial" by Michel de Galderud.
In 1972 he directed a play based on a story by Heinrich von Kleist, "Michael Kohlhaas", adapted by Aliza Alion-Israeli.
In 1978, together with Danny Horowitz, he wrote and directed the play "A Terrible Deed" at the Khan Theater in Jerusalem. This was the first show that Raz directed in the repertory theater. The show is based on an ancient Kabbalistic story, which tells about Rabbi Yosef Della Reina, who lived in Safed, and decided to set out with his disciples to free the Messiah from his chains.
In 1980, the Khan Theater in Jerusalem staged the play "Rashomon". He translated and adapted the story "In the Woods" by Rinosuke Akutagawa, and was also based on the film "Record" by Akira Kurosawa. The rehearsal process for the play was accompanied by meditation practiced by the actors. The stage was designed as an arena stage, the audience sat on the four sides and each character was embodied by two people, to show the duality of seeing reality. The show was a success and ran for three seasons.
In 1981 he directed the play "The Balcony" by Jean Genet at the Khan Theater.
In 1982 he directed at the Haifa Theater "Yosl'a Golem", a play by Danny Horowitz based on the legend of the Golem of Prague.
In 1984, he directed "The Mistress and the Peddler" at the Haifa Theater, based on the play "Face of Death", by Ada Amichal Yavin, inspired by SY Agnon's story "The Mistress and the Peddler". It is a story about a Jewish peddler who happens upon the house of a woman living alone in the forest This woman seduces men, seduces them and eventually eats them. This is a common folk tale in Europe, and Agnon added new content to the legend, when he put the pagan woman in front of the innocent Jew, who almost fell into the trap.
In 1985 he directed "Ido and Inam" at the Khan Theater based on a story of the same name by S. Y. Agnon. Raz himself adapted the story into a play and also designed the set.
In 1986, he directed the play "The Stories of Yehezkel Fairman", by Danny Horowitz, about the character and life of Yosef Haim Brenner at the Khan Theater.
Apart from these, Raz directed a number of other experimental plays, among them "One page from the Talmud" based on the Talmudic passage "The Furnace of Aknai" (Baba Metzia, net., 2). The play, the result of experimental work with theater students, was written and directed together with Danny Horowitz.
He also worked for a year with a group of actors-puppeteers, at the end of which a puppet show called "The Neighborhood Children" was produced, which shows ordinary children the world of children with special needs. The show was accompanied by an activity by the children. The play ran for a long period of time in hundreds of schools, and was accompanied by research (by Norit Perry) on the change in the attitude of ordinary children to other children after watching the play and participating in the performance.




Public activity


For many years, Raz has been active in the community, and sees social activity as just as important as academic activity, and as complementary to it: following the birth of his son Yoni, he was one of the founders of the association "14 - Down syndrome children" in 1981. The association helps parents whose children have Down syndrome, both in the field of information and with practical help. Later, Raz also served as chairman of Akim Tel Aviv.
In 2000 he was a partner in establishing the 'Marg' association to promote a multicultural society in Israel, and he has been serving as its chairman for several years. The association is engaged in many programs that are concerned with shaping the possibility of a life partnership between Jews and Arabs, and also in other areas of challenging cultural encounter, such as between Israelis and veterans and Ethiopians, and more. The association works in cooperation with the Jewish-Arab center 'Beit Hagafen' in Haifa.
In 2000, Yaakov Raz and the clinical psychologist Nachi Alon founded the Psycho-Dharma Center, a school of Buddhist psychology, which today operates on the Cypress campus in Tel Aviv. The center was established following seminars given by Raz and Alon on psychology and Buddhism. The two decided to bring together the Buddhist world and the Western world, learning as living Torah in the practical world. The school first engaged in the training of therapists, mainly psychologists, in the basics of Buddhist teachings, in order to apply them in their professional world. Later, the work was expanded to other diverse population groups and professions.
Raz leads meditation groups. He is a member of a meditation group, which he guides and accompanies with dharma talks, which discuss issues from everyday life. I collected some of these conversations in a book called 'So I Heard - Zen Notes', published in 2013 by Moden.
Raz is one of the founding team of the "Uru - Home of the Majority" association, the initiative of businessman Roni Doak, in an attempt to formulate a new social agenda and influence the majority of citizens through civil and non-political activities through agreed issues.
Raz is also a key activist in the "Beehive" - a platform for change on sustainability in ecology in collaboration with the Heschel Center and the Porter Center at Tel Aviv University. Setting standards for environmental communities and alternative money.
In the last months of 2013 he was among the founders and activists of the 'Leadership Network for Social Political Engagement' together with other activists - Iris Dotan-Katz, Nachi Alon, Steven Polder and others, with the aim of creating a different kind of dialogue and activity between rival groups that are not in dialogue and cooperation, within society the Israeli, and between Israeli and Arab groups.




Books


1972 William Butler Yeats and the Japanese "No" Theater. Tel Aviv: Tel Aviv University.
1983 Audience and actors: A study of their interaction in the Japanese traditional theater, Leiden: E.J. Brill.
1992 Aspects of Otherness in Japanese Culture, Tokyo: Institute for the study of Languages and Cultures of Asia and Africa.
1995 Crazy Conversations - Acts of Zen. Tel Aviv: Moden.
1996 Man looking for bull. Translated, commented and added their own by Jacob Raz and Dan Daur. Ben Shemen: Moden.
1996 Yakuza no bunka jinruigaku: “Ura” kara mita nihon [The Anthropology of Yakuza: Japan as Seen from its Backside], Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten Publishers, 1996 (Japanese).
2000 Japanese Mythology. Tel Aviv: Tel Aviv Books.
2000 Tokyo round trip. Tel Aviv: Moden.
2004 Yakuza My Brother: A Personal Journey into the Japanese Mafia. Ben Shemen: Moden. (Also published in Japanese, 2007, and Russian, 2011).
2006 The Narrow Road to Uko, by Matsuo Basho, translation and essays. Tel Aviv: Hargol.
2006 Zen Buddhism - Philosophy and Aesthetics. Tel Aviv, Broadcasting University, Ministry of Defense - the publishing house.
2013 So I Heard - Zen Lists. Dharma talks. Moden publishing house.
2017 towards what. Haiku poems. Missing Moon books.




A selection of translations from Japanese


1979 in the grove - by Ryunosuke Akutagawa. Literary supplement 'Masha', newspaper 'Lamerhav'.
1983 Kokoro - by Natsuma Sousaki. Jerusalem: Crown Books.
1984 Volcano - by Shusaku Ando, Tel Aviv: Zamora Beitan.
1994 Salad Anniversary - by Machi Tawara, translation and afterword. Tel Aviv: Poalim Library.
2006 The Narrow Road to Oko - by Matsuo Basho. Translation and articles. Tel Aviv: Hargol Publishing.
2023 Fire on the Hill - by Tanda Santoka, poetry and diary excerpts, Tel Aviv: Missing Moon Books.




External links



Jacob Raz catalogue at the National Library of Israel
Jacob Raz Portal at The Nation Library of Israel
Kobi Meidan Interview with Prof. Jacob Raz - Israeli Channel 1 on YouTube
Shadmi, Yoni (10 June 2010). "My Brother Jacob" (in Hebrew). Makor Rishon. Retrieved 18 October 2024.




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