Mordechai Gafni is Back

Here's his site.

Marc who?

Marc Gafni has been a beloved and sometimes controversial spiritual teacher on the cutting edge for many years. He has inspired many, comforted the afflicted, and afflicted the comfortable. He reflects back to people their most gorgeous selves, shares teachings of love, pricks egos, and calls others, by his very being, to truth and integrity. For some Marc is a teacher, for others a spiritual friend, for still others a spiritual artist, and for still others a revolutionary catalyst of social change and evolution.

That's Mordechai's version. Oh, Mordechai is his Hebrew name.

Here's a recent example of his teachings:

Being on the inside means not on the inside of your sexual partner, for that is limited to the masculine sexual experience – rather it is about being on the inside of the experience itself. Yearning is of the essence of the sexual. So much so that it is often thought by poets and psychologists to be more pleasurable and intense than the fulfillment itself. Interconnectivity is nowhere more clearly manifested than in the sexual drive. We are born with an urge to merge. Finally it is in the sexual where - in its ideal expression- we are most fully present to each other. Every gesture, fragrance, sigh and whisper ripples through us as we listen deeply to the erotic instruction that well up from the depth of our soul’s body.

As my only real connection with him in any form of a working relationship was his role in trying to promote Techiyah in English, an Israeli political party 1978-1992, I cannot comment with authority on any other phase of his life, this despite reliable knowledge and information. (Gee, I'm beginning to write like him).

But if you want to know, I'll quote from an interview with him that he has up at his site:-

Gafni’s main vulnerability was his counter-cultural and often bohemian lifestyle. Throughout his career, Gafni had several love affairs outside of marriage. “I tried to push the boundaries of what was possible. I experimented,” Gafni admits. “I sometimes chose a moment of love over other loyalties. Sometimes I was right, sometimes dead wrong. Where I was wrong, I’ve tried to ask forgiveness.”

During the period following his divorce from his third wife, his lovers included a few women who had worked with him in his community, taught with him, or served on the board of his organization. “I was working literally 24/7, teaching and traveling around the clock,” he says. “It seemed natural to be involved with people who were part of my circle. At the time, in my hubris, disguised even from myself, it felt to me that there wasn’t a moment free for anything like normal dating or personal life.”

He says he kept these relationships private, not because they seemed inappropriate or “wrong,” but because, like many people in his position, he preferred not to have his personal life the subject of gossip or attack.

But I can say that he has a typo here:-

I have been asked whether I had, or have, Ordination from Reb Zalman Schachter. I retain in my records a document that Reb Zalman wrote for me several years ago. The document is not an Ordination, but rather an [???] of my previous Ordination from the Orthodox institution mentioned above. When I returned that Ordination in 2004, Reb Zalman’s letter, which was based on my first Ordination, ceased to be valid. I have never held, nor do I seek, independent Ordination from Reb Zalman.

An...what? Approbation? Authorization?


Kippah tip to a critic, Failed Messiah.

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Kippah = head-covering; yarmulka.