By Leyna Krow, Assistant Editor, JTNews
Ted Falcon has always been fascinated by human consciousness. Before he was a rabbi, before he was a psychologist, before he was a leader of spiritual retreats and a writer of books, Falcon was an aspiring hypnotist.
“In junior high school, I used to take the street car by myself to downtown Cleveland, where there was a dinky magic shop, and I would go down there and hang out,” Falcon recalled during a recent interview with JTNews. “I read on hypnosis and I was drawn to it. I practiced hypnotizing my friends…and I remember doing two things. One of which I’m proud of, one of which I’m not. One was I would stick pins through their hands because you could do anesthesia. And the other thing, the thing I’m proud of, was I had a friend who got migraine headaches and I could relieve the migraine headaches through hypnosis.”
While Falcon’s enthusiasm for hypnosis eventually faded, his interest in the complex workings of the mind did not. Today, Falcon is the senior rabbi of Bet Alef Meditative Synagogue in Bellevue (of which he is also the founder), where he combines the traditional Jewish liturgy with meditative practices to evoke a deeper spiritual experience for both himself and his congregants.
This month marks the 40th anniversary of Falcon’s ordination. To celebrate the event, Falcon is hosting a series of story nights in which he recounts the events and revelations that have led him on his own spiritual path, from his days as an aspiring magician in Ohio to leading services in an abandoned synagogue in Los Angeles to partnering with Christian and Muslim leaders in Seattle.
The lecture series is titled “Stories of a Maverick Rabbi,” but could just as easily be called “Stories of an Accidental Rabbi.” Although today he is an established member of the Jewish clergy, for a long time Falcon had trouble seeing himself as a spiritual leader.
From the very beginning of his career, Falcon was on a different path from his peers. It was not the desire to lead a congregation, but rather an aspiration to teach Jewish philosophy that first led Falcon to rabbinical school in Cincinnati, Ohio.
He said he had never had any intention of becoming a a pulpit rabbi. But then, in his third year at rabbinical school, Falcon accepted a student pulpit position in an unlikely location: Hattiesburg, Mississippi.
“I started there in ‘65, which was the year of voter registration, so things were very hot down there. I went because I had never experienced the South and I thought, ‘I talk about civil rights, I should get down there,’” Falcon said.
The congregation had no other clergy and they treated Falcon not as a student, but as a full-time rabbi. Although he had gone to Mississippi out of an interest in civil rights, he left with an enthusiasm for the pulpit he had not previously known.
“It was through that experience that, for the first time, I could see myself being a rabbi,” Falcon said.
Still, Falcon wasn’t ready to jump headlong into the rabbinate. Instead, following rabbinical school, Falcon had intentions of getting his doctorate in social psychology from the University of Michigan. But then a friend introduced him to the senior rabbi from a progressive, social-action–oriented congregation in Los Angeles who was looking for an assistant. The rabbi persuaded Falcon to join him in California.
It was the first time Falcon had lived on the West Coast, and a number of the anecdotes he plans to share at the next “Stories of a Maverick Rabbi” event, which will take place July 17 at the Center for Spiritual Living, revolve around that culture shock. For example, he tells of one instance when, while leading a confirmation class, he got into a discussion with his students about marijuana.
“I don’t know how we got on the topic, but we got on the topic of drugs. I’d never seen a drug. I mean, Ohio, it just was different. So I gave them the speech that I had been taught, about how marijuana leads to heroin and this whole thing. And after I finished, you could hear the beat, beat, and then they started howling. But they were very kindly laughing and they said, ‘Rabbi, you don’t know what you’re talking about.’”
While in L.A., Falcon received his Ph.D. in Psychology from the California School of Professional Psychology. In 1975, he set up a private practice and also began teaching classes on spiritual approaches to the Torah. It was during this time that Falcon found his own interest in combining Judaism with more mystical spiritual practices taking shape. And slowly but surely, others with similar interests found their way to Falcon.
“Tradition says that when the teacher is ready, the students appear. And in a lot of ways that’s true,” he noted.
One such person was Rabbi Bernie King. A former peer of Falcon’s from Hebrew Union College, King sought Falcon out during a particularly rough patch in his personal life.
“I went through a couple of major changes in my life. I found all of my conventional teachings in crises did not work for me; they didn’t touch my soul,” King said. “I had known of Ted’s work so I went to see him and told him I wanted to enter onto that spiritual path. He guided me through my very first awakenings.”
Today, King, who is the rabbi emeritus at Congregation Shir Ha-Ma’alot in Irvine, Calif., says he has remained friends with Falcon and is continually impressed by Falcon’s commitment to his work.
“I’ve not found among many so called ‘spiritual teachers’ the kind of integrity he evidences,” King said.
King wasn’t the only spiritual seeker drawn to Falcon.
Not long after receiving his doctorate, Falcon invited a few friends and students to take part in High Holy Day services at his home, and, using a prayer book he had written himself, he found himself with an impromptu congregation.
“We did that and someone said, ‘When do we meet next?’ So we started meeting at somebody’s house. First it was one Friday night a month, then two Friday nights a month,” Falcon said.
Falcon’s informal Friday night services quickly grew in popularity.
“It was getting too big for a house. I pledged everybody to secrecy. Really. Because I wasn’t sure that what I was doing was okay,” he said.
What exactly was Falcon doing that he feared might cause such a scandal among L.A.‘s Jewish community?
“We were chanting Hebrew, but in a meditative way, and, you know, people didn’t do that then,” he explained. “Like when I started teaching Jewish meditation in L.A., nobody was doing that. There was a lot of resistance, a lot of suspicion. Now there are several schools and certification programs that teach it, but back then, there really wasn’t anyone else doing this.”
To accommodate the size of his accidental congregation, Falcon rented an abandoned synagogue north of Los Angeles.
“We’d always used church space because I never wanted to have my own building,” Falcon said. “But we found an abandoned synagogue in Van Nuys. The area had turned totally Hispanic and the previous congregation had fled south. So we decided we could use the space. And for a while we had the largest Friday night congregation in all of Los Angeles. The synagogue was made where the social hall was behind the sanctuary and there were folding walls in between. We had to open the wall, to make room for everyone.”
Despite his popularity as a rabbi, by the early ‘90s, Falcon began to feel that he had come to the end of his spiritual path in Los Angeles. He and his wife began to look around for other locations that might better sustain them.
Ultimately, the couple, along with their son, decided to resettle in Seattle, and Falcon set about starting a second synagogue. However, unlike in L.A. where his congregation had more or less found him, this time Falcon went out looking for Jews who would be interested in what he had to offer.
“The people I wanted to attract were not at other synagogues. Because if people were happy with those services, mine wouldn’t interest them. So I went out and spoke to Buddhist groups, and some of the more metaphysically inclined Christian groups where there are Jews,” he said.
Today, Bet Alef Meditative Synagogue, which meets at the Unity of Bellevue church, mixes Jewish ritual with guided meditation and music for its bi-weekly Shabbat services. Falcon noted that, as his personal approach to spiritual understanding has changed over the years, so too have his teachings and services evolved. Although he pointed out that his core interests — Jewish theology and the mind’s capacity for spiritual growth — remain the same.
He has also become increasingly interested in interfaith possibilities and regularly partners with Reverend Don MacKenzie of the University Congregational United Church of Christ and Muslim Sufi Minister Jamal Rahman of the Interfaith Community Church for services and spiritual retreats. The three also host a talk radio show on KKNW-AM 1150.
“I’ve always been involved in interfaith,” Falcon said. “The way I see it, each authentic spiritual path is an avenue to a shared universal. And that universal is bigger than any single path.”
Falcon, Rahman and Mackenzie are currently collaborating on a book called What Really Matters about the healing potential of interfaith spirituality.
He hopes that the message of the book, as well as his radio show, spiritual retreats and Friday night services help those who hear them and read them to connect with “love, compassion and universalism.”
Falcon acknowledges that his approach to Judaism and spirituality may not be for everyone. But then, he never wanted to be a conventional rabbi to begin with.
“There are people who get upset at this,” Falcon said of his style of teaching. “But I guess that’s how we know we’re doing something right.”