Beyond the Closed Door:

The Jews and the Chinese share many things, but for many Jews "opening the closed door" to Chinese culture is rarely more than visiting the nearest Chinese restaurant. This book provides another kind of food - for thought.

For one thing, it can be read and re-read on many levels: a well-written introduction to Chinese history and philosophy; a handbook of preliminary techniques in meditation; a guide to one of the oldest and most successful martial arts. But the book is also more than this.

Anyone who has seen anything of China has probably retained an image of hundreds of people (many of them elderly) flocking to public parks to begin their day with a morning session of T'ai Chi - a series of flowing moves that can be regarded as martial art, meditation, dance or exercise. Since the Chinese approach to health - from herbs to acupuncture - seems to have produced some wonderful results, one is bound to ask: Can so many millions be wrong?

In fact, Breslow shows how right they are. But many of the concepts Breslow focuses on are, by necessity, difficult to transmit with only pen and paper. Indeed, one of the more intriguing concepts discussed is the "oral law" approach that underlies both Rabbinic Judaism and the knowledge of the Chinese teachers of T'ai Chi.

"Perhaps nowhere is the cultural gap between China and the West so apparent as in the relationship between student and teacher," writes Breslow, noting that Western democratic values encourage the view that knowledge is there for the taking, accessible to all. Western norms also encourage skeptical questioning of teachers. This is not the Chinese approach.

As in Judaism, where there is a general veneration of teachers and a concept of k'hol asher yoruha (everything as they teach you), so the Chinese taught veneration of the teacher. There is also the tendency of both Talmudic and Chinese sources not to impart the full message in written texts lest it be stolen by someone unworthy or be distorted.

Close contact between student and teacher - even the idea that the student would become the teacher's servant - was meant to allow the teacher to supervise and influence the student's behavior while monitoring whether he was worthy to continue learning at higher levels.

The risk in reviewing a book of this kind is that by trying to give a sense of it - through a quotation or two - one could produce what sounds like a puffy soundbite for those with "a yen for the Yin and the Yang." But it is more than a collection of cute aphorisms. Incidentally, it includes what this reviewer found to be novel and intriguing explanations for Yin and Yang - the two philosophical ideas (and/or matter/energy forces) - ranging from the writings of physicist Niels Bohr to the anaerobic travails of a marathon runner.

Most Westerners know the saying that "more is less." The author illustrates how the Chinese concept of Wu Wei typifies this saying in the learning process.

"Wu Wei is a way of giving up in order to gain," writes Breslow, and I immediately thought of voice coaches who teach their students to "forget all the mistakes you've been making all your life, and start breathing like a baby."

The author is especially good in explaining this concept in the writings of Lao Tzu, who opposed the insular pursuit of logic as espoused by Confucius. "Lao Tzu seeks to achieve the intuitive blending or harmonizing of opposites, while Confucius' approach is a way of logically choosing the middle path between opposites."

Reading this book will certainly take more time than a meal in a Chinese restaurant, and the reward is likely to be greater.

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