"Spengler" contemplates buying a black hat

He writes over at his First Thing's blog:

“Follow your bliss” was the watchword of the late Joseph Campbell, the cultural anthropologist who popularized the idea of the universal “hero’s journey” and the “spiritual quest.” Campbell was also an anti-Semite

The controversy surrounding the ritual role of women at the Kotel (the western wall of the Jerusalem Temple) peaked in the last several days with the arrest of women for adopting male roles (specifically, carrying the Torah scrolls during a prayer service last week). I do not propose to evaluate charges that the Israeli police overreacted, much less to address the difficult issue of women’s ritual leadership in Jewish worship. But the statement issued January 27 by the Conservative movement’s Jewish Theological Seminary made me want to go out and buy a black hat:

By permitting ultra-Orthodox extremists to control public life and block other caring and devoted Jews from fully realizing their spiritual quest, intentionally or not you send a message that Israel is not committed to democratic principles.

Quest, schmest. Who cares if anyone realizes their “spiritual quest”? That, if you will pardon the term is not goyische naches (a deprecatory Yiddish term referring to something that would give satisfaction to a Gentile) but pagan naches. It bespeaks Campbell’s New Age, narcissistic search for self-realization, not the fearful and ecstatic encounter with the creator of the universe.

The God who loved Abraham stands beyond all hymns and praises of which humanity is capable, states our most frequently-recited prayer, the Kaddish. How is it possible to approach this transcendent and omnipotent God? Judaism’s answer (and in a different way, Christianity’s) is that God himself has given us the means to approach him, through the Temple service of which ritual prayer is the successor, through Torah study, and through imitation of God in the form of works of lovingkindness. It is not a quest that we cook up for ourselves: it is a path not too difficult for our foot to tread.