August 06

My Life as a Jewish Hare Krishna Skinhead
by Sascha Gottschalk
p. 2 of 2

Still, although I created a front that kept the world at arm’s length for a satisfactory amount of time, it wasn’t going to work for the long haul. Like punk, and to a lesser extent soft drugs and alcohol, skinhead did not fill the void. It got increasingly tiresome to explain “good skin vs. bad skin” to everyone who had watched Geraldo, Oprah or movies like Romper Stomper and, later, American History X. The potential for total paranoia was high. I was constantly explaining myself or fighting with one group or another. Many of us had merely wanted to contentedly drink beer and dance to the music of our choice, yet we were called upon to be spokesmen either for racial tolerance or stormtroopers of the extreme right.

The early 1990s were some of the worst times of my life. By then I was in my mid-twenties and the stakes were getting higher all the time. Friends of mine were dying of drug overdoses, losing themselves to alcohol or going to jail. Music and style seemed to have very little to do with it by now. I started reflecting about what was happening around me rather than simply reacting to it all the time. I needed something that encompassed that reflection and I found it from an unlikely source: Krishna.

I was first introduced to Krishna Consciousness in the late 1980s by a friend of mine who was a skinhead girl. She took me to the ISKCON temple on Commonwealth Avenue in Boston for a free vegetarian meal. Although I enjoyed the food, I had little interest in the religion initially. To my way of thinking religion and spirituality were still the preserve of those geeky yarmulke wearers.

In retrospect though, it makes sense that kids from a punk background would find emotional and philosophical sustenance through the practice of Krishna Consciousness. First of all, it was bizarre; it’s unlikely that conventional Western religion would have appealed to punks in the same way. Secondly—and more importantly—many of the people I’ve met during my travels through various scenes have been seekers of one kind or another. Very few people become interested in punk or any of its offshoots because they are satisfied with what they see around them, regardless of how popular the superficial fashions and watered down versions of the music have become in recent years. These people want more than what is offered, and while for many it may simply begin and end with green spiked hair, for others it is an entrance into any number of alternatives to mainstream America.

Third, I realized I didn’t have to reject every single thing that had been important to me in adolescence. Basic Krishna philosophies such as political (not necessarily personal, as the Bhagavad-Gita takes place on a battlefield) pacifism, anti-materialism and vegetarianism meshed very well with what some of my favorite punk—not skinhead—bands had been hectoring me about since I was in eighth grade. And its asceticism and warrior-spirit went well with what had I attracted me to the skinheads.

Finally, and perhaps unsurprisingly given all of these parallels, by the time I found Krishna Consciousness, there was already a Krishna-punk culture there waiting to great me. The introduction of this ancient form of religious worship to American punk kids can almost single-handedly be traced to one band, The Cro-Mags, a no-holds-barred hardcore band that came barreling out of New York’s Lower East Side in the mid 1980s. Fronted by a brace of tough New York skinheads, they represented an ideal package for me and many others: spiritual conviction garnished with street reality. I’d seen Krishnas chanting in Harvard Square years before The Cro-Mags, and merely rolled my eyes. But when I saw heavily tattooed skinheads reading books like The Nectar Of Devotion, I decided there might be something to it. Though the Cro-Mags imploded after a few years, others took up the idea of fusing Krishna with hardcore punk. The following decade saw a number of bands singing the praises of Krishna to the adolescent masses. This odd cultural pollination actually became quite popular, even faddish, at one point.

Krishna Consciousness gave me a spiritual framework I needed for the ideas and feelings that had developed within me over the years. In Krishna Consciousness, the world is viewed not only as inherently corrupt, but also transitory and illusory. The body is merely a temporary vehicle; our true selves are souls seeking a higher spiritual plane. People reach this plane, or “Godhead,” by chanting and following Krishna practices, such as vegetarianism. While it’s the duty of a human being to seek out this enlightenment, it’s also a given that humans are innately flawed and will stumble in the process. The thing to do, Krishna Consciousness says, is simply to keep trying harder.

Punk and skinhead gave me a chance to find myself in the material world. Hare Krishna was what I needed to transcend that world, and bring me onto a spiritual plane. From there I could rediscover all the things worthwhile in my background without the prejudices and blinders of youth. Although I never acted on the ideas and sentiment of the racist bands, I do sometimes regret ever listening to them and can only cite the pain and confusion of adolescence in my defense.

Surprisingly (or not), I've met a lot of fellow Jews in the Krishna community who happily identify themselves as such, and see no inherent contradiction. The writer Satyaraja Dasa (known to some as Steven Rosen, Brooklyn born and raised Jewish) expounds on this phenomenon eloquently in his book Heart of Devotion. He writes: “The Hare Krishna movement teaches that living beings are not Christians, Jews, Hindus or Muslims, for these are all bodily designations. A person is not his or her body but in fact a spiritual soul…however, if one finds the principles of sanatana-dharma in the esoteric teachings of Christianity, Islam or whatever, one should take it, without considering its point of origin or label.” Likewise, A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prahbupada writes in The Matchless Gift: “One may learn about his relationship with God by any process….but in any case it must be learned. The purpose of this Krishna Consciousness is not to make Christians into Hindus…but to inform everyone that the duty of a human being is to understand his relationship with God.”

Now, it would have been unrealistic for me to suddenly go back to everything about my childhood that I had rejected. Nor have I come to a point where I’ve embraced the religious practices of being a Jew, because, to me, it would feel as if I was merely trying to make up for bad choices I made as an adolescent -- and penance is not something I want to build my spiritual life on. Nevertheless, I have started to observe Passover, whose story of liberation from bondage is the first Jewish holiday that speaks to a personal value within me. And as much as Krishna Consciousness has resonated with me, I am too leery of any organized religion—a punk holdover—to fully immerse myself in it. (Sadly, the “official” Krishna organization, The International Society for Krishna Consciousness has been torn apart by many scandals similar to those that the Catholic Church has experienced.) So for now, I identify myself as a Jew, by both culture and heritage, who finds spiritual sustenance in Krishna practices of chanting, yoga and meditation. I don’t know what the future holds for my spiritual life, but I don’t need to.

Today, my young daughter often likes to sift through my CD collection, which incorporates Krishna Chants, songs from The Jewish Partisans of World War II and of course large amounts of punk and all its variants. It all makes sense to me. I hope one day it will make sense to her as well.

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