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In 1990, eight Jewish delegates were invited to Dharamsala, India, to meet with the XIV Dalai Lama, the political and spiritual leader of Tibet. The Tibetans had lost their land and temples to China, their religious leader was in exile, and now they feared they would lose their identity as a people as well. Conscious of the parallels to Jewish history, the Dalai Lama asked the Jews for help: "Tell me the secret of Jewish spiritual survival in exile." To writer Rodger Kamenetz, the request seemed fantastic: "As my grandfather might have said, 'Who would have thought to ask?'" Rodger's life-long friend, Dr. Marc Lieberman, a self-proclaimed "JuBu" -- or Jewish / Buddhist -- organized the meeting. He asked Rodger to come along and chronicle the event. A confirmed materialist who never looked to religion for answers to life's problems, Kamenetz was an unlikely pilgrim. He was the perfect person to question. He was a man who was spiritually lost but didn't quite know it. When he set out on the trip to India, Rodger wasn't even sure if he could rise to the occasion. His life had slipped its moorings. The death of his infant son and the derailment of his writing career had left him adrift in a sea of self doubt. For the Jewish leaders who were asked to meet with the Dalai Lama, there were also doubts. What did they have to share? Was there, in fact, a secret? Weren't many Jews looking elsewhere for answers, turning to other religions...such as Buddhism? Marc Lieberman wondered if the Jews and the Tibetans could bridge the gap between their vastly different worlds. Rodger was more concerned with whether these two groups of people would be able to communicate. "Monks are inclined to silence and Jews like to yak." In Dharamsala, Rodger was surrounded by suffering - the overwhelming poverty of India, the diaspora of the Tibetans. Yet in the Dalai Lama and the Tibetan Buddhists, he encountered a people who faced suffering with equanimity, resolve and compassion. For the first time in his life, Rodger felt the power of a spiritual tradition. His finely wrought defense system began to crack. An observer no more, he began to look for a way out of his own pain, his own exile. Kamenetz, the skeptic, found his way back to Judaism - the tradition of his birth. As the best fables teach us, sometimes you have to go far away to find your way back home. Filmmaker Laurel Chiten first learned about Kamenetz when she stumbled onto a website devoted to the Jewish-Buddhist connection. She went out and read The Jew in the Lotus and immediately contacted Kamenetz to secure the film rights. She was most interested in discovering what sparked Kamenetz's own spiritual awakening. Says Chiten, "The film is really about how one uses grief to go to a higher place. Is it really about Judaism? No. Is it really about Buddhism? No. Is it even about the Tibetans and Jews? Not really. They're all in the background but the forefront is very much a personal story." Home | The Story | Exile | The Filmmaker | Resources | Comments | ITVS