Marc Gafni

Marc Gafni
Marc Gafni in Rome
Born	Marc Winiarz 1960 (age 55–56) Pittsfield, Massachusetts
Nationality	American
Other names	Mordechai Gafni, Mark Gafni, Mordechai Winiarz, Mordechai Winyarz
Website	http://www.marcgafni.com/

Marc Gafni (born Marc Winiarz) is an American author and spiritual teacher.^[1][2][3] A former Modern Orthodox rabbi,^[1] Gafni now self-identifies as a practitioner of world spirituality based on integral principles.^[4] He has been accused by multiple women of sexually assaulting them, and has admitted to having had sexual relationships with girls as young as 14.^[5] He was also accused of molesting a 13 year old girl over a period of nine months.^[6]

Biography

Gafni, also known as Mordechai Gafni, was born in 1960^[5] to Holocaust survivors in Pittsfield, Massachusetts.^[3] Gafni was educated at Modern-Orthodox yeshivas in the New York area. In the 1980s, while attending Yeshiva University,^[3] Gafni worked with Jewish Public School Youth, an organization providing Jewish social clubs in public schools.^[7] In 1988, Gafni also worked as a rabbi in Boca Raton, Florida.^[1] After making aliyah Gafni served as rabbi of the West Bank settlement of Tzofim.^[8] When Gafni moved to Israel he hebraicized his name. "Winiarz," Polish for "vintner," is related to the Hebrew word "gefen" for grape, thus the name "Gafni." Gafni has three children from previous marriages^[3] and one child with Mariana Caplan.^[9][10]

Teachings and prominent works

Gafni’s teachings are often described as integral or world spirituality, incorporating his traditional religious studies to contemporary themes, and are aimed at spirituality for people who do not identify with one specific religion.^[3][11] He advocates a new set of teachings around eros, sexuality and relationships in his book Mystery of Love and CD set Erotic and the Holy.^[12][13] At the core of his World Spirituality message is what Gafni refers to as the “unique self”--a term which Gafni coined in 2001--the idea that every human being has a unique story that needs to be lived.^[14] He expresses this through the theme "wake up, grow up, show up, and lighten up."^[15] Gafni describes himself and his students as “dual citizens” of both their native traditional religion and the broader themes of "world spirituality."^[3][16]

In 2010, Gafni, together with Ken Wilber founded a Wisdom Council to envision a world spirituality based on Integral Principles.^[17] The Wisdom Council is part of the Center for World Spirituality and is a think tank that includes members such as Gafni, Ken Wilber, Anthony Robbins, Deepak Chopra, Warren Farrell, Lori Galperin, Sally Kempton and other thought leaders.^[18] The chair of Center for World Spirituality is Whole Foods CEO John Mackey.^[19]

Gafni was a Scholar in Residence at the Integral Institute, and the Director of the Integral Spiritual Experience, but was disassociated from them after the 2011 allegations of his sexual impropriety.^[20] In 2010, Gafni and mother of his son Zion, Mariana Caplan,^[9] founded the Center For World Spirituality.^[21] Gafni also co-founded the Shalom Mountain Wisdom School and the Mystery School at Venwoude International.^[22][23] He is the scholar in residence at the Pacific Coast Church.^[24]

Writing

Gafni is the author of eight books on spirituality and religion, including the 2001 national besteller "Soul Prints,"^[2] which was later expanded into a PBS special of the same name.^[12][25] Soul Prints included an introduction by Israeli poet Admiel Kosman and was the Amazon.com best book of 2001 in the Jewish Thought category and won the Napra Award for the best Spirituality Book of 2001.^[3][26] Marc Gafni's second English language book, The Mystery of Love, was later converted to an audio lecture series called The Erotic and the Holy, published by Sounds True.^[27][12] Who is Afraid of Lilith? Rereading the Kabbalah of the Feminine Shadow, a book Gafni cowrote with Ohad Ezrachi, was described by the publisher as offering "the much-needed perspective of the male feminist viewpoint."^[28] His book, Radical Kabbalah, published by Integral Publishers in 2012, was a three-volume, 1,000-page work, a part of which was included in his doctoral dissertation for Oxford University.^[29] In 2012, he published Your Unique Self: The Radical Path to Personal Enlightenment with a foreword written by Ken Wilber.^[30] It won the 2012 USA Best Spirituality Book of the Year award from USA Book News.^[31]

Television and speaking

While in Israel, Gafni hosted Tahat Gafno ("under his vine"), a television program broadcast on Israel's Channel 2.^[3][32] Gafni also did a series of weekly television spots with Israel comedian Gil Kopatch on biblical wisdom for every day life.^[33] Gafni also appeared in a series of spiritual PSAs on Israeli national television in the wake of a number of terrorism attacks.^[34]

In 2008, Gafni hosted a discussion with Nobel Peace Prize laureate, the 14th Dalai Lama, about the perception of love.^[2][32][35] This was followed up by a 2010 series between new age guru Deepak Chopra and Gafni entitled "Love and Evolution."^[36] In 2013, Gafni and American entrepreneur and author Eben Pagan founded an event called "Actualize: The Source Code of Success."^[37]

Gafni is also a participant in the modern men's movement, joining American men's activist Warren Farrell and bestselling author John Gray to create a broadcast named Beyond Venus and Mars.^[38]

Gafni has lectured at universities including Oxford University, Harvard University Business School, UCLA, and Yeshiva University, as well as the Stephen Wise Free Synagogue.^{[1][2][3][27]}

The Success 3.0 Summit, held in 2014 in Boulder, Colorado,^[39] was the brainchild of Marc Gafni, based on his Unique Self teachings.

Education

Gafni majored in philosophy as an undergraduate.^[3] He proceeded to earn a doctorate of philosophy from Oxford University in 2008, where he would later teach graduate seminars on mysticism.^[3][27] He claims to hold rabbinic certification from the chief rabbinate in Israel,^[4] and has held private rabbinic ordination, since relinquished.^[1]

Sexual assault claims

Gafni has been accused multiple times of sexual assault in the media and by his victims, dating back to the 1980s, when he lived in the USA.^{[1][5][7][40][41]} After he moved to Israel, in 2006, accusations of a sexual assault of Gafni on three women who attended the Bayit Hadash ("new home") spiritual center in Jaffa, which Gafni opened in the late 1990s, and the formal police investigation, were made public.^[8] Gafni responded by acknowledging relationships with some of the women.^[7] However, Gafni characterized the relationships as consensual, and bolstered his claim by posting polygraph test results on his website.^[2][42] Due to the allegations and Gafni's fleeing the country to avoid prosecution,^[11][43] he was dismissed from Bayit Hadash.^[44] Within days after they were made public, the spiritual center closed.^[45] Once in the United States, Gafni sent a remorseful letter to his congregation regretting his actions.^[44][46] On the other hand, Gafni later claimed that the letter was not an admission of fault or guilt but an attempt to cool the controversy.^[47]

In 2011, Gafni was the subject of new allegations of sexual misconduct in the USA.^[20] This caused Integral Life to announce that they were deleting Gafni's contributions from their site and disassociating from him.^[20] Also, Tami Simon, chief executive officer of Sounds True, canceled her publication of the Gafni's new book, "Your Unique Self," and issued a statement against Gafni.^[48] The board of directors at Center for World Spirituality, an organization founded by Gafni and which Gafni is the CEO of, issued a statement of "Unequivocal Support" in Gafni's own defense, and Warren Farrell also wrote a letter of support.^[49] Ken Wilber originally separated from Gafni,^[50] but eventually reconciled with him and rejoined him at the Center for World Spirituality.^[51] The book, "Your Unique Self," was ultimately published by Integral Publishers.^[52] Gafni said that he was a victim of "pseudofeminist witch hunts," invoking Dershowitz's Sexual McCarthyism.^[5]

On January 1, 2016, an unnamed woman, who writes that she was married to Gafni from 1999 to 2004, published a personal opinion piece in The Times of Israel in response to The New York Times article a week earlier,^[5] which she called "spineless." In the piece, she cataloged her "story of abuse," and wrote that she decided to go public, albeit anonymously, to "Protect some girl. Protect some woman. Some student. Some unsuspecting soul."^[53] Eleven days later, Sara Kabakov, who claims that in the early 1980s she was abused by Gafni when she was thirteen years old, went public and told her story publicly for the first time in an article in The Forward.^[54]

Bibliography

• 1999 A Certain Spirit {Vadai}: Re-Defining Certainty
• 1999 Uncertainty {Safek}: Reclaiming the Spirituality of Uncertainty
• 2002 Soul Prints: Your Path to Fulfillment ISBN 978-0743417006
• 2002 Seelenmuster ISBN 978-3442216062
• 2003 The Mystery of Love ISBN 978-0743442206
• 2005 Who is Afraid of Lilith? Rereading the Kabbalah of the Feminine Shadow
• 2006 The Erotic and the Holy ISBN 978-1591792895
• 2012 Your Unique Self: The Radical Path to Personal Enlightenment ISBN 978-1467522779
• 2012 Radical Kabbalah ISBN 978-1467522748

References

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Marc Gafni.

• Marc Gafni's personal web site