Early Life
Born in Poland in 1924 and raised in Vienna, he was interned in detention camps under the Vichy French and fled the Nazi advance by coming to the United States in 1941. He was ordained as an Orthodox rabbi in 1947 within the Chabad Lubavitch Hasidic community while under the leadership of the sixth Lubavitcher Rebbe, Yosef Yitzchok Schneersohn, and served Chabad congregations in Massachusetts and Connecticut. He subsequently earned an M.A. in psychology of religion at Boston University, and a doctorate from the Reform-run Hebrew Union College.
He was initially sent out to speak on college campuses by the Lubavitcher Rebbe, but left after experimenting with "the sacramental value of lysergic acid." With subsequent rise of the hippie movement in the 1960s, he moved away from the Chabad lifestyle.
Read more about this topic: Zalman Schachter-Shalomi
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