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Jayadvaita Swami was born Jay Israel to a reformed Jewish family. He spent his childhood in Englewood, New Jersey. In 1968 in New York City he was first introduced to Krishna Consciousness and received initiation from Srila Prabhupada. Jay shaved his head, received the spiritual name Jayadvaita, and began to study the teachings of Krishna. Practically the first task assigned to him in ISKCON was to staple booklets. Later he went on to become the editor of dozens of books and magazines. He was engaged in transcribing Srila Prabhupada's dictation for books, and then typesetting, proofreading, managing book production, and editing. Although before joining ISKCON Jayadvaita attended some college classes at Carnegie Institute of Technology, "he is in the most general sense self-educated and taught himself everything he needed to know in order to become a literary editor". In 1978 he accepted the order of renounced life, sannyasa from Satsvarupa dasa Goswami. In 1985 and 1986, he spent a year and a half traveling with a party of pilgrims on padayatra, a journey on foot, through various states of India, stopping in a different town or village every night. From 1991 through most of 1998 he served as editor in chief of Back to Godhead magazine, for which he had been an assistant editor for several years. Recently he served as editor for a three-volume translation and commentary for Brihad-bhagavatamrita, a sixteenth-century Sanskrit philosophical and devotional work. Jayadvaita Swami has also been involved in debates with the proponents of the ritvik heresy - a major schism in ISKCON Guru System. Apart from his services in publishing, Jayadvaita Swami travels widely, teaching and lecturing in over 50 countries. |
