Language Shift and the Maintenance of Cultural Identity: Kaifeng’s Jewish Descendants

Introduction

    

In 1949 Ai Dianyuan, a resident of Kaifeng, attended the Fifth Founding Celebration of the People's Republic of China, where he met with Chairman Mao Zedong. Ai was a descendant of Kaifeng Jews who had arrived in China from Central Asia nearly a millennium earlier. His request to the Chairman was that his group, consisting then of only a few hundred families, be recognised as a separate ethnicity. Chairman Mao, who was acknowledged as an expert on Chinese history, was astounded to learn of the existence of a small Jewish community in China. He eventually ordered an investigation into this unusual phenomenon. In 1955 officials from the State National Affairs Committee visited Kaifeng and met with representatives of the seven acknowledged Jewish clans. They learned of the many legends, still preserved to this day as oral tradition, regarding the arrival of their ancestors in China; of the tribulations in maintaining its synagogue for over seven centuries amidst natural disasters, political violence and natural atrophy until its final destruction by a flood of the Yellow River in 1860; of the death of the last Hebrew-speaking rabbi several years before; and of the eventual deterioration of their exceptional variant of Jewish religion and culture.

 

Mao Zedong's response to the committee's investigation, endorsed by both Liu Shaoqi and Deng Xiaoping, was as follows:

 

"According to Comrade Stalin's Theory of nationality, there should be at least three elements to be a nationality: its own language; its own folk (religious) customs: and its own living area (i.e. the Tibetan and Uighur Autonomous Regions in Tibet and Xinjiang). Since the Chinese Jews lost all the specialties and features mentioned above, they cannot still be taken as Jews."

 

The Chairman's ruling was later transposed to an official document that officially classified the Kaifeng Jewish descendants as Han Chinese and engendered subsequent political tensions for those who would attempt to assert their Jewish ancestry (Ehrlich and Liang 2008, 280-282).

 

Chroniclers of the history and culture of the Kaifeng Jews such as Bishop W. C. White (1966), Donald Leslie (1972) and Michael Pollak (1998), are in accord that the community's small number, rapid assimilation and geographical isolation from the Jewish Diaspora made their decline as a viable community all but inevitable. According to Ehrlich and Liang (2008, 278-279), the initial contingent of Jewish traders arrived in 998 CE in Kaifeng, at the time called Bianliang, the capital of the Northern Song dynasty. As merchants traversing the Silk Road, they arrived without female accompaniment, so that intermarriage with Chinese women occurred in the first generation of migrants. Although prayer books and Torah scrolls recovered from Kaifeng illustrate the use of Hebrew and Aramaic in the liturgy, evidence from the synagogue stelae first engraved in 1489 seem to indicate the use of Chinese as the lingua franca as well as a rapid language shift, required for their commercial endeavours in China. Yet, in spite of overwhelming acculturation, the Kaifeng Jews managed to preserve a unique religious culture and common identity for over eight centuries. Furthermore, even after the destruction of their last synagogue, the death of the last communal leader knowledgeable in Hebrew language and the loss of their religious literature, a small minority stubbornly persisted in asserting its Judaic heritage. This persistence has consistently weathered political repression from the Communist government and has endured until the present moment, when global interaction has at last begun to rejuvenate this insignificant, isolated and historically neglected community (Ehrlich and Liang 2008, 310-311).

 

It is vital to issue a caveat that the reference to this Kaifeng community as "Jewish" or "Jews" is in the most generic sense only. Quite possibly, as Jewish identity is matrilineal, with no documentation as to the conversion processes that took place in the first generations, the Kaifeng Jews ceased being technically Jewish within a relatively short time span after initial migration. More importantly, as documented by the 18^th century Jesuits, their religious practice, influenced by the Confucianism of their environment, diverged significantly from that of their brethren in Europe or the Levant. As the focus of the argument presented here, however, is on the perpetuation of a sense of Jewish identity amidst concurrent language shift and assimilation, these terms are used here in a phenomenological rather than an ontological context.

 

 

 

Literature Review

 

With the increase in global mobility and migration patterns, recent socio-linguistic research has addressed the issues associated with language shift and maintenance. Socio-cultural factors such as demographics, institutional support, language loyalty and ethno-linguistic vitality all contribute to individual and collective choices to either discard or preserve a native language (Coulmas 2005). Further research discusses the significance of language in the construction of ethnic identity (Fought 2006, Paulston 1994). However, the question of how an ethnic group can succeed in perpetuating its cultural identity in the wake of language shift and adoption of a new language is one less frequently addressed. Because the phenomenon of language shift itself normally takes three generations (Coulmas 2005), the investigation into how a culture manages to retain its identity in the context of the acquired language may often only be established over an extended period of time. In that regard, the story of the Jewish community of Kaifeng serves as a unique model of an ethnicity managing to preserve its cultural identity for several centuries within the modality of an acquired language.

 

The research on the existence of an exiguous group of Jews among the numerous ethnicities in populous China is relatively recent and sparse (Ehrlich 2008). Academic debate over the Kaifeng Jewish community still continues concerning their place of origin, date of entry into China, proclivity to intermarriage, observance of Jewish custom as well as the reasons for its ultimate decline in the 19^th century. The focus of this research, however, will examine how this group, having commenced to shift language not long after their arrival in Kaifeng during the Southern Song dynasty (Xu 2003), syncretised their native culture with that of their host in a manner that managed, paradoxically, to preserve their original identity even after centuries of assimilation.

 

The stelae of 1489, 1663 and 1679 that once adorned the Kaifeng synagogue mention three different arrival times of Jews into the Middle Kingdom: during the Zhou dynasty (c.1100 BCE- 221 BCE), Han dynasty (206BCE- 221BCE) and Song dynasty (960-1126). Although these contradictory dates have provoked considerable debate, the consensus amongst Chinese scholars is that the Jewish community in Kaifeng was established during the early Song by Jewish traders who hailed from Persia and whose native language was Judeo-Persian (Shapiro 1988, Xu 2003). Moreover, Xu (2003) points out that though the stelae refer to Tianzhu (which in modern Chinese can refer to India) as the place of their origin, linguistic analysis of the Torah scrolls and liturgical texts recovered from Kaifeng clearly point to a Persian derivation.

 

According to the 1489 lapidary inscription, the first synagogue was constructed in 1163, later rebuilt on a larger scale with the permission of the (Yuan) authorities in 1279. In the first century of their sojourn in Kaifeng, the Jews retained their original Hebrew names, their original tongue as well as the liturgical Hebrew utilised in the synagogue, although daily affairs were conducted in the lingua franca of Chinese (Leslie 1972, Xu 2003). By the early Ming period, however, the Jews had already adopted Chinese surnames; by the seventeenth century the surnames Zhao, Li, Ai, Gao, Jin, Shi and Zhang were the sole signifiers of the Jewish clans in Kaifeng (White 1966, Leslie 1972, Pollak 1998, Xu 2003). According to Leslie (1972), the adoption of these surnames represents "…both the assimilation and acceptance of the Jews by Chinese society." Simultaneously, numerous Jews enrolled in Chinese schools and excelled in the imperial examinations "out of all proportion to their numbers" (Xu 2003). In addition, Confucianist rituals, particularly those related to ancestor worship, were by then practiced in the synagogue (White 1966, Leslie 1972, Xu 2003).

 

The Kaifeng synagogue, a focal point for the maintenance of collective cultural identity, was rebuilt and repaired several times during its 700 year history due to attrition, fire and flooding. The 1642 flood of the Yellow River was particularly devastating, eliminating over two-thirds of Kaifeng's population and destroying the synagogue along with its Torah scrolls and Hebrew literature (White 1966, Leslie 1972, Pollak 1998, Xu 2003). Only two hundred families survived, but, in a remarkable achievement, they succeeded in recovering many of the parchments damaged by the floods and rewriting them, though, according to Xu (2003) their scribal capabilities in the Hebrew language had diminished considerably over the centuries. With the advent of the Qing dynasty and gradual isolation of China to foreign influence, the Kaifeng Jewish community's previous geographic isolation from the Jewish Diaspora became absolute (White 1966, Leslie 1972, Pollak 1998, Xu 2003).

 

From then on until the turn of the twentieth century knowledge of the rapidly deteriorating culture of Kaifeng's kehillah (Jewish community) is gleaned almost exclusively through missionary sources, beginning with the initial encounter of Cardinal Matteo Ricci with the Jew Ai Tian in Peking in 1605. In the subsequent report of Ricci's envoys—trained in classical Hebrew—on their exploratory visit to Kaifeng, they claimed that although Hebrew was still chanted in synagogue liturgy, there were few in the community that could actually speak it and then with a flawed pronunciation. Nonetheless, despite their external acculturation to Han society, the observance of the Sabbath, holidays, circumcision, daily prayers and some of the scriptural dietary laws bolstered their inimitable sense of a cultural identity (Pollak 1998). Despite the gradual onset of economic hardship that afflicted the once-prosperous community and the continued erosion of their culture, all attempts by Jesuit and subsequent Anglican missionaries to convert the Jews to Christianity were of no avail (Pollak 1998). By the time the Canadian Anglican Bishop William C White arrived in Kaifeng in 1910, the community as a cohesive unit no longer existed. The last rabbi had died sixty years earlier, and the synagogue, ravaged by floods and in a state of decay, was dismantled several years thereafter, its bricks and tiles sold to feed the impoverished Jewish families for whom it once provided spiritual nourishment (Pollak 1998, Xu 2003).

 

Although Hebrew was now forgotten, and Jewish religious practice, except for the prohibition of eating pork, had become a memory of the distant past, the notion of a unique identity still persisted amongst the Jewish descendants. In the 19^th and 20^th centuries numerous letters were written to the Jewish Diaspora as well as to the thriving cosmopolitan Jewish community in Shanghai imploring for assistance in recruiting teachers who would be willing to resuscitate the failing kehillah; circumstances conspired that all of these pleas came to naught (Pollak 1998). White, whose Trinity Cathedral in Kaifeng inherited the synagogue's stelae and who, in letters to his superiors openly proclaimed his desire to convert this fallen people rather than have them succumb to the "heathen" religion of their Chinese neighbours, could not comprehend the stubborn refusal of the Jews to abandon their forsaken identity and take advantageous refuge in the Church (Pollak 1998). His English translation of the stelae reveals that, already several centuries ago, the influence of Confucianism and Taoism had corrupted the community's Jewish roots, making the seeds of decay inevitable (White 1966). Weisz (2008), however, in his later translation disputes this rendering and attempts to show that, although shrouded in the terminology of Chinese culture, the stelae were meant to preserve significant aspects of Jewish belief and culture.

 

Although White (1966) and Pollak (1998) both sounded a premature death-knell for Kaifeng Jewry, Leslie (1972), as the title of his book suggests, had a somewhat more positive outlook on the prospects for a community which had managed to preserve its identity as a tiny minority under adverse circumstances for almost nine centuries. Xu (2003), Ehrlich (2008) and Weisz (2006), having researched the kehillah in the wake of a Deng Xiaoping's policy of "Openness" and in the era of information technology, have seen the miraculous rejuvenation of this community from the brink of extinction. In recent years, several dozen of the Kaifeng Jewish descendants have established a modest community centre, instituted classes for three levels of Hebrew language study and celebrate communal Sabbath and festival meals. In addition, they have procured a library of Judaic resources in both English and Chinese and have commenced the process of reacquainting themselves with their lost traditions (Ehrlich 2008).

 

The focus of the second part of this paper will be on those particular referents within Han culture that enabled the Kaifeng Jewish community to maintain its identity despite its near total acculturation. In today's global era, where governments strive to preserve cultural diversity, the question of how a culture can maintain its fundamental identity in the wake of language shift is of tremendous importance both in regard to the formation of government policy and as a guide for immigrants themselves, who seek to become integrated citizens of their host country, while simultaneously preserving a resilient link to their original ethnicity. More specifically, what follows is an examination of the cross-cultural aspects in both Han and Jewish cultures that, in the aftermath of language attrition, contributed to a natural, inescapable absorption of Kaifeng Jewry into the mainstream society of their residence, but, more significantly, also managed to sustain an incontrovertible Judaic identity up until the present day.

 

Language shift and the conservation of cultural identity: the Jewish Diaspora and Kaifeng

 

The general question of how Jews were able to preserve their identity as a minority culture, including the specific question of the Jewish community in Kaifeng, was already addressed in the mid-nineteenth century by Immanuel Kant. Kant was attempting to formulate a general rule of history that the predictable fate of marginal ethnicities was assimilation into the host majority and eventual extinction. The Jews, however, were a notable exception to his theory: "…the Jews have continued to maintain themselves [as a distinctive religious body], though scattered throughout the world, whereas the faith of other religious fellowships has usually been fused with the faith of the people among whom they have been scattered. This phenomenon strikes many as so remarkable that they judge it to be impossible according to the nature of things, but to be an extraordinary dispensation for a special divine purpose (Kant 1960, 127)."

 

Kant, however, who was brought up as a Pietistic Christian, did not see any special "divine purpose" in the maintenance of Jewish cultural identity. Pragmatically, he declared Judaism's apparently uncanny survival was enabled by its possession of written scriptures that could be verified by those of the host culture either in Christendom's Old Testament or within Islam's biblical adaptations in the Koran. Nonetheless, Kant was troubled by the continued existence of a Jewish community for seven centuries in Kaifeng, news of which had been transmitted to Europe by Jesuits in the part of that century. Kaifeng Jews had survived for that length of time without the presence of Christianity's support. (Kant was apparently unaware of the large Muslim population of Kaifeng, which would have given some credence to his unusual theory.) In order to solve this anomaly, Kant declared, in what appears to be a blatant contradiction to his hypothesis on Jewish perseverance generally, that it was the total lack of compatibility between the belief systems of China and that of Judaism that allowed the Jews there to maintain their independent identity and distance from the mainstream culture (Kant 1960 ).

 

Before examining Pollak's response to Kant's supposition, one that reveals an obvious Christian bias of supercessionism, it is important to take note of a number of historical factors concerning European Jewry which Kant had conveniently chosen to ignore in ascribing Judaism's survival to its proximity to Christianity and Islam. In fact, it was Judaism's propinquity to Christendom that created the economic discrimination and religious persecutions that compelled the segregation of Jewish culture from that of the mainstream. According to Jewish historians like S. M. Perlmann, contrary to Kant's theory, it was precisely this oppression that reinforced the separate ethnic identity of the Jewish minority. Writing in 1912 Perlmann argues that the danger of assimilation and cultural extinction "… is not imminent in those countries where the hostility to the Jews is still strong and effective, for they will fight there and conserve themselves." The massive acculturation and conversion of Jews with the advent of post-Enlightenment humanism in the century after Kant's death seems to confirm this truth (Pollak 1998, 334-336).

 

In challenging Kant's assertion that Confucianism's antithetical nature to Judaism was the lynchpin of identity maintenance for Kaifeng Jewry, it is important to mention that the philosopher's comparison between the Jews of Europe and those of Kaifeng is a flawed premise at the onset. Despite the oppression confronting European Jewry, their conservation of identity created a rich religious and cultural life, where Jewish scholarship thrived and Hebrew, even in the wake of language shift, was preserved as a second language. This knowledge of Hebrew was reinforced by its continuous usage as a language of communication between the various European communities. By contrast, there is no recorded incidence of anti-Semitism towards the Jews of Kaifeng. According to their oral traditions, they were welcomed personally by the Song emperor, who bestowed upon them Chinese surnames, hastening the process of acculturation (Ehlich and Liang, 2008, Xu, 2003). Furthermore, the Kaifeng kehillah was for centuries the most isolated Jewish community on earth. They were forgotten by the world until the meeting of the Jesuit Mateo Ricci and the Kaifeng Jew Ai Tian in Beijing in 1605; at that time, according to the testimony of Ricci's emissaries, their knowledge of Hebrew was negligible. Following the Qing expulsion of missionaries in 1723, there was a veritable shutdown on all communication with Kaifeng Jewry until the 20^th century in the wake of its cultural nadir (Xu 2003, 52-53).

 

Contesting Kant's thesis that the adversative native Chinese belief systems repelled Kaifeng Jewry into a mode of cultural maintenance, Pollak argues that, on the contrary, they served as a magnet to provide Jews with an opportune means to adopt the identity of the host Han culture and to obscure their foreign origins: "The inescapable impression that emerges from even a superficial reading of the Kaifeng synagogal stelae is that of a tiny community that is losing its ancestral heritage and becoming inextricably absorbed into the culture of the larger community around it." He further suggests that it was both the tolerance displayed by the Chinese to minorities who respected its values and the phenomenal determination of Kaifeng Jewry to conserve their ethnic identity that accounted for the perpetuation of that distinctiveness as long as it did. Moreover, the assimilation with Confucianist values not only enabled the Kaifeng Jews to assert their identification with Chinese civilization, it also facilitated the economic advancement of many of them who excelled in the civil service exams and were thus appointed to distinguished social positions. Based on this presumption that expediency alone impelled the adoption of Confucianist ideas and practices, Pollak then concludes, despite the lack of any supportive evidence, that this manoeuvring necessarily must have provoked the kind of internecine wrangling that characterized other historic confrontations between orthodoxy and heterodoxy. "Without question," writes Pollak, "the insistence of certain Confucian-oriented literati, and other assimilated-minded Jews as well, that such practices as ancestor adulation be brought into the synagogue was no less repugnant to their traditionally inclined co-religionists than, for example, the insistence of the proponents of Reform [Judaism] that the organ [prominent in Christian services] be given a place in communal worship would later be to their Orthodox brethren" (Pollak 1998, 337- 342). Significantly, Pollak's assumptions run contrary to Ehrlich and Liang's (2008, 279) contention that "… there is no record of the Jews demonstrating threat or offense to the ruling philosophies of the various successive dynasties."

 

White (1966, 3) argues that apart from the seemingly un-Jewish content of the lapidary texts, the form of the stelae in itself represented a departure from traditional Jewish synagogal architecture and therefore a turning point in the absorption process. Inscribed stelae have been a feature of Chinese, rather than Jewish, places of worship for about two thousand years. "For over 300 years following the erection of the synagogue in 1163 the Kaifeng Jews appeared not to have followed this practice, until the stone of 1489 was set up. This would seem to point to a breakdown of their Jewish conservatism and assimilation into the non-Jewish environment." This statement of White's betrays an ignorance of synagogal architecture: since the time of the Judean exile in 72 CE, synagogues in Diaspora have inexorably adopted the local architectural styles. The synagogue in Kaifeng was no exception to this rule, and, as Pollak (1998), Xu (2003), Ehrlich (2008) and Weisz (2006) all argue, the setting up of the stelae in the synagogue courtyard arouse more from the need to preserve communal history in written form than from a desire to wantonly abandon it.

 

Tangentially, in his defence of the motivation behind this decision to put up the stelae, Weisz (2006, xvii) erroneously declares: "Carving in stone was contrary to the Jewish precept against idolatry, and the Israelites in China faced the dilemma of either vanishing without a trace or incising their religious beliefs in stone to be preserved for perpetuity." However, although the carving of certain three dimensional figures falls under the proscription against idolatry, no Talmudic or halachic (Jewish legal) code has ever prohibited the carving of written words in stone, as a visit to any Jewish cemetery anywhere in the world would attest to. In fact, a careful examination of the biblical Book of Joshua reveals that before crossing the Jordan River to enter the Promised Land, Joshua, similar to the Kaifeng Jews, "…inscribed there, on the stones, a repetition of the Torah of Moses, which he wrote before the Children of Israel" (8:32).

 

While the assimilation of Kaifeng Jewry is indisputable, particularly in light of their incomparable circumstances, reducing its cause to solely practical reasons or exaggerating its extent, may obscure many of the commonalities shared by both Jewish and Chinese cultures that made cultural integration not only probable but essentially desirable.

 

An analysis of the confluence of Confucianist and Jewish cultural referents in the lapidary inscriptions of Kaifeng

 

Xu (2003, 114-116) while acknowledging that Kaifeng's Jewish descendants excelled in the civil service examinations, argues that Kaifeng Jewry saw no contradiction between the social order espoused by Confucianist doctrine and the Jewish emphasis on fulfilment of God's will: "…Confucianism is a humanistic, rational and secular worldview, a social ethic, a political ideology, a scholarly tradition, and a way of life, sometimes viewed as a philosophy. But to reiterate what was said above, it is not a religion. This is critically important for an understanding why the Kaifeng Jews never hesitated to use Confucian sayings and customs in the synagogue. Since Confucianism has nothing to do with religious faith, they saw no conflict with Judaism." Expounding on Donald Leslie's (1979, 161) argument that in the inscriptions of the stelae "… the ideas expressed are sometimes Jewish in Confucian garb," Xu (2003, 119) suggests that the couching of Jewish concepts in Confucian terminology was often a linguistic convenience. Since Chinese language simply did not possess the theological equivalents of many Jewish concepts, it was necessary to adapt these concepts to the existing socio-cultural milieu. The 1489 inscription, for example, refers to the Sabbath as "four times a month"; this is because at that time there was no weekly division of the Chinese calendar, so that it was senseless to describe the Sabbath as a weekly event. Xu, however, goes further than stating that the camouflaging of Jewish theology in Confucianist terms was not a point of contention: he believes that, from an ethical standpoint, the two shared distinct commonalities: "… Moreover, as has often been noted, Judaism is not so much a religion as a way of life, and this may have made it similar to Confucianism in the minds of Kaifeng's Jews" (Xu 2003, 120). Reaffirming this suggestion is the 1663 inscription which reads: "The composition of the Scriptures, although written in an ancient script [Hebrew] and of a different pronunciation, is in harmony with the principles of the six classics [of Confucianism], and in no case is there anything not in harmony with them."

 

The following verses appearing towards the end of the 1489 inscriptions, amongst many in the stelae extolling the virtues of Confucianism, provide an example of several elements of cross-cultural value confluence:

 

"Although the religion of Confucius and this

religion are similar as a whole, and different in details.

Both are determined and set in ways.

Nevertheless they also

worship the heavenly Dao.

Honour the ancestors

Respect the relationship between Prince and Minister

Filial to their fathers and mothers

Peaceful to their wives and children

Have order in their social ranks

Interact with friends

And do not make exceptions to the Five Relationships

… May the Great Emperor of the Ming

His virtue surpass Yu and Tang

And His Highness that of Yao and Xun

His intelligence and intuitive wisdom

Be bright like the Sun and the Moon…" (Weisz 2006, 17-18)

 

According to Xu (2003, 121) "… the real implication of the 1489 inscription is that Confucianism and Judaism agree on essential points and differ only on secondary issues." The veracity of Xu's statement is paramount in understanding how the external "garb" of Confucianism could nonetheless potentially serve as a means of transmission of an essential, internal Jewish identity, even in the midst of extensive assimilation. The similarities delineated in the inscription include the acknowledgement of a higher moral authority, honour bestowed to the ancestors, respectful social and familial relationships, a stable social order and benevolent human interaction. Furthermore, in the closing salutation to the Emperor we find commendations of virtue, intelligence and wisdom.

 

The regular usage in all of the lapidary inscriptions of the Chinese words Dao (道, "the Way"), or Tian (天，"Heaven")， as an appellation for God is evidence to White (1966) that the Jews of Kaifeng had strayed far from their scriptural source. Xu, by contrast, indicates the compatibility of this term with the notion of a formless deity that is the essence of Judaism's monotheistic belief and its divergence from Christianity. In fact, he calls attention to a synagogue plaque describing the Divine donated by a Kaifeng Jew named Ai Shi-de which read: "Its presence is not impeded by visible form; its absence does not imply an empty void; for the Way is outside the limits of existence or non-existence." The thought expressed therein resonates with one of the Thirteen Principles of Faith formulated by the renowned Jewish codifier Maimonides: "I believe with perfect faith that the Creator, blessed be His name, is not a body, and that He is free from all the accidents of matter, and that He has not any form whatsoever"(Xu 2003, 117). Although the Torah, in stark contrast to the abstract Chinese concepts of Dao or Tian, describes God in anthropomorphic and androcentric terminology, the Babylonian Talmud (Yevamot 71a) explains that "the Torah speaks in the language of human beings" for the sake of comprehension; all Jewish sources concur, however, that God has no intrinsic physical form or gender.

 

More important than the terms utilized is the overarching concept that each culture acknowledged a higher moral authority that motivates human beings to act in a proper manner for the benefit of the collective whole. "Confucianism does not involve a religious belief system. Unconcerned with deities, the spiritual, or what happens after a person's death, it focuses on the establishment of a harmonious society, based upon a fixed idea of what each person's position and conduct demands—a society in which everyone does the right thing, especially in relation to others" (Xu 2003, 115). Although Judaism couches these moral imperatives as Divine commandments, the essential aim is the same: the creation of a just society. Commandments such as filial respect and honour; conjugal obligations; the honour due to a monarch; the hierarchy of the priestly (Kohen) and Levite castes; and reverence owed to a Torah scholar were all designed to ensure the preservation of a harmonious social order.

 

Although Pollack (1998) speaks disparagingly of the introduction of Confucian ancestor worship rituals as an aberration, as Xu (2003, 118) puts forward, a comparison of the prayer of ancestral veneration found in the Kaifeng Memorial Book differs very little from the Yizkor (memorial) prayer recited in the synagogue today to recall deceased family members. Most prayers in the Jewish liturgy address God as אלהינו ואלהי אבותינו (elohaynu v'elohay avoteinu), i.e. "our God and God of our ancestors" (Ganzfried 1963). Perhaps more than other cross-cultural commonalities, the veneration of ancestors in each tradition enabled the Kaifeng Jews to preserve the dual identity of Han Chinese and Judaism without contradiction.

 

As in Confucianism, where scholarship was considered to be the highest level of social achievement, so too, the tradition of Torah scholarship was always held in high esteem. In the Jewish tradition, a Torah scholar is to be given more respect than one gives to his own father, since "…his father has given [him] life in this world, while his teacher prepares him for life in the world to come" (Ganzfried 1963, 143:1-2). Although little is known about the way in which Jewish education was perpetuated in Kaifeng, in 1712 the Jesuit Gozani describes how Jews in Kaifeng "…start learning how to read Hebrew from childhood, and many of them know how to write it; I have seen them reading and writing with my own eyes " (Pollak 1998, 108). Although this linguistic knowledge was very basic, a small group of more educated scholars and rabbis preserved core Jewish knowledge until the middle of the 19^th century. Xu (2003, 89) calls attention to the mention in the 1663 inscription of Zhao Yincheng and his brother Zhao Yingdou, each of whom is said to have written scholarly works of scriptural exegesis.

 

As mentioned before, the Jewish inclination to erudition led many Jews to succeed in the prestigious civil service examinations, and, as Pollak (1998) has noted, this success led to their assimilation and advancement in Han culture. It is not clear, however, that assimilation with Han culture necessarily entailed the abnegation of Jewish tradition. The biography of Zhao Yincheng, mentioned above, exemplifies the way in which Han acculturation was capable of co-existing with a strong Jewish identity. Zhao was born in Kaifeng in 1619, received his juren (举人) degree in 1645 and the following year the ultimate jinshi (进士) rank. After being appointed as the department director of the Ministry of Justice, he was sent to Fukien Province, where he was successful in cultivating a strategic victory against an insurgency of armed bandits. Furthermore, he was also acclaimed in subsequent gazetteers as having "…promoted schools…cleared up judicial cases… The people were delighted to be free of calamity…" Yet, despite his achievements as a Chinese citizen, Zhao did not shirk his obligations as a Jew. After the death of one of his parents in 1653, Zhao returned to Kaifeng to begin the three year period of mourning. During this period, he became involved in communal Jewish affairs. More competent in Hebrew than other laypeople, he assisted the rabbi Li Zhen with the collation of Torah parchments that had been recovered from the devastating flood of 1642. Together with his brother Yingdou and cousin Zhengji, he succeeded in locating the foundations of the inundated synagogue. From his own income, which must have been significant for a man of his social prominence, he funded the total costs for three sections of the rear hall in the reconstructed house of worship. During this period he authored the book of biblical commentary The Vicissitudes of the Holy Scriptures. In 1656 he was appointed assistant surveillance commissioner in Hubei Province but died a year later, lavishly eulogized in three Chinese gazetteers (Pollak 1998, 327-328).

 

The confluence of ethical values in both Judaism and Confucianism enabled Zhao to embrace Han culture while fully partaking of his Jewish heritage. There is evidence that many more of the Kaifeng kehillah shared this dual affiliation, which, while integrating them into the host culture permitted the conservation of their original ethnic identity.

 

The effects of globalization on a revitalized cultural identity for Kaifeng's Jewish descendants

 

The 1605 meeting between Cardinal Matteo Ricci and the Kaifeng Jew Ai Tien, a documented incident that often reads like a comedy of errors, was seminal in the Western awareness of the existence of a Jewish community in China. Ai Tien, who had heard of the arrival in Peking of a group of white-skinned aliens from a faraway land, believing in one God and yet denying any connection to Islam, naturally assumed that these barbarians were in fact Jewish. Ricci, by contrast, presumed from Ai's professed monotheism that he had discovered a representative from an extraordinary Nestorian Christian enclave in China. Ai mistook Ricci's genuflection before a painting of the Madonna, St. John and the Christ child to be his reverence towards the matriarch Rebecca and her two sons Esau and Jacob; he further misconstrued a portrait of the four Christian evangelists on the chapel wall as a likeness of four of Jacob's twelve sons. Only later in Ricci's study did the religious identity of each man finally become clarified (Pollak 1998, 4-7). According to Pollak, the original intention of Ai's visit was the expectation that if "…some form of continuing communication could then be instituted with the centres of Western Judaism through the good offices of the recent immigrants, Chinese Jewry would at long last be given an opportunity to reforge its severed links to the mainstreams of its faith" (Pollak 1998, 5).

 

In the years that followed, even in the aftermath of near complete linguistic and cultural attrition, the Jewish descendants of Kaifeng persisted in appealing to the Jewry of the Diaspora to help them re-establish their fading ethnic identity. A letter written on behalf of the kehillah addressed to T. H. Layton, the British consul in Amoy, and dated August 15, 1850, the year of the death of Kaifeng's last rabbi, summarizes the community's predicament: "For the past forty or fifty years our religion has been but imperfectly transmitted, and although its canonical writings are still extant, there are none who understand so much of one word of them. It happens that there yet survives an aged female of more than seventy years, who retains in her recollection the principle tenets of the faith… Morning and night with tears in our eyes and with offerings of incense, do we implore our religion may again flourish… Daily, with tears, have we called on the Holy Name! If we could again procure ministers and put in order our temple, our religion would have a firm support for the future; and its sacred documents would have a secure repository" (Pollak 1998, 144-145). Due to both incredulity at the existence of a community of Chinese Jews and circumstantial priorities, the request of Kaifeng's Jews went unheeded. Fifty-two years later they sent a delegation to the wealthy Jewish community of Shanghai, where, once again, financial assistance to the Jews of Eastern Europe took precedence over the needs of this obscure, acculturated community of Chinese Jews (Xu 2003, 60).

 

Ironically, where appeals to the Diaspora have failed, the policies of Deng Xiaoping which opened China to global influences, including tourism, have succeeded in revitalising the small group of Jewish descendants in Kaifeng. Although their plea to both the Chinese and Israeli governments for recognition as Jews has been rejected, the remaining Kaifeng Jews, according to Ehrlich and Liang (2008, 311) numbering close to 1,000 individuals, have recently begun a process of restoring their lost cultural heritage. "The general interest in Judaism is high," write Ehrlich and Liang. "Though strongly patriotic as Han Chinese, there is great interest in studying English and Hebrew and in modernizing." As governmental suspicion of their religious activity gradually eases, the community has invested money and time into their future as a viable minority culture: they have recently rented a small room for their activities which presently include the communal observance of Friday night Sabbath dinners, festival celebrations and Hebrew classes taught by Israeli or American Jewish students from Henan University. The Sabbath kiddush (i.e. sanctification of the day) is recited in Hebrew and the meal is followed by a talk in Chinese on the weekly Torah portion. There are over thirty people, ranging from high-school age to pensioners, who currently study Hebrew twice a week. Although a dozen or so have immigrated to Israel in recent years, most of those who remain in Kaifeng, like Guo Yan (A Jew in Kaifeng,
2009), a schoolteacher of Chinese language and organiser of many of the kehillah's current activities, share the sentiments she expresses on her website: "…I cannot but intensely hope that on the world's edge [sic], in Kaifeng, extremely remote from our homeland Jerusalem, a Torah and a Hebrew culture can be preserved." Recently, the Israeli organization Shavei Yisrael, dedicated to the restoration of lost Jewish communities across the globe, sponsored a year-long visit to Israel for seven of the kehillah's younger members, where they will study Hebrew and undergo formal conversion. One of them, 23-year old Yaakov Wang, also aims to enter into the rabbinate. "My dream," he declares, "is to complete the process of converting to Judaism and become a certified rabbi, after which I will return to my community and serve as its first rabbi since the dissolve [sic] of the Jewish community some 150 years ago" (Chinese descendants of ancient Jewish community make aliyah, 2009).

 

Conclusion

 

During the eight centuries in which Jews resided in Kaifeng, despite bouts of official xenophobia and occasional tensions with the Moslem community, there is no recorded incident of Han anti-Semitism. Furthermore, unlike Jews in other Diaspora communities, the Jews of Kaifeng were free to advance economically and socially. Finally, the many similarities in the ethical parameters of Confucianism resonated with many primary Jewish values. All of these factors, compounded with normative language shift, served to hasten the assimilation of Kaifeng Jewry into the culture of its Chinese host. Yet, in spite of a syncretistic religious culture that bore little resemblance to that of their Western co-religionists, many of the descendants of Kaifeng's original Jewish migrants, though not technically Jewish, have maintained a unique sense of Jewish cultural identity up until the present.

 

Bishop White, in his translation and analysis of the centuries-old lapidary inscriptions, alleged that the Kaifeng Jews had abandoned their heritage and completely assimilated into Han culture. There are many today, particularly more orthodox Jews, who might similarly dismiss the significance of this community, given their inconsequential numbers and heterodox orientation. Others, like Tiberiu Weisz, who claims to have corrected many of the shortcomings in White's original translation, argue that the Jews of Kaifeng preserved a high degree of Judaic observance, albeit camouflaged in the linguistic and cultural referents of their habitation. According to Xu Xin, "Some scholars maintain that these writings were heavily influenced by Chinese culture, Confucianism in particular, and were inspired by and taken from Chinese teachings. Others hold that they were inspired by the Jewish spirit and express nothing but Judaism… Even a cursory glance makes it obvious that the writings of the Kaifeng Jews are a mixture of Confucianism and Judaism." More importantly, due to the complementary nature of these teachings, the dichotomous identities managed to re-enforce one another for over a thousand years.

 

Further research is required as to whether or not this cultural phenomenon is unique to Kaifeng Jewry's integration into Han culture, or whether any immigrant group, in the wake of language shift, is capable of anchoring its original ethnic identity through the cultivation of confluent values. Additionally, the recent phenomenon of cultural renewal through the effects of increased globalization is worthy of academic attention. After a hiatus of a thousand years, Kaifeng Jews are finally in contact with the Jewish Diaspora and with it, a number of varied influences. How these will affect the syncretised balance of Han and Jewish cultures which have imbued the Kaifeng kehillah with its distinctive sense of identity is unpredictable. What seems fairly certain, however, is that, despite their small number, the faint spark of identity which tenaciously endured among Kaifeng's Jewish descendants throughout the centuries, has not yet been extinguished and continues to this day to glow with increasing luminosity.

 

References:

 

Chinese descendants of ancient Jewish community make aliyah. 2009. Ynet News, October 22.

http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/1,7340,L-3793399,00.html (accessed November

4, 2009).

 

Coulmas, F. 2005. Sociolinguistics: The Study of Speakers' Choices. New York. Cambridge

    University Press.

 

Ehrlich, M.A., ed. 2008. The Jewish-Chinese Nexus: A Meeting of Civilizations. New York.

    Routledge.

 

Ehrlich, M.A. and P. Liang, 2008. The contemporary condition of the Jewish descendants of

Kaifeng. In The Jewish-Chinese Nexus: A Meeting of Civilizations, ed. M.A. Ehrlich, 278-315. New York. Routledge.

 

Fought, C. 2006. Language and Ethnicity. New York. Cambridge University Press.

 

Ganzfried, S. 1963. Code of Jewish Law. New York. Hebrew Publishing Company.

 

Kant, I. 1960. Religion Within the Limits of Reason Alone. La Salle, Ill. The Open Court

Publishing. Quoted in Pollak, 1998, 334- 337.

 

Leslie, D.D. 1972. The Survival of the Chinese Jews: the Jewish Community of Kaifeng.
Leiden.

    Brill.

 

Paulston, C.B. 1994. Linguistic Minorities in Multilingual Settings. Philadelphia. John

    Benjamins Publishing Company.

 

Pollak, Michael. 1998. Mandarins, Jews, and Missionaries: The Jewish Experience in the Chinese

Empire. New York. Weatherhill, Inc.

 

Shapiro, S., ed. 1988. Jews in Old China: Studies by Chinese Scholars. New York. Hippocrene

    Books, Inc.

 

Xu, X. 1995. Legends of the Chinese Jews of Kaifeng. Hoboken. Ktav Publishing House.

 

Xu, X. 2003. The Jews of Kaifeng China: History, Culture and Religion. Jersey City. Ktav

Publishing House.

 

Weisz, T. 2006. The Kaifeng Stone Inscriptions: The Legacy of the Jewish Community in Ancient

China. New York. iUniverse, Inc.

 

White, W.C. 1966. Chinese Jews: A Compilation of Matters Relating to the Jews of KÀi-Feng Fu.

    Toronto. University of Toronto Press.

 

Yan, Guo. 2009. A Jew in Kaifeng. http://kaifengjews.blogspot.com/ (accessed November 3,

2009)

The Power Within: The Feminine Principle in Chinese and Jewish Mystical Traditions

Introduction

A perfunctory examination of Chinese and Jewish cultures reveals many features that are patriarchal. In the Confucian order a wife must abidingly obey her husband (Jinfen 2002, 4); Jewish law adopts a similar demand and further excludes a woman from acting as a legal witness and the performance of certain religious precepts. Both cultures display a significant bias towards the procreation of male progeny (Kaup 2007, 330; Rosner 2001, 168), while the Chinese veneration of ancestors and the lineage of Jewish rabbinic and priestly traditions are reserved exclusively for males. However, when one delves beneath the surface into the ancient, mystical traditions of China and Israel-- Daoism and kabbalah-- a different picture emerges. In both of these traditions, the feminine aspect plays a vital role not only in the celestial realm but also in the earthly relationships between men and women. Furthermore, in both of these traditions a surprising yet paradoxical element of feminine superiority comes to the fore.

The focus of this study will be of principles manifest in the earlier conventions of philosophical Daoism, dao jia (道家), and theoretical kabbalah, kabbalah ha-iyunit (קבלה העיונית). The former begins with Lao Zi in the 6th century BCE and extends roughly 500 years until the development of a more ritualised Daoist church, including ideas from this time period antedated to the legendary Yellow Emperor, Huang Di (黄帝) (Fowler 2005, 29-33). Theoretical kabbalah begins at a much later date with the appearance of Sefer Ha-Bahir, (The Book of Illumination) in the 12th century and stretches to its apex in the 16th century, the period of the renowned kabbalist Rabbi Isaac Luria of Safed in the Upper Galilee (Kaplan 1991, 5). Many of these kabbalistic views on the feminine principle were embellishments of earlier references in the Torah (i.e. the Pentateuch) and Talmud. Although subsequent religious Daoism, dao jiao (道教), and practical kabbalah, kabbalah ma-asit (קבלה המעשית), both exhibit certain feminine elements-- the former in its pantheon of deities (e.g. the goddess Dou-Mu, 斗母, the “Mother of Light”) and the latter in its demonology (e.g. Lilith, Queen of the Night)—these expressions had already degenerated into superstitions as opposed to purely philosophical doctrine.

The Supernal Feminine

Unlike Western religions, philosophical Daoism lacks the concept of a personal God. The Dao, the source of all creation, is ineffable. As described succinctly in the first chapter of the Dao De Jing (道德经):

“The way that can be spoken is not the real Way
The name that can be named is not the real name.”

A euphemism for the Dao is wu-ji (無極), a primordial state of Nothingness that is “without bounds and limits”. It is from this Nothingness that Taiji (太極), the Supreme Ultimate Source, manifesting as absolute Oneness, comes forth. From Taiji then proceed the dual, yet entwined forces of yin (阴) and yang (阳), which in turn become the components of the myriad forms that characterize creation:

“Dao gave birth to the One;
The One gave birth to two things,
Then to three things, then to ten thousand…” (ibid, 42)

Whereas the Dao is the ineffable and nameless void, its manifestation as Taiji represents its latent immanence in all existence. It has also been referred to as the “supreme mother of all things” (Fowler 2005, 108); as such, it may be conceived of as a womb of complete potentiality. From this womb the generation of masculine yang, literally “the sunny place” or “south slope”, and feminine yin, “the shady place” or “north slope”, encompasses a tripod of Heaven (the transcendent), Earth (the immanent) with Humanity poised between them. Through descent into the Four Realms and substantiation into the Wu Xing (五行), the five elements of Fire, Earth, Metal, Water and Wood, the physical world with all of its possibilities materialises. It should be emphasized that Daoism’s worldview is holistic rather than dualistic: its masculine and feminine elements are interdependent and dynamic. Moreover, as every quality is defined by the gradient of its opposite, the feminine yin is contained as potential within the masculine yang, and vice-versa (Fowler 2005, 81-84).


Readers of the Old Testament are familiar with the anthropomorphic imagery of the patriarchal “Jehovah”. In Jewish tradition this name, better known as the Tetragrammaton, or “four-lettered name” represented as Y-H-V-H (י-ה-ו-ה) is never pronounced but replaced with the euphemistic adonai (א-ד-נ-י), meaning “my Lord”. According to Jewish mysticism, however, neither of these names, nor the personalised, masculine deity they signify, is indicative of the intrinsic nature of God. Not unlike the Dao, the absolute nature of the Supreme Being is ineffable and completely unknowable; the kabbalists gave it the appellation Ayn Sof (אין םוף), literally “without bounds” or “Nothingness without limits” (Kaplan 1991, 23-24).

In order for this Nothingness to manifest as creation, a process of Divine Emanation occurs. This results in the model of the Ten Emanations, or Sefirot. The arrangement of these Divine Emanations in a tripartite alignment, with the right column representing masculine forces, the left side feminine and the centre their line of mutual confluence, is known as tikun, or rectification. Furthermore, the Sefirot combine in such a way to reflect the quality of the Four Worlds through which they descend in order to become manifest. These are: the World of Emanation (Atziltuh), the World of Creation (Beriyah), the World of Formation (Yetzirah) and the World of Action (Assiyah). A further ethereal quasi-realm of “Primordial Man”, Adam Kadmon, signifying the Divine Will to emerge from Nothingness, precedes these four (Kaplan 1991, 15-16).

These five sefirotic combinations are known in kabbalah as Partzufim, or Divine Expressions, and from the sublime to the more mundane, are known as Arich Anpin, “the Extended Face” (but also referred to as Ayin or Nothingness), Aba, Father, Ima, Mother, Zeir Anpin, “the Reduced Face” and, finally Nukva, the Female, comprised solely of the final Sefirah of Malchut, Kingdom (Kaplan 1991, 95-96).

The feminine aspects of Ima and Nukva are also referred to respectively as the Upper and Lower Shekhina. The term Shekhina, literally meaning “dwelling place”, is mentioned frequently in the Talmud as a referent to “the Divine Presence”. In this earlier usage, however, despite its grammatical feminine gender, the term had not yet developed into the female hypostases within the Godhead that later kabbalistic works like Sefer Ha-Bahir and, in particular, Sefer Ha-Zohar (The Book of Radiance) would boldly articulate (Scholem 1991, 150).

The Upper Shekhina, which is designated in Sefer Ha-Zohar as “the Palace” or “Celestial Womb “and reminiscent of Taiji, exemplifies the process whereby Nothingness transforms into infinite potentiality. The Upper Shekhina, while serving as a receptor of the supernal flow of Divine Life, simultaneously functions as a dynamic agent in which the ineffable becomes revealed through the emanations (i.e. the seven lower Sefirot) that it emits. Borrowing Indian terminology, Gershom Scholem describes the Upper Shekhina as “the Shakti of the latent God: it is entirely active energy, in which what is concealed within God is externalized.”

By contrast, the Lower Shekhina of Malchut (Kingdom) receives the influx of all the supernal emanations but what it transmits is no longer within the realm of the Godhead but rather Creation itself. Allegorized in Sefer Ha-Zohar as “the Moon” and “the Earth”, the Lower Shekhina possesses no light of its own. (This attribute resulted in its later development as the potential to at times infuse “darkness” and “evil” into the world.) Apart from the influx of the nine Sefirot preceding it, more significantly, the Lower Shekhina receives a reflux from below through human actions, which it then transmits upwards to the transcendent realms of being. Significantly, the kabbalists held that the sin of Adam and Eve and their expulsion from Eden had caused the Shekhina to likewise become exiled from her earthly domain and separated from her male counterpart Zeir Anpin, also known as “The Higher Man” from Ezekiel’s vision. The Zohar repeatedly emphasizes the fundamental role of human endeavour in restoring the immanent Shekhina in union with her transcendent partner, Zeir Anpin. In the kabbalah of R. Isaac Luria many meditative prayers known as yichudim (unities) were established to precede the performance of certain Torah precepts, expressing the conscious intent to restore the harmonious balance within the Divine (Scholem 1991, 186-187).

The Mundane Feminine

Daoism maintains that sexual relations between male and female are a microcosmic paradigm of the macrocosmic Yin and Yang. Works ascribed to the legendary Yellow Emperor, such as The Classic of the Plain Girl, viewed heterosexual relations as a natural function and discuss its various aspects with candour. Since the hormonal secretions of both male (yang) and female (yin) were considered storehouses of “life essences”, or jing (精), the goal of sexual relations was to achieve a healthy absorption of these essences. There was, however, a fundamental difference in the sexual nature of men and women. As expressed by the Daoist adept Wu Xian of the Han Dynasty (Reid 1989, 258):

“The male belongs to Yang. Yang’s nature is such that the male is easily aroused but also quick to retreat. The female belongs to Yin. Yin’s nature is such that the female is slow to be aroused and also slow to be satiated.”

Furthermore, male orgasm involved a depletion of jing, whereas female climax entailed its retention. In order to balance the inequity of nature in this arena, Daoists advocated a regimen of semen retention during coitus. This type of sexual practice was meant to enable the female to have more time to reach her climax, at which time her partner would reap the dual benefits of retaining his own jing, while simultaneously absorbing hers (Reid 1989, 263-264). Although younger adepts were allowed occasional ejaculations, these were viewed as progressively detrimental with age (Reid 1989, 261). According to Daoist principles, sexuality was not about satisfaction of desires but rather a means to nurture vital essence. As stated by the renowned Tang dynasty Daoist Dr. Sun Ssu-Mo, “a man must think of how this act will benefit his health and thus keep himself free from disease. This is a subtle secret of the art of the bed-chamber.”

A hedonistic stream of Daoism subsequently developed by the 3rd century, and its utilization of these sexual techniques in Daoist temples without regard to moral ramifications, at various junctures in Chinese history evoked a strong public reaction by the authorities against these practices (Reid 1989, 13).

Like the Daoists, kabbalists also saw the sexual act as the primary earthly paradigm of the Union between the Bride (Shekhina) and her Spouse, the Higher Man (Zeir Anpin). Kabbalah, however, imbued the sexual act with a sanctity and moral quality which naturalistic Daoism did not. This meant that the sexual act could only be performed within the sanctity of marriage and after the woman’s ritual purification following her menses.

Though both the Talmud and the medieval Jewish physician Maimonides call attention to the deleterious mental and physical effects of excess depletion of semen, Judaism still championed the procreative effects of sexuality as fulfilment of the first Torah precept “Be fruitful and multiply…” The Talmud, however, recommends that during intercourse a husband delay his ejaculation in order that his wife may climax first. (Ironically, the stated purpose of this practice is to engender male offspring!). Furthermore, according to the laws of onah (Exodus 21:11), in which a husband is obliged to provide his spouse with food, clothing and sexual relations, it is not merely the frequency of the latter for which the male is responsible but also its qualitative aspect.

The unio mystica advocated by the kabbalists was reinforced with the Zohar’s interpretation of the creation myth. Mentioned several centuries earlier in both Midrash and Rashi commentaries, Adam was said to have been created du-partzufim (דו-פרצופים), or androgynous. The taking of Adam’s rib (Genesis 2:21) in order to create Eve was the forceful Divine act of separating this heretofore unified androgynous being. The human process of finding a mate and binding that relationship within the sanctity of marriage was deemed a restoration of the pristine unity that had existed prior to this rupture. This restoration was in itself paradigmatic of the rectification inside the Godhead which occurred during performance of the sexual act within the parameters of sanctity and morality set by the Torah (Green 2006, 39).

As with the licentious tendencies that developed in the Daoist tradition, the Sabbatian and Frankist heresies which emerged in Europe during the 17th and 18th centuries respectively were perversions of this kabbalistic notion that human coupling could affect the restitution of unity within the Godhead. These heresies similarly affected a reactionary backlash against the promulgation of kabbalah.

Conclusion

Excepting the enhanced stamina of the female in sexual matters, Lao Zi makes several references in the Dao De Jing to an intrinsic superiority of the Yin aspect:

“The female by quiescence conquers the male;
By quiescence she gets underneath.” (61)

“Truly, the hard and strong are cast down,
While the soft and weak rise to the top.” (76)

“When you know the male, yet hold on to the female,
You’ll be the ravine of the country.” (28)

In the psychological, political and spiritual matters referred to in these verses, the Dao De Jing regarded the yielding Yin as more capable of attaining results than the more abrasive Yang. Likewise, the practice of Wu-Wei, or effortless achievement, involved a passive Yin approach that enabled all human artifice to acquiesce to the greater flow of Dao.

It is in the eschatological teleology of kabbalah, where aspects of feminine superiority become visible. In the world of time and space, the six masculine emanations of Zeir Anpin symbolized by the 6th masculine letter vav, “ו”, representing the phallus, encapsulate the six directions of space (N, S, E, W, up, down) and the six days of the week. By contrast, the feminine letter heh “ה” corresponding to the (Lower) Shekhina represents a singular, internal spatial point and the temporal Sabbath day (Kaplan 1991, 11). Though the Sabbath is the seventh and final day of the week, the Talmudic sages classified it as “the last in Creation; the first in Thought.” In this context, in the same way that in the Jewish religious tradition the Sabbath day has a greater sanctity than weekdays, likewise the revelation of Divinity in the immanent natural order of the Shekhina appears as the primary motif of Creation itself (Green 2006, 8-9).

Furthermore, according to Jewish tradition, with the dawn of the Messianic era, predicted to occur after 6000 years of the Jewish calendar (currently at 5769) at the threshold of the Sabbatical millennium, Adam’s sin will be removed. This will have a profound effect on the status of women. Isaiah’s prophecy that “…the light of the Moon will be like the light of the Sun” (Isaiah 30:26) is said to reflect this transformation in the eminence of women. So too, according to the Zohar, does the prophecy of Jeremiah: “For God will create a new thing, a woman shall court a man” (Kaplan 1993, 62).

With the socio-cultural advancement of women in the postmodern era, more people are questioning the mythology of the masculine God portrayed in exoteric Jewish scriptures and other religious narratives. Furthermore, men and women alike are rejecting patriarchal structures as enshrined in Confucian thought and still operative in numerous societies around the world. The exploration of mystical traditions such as Daoism and kabbalah reveal a worldview where the feminine principle plays a dominant role both in the supernal and earthly domains. A greater understanding and implementation of these ideas could ultimately facilitate a more sophisticated notion of the Divine. More importantly, the respective practices associated with each of these traditions radically transform our view of Ultimate Reality from a transcendent concept beyond our grasp to a simple experience which, if we can only surrender to the power within, we all have the capacity to access in every moment of our lives.


REFERENCE LIST:

Fowler, Jeaneane D. An Introduction to the Philosophy and Religion of Taoism: Pathways to Immortality. 2005. Sussex: Sussex Academic Press. Google Books. http:// books.google.com (accessed September 22, 2008).

Green, Arthur. A Guide to the Zohar. 2004. Stanford: Stanford University Press.

Green, Arthur. Seek My Face: A Jewish Mystical Theology. 2006. Woodstock: Jewish Lights Publishing.

Jinfen, Yan. 2002. A feminine expression of mysticism, romanticism and syncretism in A Plaint of Lady Wang. Inter-Religio 42: 3- 18. Nanzan University. http://www.nanzan-u.ac.jp/ (accessed September 29, 2008)

Kaplan, Arye. Immortality, Resurrection and the Age of the Universe: A Kabbalistic View. 1993. Hoboken: Ktav Publishing House.

Kaplan, Arye. Innerspace. 1991. Brooklyn: Moznaim Publishing Company.

Kaup, Katherine P., ed. 2007. Understanding Contemporary Asia Pacific. London: Lynne Rienner Publishers,

Lao-Tzu. Te Tao Ching. 1993. New York: Random House Inc.

Reid, Daniel P. The Tao of Health, Sex and Longevity: A Modern Practical Guide to the Ancient Way. 1989. New York. Simon and Schuster.

Rosner, Fred. Biomedical Ethics and Jewish Law. 2001. Hoboken Ktav Publishing House. Google Books. http://books.google.com (accessed October 4, 2008).

Scholem, Gershom. On the Mystical Shape of the Godhead: Basic Concepts in the Kabbalah. 1991. New York: Schocken Books.

On Lotteries, Adultery and Fragrant Herbs

The name of the Jewish holiday of Purim means "lottery". It refers to the lottery that the Persian vizier Haman, the antagonist of the story in the Book of Esther, conducted to determine the month for his nefarious campaign to eliminate the Jews of ancient Persia. In all other Jewish holidays the name follows the symbol of redemption: Pesach denotes God's passing over the homes of the Jews in Egypt during the plague of the first-born, the final blow leading to Israel's exodus; Sukkoth refers to the "clouds of glory" surrounding the Israelites during their sojourn in Sinai. Why does the Purim story use the term related to the catastrophe rather than one referring to the deliverance?

To understand this, one must go deeper than the literal level of the Torah and examine it through the lens of the Pardes ("the Orchard", an acronym for pshat, the simple meaning; remez, the hermeneutic; drash, the exegetical; and sod, the mystical.) In fact the Hebrew name for the Book of Esther is מגילת אסתר, Megilat Esther, which can also be read as 'revelation of the concealed'. There is much that is hidden behind the visible garment of the Purim story.

On the simple level is a story of political intrigue, which the text claims is also recorded in the chronicles of Persia, though this claim has no historical verification. King Achashverosh, who some commentators suggest is Xerxes, has a lavish banquet for his subjects of 127 nations. He asks his wife, Vashti, to appear before the guests in her royal crown, but she refuses. The Talmud fills in the reason for that refusal: she was asked to comeby her drunken husband wearing only the royal crown and nothing else. She is put to death for her disobedience. On the advice of his advisors virgins are gathered from all over Persia in a selection process for the next queen. The King finally selects Esther, the niece of Mordechai the Jew, as his consort, but Esther conceals her ethnicity. While Esther is in the royal palace, her uncle Mordechai uncovers a plot against the king's life. The king neglects to reward him for this act.

In the interim Haman seals a deal with the king to destroy a "certain people scattered about the kingdom", a people who adhere to "their own laws." Though he hates all Jews, he is particularly irked by Mordechai who refuses to bow down to him. Mordechai hears of the edict to instigate a Jewish massacre, determined in Haman's lottery to be this month of Adar in the Hebrew calendar. In a public display of mourning at the royal palace gate, he sends a message to Esther to intercede on behalf of her people; but she has not been called to the King's chambers in 40 days. To appear before him without being summoned can carry the penalty of death. She tells Mordechai to organise a three-day fast on the part of the Jews, after which she goes to the king. His feelings of love rekindled, the King allows her to enter his chambers by the "raising of the golden sceptre". He asks her what she desires ("up to half the kingdom and I will grant it to you"); all Esther requests is the company of the King and Haman at a special banquet she wants to hold. Accepting her invitation, they appear the next day at Esther's feast. Again, the King pleads to hear Esther's request. She invites them both to another banquet the following day. Haman is feeling particularly proud as a recipient of this honour by the queen, but, leaving the banquet, he sees Mordechai at the gate, stubbornly refusing to prostrate himself. With his family he resolves to set up a gallows in a tall tree and hang Mordechai even before the advent of Adar.

The king has a sleepless night, in which he asks for the royal chronicles to be brought to him. The chronicles remind him that nothing had done to award Mordechai for saving his life. At that point, Haman is waiting to see the King to request the hanging of Mordechai. The King summons him and asks him what should be done "to a man the King wishes to honour." Imagining that the King is referring to him, Haman suggests that the said beneficiary be donned in royal apparel and led through the streets of Shushan with a crier proclaiming his praises. The King then instructs Haman to heap those royal rewards on his archenemy Mordechai. In the wake of this humiliation, Haman relates this turn of events to his family. His wife warns him that if Mordechai is of Jewish descent, then "you will surely continue to fall". Then and there, Haman is whisked away to attend Esther's second banquet. When the King again asks to hear her request, she makes a dramatic plea for her own life and the life of her people. Achashverosh asks who could be such a cruel villain; she points to Haman. The King, in his anger, goes out to catch a breather in the garden, while Haman pleads for his own life to Esther. Unfortunately, he "falls on the couch" where Esther is reclining (he was pushed by an angel, according to the Midrash), just as the King re-enters from the garden. One of the King's servants then reveals that this same villain wanted to kill Mordechai, who had saved the King's life. A hood is placed over Haman's head, and he is taken away for a summary hanging on the tree he had prepared for Mordechai.

The King bestows all of the wealthy Haman's assets to Mordechai. The Jews are granted a new decree to rise up and fight their enemies on the 14^th of Adar. They are later granted an extra day to fight their enemies in Shushan. Purim is declared an eternal holiday for feasting, the reading of the Megilah, giving of portions [of food] to one's friends and gifts to the poor.

That is the simple story. Of interest is that this is the only Biblical book in which the name of God never once appears. Also, of interest is the Talmudic dictum that in the times of the Messiah all of the Jewish holidays will be abandoned with the exception of Purim. Why is this so?

If we jump to the hermeneutical level and examine some of the inter-textual relationships we find that both Mordechai and Haman have an interesting karma behind their births. Haman is a descendant of Agag, the king of Amalek. Several hundred years earlier, King Saul was given the commandment to wipe out the cursed Amalekites, the first nation that attacked the Israelites in the desert. Although he ransacked the Amalekite kingdom, he disobeyed the commandment and kept Agag alive. God angrily informs the prophet Samuel of this defiance. Samuel proceeds to Saul's camp and to kill the Amalekite king by sword. He then announces that because of Saul's insubordination, he will lose the kingship. In the short interval that Agag was kept alive, he had enough time to impregnate his consort. It is from the circumstances of this union, and Saul's misplaced compassion, that Haman originates.

Fast forward about half-a-century and we find that Saul's replacement, King David, is faced with a rebellion by his son, Absalom. As David flees Jerusalem for his life, he is cursed by one Shima ben Gera, a religious leader who has sided with Absalom. David is urged by his aides to kill Shimi for lèse majesté, punishable by death. David refuses to do so. "Perhaps God will look after my affliction and requite me good for his cursing this day." Shimi lives a long life, and it is from his descendants, and ultimately from David's compassion, that Mordechai owes his existence.

There is another interesting relationship that hermeneutics reveal. According to the view of Rabbi Meir in the Talmud, Esther was more than just a blood relative to Mordechai: she was his wife. This is based upon the reading of the verse לקח אותה לבת ("he took her as a daughter") with לקח אותה לבית ("he took her as a wife"). Of course, in its inimitable fashion, the Talmud comes up with all sorts of interesting answers as to how Achashverosh failed to notice she was not a virgin, but we will not digress on that here. The main point is that Esther was committing adultery, an act punishable by death according to Torah law. The Talmud states that initially she was passive in the sexual act, which was therefore counted as rape rather than infidelity. Later, however, her entry into the royal chambers to plead for the life of her people constituted active seduction. At that point, she became halachically forbidden to Mordechai. From Esther's conscious sacrifice of her marital life to save her people, we learn of the significant Talmudic dictum: a sin committed for the sake of Heaven is preferable to a commandment performed with ulterior motives.

Climbing up the ladder to level of the exegetical, we find the reason for Achashverosh ordering a feast at the beginning of the story. Prior to Nebuchadnezzar's conquest of Jerusalem, Jeremiah had predicted that in 70 years the Jews would return to their homeland and rebuild the fallen Temple (still extant at the time of his prophecy). It was Achasverosh who, upon assuming power decades later, ordered that the work on the Temple initiated by his predecessor Cyrus, be brought to a halt. In the third year of his reign, 70 years after the onset of the Babylonian exile, Achashverosh concluded that Jeremiah's dreaded prophecy of the Jews regaining their former glory was doomed to failure. He ordered a feast to celebrate the continued subservience of the Jews to Persia.

On this level we also learn that Haman wanted to entice the Jews at this feast of Achashverosh. He wanted them to drink and thus succumb to the many sensual desires that this feast offered its participants. In contrast, Mordechai was concerned that the Jews attending this feast conducted themselves within the parameters of Jewish law. The Midrash teaches that while some of the Jews followed Mordechai's directives, many others did not. They celebrated the temptations of the senses at a feast where the victorious Achashverosh shamelessly drank from the golden vessels of the sacred Temple. In the spiritual realm, then, this "sin" gave empowerment to Haman and his plot to annihilate the Jews.

Finally, on the mystical level of sod, the Ari teaches that Haman was a reincarnation of the Primordial Serpent. This is because the first time the Hebrew letters of the name המן (Haman) appear in the Torah is in the verse המן העץ אשר צויתיך))
"Have you eaten from the tree of which I commanded you…?" (Genesis 3:11). According to the Ari, Haman's attempt to have the Jews eat at Achashverosh's feast was the same attempt of the Serpent to cause Adam and Eve to "sin" by bringing duality ('the knowledge of good and evil") into the oneness of Eden. The Zohar describes that sin as the separation of the Shechina from Ze'ir Anpin, the primordial breach in sefirotic unity, the rupture of Divine immanence and transcendence. It is also noteworthy that kabbalists describe Esther's separation from Mordechai, and her union with Achasverosh in the same terms. Esther is Malchut or Shechina, the "concealment" of the Divine in the physical world. Achashverosh translates into Hebrew as "pain in the head", a fairly good description of physical reality, especially one devoid of Spirit (i.e. where Shekihina and Tiferet are separated).

On the kabbalistic level the names of both Esther and Mordechai actually refer to fragrant herbs. Esther's Hebrew name is Hadassah, meaning myrtle; in Aramaic Mordechai translates to מר דכיא, meaning "pure frankincense". The sense of smell corresponds to the spiritual. It is the only sense that was not blemished in the original sin of eating from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, in which all the other senses took part. It is for this reason we have the custom of smelling fragrant herbs upon the closing of the Shabbat; we try and retain some of the spiritual vibration sullied in the six-day workweek of material existence. According to Sefer Yetzirah, all of the months of the year correspond to a particular sense. The month of Adar corresponds to the sense of smell.

From this we can understand the origin of this holiday's name. When Adar came up in Haman's lottery, it was in fact the beginning of Israel's deliverance. The fact the incarnation of the Serpent, striving to re-enact the original sin of abandoning Divine oneness, chose the month corresponding to pure fragrance, was an assurance his scheme could not succeed. Although the name of God never appears explicitly in the Megillah, according to kabbalistic calligraphy, the scrolls are deliberately written with the word המלך, the King, at the top of every column. Though this ostensibly refers to Achashverosh, it refers as well to the transcendent God who is always already one with the immanent Goddess. This is why the Purim holiday will remain during the Messianic Era. At that time, Divine revelation will be ubiquitous. We will not need any holidays to remind us of such. What we will celebrate, however, is our ability to perceive that Divine Presence when it could not outwardly be seen. That is the "revelation of the concealed."

Lastly, we are taught that Esther and Achashvarosh had a child, who ascended the throne of Persia. His name was Darius, and one of his first acts was to grant the Jews permission to return to the land of Israel and rebuild the Temple. This took place exactly seventy years from the time of the first Temple's destruction.

I have only written a small morsel of what the Megillat Esther offers, but, as the kabbalists are wont to say: "Those who will understand, will understand."

PHONE SEX & BIBLIOGRAPHIES: THE REAL THING II

I received several positive responses and expressions of gratitude after posting The Real Thing. Many of those messages were appreciative of my candour, while for others it was an eye-opener as to the true breadth of the Jewish mystical tradition. I am not in the habit of doing sequels, and it is not because of pandering to popularity that I am making an exception here. Rather, it is because there was a significant omission in the first article which I would like to rectify.
In the summer of 1989, when we were still living in the Old City of Tsfat, for a Shabbat weekend we hosted a young man who worked for an advertising firm in Los Angeles. I don’t remember exactly what got us on to the topic—and I know this must seem suspect here—but, somehow, over our Sunday morning coffee at the kitchen table, we entered into a conversation about phone sex. It seemed that Gerry (not his actual name) was into phone sex in a big way. Don’t forget this was still the eighties, when the cell phones were clunkers twice the size they are now and the phone sex phenomenon was at its inception.
What I found most unusual about Gerry was not only his predilection to phone sex but rather his dogged preference to it over the “real thing”. According to him, the practice offered a more titillating experience of pure fantasy superior to the mundane realities of human interaction. Furthermore, one was not bound by any commitments; it was pure pleasure void of any emotional attachment and the subsequent pain that, according to him, invariably followed.
Needless to say, his comments were startling to me, particularly at that time given the very insular and particular concerns of a Hasidic lifestyle in the Old City, in many ways a reflection of the shteitl culture centuries before. Of course, having come of age in the 60’s and 70’s I was no stranger to sexual experimentation, though admittedly quite tame and innocent compared to what goes on these days. While I did not consider myself a prude, however, I felt there was something distasteful and perverse in Gerry’s remarks.
I tried in vain to point out that his comparison of phone sex with sexual intercourse was an invalid premise at the onset. Whereas regular, old-fashioned sex involved some form of direct contact of two or more human bodies, what was referred to as “phone sex” was simply masturbation accompanied by audio stimulation from a voice on the other end of the telephone line. That female voice was only a remote, indirect participant in the act of sexual pleasure; she was no more real in the audio sense than the Playboy centrefold, also an icon of male sexual fantasy, was in the visual.
My reasoned arguments, however, fell on deaf ears. He claimed I was being judgemental and moralistic. If a woman’s voice over the phone wires could succeed in triggering greater pleasure than could be attained through direct sexual stimulation with an actual person, then that was entirely his prerogative to choose that option. I had to concede to him on that point. There is a modern, Hebrew saying “טאם וריח אי אפשר להתוכח על” (“Concerning tastes and odours, it is impossible to argue.”), which basically means you will have a hard time convincing a chocoholic on the virtues of vanilla. The awkward conversation became an awkward silence, as Gerry finished his breakfast and left to catch the morning bus to Jerusalem. We never heard from him again. It could very well be, given that there seemed to be some psychological barriers and fears obstructing his emotions, that he is now a middle-aged loner still making desperate phone calls to continually relive his self-absorbed, paradisaical fantasies. Alternatively, he could have met the right person who enabled him to overcome these mysterious personal issues. Probably we will never know.
The reason I mention this incident is that it came to mind during a visit the other day to Borders in Downtown Perth. My wife had gone to the adjacent Myers department store to take advantage of of the January sales. I was given an hour or so to browse in the bookstore. After looking for The Mirror of Simple Souls by Marguerite Porète, which was not in stock, I found myself standing in front of the paltry section devoted to books on kabbalah. I understand that I am living in Perth and not Jerusalem, Brooklyn or London, where the selection would certainly have been greater. Yet, it was disappointing to see that there was not one single classical text of kabbalah on the shelves. The most prominent book with the most copies was Yehuda Berg’s The Power of Kabbalah: Technology for the Soul. Having over an hour to kill, I began “scanning” it. (I have to admit that I cheated and read a fair bit, as well.)
When it was finally time to leave, I had browsed about three-quarters of the book. There was nothing at all there that was incorrect or offensive. In fact, as I have said before, there was much in it that would be of great benefit to those who had no notion of what kabbalah entailed. Yet, simultaneously, I found it a mystery how such a book had proven inspirational to so many. In terms of depth, profundity and wisdom, I felt it did not come close to the works of the late Aryeh Kaplan, to give but one example. Then I remembered something interesting from my prior conversation with a teacher from the LA Kabbalah Centre. In response to my suggestion that the pop-kabbalah presented by the Centre was an adulteration of Jewish mysticism’s original intent and function, he had replied that because most people were incapable of engaging directly with the original, it was necessary to “extract the consciousness” of kabbalah and present that indirect version as a palatable alternative.
It was there and then in Borders that I remembered my conversation with Gerry two decades before.
That notion of having to “extract the consciousness” did not sit well with me. After all, what remains of any entity once its consciousness is “extracted”?
Before leaving the bookstore, I turned to the back of the book to see if the author had given a proper bibliography of his sources. There I found a resource guide (I think it was referred to as a “products” listing) to further one’s spiritual journey into this extraction of kabbalistic consciousness. Of course, every single product listed there was a either a Berg family publication or DVD. It was then I decided to write this sequel and include a bibliography for English speakers that would truly assist those who would like to engage in direct contact with kabbalistic sources rather than a diluted extract poured down their throats.
When I began researching this bibliography, I was amazed at the sheer volume that is out there on the market nowadays. Lately, Providence University-- a fitting name in this enterprise-- has published a slew of kabbalah classics by Chaim Vital, Abraham Abulafia, Moshe Cordevero and others. I have delineated three categories: General Reading, Classic Texts and Critical Histories. Ideally, I believe a student of an integral kabbalah should be learning from each. I have deliberately limited each category to 18 books, eighteen being the gematria of חי, i.e. “life”. Three times eighteen is 54, which is the gematria of נד, meaning “movement”, which, from the time of Merkava mysticism onwards has been the aim of kabbalah: to awaken people from spiritual slumber and get them to move. Any book descriptions marked with an asterisk are from Amazon; the few brief one-liners are my own summations.
A story is told of a poor woman who earned her meagre living selling apples. Once she came to pour out her heart to the Divrei Chaim, Rabbi Chaim Halberstam, the 19th century Hasidic master and mystic. Her apples were not selling; she was convinced they were of inferior quality. She complained bitterly to the Rebbe about her mounting debts and poverty. The next morning the Divrei Chaim arrived at the marketplace and finding the stall where the woman sold her apples, stepped inside and began proclaiming in a loud voice: “Delicious, crisp apples for sale! Delicious, crisp apples for sale!” In no time at all, the curious sight of the Divrei Chaim advertising apples attracted a crowd of eager shoppers. Three days later the woman again paid a visit to the Rebbe. With a smile across her face, she told him that she had paid back all of her debts and her apples were selling so well, she could hardly keep abreast with the demand. “You see,” he replied, “your apples were always good. Somebody just had to let the people know that.”
I am not so pretentious as to compare myself with the Divrei Chaim, but my intent in publishing this bibliography is similar to his in praising the poor woman’s apples. I just want people to know. Of course, there is far more out there than I have included in this listing, but at least this can be a start.
I need to add one word of caution here. For anyone who prefers the experience of direct engagement in kabbalistic texts, it is imperative to learn Hebrew to truly do so. Even the best English translations do not cut the ice when compared to the delivery and nuance of the original language. In the analogy I have given so far, these English translations might be analogised to sexual intercourse with a condom. It’s not 100% completely direct contact, but, for those whose preference lies in that direction, it beats phone sex hands down (no pun intended).
Finally, for those of you who might think I am being cheeky and provocative to use sexuality as a metaphor for something as sacred as Divine awareness, the following is a quote from the great Maimonides from the Mishneh Torah (1:10:5), the first major code of Jewish law, on the way in which a person must fulfil the commandment to love God: “What is the love of God that is befitting? It is to love God with a great and exceeding love, so strong that one’s soul should be knit up with the love of God such that it is continually enraptured by it, like love-sick individuals whose minds are at no time free from a passion for a particular woman, and enraptured by her at all times…even more intense should be the love of God in the hearts of those who love Him; they should be enraptured by this love at all times.”
Though I have yet to read the book-- it’s in my current Amazon order -- I have been told that in The Mirror of Simple Souls Marguerite Porète, from the viewpoint of a woman and Christian mystic, similarly expresses those sentiments and that same burning passion.

GENERAL READING

1) INNER SPACE: INTRODUCTION TO KABBALAH, MEDITATION AND PROPHECY by R. Aryeh Kaplan
An outstanding overview of kabbalah, Ain Sof, the Sefirot and their relationship to the prophetic experience.
Publisher: Moznaim Pub Corp (June 1990)
ISBN-10: 0940118564
ISBN-13: 978-0940118560

2) MEDITATION AND KABBALAH by R. Aryeh Kaplan
Kaplan’s groundbreaking work examines the meditative traditions throughout the historical evolution of kabbalah.
Publisher: Weiser Books (May 1989)
ISBN-10: 0877286167
ISBN-13: 978-0877286165

3) MEDITATION AND THE BIBLE by R. Aryeh Kaplan
Kaplan analyses the scriptural origins of meditative and mystical practice.
Publisher: Weiser Books; New Ed edition (June 1978)
ISBN-10: 0877286175
ISBN-13: 978-0877286172

4) JEWISH MEDITATION: A PRACTICAL GUIDE by R. Aryeh Kaplan
*Kaplan, Orthodox rabbi and author of Meditation and the Bible (Weiser, 1978) and Meditation and Kabbalah (Weiser, 1981), shows that meditation is consistent with traditional Jewish thought and practice. He then presents a guide to a variety of meditative techniques: mantra meditation (with suggested phrases and Bible verses to use as mantras); contemplation; visualization; experiencing nothingness (which he does not recommend for beginners); conversing with God; and prayer. His instructions are clear and explicit, and his advice is informed and sound, advocating that a simple 20-minute-a-day program can indeed help make the practitioner a better person and a better Jew, and develop a closer relationship to God and things spiritual.
Publisher: Schocken (March 14, 1995)
ISBN-10: 0805210377
ISBN-13: 978-0805210378

5) KABBALAH OF CREATION: THE MYSTICISM OF ISAAC LURIA by Eliahu Klein (Editor, Translator)
*Kabbalah of Creation is a new translation of the early Kabbalah of Rabbi Isaac Luria, founder of the most influential Jewish mystical school of the last 400 years. Living in relative obscurity in Northern Galilee, Luria experienced a powerful epiphany that influenced his lyrical, influential text. Poetically and meditatively described, the range of subjects includes the revelation of the Godhead's light in the world and its relationship to every aspect of the human life cycle, including lovemaking, conception, gestation, birth, and maturation.
Publisher: North Atlantic Books (July 13, 2005)
ISBN-10: 1556435428
ISBN-13: 978-1556435423

6) IMMORTALITY, RESURRECTION AND THE AGE OF THE UNIVERSE: A KABBALISTIC VIEW by R. Aryeh Kaplan
This is fascinating collection of lectures presented to the Association of Orthodox Jewish Scientists.
Publisher: Ktav Publishing House (January 1993)
ISBN-10: 0881253456
ISBN-13: 978-0881253450

7) THE THIRTEEN PETALLED ROSE by Adin Steinsaltz
* ”The Thirteen Petalled Rose”, written by the world-renowned scholar Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz, is based on the structures and assumptions of kabbalah, the largely esoteric theological system that deals with the relationships between man, Torah, the Commandments, and God. As Rabbi Steinsaltz teaches, kabbalah is the official theology of the Jewish people. While The Thirteen Petalled Rose can be viewed as an introduction to the essence of Jewish existence and belief, its author does not attempt to justify Judaism according to external criteria. It is not meant to be a book about its subject, but rather a book that grows out of its own world, the world of kabbalah. While most primers deal with practical matters, this volume touches largely upon issues of the soul
Publisher: Jason Aronson (April 28, 1994)
ISBN-10: 0876684509
ISBN-13: 978-0876684504

8) THE KABBALAH OF THE ARI Z'AL, ACCORDING TO THE RAMHAL by Rabbi Raphael Afilalo
*The book of the Ramchal [R. Moshe Chaim Luzzatto]"The Essentials of the Tree of Life" is a summary of the master work of the Ari Z'al; "The Etz Hayim" (The Tree of Life). It describes the evolution of the worlds, the Sephirot and the Partsufim, in a clear and concise language, which only retains the essential. Divided into ten chapters, it starts with the first manifestation of the creation, the superior worlds, the Sephirot, until explaining to us the systems of reincarnation of the souls.
Publisher: Kabbalah Editions; 1 edition (November 2004)
ISBN-10: 2923241010
ISBN-13: 978-2923241012

9) ENDLESS LIGHT: THE ANCIENT PATH OF KABBALAH by R. David Aaron
*After years of careful study, David Aaron helps us find the answers to life's questions as revealed in the Kabbalah, the mystical tradition of Judaism. Unlike other works on the Kabbalah, which are often academic, abstract, and unrelated to our everyday challenges and concerns, Endless Light is a thought-provoking, practical guide that illuminates our path in life. Rich in personal stories and anecdotes, Endless Light offers a deeper awareness of ourselves, our inner conflicts, and the way we understand and receive life's bounteous gifts. Drawing upon the profound, timeless teachings of the ancients as well as on his own contemporary insights, David Aaron helps truth-seekers of all faiths to enrich their lives, strengthen their faith, and enjoy more meaningful relationships.
Publisher: Berkley Trade; Berkley Trade Pbk. Ed edition (November 1, 1998)
ISBN-10: 0425166295
ISBN-13: 978-0425166291

10) SEEING GOD: TEN LIFE-CHANGING LESSONS OF THE KABBALAH by Rabbi David Aaron
* “Seeing God” by Rabbi David Aaron presents as its subtitle promises "Ten Life-Changing Lessons of the Kabbalah." Aaron, whose founding of the Isralight Institute in Jerusalem helped establish him as one of today's most popular spirituality gurus, writes in a crisp, clear style that offers eminently practical advice for those who wish to see God in their daily lives. The book's first chapter, "Getting Rid of God," does away with "the male, Zeus-like avenger floating about in heaven," which Aaron calls "a childish and counterproductive" concept. In place of "God," Aaron offers Hashem, a Hebrew term that means "the name," which stands for "Ultimate Reality Who embraces everything and fills everything"--a theological and lexical shift that emphasizes divine immanence in the world. Seeing God then elaborates 10 qualities of Hashem, derived from the Kabbalah, the ancient Jewish mystical text. Readers are encouraged to acknowledge and emulate these qualities, which range from Gevurah (kindness) to Malhut (communal consciousness). Each chapter concludes with "Seeing Exercises" and questions for contemplation ("Can you think of three things that you have done to bring justice into the world?"), whose purpose is to demonstrate that "Hashem is right here, right now, waiting to be seen, wanting to be known." --Michael Joseph Gross
Publisher: Tarcher (January 8, 2001)
ISBN-10: 1585420808
ISBN-13: 978-1585420803

11) KABBALAH: THE WAY OF THE JEWISH MYSTIC (Shambhala Classics) by Perle Epstein
*This pioneering, popular introduction to Jewish mysticism was the first survey written for a general audience, and it's now available in Shambhala Classics. Epstein presents the methods, schools, and legendary practitioners of Kabbalah, unraveling the web of ancient traditions hidden in such texts as the Sefer Yetzirah and the Zohar. The words of the great Kabbalists appear throughout the book, giving instructions on practices such as contemplation of the Bible's secret teachings, ecstatic prayer, and intensive meditation.
Publisher: Shambhala (February 13, 2001)
ISBN-10: 1570627673
ISBN-13: 978-1570627675

12) PRACTICAL KABBALAH: A GUIDE TO JEWISH WISDOM FOR EVERYDAY LIFE by R. Laibl Wolf
* The first section, "Spirit Moves" explores the tradition of Kabbalah, tracing its roots to the Bible and comparing many of its traditions to Eastern religions, suggesting they originated in the same beliefs. The second section, "Flows of Mind and Emotion," devotes a chapter to each of the sefirot--three of which relate to the mind, the other seven to emotion--to show how you can use these tenets to improve your life. For instance, Tiferet relates to a wise heart, and its chapter concentrates on ideas such as "inner balance for wellness," truth and beauty, and compassion using the teachings of Maimonides and the Bible, a Hasidic tale, an exercise, a meditation, and even some thoughts on Deepak Chopra.
Publisher: Three Rivers Press (June 15, 1999)
ISBN-10: 0609803786
ISBN-13: 978-0609803783

13) BASIC CONCEPTS IN KABBALAH by Rav Michael Laitman PhD
* By reading in this book, one develops internal observations and approaches that did not previously exist within. This book is intended for contemplation of spiritual terms. To the extent that we are integrated with these terms, we begin to unveil the spiritual structure that surrounds us, almost as if a mist had been lifted.
Publisher: Bnei Baruch/Laitman Kabbalah (June 15, 2006)
ISBN-10: 0973826886
ISBN-13: 978-0973826883

14) GARDEN OF THE SOULS: REBBE NACHMAN ON SUFFERING by Avraham Greenbaum
“This is a beautiful translation of Rebbe Nachman of Breslov's treatise, "Garden of the Souls," which he wrote after the death of his young son. The Garden of Souls is the mystical Garden of Eden, where souls come from and return to after death. The book explores the question of suffering and the death of the innocent, in a beautiful, poetic prose that will inspire anyone -- Jewish or not -- who is recovering from grief, or who is thinking deeply about why "bad things happen to good people." An excellent intro to Breslov Hasidic thought, too!”—R. Yonassan Gershom
Publisher: Breslov Research Institute (April 1990)
ISBN-10: 0930213394
ISBN-13: 978-0930213398

15) THE WINGS OF THE SUN: TRADITIONAL JEWISH HEALING IN THEORY AND PRACTICE by Avraham Greenbaum
*This book is an exploration of the Jewish healing tradition as taught in the Bible, Talmud, Midrash and Kabbalah, and especially in the writings of the outstanding Chassidic luminary, Rebbe Nachman of Breslov (1772-1810).
Publisher: Moznaim Pub Corp (January 1, 1995)
ISBN-10: 9659012047
ISBN-13: 978-9659012046

16) IN THE SHADOW OF THE LADDER: INTRODUCTIONS TO KABBALAH
by Rabbi Yehudah Lev Ashlag( Mark Cohen PhD and Yedidah Cohan, translators)
This authentic translation into English of two Kabbalah texts written in Hebrew asks deeply personal questions about the essence of an individual and the existence of a soul. Discussing the experience of an individual and the role of humans in creation, it offers an understanding of the places of evil, suffering, compassion, and joy in the full experience of divine love. The Kabbalah is presented here not as an esoteric study limited to the divinely inspired, but as a universal pathway of the spirit. Coming from the West rather than the East, this book fills a long-awaited gap as it teaches an essential spirituality within the conceptual framework of the Judeo-Christian tradition.
Publisher: Nehora Press (April 1, 2003)
ISBN-10: 9657222087
ISBN-13: 978-9657222089

17) ECSTATIC KABBALAH by David A. Cooper
* Kabbalah—the secret is out! From Madonna’s controversial conversion to the Dalai Lama’s acknowledgment and support, this mystical tradition is gaining unprecedented recognition. But how do we put this powerful and esoteric worldview into practice? With The Ecstatic Kabbalah, Rabbi David Cooper— author of God Is a Verb (100,000 copies sold), and a renowned leader of the Jewish meditation movement—provides practical exercises on the path toward "mending the soul," the fundamental Jewish experience that brings union with the Divine. With meditation techniques for both beginning and advanced practitioners, The Ecstatic Kabbalah guides listeners into awareness of the "presence of light" with experiential practices for touching the four worlds of mystical Judaism: • Physical—breath work and mind-body harmonization • Emotional—tone the divine names as an expression of devotion • Mental—learn the histories of these techniques • Spiritual—stabilize your connection with divine presence Finally, the long-sequestered doors of Kabbalah are open to all listeners, as they are invited to dwell in the embrace of the Divine with The Ecstatic Kabbalah’s practices of daily renewal.
Publisher: Sounds True; Har/Com edition (September 2005)
ISBN-10: 1591793440
ISBN-13: 978-1591793441

18) GOD IS A VERB by David Cooper
* Embraced by celebrities from Madonna to Jeff Goldblum to Elizabeth Taylor, covered extensively in the pages of Time and Entertainment Weekly, Kabbalah--a Jewish mystical tradition dating back centuries--has taken its place alongside Buddhism as a spiritual practice for modern Western seekers. This book--written by the rabbi who authored the bestselling audiotape series The Mystical Kabbalah--is the first to bring Kabbalah to a wide audience. Earning great praise from critics, God Is a Verb promises to do for Judaism what The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying did for Buddhism, infusing an ancient tradition with new life and popularizing its ideas among an entirely new generation.
Publisher: Riverhead Books, 1997.
ISBN-10: 1573226947


CLASSIC TEXTS

1) SHAAREI TSEDEK-- GATES OF RIGHTEOUSNESS by Shem, Tov Sefardi
Book Description
*As Moshe Idel demonstrated, this book is incorrectly attributed to Rabbi Shem Tov Sefardi de Leon. Its apparently true author is a direct disciple of Avraham Abulafia, Natan ben Saadyah Harar. He describes instructions he received from his teacher, believed to be Aubulafia himself, along with his ecstatic experiences. This gives the book unparalleled importance, as auto-biographical works in Kabbalah are extremely rare. Additionally, he explains in detail many kabbalistic techniques, the very ones he employed to reach his prophetical states. The full text is a reconstruction based upon the four original known manuscripts, which in general have some notable differences or omissions.
Publisher: Providence University (February 1, 2007)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1897352077
ISBN-13: 978-1897352076

2) SULAM HA-ALIYAH—LADDER OF ASCENT by R. Yehuda Albotini
Book Description
*Gematria, the process of calculating the numerical value of letters, words, and phrases, has for centuries been an integral component of kabbalistic studies. The Tseruf, a species of Gematria, is a complex system of combining and rearranging Hebrew letters to discover new and profound meaning in the significations of words and phrases. In Sulam Aliyah, Rabbi Yehuda Albotini, who served as a Rabbi in Jerusalem during the years of 1500-1520, explains these principles of combinations, or Tserufim, with both pious humility and mathematical precision. Subsequently, a meditation upon the various, new arrangements results in an influx of insight or Divine Inspiration from the Ruach Ha-Kodesh (Holy Spirit), a species of revelation through which the Prophets attained an ecstatic vision of God.
Publisher: Providence University (March 1, 2007)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1897352085
ISBN-13: 978-1897352083

3) NER ELOHIM – CANDLE OF GOD by Avraham Abulafia
*In "Ner Elohim" Abulafia lays down the foundations of his entire system of prophetic Kabbalah. It begins with an interpretation of the Blessing of the Priests, where Abulafia explains that the effect of the blessing depends on the knowledge of holy names, their composition, and their function. This leads him to describe the basic principles behind the workings of holy names and letter combinations, as outlined in the fundamental kabbalistic text of Sefer Yetzira, since "formation cannot exist without the combination of letters".
Publisher: Providence University (March 1, 2007)
ISBN-10: 1897352093
ISBN-13: 978-1897352090

4) SEFER HA-OT—THE BOOK OF THE SIGN by Avraham Abulafia
*This is one of the rare autobiographic books in Kabbalah. Abulafia relates his experiences and visions, some of which are really frightening. Most notable are his encounters with angels.
Publisher: Providence University (March 1, 2007)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1897352050
ISBN-13: 978-1897352052

5) THE BAHIR (THE ILLUMINATION)
Translation and commentary by R. Aryeh Kaplan
The oldest kabbalistic text with non-dual Gnostic overtones attributed to the Tannah (Mishnaic sage) Nehuniya ben Ha-kanah.
Publisher: Weiser Books (April 1989)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0877286183
ISBN-13: 978-0877286189

6) SEFER YETZIRAH (THE BOOK OF CREATION)
Translation and commentary by R. Aryeh Kaplan
The second oldest kabbalistic text, attributed by some to the patriarch Abraham, it explains the origin of the 32 Paths of Wisdom (10 sefirot and 22 Hebrew letters)
Publisher: Weiser Books; Rev Sub edition (May 1997)
ISBN-10: 0877288550
ISBN-13: 978-0877288558

7) SEPHER REZIEL HAMELACH (THE BOOK OF RAZIEL THE ANGEL)
*The long-awaited first English translation from ancient Hebrew of the rare and complete 1701 Amsterdam edition, of this famous magical text. According to Hebrew legend, the Sepher Rezial was given to Adam in the Garden of Eden, by the hand of God. The myth suggests that this diverse compendium of ancient Hebrew lore was the first book ever written. Includes an explanatory text on the holy names of God, the divisions of Heaven and Hell, and the names and hierarchy of the angels and spirits.
Publisher: Weiser Books (December 2000)
ISBN-10: 1578631688
ISBN-13: 978-1578631681

8) PALM TREE OF DEVORAH by Moshe Cordovero
* A classic work of Jewish philosophy and Mussar by the famed Safed Kabbalist. Hebrew text with facing, new, annotated translation.
Publisher: Targum (1994)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1568710275
ISBN-13: 978-1568710273

9) THE ZOHAR: PRITZKER EDITION, Vol. 1-4 by Daniel C. Matt
*The first two [4] volumes of The Zohar: Pritzker Edition, translated with commentary by Daniel C. Matt, cover more than half of the Zohar’s commentary on the Book of Genesis (through Genesis 32:3). This is the first translation ever made from a critical Aramaic text of the Zohar, which has been established by Professor Matt based on a wide range of original manuscripts. The extensive commentary, appearing at the bottom of each page, clarifies the kabbalistic symbolism and terminology, and cites sources and parallels from biblical, rabbinic, and kabbalistic texts. The translator’s introduction is accompanied by a second introduction written by Arthur Green, discussing the origin and significance of the Zohar. Please see the Zohar Home Page for ancillary materials, including the publication schedule, press release, Aramaic text, questions, and answers.
Publisher: Stanford University Press; 1 edition (October 29, 2003)
ISBN-10: 0804747474
ISBN-13: 978-0804747479

10) DAAT TEVNOTH: THE KNOWING HEART by R. Moses Chaim Luzzato
A poetic dialogue between the Soul and the Intellect on the mysteries of existence.
Publisher: Feldheim Pub (June 1982)
ISBN-10: 0873063457
ISBN-13: 978-0873063456

11) WAY OF G-D: DERECH HASHEM by R. Moshe Chayim Luzzatto
* Explores Divine regulation of the world. With Rabbi Yosef Begun's marginal notes.
Publisher: Feldheim; 5 edition (January 1, 1984)
ISBN-10: 0873063449
ISBN-13: 978-0873063449

12) KTAVIM CHADASHIM - NEW WRITINGS by R. Chaim Vital
*Ktavim Chadashim contains many unpublished works by Chaim Vital, the foremost disciple of the Ari (Isaac Luria). Here, for the first time, we publish two main sections in English, which are the commentary on Brit Menucha (Covenant of Rest), and the secret fourth part of Shaarei Kedusha (Gates of Holiness). The commentary on Brit Menucha deals with Kabbalah Ma'asit (Practical Kabbalah). It is much more than a simple commentary, because it contains names of angels that are not found in the original Brit Menucha, along with precise instructions concerning their usage. The fourth part of Shaarei Kedusha deals with the practical ways to force Ruach Ha-Kodesh (Divine Inspiration) to descend upon us, thus allowing us to reach prophecy and the world to come. Vital even explains the 72 Names of God, with their angels.
Publisher: Providence University (March 1, 2007)
ISBN-10: 1897352069
ISBN-13: 978-1897352069

13) SHAAREI KEDUSHA - GATES OF HOLINESS by R. Chaim Vital
*This book of prophetic Kabbalah teaches how to create the "external" and "internal" environment for successfully receiving the "Spirit of Propechy". It presents a clear, precise and revolutionary method for the one who feels the call but has gotten lost along the way and failed to reach the state of enlightenment.
Publisher: Providence University (March 1, 2007)
ISBN-10: 1897352042
ISBN-13: 978-1897352045

14) SEFER HA-GORALOT - THE BOOK OF ORACLES by R. Chaim Vital
* In times of need, the authorities of Israel consulted an Oracle (Goral) to learn the will of Ha-Shem (the Lord) and to receive answers to their questions. Conceived by Ahitophel, special adviser of King David, the Goraloth elicit the intercession of 117 Angels in order to receive an answer directly from God concerning matters which we take at heart.
Publisher: Providence University (March 1, 2007)
ISBN-10: 1897352166
ISBN-13: 978-1897352168

15) BRIT MENUCHA - COVENANT OF REST by Avraham ben Yitzchak of Granada
*Known only in restricted circles and closely guarded from unworthy hands, this is one of the most secret books of Kabbalah. It carefully describes the upper worlds in a very ethereal and symbolical language. It uses practical methods and pronunciations of the Divine Names that were employed by the High Priest in the Temple. It describes the names of Angels and Demons, and also explains how to summon them. This text is written for advanced readers who are at the conclusion of their kabbalistic formation.
Publisher: Providence University (March 1, 2007)
ISBN-10: 1897352018
ISBN-13: 978-1897352014

16) SECRETS OF THE FUTURE TEMPLE - MISHKNEY ELYON ("DWELLINGS OF THE SUPREME") by Rabbi Moshe Chaim Luzzatto, R. Avraham Greenbaum (Editor)
*Clear English translation of this kabbalistic classic + diagrams of the Temple, Altar, with extensive overview tracing the Temple vision.
Publisher: Moznaim Pub Corp (January 1, 1999)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 9659012012
ISBN-13: 978-9659012015

17) THE TALES OF RABBI NACHMAN OF BRATSLAV by R. Adin Steinsaltz
Rabbi Nachman's tales were originally told in Yiddish. They were recorded by his outstanding pupil, Rabbi Nathan, who translated them into Hebrew and published them after Rabbi Nachman's death. While these tales are structurally similar to folk or fairy tales, they include highly compressed and clearly defined Torah teachings expressed in literary and poetic form. Rabbi Nachman's stories are a medium for conveying hidden aspects of Torah, yet in such a veiled way that the content is not outwardly apparent. These complex allegories, intended by their author to have several dimensions, are presented here by Rabbi Steinsaltz with his own commentary, pointing the way for the modern reader to begin to grasp Rabbi Nachman's profound tales.
Publisher: Jason Aronson (April 28, 1994)
ISBN-10: 0876681836
ISBN-13: 978-0876681831

18) OPENING THE TANYA: DISCOVERING THE MORAL AND MYSTICAL TEACHINGS OF A CLASSIC WORK OF KABBALAH by Adin Steinsaltz
*Written by the great Hasidic master Rabbi Schneur Zalman of Liadi in the late eighteenth century, the Tanya is considered to be one of the most extraordinary books of moral teachings ever written. A seminal document in the study of Kabbalah, the Tanya explores and solves the dilemmas of the human soul by arriving at the root causes of its struggles. Though it is a classic Jewish spiritual text, the Tanya and its present commentary take a broad and comprehensive approach that is not specific to Judaism nor tied to a particular personality type or time or point of view. Opening the Tanya is a groundbreaking book that offers a definitive introduction, explanation, and commentary upon the Tanya. As relevant today as it was when it was first written more than two hundred years ago, the Tanya helps us to see the many thousands of complexities, doubts, and drives within us as expressions of a single basic problem, the struggle between our Godly Soul and our Animal Soul.
Publisher: Jossey-Bass; 1 edition (August 20, 2003)
ISBN-10: 078796798X
ISBN-13: 978-0787967987


CRITICAL HISTORIES

1) MAJOR TRENDS IN JEWISH MYSTICISM by Gershom Scholem
*A collection of lectures on the features of the movement of mysticism that began in antiquity and continues in Hasidism today.
Publisher: Schocken (May 2, 1995)
ISBN-10: 0805210423
ISBN-13: 978-0805210422

2) ORIGINS OF THE KABBALAH by Gershom Gerhard Scholem
* This book has been a classic in its field since it was first issued in 1950, and it still stands as uniquely authoritative and intriguingly instructive. . . . [It is] a monument of revelation and insight bridging anthropology, religion, sociology, and history.
Publisher: Princeton University Press (January 1, 1991)
ISBN-10: 0691020477
ISBN-13: 978-0691020471

3) KABBALAH by Gershon Scholem
As always, Scholem is unsurpassed in his encompassing perspective on the history of Jewish mysticism.
Publisher: Plume (April 1, 1978)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0452010071
ISBN-13: 978-0452010079

4) ON THE MYSTICAL SHAPE OF THE GODHEAD: BASIC CONCEPTS IN THE KABBALAH by Gershom Scholem
* “Scholem, who died in 1982, has long been recognized as the leading scholar of Jewish mysticism. These six Eranos Society lectures, published in 1962, complement those included in his On the Kabbalah and Its Symbolism (1965) and treat some of the most basic concepts in the Kabbalah: the mystical shape of the godhead ( shi'ur komah ), good and evil ( sitra ahra ), the righteous one ( tsaddik ), the feminine element in divinity ( shekhinah ), the transmigration of souls ( gilgul ), and the concept of the astral body ( tselem ). As ever, Scholem's treatment is complex and stylistically brilliant as he systematically analyzes the history and intellectual background of these critical ideas. Highly recommended for academic libraries and where there is interest in the Kabbalah.” - Marcia G. Fuchs, Guilford Free Lib., Ct.
Publisher: Schocken; New Ed edition (February 25, 1997)
ISBN-10: 0805210814
ISBN-13: 978-0805210811

5) THE MESSIANIC IDEA IN JUDAISM: AND OTHER ESSAYS ON JEWISH SPIRITUALITY by Gershom Scholem
This is an authoritative history on the development of the Messianic concept in Jewish history and spirituality.
Publisher: Schocken (May 10, 1995)
ISBN-10: 0805210431
ISBN-13: 978-0805210439

6) JEWISH MYSTICISM: THE INFINITE EXPRESSION OF FREEDOM by Rachel Elior,
I am not familiar with this one, but the author is a professor of world renown at Hebrew U. and it appears to be a fascinating topic.
Judith Nave, and Arthur B. Millman
Publisher: Littman Library of Jewish (May 31, 2007)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1874774676
ISBN-13: 978-1874774679

7) THE THREE TEMPLES: ON THE EMERGENCE OF JEWISH MYSTICISM by Rachel Elior
Publisher: Littman Library of Jewish; New Ed edition (August 30, 2005)
ISBN-10: 1904113338
ISBN-13: 978-1904113331

8) THE EARLY KABBALAH (CLASSICS OF WESTERN SPIRITUALITY) by Joseph Dan (Editor), Ronald C. Kiener
* In the late twelfth century, at the height of the Middle Ages that saw the flowering of the mystical element in Christendom, the Rabbinic Judaism of southern Europe was transformed by the eruption of new, Gnostic attitudes and symbolism. This new movement, known as Kabbalah (literally the 'Tradition'), was characterized by the symbol of the ten sefirot. By means of the sefirotic imagery, virtually the whole of everyday life was linked to the cosmic dimension in a novel and highly original fashion that stressed the dynamic, evolutionary element of the Godhead and the synergistic relationship between the human will and the action of God on earth. During a century of creativity, a detailed system of symbols and concepts was created by the author of the Sefer ha-Bahir, the Kabbalists of Provence, the Iyyun circle, and the mystics of Provence and Castile that set the stage for the great Kabbalists of the Zohar generation.
Publisher: Paulist Press (June 1986)
ISBN-10: 0809127695
ISBN-13: 978-0809127696

9) KABBALAH: A VERY SHORT INTRODUCTION by Joseph Dan
* “Professor Dan is one of the leading scholars of Jewish mysticism in the world today. He combines deep erudition with methodological sophistication and clarity of exposition. He is the ideal person to write a short introduction to the study of the Kabbalah."--Shaye J. D. Cohen, Harvard University
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA (May 4, 2007)
ISBN-10: 0195327055
ISBN-13: 978-0195327052

10) THE HEART AND THE FOUNTAIN: AN ANTHOLOGY OF JEWISH MYSTICAL EXPERIENCES by Joseph Dan
* “Dan is the Gershom Scholem Professor of Kabbalah at Hebrew University in Jerusalem, winner of the Israel Prize in 1997, a leading authority on Jewish mysticism, and the author of more than 50 books. With such credentials, he makes a fitting editor of a collection intended as an introduction to Kabbalah, an esoteric tradition in Judaism concerning the divine that was given to Moses on Mount Sinai and transmitted secretly through the generations. After an excellent introduction that discusses Jewish mysticism as a whole and then contrasts it with Christian mysticism, Dan presents 25 meaningful excerpts, some from classic texts like the Palm Tree of Devorah, the Zohar, and the mystical prayer of Rabbi Israel Ba'al Shem Tov, others from contemporary poetry. .. Dan's writing is lucid and engaging, bringing an expert's view to a subject that has, unfortunately, been subsumed into popular culture. Highly recommended for large public libraries or where there is an interest in spirituality.” --Idelle Rudman, Touro Coll. Lib., NY
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA (September 10, 2003)
ISBN-10: 0195139798
ISBN-13: 978-0195139792

11) BEHOLDERS OF DIVINE SECRETS: MYSTICISM AND MYTH IN THE HEKHALOT AND MERKAVAH LITERATURE by Vita Daphna Arbel
* A wide-ranging exploration of the Hekhalot and Merkavah literature, a mystical Jewish tradition from late antiquity, including a discussion of the possible cultural context of this material's creators.
Publisher: State University of New York Press (October 2003)
ISBN-10: 0791457249
ISBN-13: 978-0791457245

12) KABBALAH AND EROS by Moshe Idel
In this book, the world’s foremost scholar of Kabbalah explores the understanding of erotic love in Jewish mystical thought. Encompassing Jewish mystical literatures from those of late antiquity to works of Polish Hasidism, Moshe Idel highlights the diversity of Kabbalistic views on eros and distinguishes between the major forms of eroticism. The author traces the main developments of a religious formula that reflects the union between a masculine divine attribute and a feminine divine attribute, and he asks why such an “erotic formula” was incorporated into the Jewish prayer book. Idel shows how Kabbalistic literature was influenced not only by rabbinic literature but also by Greek thought that helped introduce a wider understanding of eros. Addressing topics ranging from cosmic eros and androgyneity to the affinity between C. J. Jung and Kabbalah to feminist thought, Idel’s deeply learned study will be of consuming interest to scholars of religion, Judaism, and feminism.
Hardcover: 384 pages
Publisher: Yale University Press (August 22, 2005)
ISBN-10: 030010832X
ISBN-13: 978-0300108323

13) KABBALAH: NEW PERSPECTIVES by Moshe Idel
* “This major reinterpretation of Jewish Kabbalah and mysticism offers new perspectives on its origin, development, and relationship to general mystical writing from antiquity to the modern era. Idel, author of more than 25 works on this subject, analyses in detail two major streams, ecstatic or anthropocentric Kabbalah and theosophical-theurgical or theocentric Kabbalah, also showing how they have intertwined. Using manuscripts and esoteric medieval and early modern works, he examines mystical experience through such factors as total union with God and such techniques of mysticism as the visualization of colors and prayer. The technical nature of this important work and the absence of a glossary of Hebrew terms restrict its use to subject collections.” Maurice Tuchman, Hebrew Coll. Lib., Brookline, Mass.
Copyright 1988 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Publisher: Yale University Press (September 10, 1990)
ISBN-10: 0300046995
ISBN-13: 978-0300046991

14) A GUIDE TO THE ZOHAR (ZOHAR: THE PRITZKER EDITIONS) by Arthur Green
* The Zohar is the great medieval compendium of Jewish esoteric and mystical teaching, and the basis of the kabbalistic faith. It is, however, a notoriously difficult text, full of hidden codes, concealed meanings, obscure symbols, and ecstatic expression. This illuminating study, based upon the last several decades of modern Zohar scholarship, unravels the historical and intellectual origins of this rich text and provides an excellent introduction to its themes, complex symbolism, narrative structure, and language. A Guide to the Zohar is thus an invaluable companion to the Zohar itself, as well as a useful resource for scholars and students interested in mystical literature, particularly that of the west, from the Middle Ages to the present.
Publisher: Stanford University Press; 1 edition (December 18, 2003)
ISBN-10: 0804749086
ISBN-13: 978-0804749084

15) KETER by Arthur Green
Keter is a close reading of fifty relatively brief Jewish texts, tracing the motif of divine coronation from Jewish esoteric writings of late antiquity to the Zohar, written in thirteenth-century Spain. In the course of this investigation Arthur Green draws a wide arc including Talmudic, Midrashic, liturgical, Merkavah, German Hasidic, and Kabbalistic works, showing through this single theme the spectrum of devotional, mystical, and magical views held by various circles of Jews over the course of a millennium or more.. …As a whole, Keter takes the reader on an exciting tour of the interior landscapes of the Jewish imagination, offering some remarkable insights into the nature of mystical and symbolic thinking in the Jewish tradition.
Publisher: Princeton University Press (July 7, 1997)
ISBN-10: 0691043728
ISBN-13: 978-0691043722

16) SHALOM SHAR'ABI AND THE KABBALISTS OF BEIT EL by Pinchas Giller
* Prof. Pinchas Giller offers a wide-ranging overview of the most influential school of kabbalah in modernity, the Jerusalem kabbalists of the Beit El Yeshivah. The school is associated with the writings and personality of a charismatic Yemenite rabbi, Shalom Shar'abi. Shar'abi's activity overwhelmed the Jerusalem Kabbalah of the eighteenth century, and his acolytes are the most active mystics in contemporary Middle Eastern Jewry to this day. Today, this meditative tradition is rising in popularity in Jerusalem, New York, and Los Angeles, both among traditional Beit El kabbalists and members of the notorious Kabbalah Learning Centers. After providing the historical setting, Giller examines the characteristic mystical practices of the Beit El School. … The first book in the English language to address the character and spread of Jewish mysticism through the Middle East in early modernity, it will be a guidepost for further study of this vast topic.
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA; 1 edition (January 22, 2008)
ISBN-10: 0195328809
ISBN-13: 978-0195328806

17) THE ESSENTIAL KABBALAH: HEART OF JEWISH MYSTICISM by Daniel C. Matt
*Kabbalah is the deeply spiritual study of the soul and internal mysteries of Jewish philosophy clothed in allegory and requiring extensive knowledge of the Torah and Talmud. Publisher: HarperOne; 1st edition (June 14, 1996)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0062511637
ISBN-13: 978-0062511638

18) SAFED SPIRITUALITY: RULES OF MYSTICAL PIETY, THE BEGINNING OF WISDOM (Classics of Western Spirituality) by Lawrence Fine , Louis Jacobs
*Collected here are the Hanhagot of Moses Cordovero, Abraham Galante, Abraham be Eliezer ha-Levi Berukhim, Joseph Karo, and Isaac Luria, plus the mystical-ethical treatise, Reshit Hokhmah (The Beginning of Wisdom) by Elijah de Vidas. In these writings the unique blend of kabbalistic tradition and messianic enthusiasm, which is characteristic of Safed spirituality, comes alive. The importance of the Safed tradition for today is perhaps best summed up by Louis Jacobs' description of the Safed mystics as "mighty God seekers; at times perhaps, over-credulous and superstitious from the contemporary point of view, but daring stormers of the heavens." Their intense devotional piety, their efforts to imbue even the most mundane event with religious meaning and their insistence on the cosmic significance of all human action make their thought a relevant, stimulating source of spiritual insight for our age.
Publisher: Paulist Press; New Ed edition (January 1, 1984)
ISBN-10: 0809126125
ISBN-13: 978-080912612

The Real Thing

A king once told his prime minister, who was also his good friend: "I see in the stars that everyone who eats from this year's grain harvest is going to go mad. What do you think we should do?"

The prime minister suggested they should put aside a stock of good grain so they would not have to eat from the tainted grain.

"But it will be impossible to set aside enough good grain for everyone," the king objected. "And if we put away a stock for just the two of us, we will be the only ones who will be sane. Everyone else will be mad, and they will look at us and think that we are the mad ones. No, we too will have to eat from this year's grain. But we will both put a sign on our heads. I will look at your forehead, and you will look at mine. And when we see the sign, at least we will remember that we are mad."

--Rabbi Nachman of Bratslav, Sipurim Niflaim (Wondrous Tales)

 

"So, you see, deep down, mental development takes time. If someone says, 'Oh, through many years of hardship I have changed,' I can take that seriously. There's a greater likelihood of the changes being genuine and long-lasting. If someone says, 'Oh, within a short period, say two years, there has been a big change,' I think that is unrealistic."

--The Dalai Lama on authentic spiritual development from The Art of Happiness

 

"Truth is the gateway to Redemption."

-- Rabbi Nachman of Bratslav

 

I have often wondered how astrology, which arose in the Northern Hemisphere and is based on the seasonal changes that occur there, applies here Down Under. It seems that it does, however, because despite the balmy hot summer weather here, for the past few weeks I have experienced a period of introspection characteristic of the dark winter period that precedes the winter solstice.

 

As part of that introspection, I had a long overdue read of The Art of Happiness, co-authored by the Dalai Lama and the American psychiatrist Howard C. Cutler. While I would not consider this book exceptional, it portrays many insights into the Dalai Lama as a person. It is always inspirational to come into contact with the humanity of this great man who calls himself "a simple Buddhist monk". His wisdom, compassion and humour-- the hallmark of all great mystics—are unflagging. Furthermore, as Cutler comments, whether in private or public, the Dalai Lama is always truthful in expressing his limitations. He denies being a miracle worker and will not infrequently respond with the words, "I don't know."

 

I believe that during this literary project, in which Cutler hoped to come away with some quick pointers for the attainment of happiness, the author was also confronted with limitations in that regard, for he writes: "When I initially conceived this book, I envisioned a conventional self-help format in which the Dalai Lama would present clear and simple solutions to all of life's problems. I felt that, using my background in psychiatry, I could codify his views in a set of easy instructions on how to conduct one's daily life. By the end of our series of meetings, I had given up on that idea. I found that his approach encompassed a much broader and more complex paradigm, incorporating all the nuance, richness and complexity that life has to offer."

 

Concurrent to revisiting the applicability of Tibetan Buddhism to Westerners, I have also been giving a lot of thought to the evolution of kabbalah, which, contrary to its past history as a concealed esoteric tradition, has now entered—for better or for worse—the public domain.

 

In Ken Wilber's latest work Integral Spirituality he lists Kabbalah along with TM, Zen and Big Mind Meditation as a core Spirit module in his chart on Integral Life Practice. Quite frankly, I was a bit bewildered by that inclusion. What exactly did he mean by "kabbalah" in the context of an ILP for integral post-moderns?

 

It certainly did not refer to kabbalah as it is studied in orthodox academies like the prestigious Beit El in Jerusalem. Despite the utilisation of the Ari's mystical kavvanot (intentions) in prayer and the intense study of Lurianic kabbalah, one would be hard-pressed to define the perspective of its students as integral. Rather, in that context the mystical knowledge acts as a support for the pre-modern traditions of religious Judaism. As such, despite their apparent engagement with radical theological concepts, these students would be obliged to maintain an ethnocentric rather than a planetary perspective (which is the starting point for integral consciousness).

 

Of greater concern was the possibility that many Wilber readers might interpret this listing as an endorsement of the Kabbalah Centre, which, due to its commercial success, in the minds of many Westerners had become synonymous with kabbalah itself. There are a number of reasons, however, a few of which are listed below, why I believe such an interpretation would run counter to the author's intent:

• The Centre's obsession with the supernatural—red threads, blessed water, scanning (as opposed to studying) the Zohar—hails from the pre-modern, pre-rational domain rather than the post-modern, trans-rational (i.e. transpersonal) vantage point where an integral perspective becomes possible.
  
• The Centre's website claim that its kabbalah is science as opposed to mysticism is problematic. Though indeed kabbalah fits the dictionary definition as 'a department of systematised knowledge through study or practice', it can by no means be considered 'a natural science' (the colloquial understanding of this term) which discovers empirical truths using scientific method. Wilber details extensively the pre-modern suppression of art and science by the Church; the positive feature of modernity is the distinctive emergence of these two domains outside the sphere of religion. In effect, by its ambiguous claim to be 'a science', the Kabbalah Centre is reversing that great leap. Kabbalah has much to offer the human spirit, but you can delve into it endlessly and you will never find the laws of thermodynamics, relativity or quantum mechanics or any other feature of objective scientific thought. Nor did any kabbalist of the past make such a spurious claim. The essence of an integral consciousness is the ability to recognise the different
  perspectives of each domain and
  to integrate them as such.
  
• The revival of the notion of the Evil Eye not only reverts to medieval superstition but to a type of dualism that is far from the Oneness aspired to in Integral Theory. The late Klausenberg Rebbe, R Yekutiel Yehuda Halberstam, one of the superior mystical personalities of contemporary Judaism, claimed that the very existence of an Evil Eye was dependent on the belief in it!
  
• In mentioning references for the study of an integral kabbalah, Wilber records only two: Professor Moshe Idel of Hebrew University, a scholar of Jewish mysticism as opposed to a practitioner, and Rabbi Zalman Schachter, founder of the Jewish Renewal movement in the U.S. (For those who are unfamiliar with Jewish Renewal, its hallmark features are egalitarianism, eclecticism and a renewal of syncretic meditative practices reworked into Jewish contexts. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jewish_Renewal). Wilber makes no mention at all of Philip Berg or his sons.
  

This exclusion is not meant to imply that the Kabbalah Centre is not effective in providing people with a valuable and necessary service. Berg has succeeded extraordinarily in taking the basic contours R Yehuda Ashlag's kabbalah and grafting it onto a simple, how-to, quick fix framework that has certainly changed numerous lives for the better. Its effectiveness, however, is not a gauge of its integral capacity. For some people, the ritual of going to church can also be effective in bringing inner peace to their lives, but this in itself is no guarantee of attaining integral awareness.

 

Through the Zohar in the Hills Facebook group I have had lots of contacts with different students from the Centre; not too long ago I also had a conversation with one of the Centre's teachers. This dialogue involved not the question of whether the kabbalah taught at the KC was integral, but rather whether it could be considered kabbalah at all!

 

A video clip on the KC website brought to my attention prompted this interchange. In this video, the claim was made that the Zohar never referred to the Torah's commandments or prohibitions but rather to "positive and negative energies". This was very difficult to comprehend. Anyone who has actually studied the Zohar knows that the words "פקודיא" ("commandments") and "אסוריא" ("prohibitions") appear frequently in the Zohar, particularly in the Raya Meheimna section which elucidates the mystical essence of various Torah laws. In the time of the Zohar the jargon of "positive and negative energies" was unheard of. It seemed as if, for whatever reasons, the Kabbalah Centre was engaged in a campaign, deliberate or not, to extricate the kabbalah from its authentic Jewish roots.

 

This was reinforced in the FAQ section where the claim was made that kabbalah has not only been the province of Jewish mystics but of many Christians as well, including "Knorr-von-Rosenroth [sic], Pico della [sic] and Sir Isaac Newton". This is offered as proof of kabbalah's universal applicability. What is not mentioned there, but what scholar Gershom Scholem discusses at some length in his works, is the unanimous opposition by Jewish kabbalists to the theological conclusions meant to justify a specifically Christian agenda reached by these non-Jewish mystical thinkers.

 

I tried to analyse what bothered me about these distortions. After all, I was also in favour of the dissemination of kabbalah wisdom to Jews and non-Jews alike. What did it matter if there was a bit of whitewashing to justify the same conclusion I also believe in? In thinking it over, I came up with a kind of weird yet apt metaphor that depicted my feelings. I imagined myself sitting in a café and drinking a glass of Coca-Cola (remember this is metaphor; not real life!). A tourist couple from a remote region in Mongolia, who have never tasted Coke before, sit down at the next table and excitedly order their maiden drink of this unique substance. For some unknown reason, perhaps a misunderstanding or a prejudice against Mongolian tourists, the smiling waiter appears with two bottles of Sprite! The two unsuspecting Mongolians, raising their glasses in my direction in the gesture of a toast, happily drink the beverage they have been given, all along thinking it's 'the real thing'. I warily smile back from the next table, wondering whether or not I should bother myself to go over and try and point out that it was not Coca-Cola they were drinking.

 

Although, in real life, like most people, I would probably just mind my own business, this once I decided to get out of my chair and blast the clarion call of 'truth' in defence of these hapless tourists. I wrote a lengthy letter to one of the teachers at the Kabbalah Centre in LA expressing my concerns as detailed above. To my pleasant surprise, he not only answered my message but arranged a time to call me from the States. On the phone, we must have discussed the issues for nearly half-an-hour. He was very kind, candid and altruistic in his sincere belief that the format of kabbalah developed by the Centre had the potential to transform the world. Yet, after half an hour, I was no closer to resolving my internal conflict than I was beforehand. In fact, and this is something I have experienced in correspondence with students of the KC, it was as if we were talking two completely different languages. Despite the best intentions and goodwill between us, it was impossible to achieve a resolution.

 

After he had hung up, I felt really stupid, as stupid as I would have felt in real life if I had actually left my table at the café and gone over to convince the Mongolians (who, incidentally, also don't speak English) that the drink they were enjoying so much was not Coca-Cola.

 

Why did I have to be so pedantic? What did it matter whether or not their kabbalah was authentic, so long as everyone was enjoying the drink? And then, jumping out of the metaphor, another more frightening thought hit me. What gave me the chutzpah to think that my drink, my version of 'kabbalah', was the real thing? That version was also adulterated with additives like Integral Theory, Sufism, Taoism, Buddhism, quantum physics and a host of other outside influences. From the perspective of the student sitting in Beit El, I was no less of a meshuggah (crazy) and a heretic than Berg was!

 

 

So, is there, after all, a kabbalah that fits into Ken Wilber's Integral Life Practice? Perhaps we have to look at Wilber's recommendations for role models to find these answers. In including Professor Idel, Wilber seems to be suggesting that a critical, objective and rational approach to Jewish mysticism is also a prerequisite to an integral one. While it may be convenient for some to believe, for example, that the Zohar is an ancient work authored by Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai (the view curiously held both in orthodox circles and the Kabbalah Centre), this contradicts all scholarly historical and philological research on the subject. Does it mean that the Zohar is of less value or less holy because of its historical origins in 13^th century Castile? To me, it does not; as much as my belief that the universe is billions of years old does not undo my appreciation for the description of creation in Genesis. The two are different perspectives that, when integrated, only enhance one another.

 

In citing Rabbi Zalman Schachter as the role-model for the practicing aspect of an integral kabbalah, it seems that Wilber was directing his remarks to non-Hebrew speakers living outside of Israel. At this juncture, Jewish Renewal, like Integral Spirituality itself, is almost exclusively an American phenomenon. In Israel, where fluency in Hebrew allows more accessibility to the full range of knowledge in kabbalah, a grassroots, eclectic mysticism-- that includes both religious and secular-- has been flourishing for a number of years. Known by the acronym of HaBaKuk, after the prophet of the same name, it combines the teachings of Habad, Bratslav, the late Rav Kook as well as a syncretism of some Eastern traditions. Yet, as is the case with Jewish Renewal, there is no clear, monolithic structure; it is rather an amorphous blend of teachings which affords individuals to connect in the manner suitable to their personal perspectives and needs.

 

For those who have chosen to explore the pathways of Jewish mysticism, it is vital to bear in mind that "kabbalah" itself is by no means a clear, monolithic structure. (It is because of this that Wikipedia cannot even offer a concise definition of what it is!) From its distant origins in antiquity, to the Gnostic trends of the Merkavah, to the Pythagorean influences in Sefer Yetzirah, to the Neoplatonic trends surfacing in Provence and Gerona, to the antinomian views of Abulafia, to the anti-Maimonidean stance of the Zohar, to the radical theology of the Ari (of which several versions are extant!) kabbalah is a vast catchword that has meant many different things to many different people.

 

In Ken Wilber's various works on Integral Theory, a point that he repeatedly makes is that the system he presents is merely a map of reality. At some point one must put the map down and see whether or not it matches the actual terrain—the plane of our everyday existence. The same can be said about Kabbalah, Buddhism, Sufism or any other spiritual map that attempts to depict the reality of life. Its effectiveness can only be determined when we put it aside and experience the actual territory. In the end, our Mongolian tourists will not get very far and will see very little of the town, if their heads are always stuck in the map! It is marvellous to discuss the supernal worlds, tsimtsum, shverit ha-kelim, the Sefirot, the 32 paths, the Divine names and the Partzufim; the value of these discussions, however, is determined in the end by how these concepts assist our participation on the playing field of real life with all of its "nuance, richness and complexity".

 

So, am I ready to abandon my search for the integral map, knowing that, as good as it gets, it can never be 'the real thing'? Not at all! Personally, the fact that there is ultimately no simple, clear answer does not discourage me. It is only an indication of coming closer to Truth, the ineffable, ever-present Ultimate Reality of Ain Sof, of which we cannot even speak.

 

Does that conviction to plod on in spite of this knowledge classify me as a meshuggah?

 

I suppose it does; but, no worries, mate! At least I've got a sign on my forehead.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Lightening Up the Shadows

Nearly 2300 years ago the kingdoms of Judea and Israel were ruled by the Seleucid Greeks under the oppressive lordship of Antiochus IV Epiphanies. Not content with the tribute paid by the Jews, Antiochus initiated a series of decrees designed to wean the Jewish people from their own traditions and assimilate them into Greek culture. Torah study, circumcision and the declaration of the new month which determined the celebration of festivals were abolished. A rebellion ensued led by the Hasmonean priestly clan and, in its military aspect, the charismatic son Judah the Maccabean. Severely outnumbered and with weaponry inferior to the Seleucids, the Jewish fighters nonetheless waged a relentless campaign against their overlords.

In retribution, in 165 BCE Antiochus ordered that the Second Temple be ransacked and desecrated. This setback, however, only increased the motivation of the Jews, who ultimately vanquished their former conquerors. When the Hasmoneans entered the ravaged Temple, they wanted to light the seven lights of the Menorah, the “eternal flame” in the Sanctuary. All of the oils, however, which had been harvested and processed in the required state of ritual purity, had been desecrated. Only one small vial of olive oil, enough to last for one day was discovered; this little vial miraculously lasted for eight days, which gave the Kohanim (priests) time to ritually purify themselves and prepare new oil for the eternal light of the Menorah.

Of all of the Jewish holidays, it can be safely said that the celebration Hanukkah is the most widespread. Even amongst the most secular Jews who would scoff at the fast on Yom Kippur (Day of Atonement), the lighting of Hanukkah candles is ubiquitous. This is part due to the perception that the holiday celebrates a military victory, and it has thus, in many respects, become erroneously intertwined with the secular-Zionist ethos.

In point of fact, the rabbis who instigated the celebration of Hanukkah did so not to commemorate the military victory, though it could well be argued that this too was a miracle, but rather as a commemoration of the little vial of pure oil which remained lit for eight days. Considering that the Hasmonean conquest led to the corruption of both priesthood and monarchy, it seems there was some foresight in the rabbinic decision to ignore commemoration of the military victory in its own right

In the Bnei Yissachar the brilliant 18th century kabbalist R. Tzvi Elimelech of Dinov states that the light from the Hanukkah candles is in reality the אור גנוז (or ganuz), the concealed light from the first day of creation. (For those unfamiliar with this concept, in Genesis 1:4 it says, “And God saw the light, that it was good.” The commentator Rashi brings the Midrash which declares that God saw that this “light”, a spiritual illumination which preceded the physical solar light created on the fourth day, was unworthy to be utilised by the wicked; He therefore separated and concealed this light for the benefit of the righteous in the world to come.)

The Bnei Yissachar does not claim that the Hanukah light symbolizes this concealed light; he asserts that it IS the light that was concealed at the onset of creation. It would perhaps be more understandable if such a claim were made regarding the light of the Sabbath candles, as these commemorate the completion of creation. What does Hanukkah, however, a minor festival initiated by rabbinic decree that celebrates the endurance of a small vial of oil following the victory of the Hasmoneans, have to do with the supernal light that is ultimately destined to illuminate the souls of the righteous?

To understand this, it is first worthwhile to have a closer look at some of the customs and laws associated with Hanukkah and the lighting of its candles.

1. The Torah portion Vayeshev, devoted mainly to the story of Joseph’s descent to Egypt as a slave, precedes Hanukah. The commentator Rashi provides an odd Midrash in explanation of the opening verse: “And these are the chronicles of Jacob: Joseph, [at age seventeen, was a shepherd…]” The flax merchant arrived with his camels bearing loads of flax. The smith wonders, “How will all of this flax get through?” One clever lad replies: “One spark from your bellows will burn it all!” So too, Jacob saw the legions of Esau’s noble descendents (mentioned in the previous Torah portion) and thought, “Who will be able to vanquish all of these?” What is written thereafter? “And these are the chronicles of Jacob: Joseph…” and it is written: “And the house of Jacob will be like a fire; and the house of Joseph a flame; and the house of Esau like straw…” (Obadiah 18). Moreover, this strange theme of the flax merchant is repeated in the brief section on Hanukkah that is hidden away in the Talmudic tractate of Shabbat. There, a shopkeeper who places his Hanukiah in the public domain is exempt if it causes the flax to be set on fire.

2. There is a dispute between the sages Shammai and Hillel as to how many candles we should light. According to Shammai, on the first night one lights eight candles corresponding to the eight upcoming days during which the oil miraculously burned; on the second night, one lights seven, etc. According to Hillel, however, we begin with only one light on the first night and finish with eight on the last because of the dictum “one should increase matters of holiness.” The law is as described by Hillel.

3. Hanukkah is one of the only commandments involving פרסומי ניסא, i.e. publicizing the miracle, and, for that reason, we are commanded ideally to light in the “public domain” (literally, רשות הרבים, the “domain of the many”). In “times of danger”, however, ostensibly during periods of persecution, this requirement is wavered and one “may light on his table, and this is enough.”

4. Ideally, the candles should be placed within 3 to 10 handbreadths from the floor, a law that is unique to Hanukkah. According to kabbalah, the Shekhina is said to descend to the level of 10 handbreadths. Below that, one finds the realm of kelipat noga (“the shining husks”) that can only be illuminated through human action.

5. According to the Talmud, the time for lighting the Hanukkah candles terminates when “the last leg has left the marketplace”, and there are no more people to whom one can broadcast the miracle. This expression in Hebrew, however, (עד שתכלה רגל מן השוק) is ambiguous and could also be read as “until habitude has vanished from the marketplace.”

6. Although the Talmud tells us that the word Hanukkah is an acronym for (“they rested on the 25th [of Kislev]”), its simple meaning is “dedication” or “inauguration”, as the actual nature of the celebration was the reinauguration of the Second Temple following its desecration by the Greeks.

The miracle of Hanukkah is our ability to illuminate the mundane domains of the material world, where the Divine Presence on its own does not reach. What does this mean? We are all aware of those spiritual moments in our lives when everything appears as connected and illuminated. Can we, however, retain that light in our dealings with the “real world”? Can we still feel the “light” when confronting issues of our health, relationships, jobs, finances, etc? Does all that material “flax” passing through the marketplace make us wonder if spiritual illumination is only a delusion of comfort in the face of a predominantly material world?

The name “Joseph” means “he will increase…” In the story told of Joseph, his brothers first dump him in a pit before selling him as a slave to Egypt, which our sages considered the paradigmatic “pit” of materialism. As I have mentioned elsewhere, the very name of Egypt in Hebrew can be read as meitzarim, or “narrow borders”, a worldview lacking any acknowledgement of Spirit (one that still tends to dominate human thought today). From the pit of his prison, Joseph becomes the master of dreams and eventually the de facto ruler over all of Egypt. As a symbol of the sefirah Yesod, Joseph represents the element of human consciousness that bridges the gap between upper and lower worlds, and, in so doing, creates a seamless unity between them.

One of the more enigmatic Talmudic stories describing this apparent gap between the upper worlds (spiritual) and the lower (material) involves R. Shimon bar Yochai, for whom a death warrant was issued following his scathing criticism of the Roman authorities. Rabbi Shimon and his son Elazar escaped for their lives to a cave, where a miracle occurred and a spring of water and carob tree materialised to sustain the two. They stayed in that cave for twelve years, donning their clothing only for the times of prayer (so that they wouldn’t wear out), and, the remainder of the time, studying the mystical Torah buried up to their necks in sand. After twelve years, a disguised Elijah the Prophet appears at the mouth of the cave, incidentally informing Rabbi Shimon that the Caesar is dead and the writ for his execution thus suspended. Rabbi Shimon and Rabbi Elazar leave the cave, but they are distressed to find human beings engaged in the normal course of mundane events that make up life. “They have given up the eternal for the temporal life,” says Rabbi Shimon to his son, and everywhere the two of them cast a glance is burnt up in fire. A Heavenly voice cries out: “Have you left your cave to destroy My world? Go back to where you were!” The pair returns to their cave, where they remain for another year, i.e. the length of time sinners in purgatory would normally be punished. Again, a Heavenly voice instructs them to leave the cave. “My son,” says Rabbi Shimon, “it is enough for the world with you and me.” When they emerge a second time, every spot upon which Elazar casts a glance burns up in fire as it did before; when his father, however, casts a look at the same spot, he brings to it complete healing. It is Friday afternoon, and they then see an old man carrying two boughs of myrtle. “One is for the command to remember the Sabbath; the other is to observe it,” the elder explains. The scene suddenly switches to Rabbi Shimon’s son-in-law Pinhas ben Yair (in the Zohar their relationship is reversed) nursing the wounds to the skin of the former from the many years immersed in coarse sand. “Woe that I must see you in this state!” says Pinhas Ben Yair. “Woe had you not seen me in this state,” declares Rabbi Shimon. (Meaning to say, had Rabbi Shimon not suffered the harsh physical realities in the cave, he would not have experienced the spiritual realizations either.)

What is going on here? Why do they both burn up everything in sight on their first exit from the cave? And why, after returning to the cave upon the Divine command, does Elazar emerge as he does before, still burning up everything in sight? And what is his father doing to effect the healing that undoes his son’s arsonist stunts?

What occurred is that after twelve years of intense meditation and spiritual discipline, the mundane world resembles that huge supply of “flax” that is just waiting to be illuminated with the fire of spirituality. It is for this reason that Rabbi Shimon is startled to see that people seemingly forfeit eternal life for temporal concerns. This perception of the world, however, condemns it to duality: there is a part of my life that is light and spiritual, and another part of it that is dark and mundane. This duality can also lead to spiritual vanity, where we see it as our mission to enlighten and illuminate the benighted world. Conversely, when we misconstrue the fire of our personal desires with this spiritual fire, it is possible to get stuck in the gravitational pull of this lower world, all of the while convinced that one is forging a spiritual path.

When they leave the cave for the second time, Rabbi Elazar’s gaze still causes things to catch on fire. After all, according to kabbalah, the material world is in fact laden with hidden, fallen sparks of light that are meant to be redeemed through human effort. His father, however, has added on a quality that restores the balance to reality and healing to all of existence. That quality is known as השתוות הנפש, or equanimity. This is clear from Rabbi Shimon’s comments on his skin wounds to his son-in-law. Equanimity was the minimum requirement to join the circle of kabbalists in 16th century Safed. With equanimity, it becomes possible to perceive “the fire of Jacob” (spirit) and “the straw of Esau” (matter) and to see each as part of an integral process rather than as ontological didactics.

This is why we are meant to light in the lower ten handbreadths, which is not ordinarily illuminated by the Divine Presence. In so doing, we connect that shadowy nether region to the supernal world of light that emanates through creation. This is the concept of “adding on to holiness” described by Hillel. Through our perception, the profane itself becomes the holy. This gives us the possibility to enlighten “the domain of the many”, the illusion of substance and multiplicity that accompanies Esau’s flax.

How do we accomplish this in practical terms? We all stand metaphorically in the desecrated ruins of the Sanctuary, where the sacred flame has been extinguished. Is it possible to take these shadowy depths ravaged by the karmic past and transform them into light? According to the Hanukkah story, all that we require is a small vial of pure olive oil. Since olive oil is itself the mystical symbol of awareness, the vial of pure oil stamped with the signet ring of the High Priest represents the element of pure consciousness present in any or all moments of existence. That level of pure consciousness is directly proportional to the trait of equanimity we have cultivated. The greater our emotional or mental attachment, the more that pure consciousness is strewn with the impurities that imbue it with the reality of substance, the load of “flax” atop the camel that seems so impenetrable.

By surrendering our dualistic perceptions of reality and resting only in that pure awareness symbolizing the vial of pure oil, one transcends that seeming obstinacy of nature (symbolized by the number 7) and transforms the real world into one that manifests that which is above nature—the supernatural signified by the number 8 (the Infinity symbol on its base).

This is why the Talmud states that the Hanukah candle should be lit “until the last leg has left the marketplace.” As mentioned before, the word רגל can mean both “leg” and “habitude”. What the Talmud is saying is that we have to light that metaphorical candle until our usual way of seeing mundane reality is absolutely transformed. It must become for us a source of light rather than shadows.

In essence, the Hanukkah story describes each human being’s mystical mission, to illuminate his or her own personal darkness in the material realms, as well as the collective mission of humankind and the specific mission of Israel as a “light unto the nations.” The gematria of Israel in Hebrew is equivalent to the numerical value of the Hebrew words for “light” and “darkness”. This is because Israel is meant to be a mystical station to process seeming darkness into the reality of light.

Sometimes this process is fraught with difficulties and dangers. When we fail to eliminate the dualistic split and still perceive the “real world” as something outside ourselves, we run the risk of looking at “reality” with bitterness and contempt. Conversely, we can also fool ourselves, becoming victims of our instincts and passions in the guise of spiritual rectification.

That is why in “times of danger’ we light the Hanukiah on the table, and “that is enough”. The table symbolizes our eating habits and, in general, our physical desires and appetites. Only when these are first balanced in a state of equanimity, when we achieve oneness from within, do we have the capability of creating oneness in the external reality surrounding us. Then, we can “inaugurate” our perception of reality to one that remains perpetually new, and our world becomes a different place.

The 18th century rabbi and scholar Rabbi Meshullam Feibush of Zabrizce suggests that many people mistakenly assume that the “primordial light” concealed by the Divine is inaccessible until we reach the World to Come (or, more precisely translated, the World that Is Coming). He goes on to explain that the Hebrew word for Torah translates as “Guide” and its Aramaic equivalent, ohraiytah, as “revealing that what is hidden inside of it” (דאורי וגלי מאי דסתים ביה). What is in fact concealed in the Torah is that very primordial light! Moreover, one does not need to wait for an eschatological event to access that light. As soon as a righteous person seeks it there, then, in “the world that is coming”, that is, the immediate future, that light is revealed to him or her straight away.

From this, we can better understand how the simple action of lighting a candle manifests that primordial light of Goodness. Since, from a mystical viewpoint, the Torah is a guidebook to illuminating the shadowy realm of the husks through human effort, the light from the Hanukiah becomes more than a concrete symbol of the concealed light—it becomes its very manifestation. May the meditative light of Hanukkah help us all in our search to transform the “domain of the many” into the “domain of the One” and, rather than fleeing from Esau’s flax and the shadows of the “real world”, may we all be blessed to find therein that pure vial of oil that will light up the darkness forever!

The Paradox of Trashing the Ego

There is a popular Jewish joke about the former Novardok Yeshiva, one of the more extreme exemplars of the mussar movement that developed in Lithuania in the latter part of the 19th century. This yeshiva placed great emphasis on “the negation of the ego and the physical world” (Wikipedia). Students wore tattered clothing and engaged in deliberately humiliating activities to achieve that end. The joke goes as follows:

Chaim, a new student, arrived at the Novardok Yeshiva. Being a novice and not knowing exactly what was expected of him, he simply observed what the other students were doing and copied them. When it was time for davening, observing his fellow yeshiva students engaged in fervent prayer and shokeling back and forth with great intensity, he did the same. During the period for Talmud study, he mimicked the others with their sing-song chants and exaggerated hand gestures. Finally, it was time for mussar self-examination, when each student retreated to a private corner, beat his fist remorsefully against his chest and repeated the refrain in Yiddish: “Ish bin a gor nisht! Ish bin a gor nisht!” (“I am a complete nothing!”) Observing the behaviour of these students, Chaim sat down and, pounding his fist against his chest, likewise repeated the same mantra: “Ish bin a gor nisht! Ish bin a gor nisht!” One of the veteran students seated nearby observed Chaim disdainfully, turned to another old-timer and commented, “Look at this one! He’s been here just one day, and he already thinks he’s a gor nisht!”

The concept of bitul ha-yesh, literally the “negation of substance”, first appeared in certain schools of kabbalah and came to prominence with Rabbi Yisroel ben Eliezer, better known as the Baal Shem Tov, founder of the 18th century pietist Hasidic revival in Eastern Europe. The idea of “annihilating the ego” is well-known from different forms of Eastern mysticism as well as in Sufi and Christian mystical thought. It has resurfaced with contemporary spirituality, including the new pop kabbalah, so that once again many spiritual seekers are pre-occupied with this arduous task.

The questions addressed in this article are three-fold:

What does it mean to annihilate the ego?
Can it in fact be done?
Should it in principle be done?

As the American philosopher Ken Wilber has pointed out, the whole notion of “ego” is based on a mistranslation of Freud. In German, Freud used the 1st person pronoun “das Ich” (the “I”) to indicate the self-sense that one possesses in relation to others. The translation of this into the Latin “ego” has led to the misunderstanding that the “ego” is some kind of entity independent of self; applying this mistranslation to the mystical concepts mentioned above, the “ego’ is viewed as a negative force that somehow obstructs the perception of a higher Self.

A statement such as “I am working hard to get rid of my ego” is an inherent tautology, for the “I” that is working hard is, in fact, according to Freud’s definition, none other than “das Ich”, i.e. the ego itself.

Even the lesser effort to eliminate pride, an endeavour endorsed in the ethos of most exoteric religions, is still laden with paradox. It is said that the last words of the Baal Shem Tov, a paragon of humility whose heart was open to every human being, were from Psalm 36: “אל תבואני רגל גאוה” (“Let me not succumb to the habit of pride…”). The Hasidic manifesto Yosher Divrei Emes heaps scorn upon those who adopt a manner of humility, as this pretext itself is used to enhance one’s perception of self, thus fuelling the fires of pride through its supposed negation.

Another well-known story is told of Reb Dovid of Lelov, a paragon of humility in the panoply of Hasidic masters. In addition to being humble, Reb Dovid practiced an extremely ascetic lifestyle, fasting during the entire week and eating only on the Sabbath. On a Friday afternoon on a scorching hot summer’s day, he was wandering through the Polish countryside on his way back home to Lelov. After six days of fasting, his stomach ached and his throat was parched. Suddenly, he came upon a clear, gurgling stream of pure spring water. He was sorely tempted to have but one small drink of water to make the remainder of his journey bearable. After all, it was nearly the Sabbath; in a few hours he would be enjoying a meal in the comfort of his home, so what did it matter if he had a little drink of water now? Surely, God in his mercy would understand.

He knelt down beside the brook and cupped the cool, fresh water in his hands. At that moment, the voice of his own conscience spoke to him: “Oy, Dovidl! Oy, Dovidl! You have gone for six days fasting for the sake of your Maker and now, because of your lowly desires, you intend to discard it all? Have you not the power to overcome your personal needs and wait but another three hours to enjoy a meal on the Sabbath as is your wont?” Reb Dovid braced himself with resolve, let the water slide from his hand, rose up, and resumed his hike back to Lelov. All at once, he was overcome with a sense of great elation and self-satisfaction at having overcome his thirst. At that very same moment, he froze in his tracks, having recognized that emotion for what it truly was: spiritual pride. He then returned to the stream and drank freely from the crystal waters.

I often visit the Bodhinyana Monastery of Theravada Buddhists in Serpentine, not too far from my home in Western Australia. It is always a serene experience for me. I have a warm rapport with the abbot, Ajahn Brahm, and often engage in discussions with the monks. Once, I discussed the issue of celibacy with one of them. Most kabbalists would find general agreement with the first three of the Four Noble Truths of the Buddha: life is suffering, suffering is caused by desire and negation of desire eliminates suffering. The theoretical disagreement lies in the application of one facet of the Eight-Fold Path, the ostensible Middle Way and the means to eradicate desire.

That facet pertains to the Buddhist view (shared by Catholicism) that abstinence from sexuality is a way to overcome its magnetic allure. Apart from the Torah commandments to produce offspring and for a husband to provide his wife with sexual pleasure, according to kabbalah the sexual act is both paradigmatic and reflective of the union between Divine transcendence and immanence.

My somewhat wistful comment to the Buddhist monk was that I envied the simplicity of the Theravada sangha: no monetary possessions, no home (or mortgage on one), no wife and children to deal with. It seemed to me far easier to reach spiritual fulfilment under such idealised conditions. The monk expressed profound surprise; he had never before considered the path of the Buddhist monk to be an easy one. The Jewish mystic, however, is expected to reach enlightenment through engagement with the physical world rather than renunciation of it. Although, on the one hand, this might seem like a far more pleasurable experience in temporal terms, in spiritual terms it appears on the surface to be a gruelling if not outright impossible task.

That, however, is only the view from the surface, where physicality seen in dualistic terms is an impediment to the sublime. Indeed, this was the view reiterated by many of the kabbalistic schools, particularly those influenced by the Gnostic perception of the physical world as a reality that had to be transcended. Even the kabbalah of the Ari was tainted by this perception; the kabbalists of Safed followed a path of extreme asceticism, where extensive fasts, self-mortification, flagellation and tearful prayers were par for the course. It was the innovation of the Baal Shem Tov that developed Lurianic kabbalah beyond this surface dualism to the absolute unity of panentheism, where everything that existed was a manifestation of the One. The very notion of evil, according to the Baal Shem Tov, was only so insofar as our relative perception of it imbued it with this negative quality. The physical world was more than just an emanation from God, as defined by previous schools of kabbalistic thought; it was an actual manifestation of the Divine, present in all created things.

Bitul ha-yesh, “the negation of substance”, was not a state that one needed to struggle in order to achieve. It was the state of things as they are. For if every physical manifestation is in reality nothing more that the presence of the ineffable Ayn Sof, then there was no “substance” or “yesh” to begin with. Rather than an arduous task to alter reality, one only had to perceive it as it truly is. What need was there to annihilate the ego, when it never truly existed? Like the Buddhist doctrine of “emptiness is form, and form is emptiness”, every aspect of the manifest world, including the perception of self, was in fact the Nothingness of Ayn Sof. Even more, without that vessel of the “I’ or the “ego”, no manifestation of the Divine was even possible. The two were mutually symbiotic. Godliness would not exist without an ego to both perceive and manifest it.

In the Tibetan school of Dzogchen Buddhism the “Great Perfection” is considered the natural state intrinsic to all beings. Only as a result of karmic flaws do we miss seeing the absolute goodness inherent in what we truly are. The ultimate goal is to clear the mind of the mental clouds that obscure this truth and to then maintain it in every aspect of physical existence.

Similarly, in Hasidism the aphorism בכל דרכיך דעהו (“Know him in all your ways…”) was foundational in establishing this material world, and the perception of self known as ego essential to it, as the meeting place of the Divine rather than the escape route implied by the earlier ascetic versions of kabbalah. One might argue that all of this is mere polemics. Is there any difference in the end between getting rid of ego and clearing away the mental flak that hampers a true perception of what ego really is? My contention, however, is that the difference is existential rather than semantic. By viewing the ego as inherently evil, one not only perpetuates a dualistic outlook but also runs the risk of falling into the trap of spiritual egotism, where the ego takes pride at its very efforts to eradicate itself. When, however, we relinquish not our ego but our mental pre-conceptions as to what that is, we arrive at the foundational understandings in both Dzogchen and Hasidism. Then, the ego itself becomes the “Great Perfection”, the mirror of Emptiness in which the divine Form is reflected. It is at that point that we can all heave a deep sigh of relief, sit back and, whatever we are doing, perpetually enjoy the blissful condition as the gor nishts we really are.

Eyes on the Road

“Keep your eyes on the road, your hands upon the wheel…
The future’s uncertain, and the end is always near.”
-- The Doors, Roadhouse Blues

In the spring of 1989 I was privileged to host a most distinguished guest in my home at that time in Safed. Then President of Hanazono University in Kyoto, Japan’s largest academic centre for the study of Zen Buddhism, the late Zen master Roshi Hirano had come to Israel with an intent to learn more about kabbalah. Professor Yoel Hoffman of the Asian Philosophy Department at the University of Haifa, noted author and a personal acquaintance, had arranged the meeting between us.
We had organised to meet first in the old Abouhav Synagogue around the corner from our former home. When he walked into that bastion of Sephardic tradition with his flowing grey robes, clean-shaven skull and furtive smile, he caused more than one head to turn in his direction. He watched the Kabbalat Shabbat service, a hallmark of the emotionalism in Jewish ritual, with that pristine equanimity so characteristic of Zen Buddhists.
After the service, I brought him to our home, as planned. In the vestibule we had one of David Friedman’s prints, Pardes Ha-Torah (The Torah Orchard), displayed on the wall straight opposite the entry. (The PaRDeS is meant to be acronym for the four basic levels of Torah: P for pshat, the literal meaning; R for remez, the allegorical meaning; D for drash, the exegetical meaning; S for sod, the secret or kabbalistic meaning.) Like a mandala, the print displayed the levels of the Torah orchard concentrically rather than hierarchically. On the outer ring were the surface layers of the 24 books of the Tanach (Bible); another level deeper displayed the six orders of the Mishnah, corresponding to the second allegorical level; further in were diagrams representing the Babylonian and Jerusalem Talmud along with the four tomes of the Shulchan Aruch, the main compendium of Jewish law, signifying exegesis; finally, in the centre was a picture of Rabbi Shimon Bar Yochai and his companions illuminated with the radiance of the secret Torah, the kabbalah.
Without any prompting on my behalf, Hirano walked straight into the vestibule and stood quietly in front of this picture for some time. Finally, turning in my direction, he pointed his wizened finger towards the print and said: “Zen!”
I thought that was amazing. It was even more amazing that after the Shabbat he returned to the art gallery where David Friedman sold his work to purchase a Pardes Ha-Torah for his meditation shrine at Hanazono. But that amazement pales in comparison to what I experienced, when, after being seated in our living-room Hirano asked me his first query, translated by Yoel Hoffman, in his quest to understand more about kabbalah:
“Does one who studies the kabbalah become stricter or more lax in the observance of outer ritual and commandments?”
Even way back then, nearly two decades ago, I was beginning to have a faint inkling as to the profundity of that question, though I had no idea back then of how much of my life in the years to follow would be affected by it. Even more puzzling though was that this question was addressed to me by a Zen master. Were there any such parallels in Zen itself? Would a reciprocal question have been: “How important are the Buddhist precepts once you have practiced zazen or experienced satori?” Somehow, it seemed to me that Hirano had touched on a dichotomy that, in many ways, was fundamentally applicable to Judaism.
One pole of that historical dichotomy had manifested itself right there in Safed four centuries earlier. At that time, when the master kabbalist the Ari (Rabbi Isaac Luria) and his disciples walked the cobblestone alleyways of this Galilean town, a seamless integration occurred between the halachic (legalistic) and mystical aspects of Judaism. Simultaneous to the renaissance of kabbalah in the wake of the Spanish exile, Safed was also the centre of legalistic development. While most Jews are familiar with Rabbi Yosef Karo as the author of the Shulchan Aruch, the authoritative compendium of Jewish law, fewer are aware of the fact that he was also an accomplished kabbalist. His work Magid Mesharim is a mystical interpretation of the Mishnah transmitted to him by an angelic intermediary. At that point in history, kabbalah was universally accepted as central to Judaism. Many of the customs and much of the liturgy practiced today emerged from this mystical zenith. The esoteric kabbalah, however, in no way contradicted the exoteric aspects of Torah law; in fact, it only served to enhance it.
A century later the mass movement of Shabbtai Zevi, the self-proclaimed Messiah who ultimately apostatised at the command of the Ottoman Sultan, reversed this trend of integration. Gershom Scholem, the late pioneer in academic research on kabbalah, defined the Shabbatean movement as antinomian, i.e. opposed to the dominance of Torah commandments. Although many of Shabbtai’s whimsical breaches of Jewish law stemmed more from his personality than from any defined philosophic outlook, they were nonetheless rationalised as the Messianic materialization of the “new Torah”, one rooted in the spiritual revelation of the Messiah himself rather than the existing legal structure.
Although at its peak the Shabbatean faction succeeded in attracting many of the most prominent rabbis across the Jewish world, following the apostasy the practice and study of kabbalah were severely repressed by the rabbinic establishment. The esoteric and exoteric, once so effortlessly integrated, disconnected and finally drifted apart.
The dichotomy that had expressed itself in Jewish history has also displayed itself in my personal life. At the time of Hirano’s visit, I had already been studying Talmud and commentaries for close to a decade. Every month the students in the Klausenberg Hasidic kolel (an academy for married men) were tested on 30 pages of Talmud with Rashi and Tosafot commentaries; the amount of our monthly stipend depended on the scores of these tests. Although I also studied some kabbalistic texts during that time period, it was tangential to my primary studies in Talmud and Shulchan Aruch. In point of fact, the philosophy of the Klausenberger Hasidim was that the study of kabbalah was superfluous for most; a rigorous devotion to exoteric study alone would bring about all the purification necessary to lead a good and holy life. Only the rare tsaddikim, the spiritual pillars of the community, were supposed to engage in the esoteric domain.
Looking at my life today, the situation is precisely opposite. Although I still observe many facets of Jewish law, I no longer devote time to its study. After so many years, much of that observance functions, rightly or wrongly, on automatic pilot. These days my focus is on the centre of David Friedman’s Pardes: Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai illuminated by spiritual fire and grasping the Tree of Life. By this, I don’t mean to imply that I study volumes of kabbalah, although I at least try and keep up with the monthly Zohar allotment for our group study. For me, that paradigmatic picture of Rabbi Shimon is not so much about the theoretical study through text but rather the experiential perception of the Divine in every aspect of life.
In the wake of the Shabbatean disaster, the rabbis who attempted to restrict the study of kabbalah confined it to “married men, over forty, whose stomachs were full from the Talmud and law codes.” In my particular case, although I cannot claim to have swallowed that prescribed quantity of Talmud that would make my “stomach full”, my ten years of Talmud study nonetheless managed to have that effect. (Incidentally, I have recently started again a daily page of Talmudic study for the sake of balance in my spiritual path.)
Obviously, however, I did not simply wake up one morning to find myself on the other side of the divide. It was a process containing many pivotal points: one, which I distinctly recall, involved the use of a toilet.
Before proceeding, it is important to explain that Jewish law does not shy away from any question, no matter how personal, that entails an aspect of life experience. The Talmud recounts how Rav Kahana hid in the outhouse to watch how his master, Rav, would defecate. When rebuked by Rav for this breach of privacy, Rav Kahana replied; “This is Torah, and to learn it, I have come here.” (A similar is story is told about Rav Kahana concealing himself under Rav’s bed to study the Torah implications of sexual intercourse.)
In the year 2000 my late father took our family on a kosher cruise of the Greek islands in celebration of my mother’s seventieth birthday. My wife and I had no sooner settled into our cabin, when the phone rang. It was my brother, a staunchly observant Hasid, phoning from his cabin on the same deck. He was very upset upon discovering that the toilets flushed electrically. How would we be able to use them on the Jewish Sabbath, when the usage of electricity was forbidden, akin to the lighting of fire explicitly forbidden by the Torah?
Although there was a mashgiach (kashrut supervisor) on board to oversee the meals, there was no ship’s rabbi to whom to address the question. Since the cruise boarded on a Friday morning, the question would become relevant in a matter of hours. I briefly discussed the situation with my wife. I was already somewhat claustrophobic in the confines of the cabin. To imagine being stuck in that room with the foul odour of unflushed faeces was unthinkable.
That night we enjoyed a scrumptious Shabbat meal together with my family. Upon arising the next morning, I made use of the toilet and made an unhesitating executive decision to flush using my elbow instead of my finger to press the “Flush” button. (This legal device, known as a shinui, or a change from the usual manner of performing an act, is actually of no avail whatsoever when making use of an electrical appliance on the Sabbath.)
My brother appeared at breakfast, looking quite happy and self-satisfied. He asked me how I had solved the toilet dilemma. I told him that I hadn’t; I had just flushed it. He was aghast.
“How could you do that? You violated the Sabbath!”
I asked him in return how he had solved the problem.
“Simple,” he answered. “I just used the public toilets on the deck.”
“But you still had to flush it,” I said.
“Says who?” he asked rhetorically.
When I expressed my disgust at his solution, he just shrugged it off. “Most of the passengers are goyim. What does it matter if a goy flushes the toilet?”
To me, it mattered a lot. If appeasing God meant that I would have to cause any kind of revulsion to my fellow human being, this was just not the God I was interested in pleasing. So I continued to wantonly flush, even without the shinui.
When the cruise ended, I took my wife and immediate family to Switzerland for a few days. There I had a meeting with a well-known rabbi, also a rebbe of Hasidic group in Jerusalem, who had been a friend and advisor for many years. I decided to ask him the question, even though it was by now post-facto. I described the situation with the toilets and told him what I had done and how my brother had approached the issue.
The rabbi was thoughtful and quiet for what seemed like a very long time. Finally, he said, “In such a situation, you were right to flush because of כבוד הבריות (kavod ha’briuth), the 'honour' due to all created beings.” I felt vindicated that my intuition had been correct. I then realized that it was only when one had a vision of the “big picture” that one could truly understand and properly apply the halacha.
As the word “halacha” has its etymological roots in the verb “holech”, meaning “to go”, I have often used the analogy of driving a car as a means of understanding this correct application.
When one first begins to drive, it is necessary to know exactly how the vehicle functions. The brakes, accelerator, steering wheel, shift, clutch, headlights and blinkers must be thoroughly mastered if one is to travel without coming to harm. Yet, once one has become familiarized with the vehicle and is ready to travel, it is necessary to keep one’s vision focused on the road. If instead, one were to concentrate on all those inner mechanisms that make the car function without regard to the big picture of where one is going, catastrophe is likely to follow. Furthermore, once the mechanics of driving has become second-nature, it behooves the driver to pay attention to the road ahead, not only as a means of getting to the proper destination but also to enjoy the passing scenery.
Returning again to Hirano’s question, the implied dichotomy has also manifested in the contemporary approaches to kabbalah. On the one hand, the elite group of rabbinic scholars engaged in the study of חכמת האמת (the wisdom of truth) practice Jewish law with a scrupulousness that borders on asceticism. On the other hand, the Kabbalah Centre, in opening its doors to all and sundry to spread the Messianic tidings of Jewish mysticism, has purposefully erased kabbalah’s quintessential Jewish nature and its inherent connection to Jewish law and Torah commandments. So, is there, in fact, an answer to Hirano’s enigmatic question?
When I first quoted from The Door’s Roadhouse Blues at the onset of this article, I was fully aware of the nihilistic tone of those lyrics. The Doors, after all, were the pioneers in the glorification of lethal hedonism. My interpretation, however, in relation to what has been discussed, is antithetical to the original meaning conveyed in that characteristically raunchy style Jim Morrison made famous.
“Keep your eyes on the road, your hands upon the wheel” says that we need both the mystical vision to transmit the desired destination as well as the exoteric vehicle that provides the mechanics of the actual movement. “The future’s uncertain, and the end is always near.” In kabbalistic terms, the future is not only uncertain, it is non-existent. The only reality is Infinite Ain Sof manifesting in every mutable aspect of the Eternal Moment. The destination, or “the end”, towards which our vehicle must be heading, is that utter unity with the ceaseless Now wherein the Living God is revealed. That “end” is not only very “near”; it is actually inevitable.
The Ari declared that when one removed the final samech ("s") of the secret wisdom from the Pardes, what remained was the word pered, suggesting the “separation” between the human being and the Divine. I would also say that one could use that analogy in the reverse sense: when one neglects the exoteric levels of Torah and extricates them from its mystical wisdom, all that remains is the samech, which, on its own, resembles nothing more than a hiss, like that of the primordial serpent. Recall that that creature tempted Eve with the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil by declaring that it would “open your eyes and make you like God, knowing good and evil.” Perhaps this is an allegorical reference to a certain type of antinomian narcissism that seems to permeate much of the New Age spiritual smorgasbord.
After twenty years of mentally churning and regurgitating this issue, and then writing this article, I have finally come to the conclusion that Hirano never even asked me a “question” to begin with. Instead, what he gave me, like the sound of one hand clapping, was a beautiful, meditative koan. For his supposed question has no fixed answer; rather, like his pointed finger, it merely signifies a dynamic process that ascends and descends both infinitely and infinitesimally. Only through an awareness of that process, however, can one fully understand the flawless unity inherent in the Pardes Ha-Torah and secretly embedded in Hirano’s monosyllabic proclamation: “Zen!”

Can Somebody Please Turn On the Light?

"I, HASHEM, have called you in righteousness, and will strengthen your hand and protect you; and I will establish you as a covenant for the people, for a light unto the nations."(Isaiah 42:6)

I can't remember when in my childhood I first heard about the idea that Jews were the chosen people of God. It must have been early on, either from my parents or first years in Hebrew School, but it was certainly before I had learned of the horrors of Jewish history. It made me feel flushed with pride to be one of those privileged people chosen by the Almighty, though I hadn't figured out at that point exactly for what purpose.

The picture began to shift in early adolescence. By then, through contact with gentile friends, I became aware that our Torah was called the Old Testament while theirs was the New; that our God seemed to keep busy with such vengeful feats of destruction like deluges, fiery brimstone, plagues and demands of filial sacrifice, while theirs was a Jewish preacher of love who had been murdered on the cross by Romans with the complicity of other Jews; that our history was an ignominious chain of exile, persecution, inquisitions, pogroms, ghettoes and holocausts, while theirs was the triumphant ascendancy of Western civilization and culture as we know it. A sense of discomfit began to surface, gradually eclipsing my naïve childhood pride at my special status.

One incident I recall in which this sense of shame was highlighted was the confirmation of my best friend Hayden Pearl (the Jewish name was from his father) at St. Ann's Church in Quincy, Massachusetts. As this was the first (and only) occasion that I attended an actual church service, I was filled with a mixture of curiosity and trepidation. The confirmation was celebrated by the renowned Richard Cardinal Cushing of Boston. I took an aisle seat towards the back, staring in awe at the elaborate decorations and statues, in stark contrast to the modest furnishings of our temple. The Latin mass, the strange perfume of frankincense, the flowing robes of the altar boys and the weighty tones of the organ conspired towards an ethereal experience, the likes of which I had never witnessed in any Jewish rituals. After some time, however, like most 11-year-old boys, I had had enough and was already getting a bit fidgety. Fortunately, the congregation at last rose to their feet, while one of the confirmed recited a concluding benediction in Latin. Just then, however, to my horror, Cardinal Cushing began his departure down the aisle, and as he walked forward, all the congregants before him dropped to their knees, while those seated on both sides of the aisle (like me) were offered his ring to kiss in an act of Christian devotion.

This was my first real test as a Jew. I remained standing, as the Cardinal approached. He looked at me with inquisitive eyes, as did numerous other parishioners who had turned around in their pews to watch the prelate's grandiose exit. As he extended his hand in my direction, I made an awkward hand gesture and muttered a polite "No, thanks!" As he passed by my seat like an ominous shadow, I looked up to take in the sea of hostile faces gazing in my direction. It was then I truly realised that the honour of being chosen, for a mysterious end which I still did not comprehend, carried with it a heavy price tag.

With the onset of puberty I was no more the wiser as to the Divine purpose of being one of the chosen, but I was now aware of a new commandment, one that seemed to acquire even more prominence than the ten received by Moses at Sinai: "Thou shalt not fraternise with a shiksa." I sensed correctly that the word "shiksa" seemed to have a derogatory connotation, although it was not until a decade later in the Talmudic academy (kollel) that I finally figured out its derivative from the Hebrew word "sheketz", the "detestable thing". As a teenage boy, however, it hardly mattered how the word sounded; like a character in a Phillip Roth novel, I was fatally smitten by the dazzling allure of these lovely creatures! The more that parents, rabbis and teachers tried to convince us of the dangers of interfaith dating and marriage, the stronger the attraction became to that luscious forbidden fruit.

The huge emphasis on preserving Jewish pedigree, however, provided a semblance of an answer to the burning question that still raged unsolved in the back of my mind. It seemed that we had been chosen simply to preserve our genetic status of being chosen! While that was possibly enough of an answer for most of the Jews I knew, it failed to satisfy me.

And then along came the sixties and with the ubiquitous sex, drugs and rock-and-roll, the question hardly seemed relevant. By 1970 I had already been expelled from High School for my radical sub-cultural politics and was living with one of those beautiful "detestable things" in Boston's Back Bay. Those were heady times, the Dawning of the Age of Aquarius, and Jewish identity seemed the farthest thing from my mind.

One of my close friends in those days was an Aquarius named Michael SanAntonio who shared my passion for the mystical. We used to sit around at my place, get high and listen to Led Zeppelin or the Stones, while discussing the future of humanity.

Michael explained his theory of the historical development of world religion in conjunction with the phenomenon known as the precession of the equinoxes. According to him, Judaism emerged in the Age of Aries, the Ram, a symbol frequently used in the Old Testament. As the Sun, ruler of the ego and consciousness, is exalted in Aries, Judaism's prime purpose was the stabilization of the ego and the reinforcement of tribalism. Along came the Age of Pisces, the Fish, symbol of the new Christian religion and a universal love preached by the Avatar Jesus that dissolved the previous egoic and tribal boundaries, creating a new covenant based on faith in Jesus Christ's sacrifice on the cross. The next phase, naturally, was the electrifying Age of Aquarius, of which we were sitting on the threshold. Faith was to be replaced with experiential knowledge, which would become the glue to bind a fractured humanity into a harmonious global whole. Peace and love would reign supreme, and it was only a matter of time before our world leaders were sporting pony-tails and tie-dyed T-shirts, and cannabis would replace the dollar as legal tender.

But there it was again! Even my best friend, a committed hippie, pronounced the unequivocal judgment: the Jews had been chosen for a cause that had long ago passed its use-by date.

I must have swallowed that theory hook, line and sinker, because in the years that followed I did everything possible to extricate myself from that primitive tribal identity of my childhood Judaism.

In 1972, however, I was provided an innovative glimpse at the meaning of the "chosen people" from an unexpected source.

Sandy and Lowell Williamson had lived on the top floor of our building with their nine-year old son, Jon. Though they were the same age as my parents at that time, the couple was a vestige of the beatnik era. Sandy was the first to help me comprehend the significance of the integral holism of the zodiacal cycle, which considerably honed my future skills as an astrological counsellor. She also liked a good smoke and knew that she could usually count on getting some at my place. One day she said, "You should go to Jamaica, man. You would really dig the Rastafarians!"

"The rust-a-what?" I replied. It was the first time I had heard the word. She had been to Jamaica years before and explained to me a bit about this strange group who apparently used cannabis in their rituals. To be honest, at the time, it was so foreign to me that it went in one ear and out the other.

In February 1972, however, I was ready to embark on that recommended voyage. With my backpack, a plane ticket, about $250 cash and a list of some addresses from a few of my Jamaican friends living in Dorchester, I arrived in Kingston on a warm, starry night. I had to wait a long time before finding a cabdriver willing to drive me to Trenchtown, where I was to meet my first contact, Ras Moses. Here is not the place to fill in the harrowing details of my arrival in that forsaken shantytown, where, as a "white boy", I attracted considerable attention, not all of it positive. By the end of that evening, however, I was brought to the abode of Ras Moses, and on one of the concrete slab rooftops I was inducted into the "brotherhood" with a massive spliff.

Early the next morning some of the brethren arrived at my hostel with the news that there had been two killings in the neighbourhood that night due to the urban violence generated by the approaching elections. All foreigners had been asked to leave the island. I refused to leave; after all, I had just arrived. The dreadlocks decided to drive me up into the relative safety of Saint Catherine Parish in the Blue Mountains, where I had an address from another of my Boston contacts.

For the next five weeks I lived in Belleview with the mother and family of one of these acquaintances. Most of my days, however, were spent in the shack of an elderly Rastafarian cobbler, Joseph Roberts, who lived on the ridge at the town's edge. As he went about his business cobbling, he would also expound the prophecies of Isaiah and Jeremiah, the verses of which he knew by heart. Furthermore, all of the stories that I had learned as a child in Hebrew school—the exile, 400 years of slavery, the fall of Egypt, the exodus, the return to the Promised Land of Zion—had been appropriated in their entirety.

"Babylon a-go fall down, mahn, and Jah chosen people I-and-I come a-home to Zion," he would periodically interject into his bubbling exegesis.

On the evening before returning to the States I was invited to attend a Nyabingi, a sacred gathering of Rastafarians with lots of chants, songs and herb. Before lighting the "chalice", a water-pipe with a coconut bowl and cow's horn for a chillum, a member of the group recited Psalm 133: "Behold, how good and pleasant it is for brethren to dwell together in unity… Like the precious oil of the head, running down upon the beard, yea, Aaron's beard, running down upon his garments… so the dew of Hermon descends upon the mountains of Zion… for there Almighty God, Jah Rastafari, has commanded the blessing of Life, forever more!"

As the chalice made its rounds, I reflected on the bizarre set of circumstances I found myself immersed in. I recognised that song from Hebrew school as "הנה מה- טוב ומה- נעים", which I had sung hundreds of times before. Never in the past, however, did that psalm possess the profundity and meaning that it did in the circle of these descendants of African slaves. How, I wondered, had they succeeded in taking our Jewish paradigm and reworking it into a vital and viable model that exemplified the concept of a chosen people?

I was not to discover the answer to that question until six years later in another set of hills in the Upper Galilee in the holy town of Safed, the cradle of kabbalah, where I lived with my wife and family for fifteen years.

Prior to coming to Israel, I had become an avid searcher in the traditions of Sufism, Gnosticism, Taoism and Vajrayana. My background in Jewish mysticism, however, had been limited to the "qabbala" espoused by Aleister Crowley in the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn. (I was also conversant in Arthur E. Waite's works in conjunction with the Tarot tradition.) Now fluent in Hebrew, for the first time in my life I was able to explore kabbalah from authentic Jewish sources. What I discovered was no less than a sparkling treasure that all along had been buried in my own back yard.

The deeper I explored in this journey of the soul, the more questionable my previous assumptions about Judaism now appeared. Rather than a body of antiquated laws commanded by an authoritarian and patriarchal Deity, the mitzvoth suddenly transformed into miraculous opportunities of connection. The notion of God's Oneness, erroneously perceived as quantitative in exoteric Judaism (i.e. there is one unique God amongst many other forces and beings in the universe) suddenly became qualitative and absolute. As we concluded each prayer service daily: "You are to know this day and take it to your heart that HASHEM is the only God—in heaven above and on the earth below—there is none other." (Deuteronomy 4:39). According to the Ramchal the meaning of "…there is none other" is that "there is nothing else". This was amplified by the Hasidic masters in the simple Yiddish expression "allez ist Gott", everything is God. Indeed, the path of Hasidut, one of the more recent manifestations of kabbalistic development, was to achieve bitul-hayesh, the negation of substance, the dissolution of the illusory barrier between the self and the Divine.

The answer to that vexing question had been there all along. It was embedded in the prophetic verse that defined Israel's task as a "light unto the nations". I had heard the phrase used many times before but had been unable to determine what that "light" was that we had to offer. It didn't seem to be our predilection for pedigree, our proficiency with money, our complex set of legalisms nor our innate sense of inherent privilege. Our moral code had already been more or less adopted by the other monotheistic faiths, so it had to be something more than that as well.

The light that Israel had to offer humanity was the radiance concealed in the inner Torah, the kabbalah. For its knowledge and practice has the power to transform the gross material body into a vessel of spiritual light. When such a process takes place on a collective scale, the net result is an illuminated and enlightened humanity. In the epistle of the Baal Shem Tov he describes his ascent to the supernal realms and vision of the Messiah; he asks the latter when he intends to appear on earth. The Messiah replies, "This shall be your sign. It will be at a time when your teachings become widespread in the world, and 'your springs overflow abroad.'"

More than mere privilege, the attribute of being chosen carried with it a poignant awareness of responsibility. This is hinted at where the Torah first refers to the special status of the Jews: "And now, if you hearken to me and observe My covenant, you shall be to Me the most beloved treasure of all peoples, for Mine is the entire world. You shall be to me a kingdom of ministers and a holy nation." (Exodus 19:5-6) There it was. I finally understood what it meant to be chosen, to be part of a ministry to rectify the world. In the words of the Blues Brothers: "We are on a mission of God."

The discovery of that mission, however, was the easy part. Implementing it has proven far more difficult. For how do you explain that spiritual mission to the vast majority of Jews who would prefer the inherent privilege to the urgent responsibility? How do you convince the rabbinic authorities that our spiritual legacy to the world is that mystical light rather than a national pastime of legalistic casuistry? How do you point out to the gentiles of the world that, rather than a relic from the ancient past, Judaism embodies the hope for humankind's future?

Moreover, most of the learned kabbalists perform their practice with modesty and privacy; they have no desire to leave their sphere of hermetic sanctity to go out and educate others, whether secular Jews or gentiles. The argument put forth (and I have heard this used against the outreach method of Chabad) is that one can achieve more to transform the planet by sitting in the Beit Midrash, studying and praying with true devotion, than can be achieved by natural effort. It is an argument that is impossible to disprove, particularly if one agrees that there are indeed spiritual realms that are influenced by our actions. These mystics concentrate solely on the cultivation of "the light"; getting it out there "unto the nations" is of no concern to them.

On the other side of the coin, we have the purveyors of popular kabbalah. By making Jewish mysticism accessible to the masses they have no doubt helped countless people imbue their lives with meaning and depth. This is vital in the times we live in, where the oppressive force of the materialist paradigm has engendered nihilism, gloom and despair. Yet, the obsession to promulgate these ideas "unto the nations" comes at the expense of the authenticity of "the light" itself! Attempts, for example, to blur distinctions by equating the Christian "qabbala" of Giovanni Pico della Mirandola with the Jewish kabbalah of the Ari are disingenuous, if not deceptive. Similarly, claims that the Zohar never refers to "commandments and prohibitions" but rather to "positive and negative energies" is patently false, as anyone who has studied the Zohar will attest to; the entire section of Raya Mehemna elaborates on the spiritual ramifications of various "commandments" and "prohibitions" of the Torah. Finally, I have met only a few non-Jewish students of kabbalah who are even remotely aware of the Seven Universal Laws, which, for them, should be the foundation of any mystical practice.

So where does that leave a Jew like me who would like to fulfil the mission and become "a light unto the nations"? In fact, it leaves me stuck in the middle, which is the worst place of all, a plight reflected in the well-known Yiddish adage: "You can't dance at two weddings with only one rear-end."

During the fifteen year period I lived in Safed, I was not pre-occupied pondering this implementation of the Jewish mission. Living in the spiritual heights of the Holy Land, this was just not a major concern. As far as our Arab cousins go, I suppose we first had to achieve peace, before we could convey any mystical secrets of the Torah, although I admit that perhaps these two goals are interdependent. Since our arrival Down Under in 1993, however, that question has been an object of much contemplation. In one sense, it is disheartening that in all that time I have not come up with a solution.

Perhaps the truth is that there is none. Perhaps, like Agent Ethan Hunt, we have been handed a "Mission: Impossible". We are, in the end, ultimately talking about a connection with Ohr Ein Sof, that light from a nameless, ineffable God who, solely out of convenience, we label "without limits". Perhaps any endeavour to adequately define how that sublime light should be conveyed is simply unattainable, in the same way that "the Tao that can be named is not the Tao."

When I first arrived in Safed back in 1979, it was a chance encounter with the Nadvorna Rebbe of Hadera, who was conducting a Hasidic tisch in the Old City, which impelled me to study Torah full-time. After one of his Hasidim spotted me in the alleyway and hauled me inside the darkened room, the Rebbe took my hand and said to me in his heavily-accented English. "Remember one thing! In this life, there is no such thing as standing still. Because if you stand still today, it means that tomorrow you will have fallen behind."

That teaching resonated with everything I had learned up until that point, and it is deeply embedded in my heart still today. The Jewish concept of enlightenment is dynamic, not static. It is based on רץ ושוב, "running and returning". Whenever we think we have found the truth, we have to remind ourselves that it is always something more than what we think it is.

Furthermore, in reality, illumination is not actualised through meditations on the sefirot, knowledge of the Zohar (or scanning it!) or even through the performance of numerous mitzvoth. Nor will all the red threads in the world, stacks of how-to DVD's or an ocean filled with blessed drinking water bring one any closer to enlightenment. The reason is that enlightenment is right here with us already, and all these other things are just external means to trip our awareness into recognising that which resides within us all along.

Perhaps, when all is said and done, that light that I have been referring to is not even ours to give but rather incumbent upon us to perceive. And it is in that Divine task that every one of us, Jew and gentile alike, becomes a part of "the chosen people" and a mission that culminates in eternity.

How I Became a Post-denominational Mystic

I was recently challenged by a former Carmel School student, currently a Friend in Facebook, why in my profile I have listed my religious views as “post-denominational mystic”. This particular student, who was never really enthused about Jewish Studies while at Carmel, messaged me from Israel. It seems that, like many former students, age and maturity have increased his Jewish awareness. In between the lines, I could sense some disappointment that his former rabbi and Director of Jewish Studies, always a proponent of Jewish self-respect, seemed too embarrassed to list his religious views as “Jewish.”
Immediately thereafter, I received a second Facebook message from another former student studying at yeshiva in Israel. He was sincerely concerned about the viability of Jewish life alone out here in the hills of Roleystone, away from the synagogue and the hub of Jewish community.
Inevitably, in answering both of these similar questions I lay bare some of the deep unresolved conflicts and contradictions in my own personal life. In that respect, it might be better to just let these issues lie dormant rather than expose discomforting questions that are often unpopular. Nonetheless, as a believer in the adage of Rabbi Nachman of Breslav that “truth is the gateway to Redemption” I am left with little choice but to try and answer as best as I can. I want to make clear, however, that what follows is only a brief sketch of a select set of events that have influenced my thinking. There are a number of other critical events I have not discussed, both personal and circumstantial, that have also had impact on my transformation.
Before leaving Sydney for Perth in 1995 I had been contacted by the Melton Foundation to be a panel member on a proposed seminar on the topic of theological views of homosexuality. The program, which involved a number of Sydney clergy, seemed intellectually engaging. I was somewhat surprised and disappointed, therefore, when several weeks prior to the event I was informed by a representative of the Sydney Beit Din (Rabbinic Court) that I was forbidden to take part, as I would be sharing the podium with a Reform rabbi. I argued the importance of having a voice representing an orthodox perspective. I had already prepared what I suspected would be an interesting presentation with elements from both exoteric and esoteric Judaism, not to mention a sprinkling of Taoism. Despite my protestations, I was instructed in no uncertain terms to pull out, which I did.
In Perth I was surprised to find that, despite the comparative lack of orthodox infrastructure at that time (it has grown tremendously since), attitudes were much the same. At Carmel I succeeded in starting interfaith programs involving Christians, Moslems, Buddhists, Hindus and Sikhs. Yet, the school’s orthodox ethos would not allow me to invite the local Reform (Liberal) rabbi to speak on the principles of Reform Judaism.
Let me clarify that I was raised in the United States as a Conservative Jew. At least in America, the three major Jewish denominations were discernable. Each one knew where the other stood. Basically, Orthodox Jews held that the Torah commandments were of Divine origin, Reform Jews believed they were not and the Conservative Jews attempted a diplomatic “yes, but…” theological response to these polarities.
Here in Australia, however, where there is only Orthodox and Liberal, the situation is different. I once recall a mother of a student informing me that although she neither kept a kosher home nor observed the Sabbath, she considered herself staunchly orthodox. There are numerous others like her, too. Such a statement would be a tautology coming from an Orthodox Jew in New York or London. In practical terms, many of the congregants at some of the Orthodox synagogues here conduct themselves just like those in the Liberal, yet, strangely enough, an unbridgeable chasm divided the two communities religiously and socially.
As fate would have it, my next door neighbour in the unit in Perth which the school had procured for us was the rabbi at the Liberal (Reform) temple. He had been brought up in the US as Modern Orthodox but at some point rejected that; he “found himself” in later years with the theology of Reform Judaism. (My experience had been almost the opposite. I had rejected the non-committal stance of Conservative Judaism and discovered the profundity of Hassidism, studying for over a decade in the Zans-Klausenberg Kollel in Safed, Israel.) We developed a friendship, despite being an “odd couple”, and shared many interesting and challenging conversations.
Here I must inject that during my time period in Safed, I had also viewed and rejected the Reform movement as a heretical aberration. In effect, this view was more theoretical than practical, since at that time I had very little contact with any Reform Jews. In fact, the mutual rejection of these two streams is a very natural phenomenon. For Orthodox Judaism to give validity to the position of Reform would entail the nullification of its own platform; the same applies to the Reform position on Orthodoxy.
Yet, despite the inevitability of these perspectives, something in this divisive rut struck me as profoundly unhealthy. We are taught that the verse "ויחן העם" (“…and the people camped…”), where the verb is expressed in the defective singular, refers to the unity of the Jewish people at Sinai, a prerequisite to their receiving of the Torah (Rashi). The Talmud also teaches that the reason for the prolonged exile was needless hatred. Furthermore, it states that even the פושעי ישראל (the intentional Jewish transgressors) were filled with mitzvot like pomegranates. Finally, Pirkei Avot tells us in the simplest terms: "Who is wise? The one who learns from every person.”
There seemed to me to be a huge gap between these sentiments and the bitter reality on the ground. Of course, the standard answer to this contradiction in the Orthodox world was fairly simple and straightforward: this is galut, the exile. When the Messiah comes, everyone will return to God and Torah obedience, and there will be unity. (Reform Judaism, which, in its original platform rejected the idea of a Messianic era altogether, had no need at all to even address this fragmented state of affairs, since from a humanist perspective, fragmentation was in many respects an unavoidable existential reality.)
Yet, the idea of a future triumphant Orthodox theocracy as a solution to these issues was starting to unravel for me. First, the Rambam teaches that it is impossible to second-guess the details of the Messianic future. To interpret it narrowly through the lens of Orthodox hegemony seemed to me both reductionist and manipulative. Second, thanks to developments in the Islamic world, I was rapidly shedding any penchant I might have harboured for theocracies of any shade. Neither religious coercion nor hegemony seemed to hold the key to resolve the divide that was tearing apart my people (not to mention the rest of the world).
These were among the initial triggers that set me off on a search for a valid, more inclusive view that could somehow heal the rift and identify positive elements in each denomination. I cannot say exactly how long that search has lasted or that it is over: like everyone else, I am still a work in progress. I did not, however, have to look very far to find those signposts towards a more inclusive perspective. Within the Jewish mystical tradition those indicators are ubiquitous. Rav Avraham I. Kook, the Baal Shem Tov, Rav Shneur Zalman of Liadi, Rav Levi Yitzhak of Berdichev, the Apter Rebbe and numerous others all pointed to the same self-evident truth of the intrinsic unity of the Jewish people (klal yisrael).
I am, however, jumping the gun here. I will return to this mystical component momentarily, but I first want to explain the “post-denominational” bit. I initially discovered the term “Post-Denominational” a few years ago in an article in The Jerusalem Post. To my delight, it described an unusual phenomenon occurring in Israel. Secular Israelis who previously wanted nothing to do with Judaism were suddenly flocking in substantial numbers to study Torah and Talmud. Unlike the various outreach movements that have been active in recruiting new baalei tshuvah, those who return to the faith, these Israelis had no interest in becoming religious. Their sole motive was reclamation of their heritage which had been circumstantially hijacked and monopolised by orthodoxy.
Simultaneously, a growing number of Orthodox Israelis had begun to explore the fascinating world of science and philosophy. Online forums such as the Israeli website Hyde Park gave these religious Jews the opportunity to exchange views in an open environment, many of them taking advantage of the Internet’s anonymity to express opinions they dared not utter on the streets of Bnei Brak or Mea Shearim. Furthermore, what was coined the Habakuk movement (after the prophet Chabakuk, but truly an acronym for Chabad, Breslav and Rav Kook), an eclectic, mystical revival indigenous to Israel, spanned the denominational spectrum in its constituency.
Up until I read that article, whenever asked about my denominational status, for a while already I had begun to reply: “unorthodox”. While that adjective is possibly suitable for my personality, it is less than adequate in describing my religious affiliation. Post-denominational works much better. So I began using that.
When I did a more recent Google search on the topic, I found the word post-denominational used critically towards Lubavitch in a JP article from July 2006 written by Marvin Schick, president of the Jacob Joseph Yeshiva, NY. Decrying the abandonment of halacha in the movement’s efforts to include Jews of all backgrounds, Schick writes: “As it grows, Chabad's options are in a sense limited by certain realities, primarily the wholesale Judaic abandonment that we are witness to, and which is accelerating. Increasingly, the movement operates in a framework of post-denominational Judaism.”
In the past I have been critical of certain aspects of Lubavitch, particularly of its extreme messianic element. In this regard, however, I have to vigorously defend them.
In 1981 I was employed as an English teacher in the Lubavitch Primary School in Safed. Nearly half of the school’s pupils were from families in Kiryat Chabad; the rest came from non-observant Israeli homes in the area. I recall how the Chabad families wrote the Rebbe ז"צל to request that they form their own school without the negative influences their children were encountering from their secular classmates. The Rebbe ז"צל refused; the positive influence inherent in the interaction between religious and secular children outweighed the potential negatives.
During our recent 18-month stay in the Byron Bay area, I had the good fortune to befriend the Chabad shaliach (emissary) for the Gold Coast & Northern Rivers area. Rabbi Mosheh Serebryanski epitomises the concept of Jewish unity as expressed by the Jewish sages quoted above and emphatically reiterated by the Lubavitcher Rebbe. Byron Bay, of course, has a culture all of its own, and the many Israelis living there are both secular and alternative. Though there are many who consider “kiruv” (bringing Jews closer to their heritage) a means to provide quantitative fodder for orthodox culture, Reb Mosheh comprehended a deeper, antithetical significance: the ability to identify and come close to the spark of innate goodness in every soul. Whatever the Jewish occasion, the gatherings he organised never failed to manifest a certain character unique to the Byron Bay sub-culture. No doubt Schick would object to the occasional erosion of halacha which could occur under such circumstances nor would he fully appreciate the concomitant and contagious sense of simchah (joy).
Two and a half centuries ago the Baal Shem Tov began a movement that was truly revolutionary in its day. It was a Jewish rebellion against a soulless rabbinate, an ivory-towered world of dry legalism insensitive to the peoples’ needs and suffering. Hasidism in essence shifted the Jewish focus from the head to the heart, allowing a larger number of Jews to connect to God, the Torah and commandments through heartfelt devotion and simple intent. In its early days the movement was actually excommunicated for what the rabbinic establishment viewed as breaches of Jewish law. Today, ironically, most of the Hasidic movement has itself crystallised into an exclusive establishment. Only Chabad stands out in bearing that original torch of inclusiveness, willing to guide the flocks in Byron Bay, Kathmandu, Dharamsala, Saigon, Bangkok and countless other remote places. Chabad has assimilated the Baal Shem Tov’s famous dictum, which Marvin Schick would no doubt find anathematic: “One can’t expect to save a person from sinking in quicksand without getting one’s hands dirty.”
With these prefatory remarks on the post-denominational, I can better explain why I have seemingly discarded my Jewish identity for that of a “mystic”.
The answer to that is that mysticism is the sole perspective that can include and integrate both mythic belief and rational knowledge; as such, it heals the gaping wound that has caused the aforementioned rift both amongst the Jewish people and the nations of the world.
For many readers, particularly those who think of mysticism as some fuzzy, spaced-out, Lucy-in-the-sky-with diamonds blur, the previous statement seems fanciful if not outright dogmatic. Indeed, kabbalah and other esoteric traditions inherently define the New Aeon as the epoch when Spirit is revealed in its full glory. “..I will pour out My spirit upon all flesh, and your sons and daughters will prophesy; your elders will dream prophetic dreams, and your young men will see visions…” (Joel 3:1). It is not, however, my faith in scripture that generates such a radical claim.
In fact, I have always intuited that mystical consciousness is the engine for the realization not only of Divine Unity but the unity of a fragmented humanity; to give credit where it is due, however, it is thanks to the pioneering work in Integral Theory by American philosopher Ken Wilber that that intuition was verified. More than a speculative philosophy, Wilber’s outstanding contribution is as a classifier of diverse systems. Using the Neoplatonic Great Chain of Being (the evolutionary and ontological “holarchy” of matter, body, mind, soul and Spirit) as a base, Wilber juxtaposes numerous psychological and spiritual developmental models from both the East and West alongside of it. The conclusion is inescapable: each and every one of us, and humankind as a whole, is on a remarkable journey whose destination is the same as its starting point: the revelation of Spirit. And even more remarkable is that at every point along the way, even right now as you read the words on this page, that very same revelation is occurring. The true mystic sees that revelation, experienced as Pure Consciousness or Simple Awareness, at every moment, in every event and in every sentient being. Therein is the soothing balm that heals the torturous illusion of fracture and separation.
The innovation of the Baal Shem Tov was to take the mysteries of kabbalah, which enabled the meditative ascent of the human being to the lofty heights of the supernal worlds, and to turn it on its head. To paraphrase the late Rabbi Aryeh Kaplan, the aim was no longer to rise up to the heavens, but to bring the heavenly domain right down here on earth.
Last year I attended a wedding here in Perth; also invited was the same Sydney rabbi who more than a decade ago had forbidden me to take part in the Melton program. In the interim years, this rabbi had had his share of woes with political machinations, communal strife and litigation. At the wedding, we had a long talk. I explained to him that I was now living outside of the Jewish community in the hills of Perth. I no longer went to synagogue except on the rare occasion; yet I still studied Jewish mystical texts and attempted to share my knowledge with those who were interested—these days mainly secular Jews and gentiles. Surprisingly, he heard me out with patience and understanding. He responded by saying how many people failed to grasp the core of the Lubavitcher Rebbe’s message: inclusiveness. Then he said something that shocked me at first, particularly bearing in mind the Melton incident but no doubt reflecting his personal tribulations over the years. He said: “In the end, the level of a person’s religious observance has only a negligible effect on the type of human being they become.”
That, in brief, is the story of how and why I became a post-denominational mystic. But, hey, who do I think I’m kidding? With a name like “Moshe Yehuda Bernstein” and a face like mine, I might as well be wearing an oversized, flashing, fluorescent Star of David; and it is in reality because I am very proud to be Jewish that I have the chutzpah to cast off the external label and cleave instead to that internal form of what a Jew is meant to be.

On Seeing Stars & Assorted Sukkot Reflections

Above all, Sukkot is a time of ingathering; it is the time of harvest in the Land of Israel. The Sukkah itself brings family and friends together. Furthermore, the mitzvah of gathering together the four species reinforces this idea of binding disparate elements. The Midrash teaches how the four species alludes to four types of people: those with both knowledge and deeds (good scent and taste, i.e. the etrog, or citron); those with knowledge only (taste, i.e. the lulav, or date-palm); those with only deeds (scent, i.e. the hadas, or myrtle); and those with neither of the two (the aravot, or willows). Sukkot brings them altogether as one.

The sukkah reminds us of our past: "כי בסוכות הושבתי את בני ישראל בהצאיי אותם מארץ מצרים" (“…because I caused the Children of Israel to dwell in sukkot [booths] when I brought them forth from the land of Egypt.) The Sages dispute whether the sukkot in the verse refer to the natural huts the Israelites must have camped in on their sojourn through the Sinai or to the supernatural Clouds of Glory that protected them from all sides as well as from above and from below.

At the same time, the sukkah makes us think about our future and question the certainty of things. We leave our permanent domains and have a taste of impermanence, to remember how everything in this material world, no matter how good it may seem, is subject to the law of change. “Vanity of vanities; everything is vanity,” as King Solomon reminds us in Kohelet (Ecclesiastes), read in the synagogue during Sukkot.

Yet, it is within this state of impermanence that our “eternal salvation” dwells. The special commandment of Sukkot ושמחת בחגיך והיית אך שמח (“And you shall rejoice on your holiday, and you shall be only joyful.”) entails a simple state of spiritual happiness to be experienced while under the canopy of palm fronds and branches.

At the mystical level, during Sukkot the “ingathering” facilitates an internal process that is meant to lead to the experience of unity consciousness, where the boundaries of duality—of self and other, of transcendent and immanent—those “permanent walls’ of the ego dissolve into Oneness. It is not coincidental that the word שמחה (joy) cited in the mitzvah of rejoicing is a euphemism for a wedding. Kabbalistic texts liken the sukkah itself to the wedding canopy and the seven days of the holiday to the seven circles the bride makes around the bridegroom, prior to the marriage ceremony and blissful union that takes place on the eighth day of Shemini Atzeret.

According to the Sefer Yetzirah, which ascribes each of the Hebrew months to a letter, astrological sign and function, the month of Tishrei is ruled by the letter (ל) Lamed, the sign of Libra and the function of coition. At the opposite time of the year Nissan is ruled by Heh, the sign of Aires and the function of speech. During Pesach the main mitzvah is with our mouths, the retelling of the story of the exodus through the Haggadah, literally “the telling”. During Sukkot we do not have to say anything in the sukkah; we only have to be there. That simple act of presence demanded of us opens up channels that are transformative and healing.

These channels are consciously accessed in the waving of the lulav and etrog. The three myrtles are channels for the sefirotic influences of Chesed, Gevurah and Tiferet; the two willows for Netzach and Hod; the palm frond for Yesod. Only during the waving are these six, representing the masculine Expression of Zeir Anpin(the “Small Face”), joined together with the etrog (citron), embodying the feminine Malchut, or Shekhina, the immanent Divine Presence. They are the waved in six directions. According to the version of the Ari these correspond to the six points of Zeir Anpin: South=Chesed; North=Gevurah; East=Tiferet; up=Netzach; Down=Hod; West=Yesod. Each drawing of the species towards the heart, channelling the supernal flow into immanent reality, corresponds to the receiver of Malchut. The custom of the Ari was to wave the lulav inside the sukkah, as its encompassing three (mandatory) walls corresponded to the three upper sefirot of Keter, Chochmah and Binah, the mochin, the Supernal Mind. This is meant to open up a flow of the Or Ha-Makif, the Enveloping Light, through Binah and then through the merging of the lower seven.

On the level of physical reality, we are taught that this waving is to bring forth water. The theme of water, in fact, appears prominently in Sukkot in the unique ceremonial drawing and libation of water that took place on the altar of the Holy Temple. The celebration of this event the Simchat Beit-Hashoeva used to inspire the sages to perform astounding feats through Divine Inspiration. It is said that one who had never witnessed the joy of the Simchat Beit-Hashoeva in Jerusalem in the days of the Temple had never witnessed true joy.

According to kabbalah, the water refers to the spiritual Upper waters, the rivers of the Upper Gan Eden, rooted in Binah, which flow unhindered by the channels opened through the ingathering of forces below. This also surfaces in the Zohar segment we read in which Rabbi Elazar and Rabbi Abbi meet Rabbi Shimon after their encounter with the soul of Rav Hamnuna. Rabbi Shimon, who claims they have become transformed from the encounter and nicknames them “Faces of God”, explains that these souls come from the Upper Gan Eden (Binah) through the Lower (Shekhina) to reveal their wisdom to human beings.

Our custom in Sukkot to invite the supernal guests (Avraham=Chesed; Isaac=Gevurah; Yaakov=Tiferet; Moshe=Netzach; Aaron=Hod; Yosef=Yesod; David=Malchut), the ushpizin, is more than a ritual formality. Each cosmic guest is an opportunity to absorb the special energy of each of the seven days and allow the higher wisdom it imparts to enter our lives.

Because our experience during Sukkot is more sensorial than verbal, the mystical intent and the foundation of the imperative simcha is an actual perception of Divine Unity. The name sukkah is rooted in the verb סוכה which means “to perceive”. There must be space enough in the roof covering for the stars, those symbols of the everlasting, to be visible. Even in our transient shacks the light of eternity must peer through; and even the ultimate “vanity of vanities” and exemplar of impermanence, the human body, becomes a remarkable channel of infinite light.
The gematria, or numerical value, of סוכה (sukkah) is 91. This is equivalent to the Divine Name YHVH (26) and the Name through which it is pronounced ADNY (55). The transcendent God, “who was, is and always will be” beyond spatial or temporal boundaries, and the immanent Goddess, the Shekhina, the light of holiness that radiates within all that is manifest, become truly one.

From this vantage point the Talmudic dispute over whether we commemorate the dwelling in simple huts or the supernatural protection of the Clouds of Glory is understandable from both angles. The natural experience of sitting in a sukkah is the same as the transcendent one of being transported on the Clouds of Glory. The atoms in the earth beneath our feet and in the sky we breathe from ARE the Clouds of Glory, carrying us through the myriad manifestations of One Eternal Moment.

So, sit back in your sukkah, invite your friends and loved ones, take a look at the stars and enjoy a good meal. While doing so, you can experience the Divine Inspiration reserved for prophets of the Messianic era; the exalted state where “God and His Name are one”; where the lines between Yin and Yang conjoin in the Tao; where Emptiness and Form become symbiotic.
And even if you don’t have a physical sukkah you are still invited to the celebration of Divine Unity. For even when we pack up our sukkah and return to the illusion of our permanent homes, absolute Oneness is still the only game in town.

Sometimes it requires stepping outside ourselves (into a sukkah) and shaking things up a bit (like the lulav) to know that. In the end, though, you just have to BE there.

In Support of a Material Girl

This Rosh Hashanah occasioned a visit to Israel by Madonna, accompanied by an entourage of colourful Hollywood figures like Demi Moore, Ashton Kutcher, Roseanne Barr and Donna Karan along with 3000 adherents of the Kabbalah Center worldwide.
The event received due coverage in the media, particularly of the meeting between the pop icon and President Shimon Peres, where the former presented the latter with a copy of the Zohar. In return, the Material Girl was given a leather-bound copy of the Tanach (Bible).
Also prominently discussed in the media were some critical remarks made by certain rabbis who teach kabbalah within the restraints of halachic orthodoxy. One rabbi, who refused to utter the name of the diva-in-question from his lips, explained how the Hollywood fascination with kabbalah only proved how the kelipot, the “husks of evil”, are attracted to the holiness of the Torah’s hidden wisdom.
Rabbi David Batzri, head of the kabbalistic Shalom Yeshiva was more circumspect in simply calling attention to the halachic injunctions forbidding the teaching of kabbalah not only to non-Jews but also to Jews who have not met the prescribed requirements (married, over 40, with full knowledge of Talmud and legal codes).
These two responses, to imply that Madonna is from the “husks of evil” or to suggest that she is forbidden to study kabbalah in the first place, are valid and appropriate from the perspective of Orthodox Judaism, which tends to see the real world through the lens of duality: kosher/treif; holy/profane; muttar (allowed)/assur (prohibited); Jew/gentile. From that viewpoint, there is no doubt that teaching the sacred Torah to the stars from “that place of iniquity and lasciviousness” must be condemned.
Is that, however, the only possible perspective to maintain?
From a mystical viewpoint, we are taught, for example, that in the times of the Messiah, human consciousness will change in a number of ways:
1. We will then see as good all that we formerly thought of as bad.
2. The secret wisdom of Torah and spiritual knowledge in general will be widespread in the world
3. The realisation of Divine Oneness will promulgate
4. The Jews, and the Land of Israel in particular, will be a “light unto the nations”
5. The “wolf will lie with the lamb”, which means, according to Rashi, former enemies become friends and allies
Let us then look at the Madonna story in a wider context. Arguably the most renowned, successful pop- celebrity, she finds solace nearly a decade ago in the teachings of kabbalah. From producing films like In Bed with Madonna, she progresses to writing children’s books promoting spiritual and ethical values. Though many detractors initially mocked her declaration of faith in Jewish mysticism as a passing fad, it seems to have withstood the test of time to the point that finds her standing before the President of Israel proclaiming to be “a friend of the Jewish people.”
What if-- theoretically, of course-- Madonna was not just a kelipa, a “shell” from the husks of evil? What is she were just a person, a human being like all of us, with a good side and a bad? And what if she is being honest when she says that kabbalah has imbued meaning in her life? If you entertain these possibilities to be true, the result is nothing less than messianic. The “bad” girl who once waved the banner of licentiousness now becomes the “good” girl unfurling the emblem of Divine Unity. Through her, a large number of people, in the midst of a turbulent, fragmented world, are gaining insight into life’s inner meaning through Jewish esoteric sources. Even if one contends that it may be an adulterated and slickly packaged version for New Age markets, some of the core message apparently sifts through (trusting, as we are, in Madonna’s intelligence and integrity).
In this Age of Information Madonna cannot be blamed for revealing this Hidden Wisdom. Since the 70’s publications on kabbalah, many of them from orthodox publishers and some translated into English, abound. There are hundreds of websites on the subject as well. Nor can she be faulted if the version of kabbalah offered by The Kabbalah Centre is less than complete or authentic, as some decry. Since the orthodox world is so deliberately reticent on this matter, the Kabbalah Centre has been most successful in stepping into the vacuum and marketing this ancient wisdom to a new, broader audience. Apart from the point-blank “no”, is this the best answer that Orthodox Judaism can give to seekers of spirituality, whether Jewish or not, eager to tap the wellsprings of Jewish wisdom?
As to the most pertinent, yet unspoken, point of contention, Madonna’s flaunting of her sexuality onstage contradicts the ascetic moral values of traditional kabbalah. Before I retell a personal story in that regard, let me retell an even older one. Rabbi Levi Yitzhak of Berditchev, the 18th century Hasidic master, was known for seeing only the good in all people and events. Once he was walking home from synagogue with his shammos (beadle) in the morning, when they both spotted a wagon-driver who was greasing the wheels of his wagon. As they approached him, they realised that the driver, who had not gone to synagogue, was wearing tefillin (phylacteries) and davening (praying). The shammos, aghast at this disrespect, said, “Look at that! He’s greasing a wagon wheel while davening!”
“Yes, that is amazing,” Reb Levi Yitzhak replied, “he is even able to daven while greasing a wagon wheel!”
Years ago when Madonna first came out with the music video of herself wearing a very provocative outfit adorned with tefillin (the latter nullifying, for me at least, any potential seduction in the former), a friend remarked to me, “How can it be that someone who dresses like that is studying kabbalah?”
Similar to the story above, I answered: “Isn’t it amazing that someone who dresses like that is studying kabbalah?”
My point here is not to compare the “sin” of sexual immodesty with the “sin” of disrespect during prayers (nor to compare that both Madonna and the wagon-driver were wearing tefillin!) but rather to show that everything can be viewed in different contexts; and though the rabbis quoted in the JP article were unable to see it, there is a favourable context in which to see the Madonna story. (Of course, since the rabbis can neither look at Madonna nor utter her name, I concede that this wider context will be easily missed.)
Nonetheless, though the rabbis can be excused for their inability to adequately interpret the popular resurgence of kabbalah in this broader context, there is a foundational concept of Torah that I believe demands that they at least try to do so. That concept is known as Derech Eretz (“the way of the earth”) and refers to our ability to interact with the real world in a display of “proper conduct.” Derech Eretz is said to be both a prerequisite of Torah study and also a consequence of it. My rosh yeshiva (academy head) used to refer to it as the unwritten “fifth book” of the Shulchan Aruch known as “common sense”. For example, although halacha forbids physical contact between the sexes, if a woman falls and slips on the ice (this actually happened right in front of our yeshiva one winter in Tsfat), common sense only dictates that a man should give her a helping hand. This is not written explicitly into Jewish law, but someone who is too “pious” to assist this woman would be deemed a “chasid shoteh”, (“a pious imbecile”).
We live in a time period where Israel and the Jewish people face enmity not only from Arabs in the Middle East but a worldwide campaign to delegitimise the Jewish state. This political smear campaign is frequently accompanied by heinous remarks against the Jewish religion, looked at as a tribal, patriarchal and ethnocentric throwback. It is no small matter to have the hip Queen of Pop publicly proclaim her infatuation with Jewish spirituality and the Jewish people. Her trips to Israel, in contrast to so many pro-Palestinian Hollywood liberals, make millions of people think twice about the negative press that Israel invariably receives. After all, if Madonna raves about her visits there, how can it really be the “apartheid state” described by the left-wing media? To me, common sense dictates that when a person displays such philosemitic enthusiasm as Madonna does, she should be encouraged rather than branded a “kelipah”.
An important facet of derech eretz is gratitude. In fact, the name yehudi (Jewish) is rooted in the word “modeh” (“to be thankful”). The very essence of what it means to be Jewish is the acknowledgment of gratitude to one who bestows a favor. Madonna’s continued practice of kabbalah, at whatever level, and her support of Israel certainly merit that gratitude rather than the rabbinic scorn that is heaped upon her. Perhaps it is time for the rabbinate to acknowledge the thirst for spiritual knowledge that currently pervades the planet, and for the kabbalists amongst them to assist in guiding the general public in accessing Jewish mysticism from authentic and relevant sources. The current approach of point-blank “no” will not stop the tide of spirituality and will only increase suspicion against such an insular, negative relgious stance.

The Root of All Evil?

ABC’s Compass recently aired the documentary The Root of All Evil, featuring biologist Richard Dawkins and based on his latest bestseller The God Delusion. Dawkins is an unabashed atheist and makes no bones as to the purpose of his book and, by extension, of the TV series: to convert the believing reader/viewer to the prevalent rationalism of modern scientific thought.
Having read The God Delusion, I have to concede that Dawkins makes a powerful case against religion: the contradictions between faith and science, the indoctrination of children, the skewed morality of many zealous believers and religion’s role in stoking the fires of hatred and war are all discussed with alarming alacrity. Unless someone has a firm foundation in theology, especially of religion’s deeper mystical aspects, I believe it would be very difficult if not impossible to read Dawkins, or to watch his doco, without suffering an erosion of faith.
This is not because Richard Dawkins is an expert propagandist—though he certainly holds a big-time grudge against religion—but rather because most of his observations are true. Religion, especially of the fundamentalist variety, does indeed bear responsibility for much of the war, hatred and intolerance in the world. It discourages intellectual curiosity and relies instead on dogmatic beliefs that frequently fly in the face of reason. It instils innocent children with the fear of the “other” and, even worse, of the tormenting fires of hell awaiting sinners in the hereafter.
With all that, it is my view that rejecting the notion of God for the new, “enlightened” view of atheism would constitute a step backwards, not only in the spiritual sense but in the rational sense as well. To understand why this is so, it is first necessary to examine the underlying foundation of Dawkins’ adamant belief in a godless universe: evolutionary biology.
About a month ago, NY Times columnist David Brooks wrote an article bemoaning the fact that, in a post-modern world where there is supposed to be no dominant paradigm, in point of fact, the paradigmatic truth of evolutionary biology has been thrust upon us willy-nilly with oppressive force. Brooks, a secular Jew, expressed his concerns for the moral and social implications that accompany this dominant trend.
Evolutionary biology claims to have filled in all the gaps that made Darwin’s Theory of Evolution a theory rather than an iron-clad law. (In that sense, it is mega-evolution or Darwin on steroids.) It states that all the developmental processes of life on this planet are fuelled solely by the need of genes to survive. In this model, there is no real telos, or goal of creation; random chance alone creates various genetic scenarios, some of which are successful, some of which are not. Rather than the religious view that labels a human being the “crown of creation” (in evolutionary ethics, this is the sin of specism), evolutionary biology might hold the cockroach, for example, as equal or superior to the human being, in that its ability to survive and perpetuate its genetic content is greater.
Make no mistake that evolutionary biology has made a great contribution to our scientific understanding, but is it the whole picture from which we can derive the meaning of existence? Should the entire pageant of human history be reduced to a playing field for the advancement of chromosomes? By doing so, I believe we eclipse another domain of existence beyond the view of the scientist’s microscope but no less valid and no less significant.
I originally borrowed the book The God Delusion from my son. When I asked him sometime later whether or not he had read it, he replied that he had started it but stopped after spotting a blaring contradiction of logic on the first page. There, Dawkins claims that without religion there would be no Taliban to blow up the renowned Bamyan Buddha statues in Afghanistan. As Eli pointed out, however, if there were no religion, we would have no Bamyan Buddhas to begin with!
For all of religion’s faults and defects, to completely ignore any of the positive contributions it has made in the collective evolution of humanity seems to me a mark of bigotry and intolerance no less than that of the theological sort. These contributions transcend the realm of mere aesthetics. Philosophy, law, morals and even science itself have been affected by people of faith. (Genetics, for example, Dawkins’ home turf, was established as a science in the 19th century by Gregor Mendel, an Augustinian monk.) Conversely, the developments in these domains continue to enhance and expand the nature of our beliefs. The ideas that the world was flat and the centre of our solar system were once held as religious dogma. Those who disagreed were deemed heretics and often suffered at the hands of religious authorities. With the overwhelming evidence of a round planet in a heliocentric system, religion gradually assimilated these ideas, and has only gained in credibility through this incorporation.
From a Jewish viewpoint, it is prudent here to mention the teaching of Maimonides that whenever a contradiction arises between scientific knowledge and Torah belief, it is incumbent on us to re-evaluate our interpretation of Torah so that it aligns with scientific facts.
In one sequence in The Root of All Evil Dawkins shows the ancient statues from the pantheon of Greek and Roman gods and blithely explains how very few moderns would accept these as deities, even though at one time in history their worship was predominant. An atheist, he maintains, simply goes one step farther and rejects the deity at the very top of the ladder: God. There is, however, a major flaw in this syllogistic reasoning.
The polytheists of antiquity gave concrete form to the concepts of their world: Aphrodite was the goddess of beauty, Ares, the god of aggression, Athena, the goddess of wisdom, etc. With the advent of monotheism, these material forms all but disappeared except as archaeological relics. The concepts they represented, however, are still with us today. We all understand, though we may not agree on, the meaning of beauty, aggression or wisdom. The thrust of monotheism was to bring all these multiple phenomenological realities back to a single creative source. We call that source God.
The only way that ancients could have any comprehension of God was through a depiction in anthropomorphic terms that had relevance to those cultures. The Torah is replete with descriptions of God as a “person” (male, of course) who breathes life into Adam, speaks with Moses, and extends an outstretched arm to the Children of Israel. In our blessings we refer to God using the patriarchal terms of “our Father” and “King.” There is not a single Jewish sage or thinker, however, who would instruct us to take these descriptions literally. Doing so, in fact, would be a violation of the Torah commandment to believe in one God.
I am not the first person to lament the paucity of the mythical picture of God that still persists to hold sway over many people. Rabbi Abraham I. Kook, one of the great Torah luminaries of the last century, wrote that atheism was only a means to obliterate this unfortunate misconception of a God created in our own image. If real religion were grounded in this outdated anthropomorphic picture of God, I would agree with Richard Dawkins’ assessment entirely. When one studies the wisdom traditions adjunct to the major monotheistic religions, however, a different “picture” of God—or, more properly, a lack of one-- emerges.
Whether it is Jewish Kabbalah, Islamic Sufism or Christian Gnosticism, in the mystical traditions God is transfigured into the absolute Oneness that God was always meant to be. In kabbalah, in particular, the patriarchal, masculine Deity becomes the eternal, divine union of the transcendent Holy One and the immanent Shekhinah, the feminine aspect or “the bride”.
This Oneness is something that can never be grasped by empirical or rational science, the explorations of which inevitably occur in the external, material world. No telescope or microscope can ever locate or substantiate that Oneness.
As an example, in cosmology for decades the dominant scientific wisdom favoured the Steady-State Theory, which claimed that matter was not created but existed eternally. Radio astronomy and the discovery of the receding periphery of the Big Bang disproved that theory. Yet, science is at a loss to explain what exactly preceded the Big Bang, since there are no scientific instruments to measure that which transcends both space and time. Kabbalah, however, has no qualms in conveying the concept of Nothingness, essential to the true understanding of a deity far beyond our mortal comprehension. Similarly, many other mystical traditions, not bound by the scientific confines of rational thought focused solely on objective reality, have the means to transmit this idea.
Evolutionary biologists are likewise imprisoned in their monological survey of the objective landscape, where their microscopes can find no trace of the Divine. Indeed, these days even the mere suggestion that there might be a Divine order—or Intelligent Design—in nature is met with cries from the scientific community of creationist sabotage and foul play. No matter how hard they search in the objective world, however, they will never find evidence of God’s “fingerprints”. For it is in the interior realm, the subjective domain that science altogether denies, where these sublime realities occur.
Anyone who has ever been moved by a beautiful poem or work of art; anyone who has ever witnessed the spectacle of a majestic sunset; anyone who has ever experienced the joys of love; or anyone who has felt the pain in losing a loved one understands that something is going on more than just a thrust of our genes towards their future survival. It is precisely in these subjective domains where religion, for all of its flaws, can provide guidance and comfort.
Furthermore, because it is the way religion is interpreted that determines its form, it is within the power of people themselves to re-interpret religious belief in a manner that rectifies its shortcomings. Shedding literalist, fundamentalist doctrines is the first step in that process. In the end, I think that the search for more meaning in those interior depths will prove far more rewarding than relinquishing millennia of religious traditions for a dubious belief in Dawkins’ chaotic, purposeless universe of random chance.
What, then, is “The Root of All Evil”? In purely Jewish terms it is neither money nor religion. It is perhaps best symbolised by Pharaoh, who deemed himself to be the supreme god and, in response to Moshe’s request in the name of the Almighty to free the Israelites, replied: “Who is God that I should know Him?” In this regard, evil is defined not by the belief in the Unknowable but rather by the belief that what we think we know is all that there is.

Divine Unity

ב ס" ד

DIVINE UNITY

By Moshe Yehuda Bernstein

One of the most unusual features of the Jewish declaration of Divine unity expressed in the Shema Yisrael is that the name of God is mentioned three times:

שמע ישראל יהוה אלהינו יהוה אחד
Shema Yisrael! Adonai (1), Elohaynu (2), Adonai (3) Ecĥad
Hear, O Israel! The Lord (1), our God (2), the Lord (3) is One.

One would expect that a declaration of God’s unity would contain only one name instead of three. One can understand the mystical paradox embedded in this concept by examining another triple proclamation from the Hindu Vedanta:

The world is an illusion
Only Brahman is real
Brahman is the world.

This statement begins by informing us that the world of our senses—the world of nature, the physical world—is an illusion. First, as the Buddha expressed it, the hallmark of this world is impermanence. Furthermore, quantum physics has shown us that matter itself has no substance. Even the atom, in the words of Werner Heisenberg, is “a tendency of consciousness.”
The only reality is Brahman, which signifies the Supreme Unity from which all other Beings, whether spiritual or physical, emanate.
Yet, paradoxically, that Supreme Unity or Absolute Reality permeates and manifests as Maya, the subjective illusion of self and other, good and evil, the reality of space-time as we know it... As we are “stuck” in the limited perspective of subject/object duality, we are normally unable to experience that Oneness. Through liberating the mind (moksha), however, one yields to that transcendent space of what the Hindus call the Eternal Witness, where the subject/object illusion dissolves and one experiences Supreme Unity, the state of enlightenment that exists “already always” in the simple condition of Being.

The Shema expresses the very same paradox, but in reverse order.
שמע (Shema) is, above all, an injunction to “comprehend” rather than merely to “hear”. ישראל represents transcendent consciousness, the Higher Self. ישראל, Yisrael, contains the letters לי ראש, (li rosh ,“my head”) indicating the higher faculties of the “head”; while יעקב, Yaakov (Jacob), refers to the lower instincts of the עקב (eikev or “heel”.)
What are we supposed to comprehend?
That the seeming duality of the transcendent and immanent, the infinite and the infinitesimal, Brahman and the world, all of these opposites are indeed One. The name יהוה (Adonai) signifies the undifferentiated, transcendent, timeless aspect (היה הוה ויהיה, haya, hoveh ve-eheyeh, “I was, I Am, I Will Be”), while אלהינו (Eloheynu, which is grammatically in the plural) represents our collective perception of the Divine as manifest in this world of multiplicity and immanent in nature (the name אלהים is the same numerical value as הטבע, the word for nature). יהוה אחד, Adonai echad, “God is One”, signifies that state of consciousness where duality no longer exists; in its place is the reality of Pure Awareness and Unity Consciousness.
It is for this reason that the final letter ayin of שמע and the letter daleth of אחד are written in large script. Together they form the word עד or “witness”. The simple meaning of this is that, as a people, we witnessed this Unity in the revelation on Mount Sinai. On a deeper level, however, it is also referring to the Eternal Witness within every one of us, the Pure Awareness in which subject and object dissolve, and God is truly One, in the ultimate sense of the word.

From the WA weekly The Maccabean, December 11, 2002: Kabbalistic Manuscript Returned

SHOSHAN SODOT RETURNED TO THE JEWISH PEOPLE

On Tuesday, December 10 Abbot Placid Spearritt of the Benedictine Order of New Norcia presented the manuscript copy of the kabbalistic text Shoshan Sodot, recently found in a cupboard in the monastery (see cover story of issue #?) to the Jewish community, represented by the President of the Council of Orthodox Rabbis and Educators, Rabbi David Y A Freilich and Director of Jewish Studies at Carmel School, Rabbi Moshe Yehuda Bernstein. The abbot’s decision to restore the book, a hand-written copy whose date has not yet been established, follows an appeal by the Council to which the New Norcia Community responded most positively.
The original Shoshan Sodot, written by Rabbi Moshe ben Yakov Ha-goleh of Kiev in 1495, is a work comprising elements of theoretical, meditative and practical Kabbalah based on the teachings of the Ramban (R. Moshe ben Nachman). It is different in nature than the more prolific works emerging from the teachings of the Arizal, R. Yitchak Luria of 16th century Tsfat, and thus classified as “pre-Lurianic”. It contains kavanot, or meditative visualisations of Divine Names with their appropriate letter and vowel permutations as well as those to be utilised in the recitation of the Shma and Amidah prayers. There are chart illustrations of the 10 Sefirot (the 10 Emanations of Creation) and their combinations into partzufim (Expressions) reflecting various mystical states of consciousness. The book concludes with a commentary on the ancient kabbalistic text (which some attribute to Avraham Avinu) of Sefer Yetzira, discussing the Hebrew letters of the alef bet with their astrological and sefirotic correspondences.
A Baal Shem Tov story appearing in a collection of Eliahu Klein entitled The Last Temptation of a Kabbalist (http://hasidicstories.com/Stories/The_Baal_Shem_Tov/temptation.html) makes reference to the book’s mystical powers and how it was on one occasion fatally misused.
Rabbi Bernstein will be taking the text with him to the chief rabbi of Lugano, the Admor of Biala Rabbi Ben-Zion Rabinowitz, who will complete the shelichut of bringing the book to Eretz Yisrael, where it can be properly conserved and researched in an environment respectful of its sanctity. Discussions with other rabbis in Israel are also underway to determine the most appropriate facilities for the conservation of the manuscript, which will remain on permanent loan from the Perth Jewish community.
On receiving the manuscript Rabbi Freilich expressed his profound gratitude to the monks of New Norcia on behalf of C.O.R.E., the Perth Jewish community as well as for klal yisroel (the entire Jewish people). In Rabbi Freilich’s reply to Abbot’s affirmative decision, he wrote: “…the generosity of the New Norcia Community imbues the concept of interfaith dialogue with depth, vitality and profound significance.”
Rabbi Bernstein, who was one of the initial party of four to investigate the book, said, “The restoration of the Shoshan Sodot to its Jewish source is a great mitzvah, and I have to commend Abbot Spearritt for his wisdom and ability to empathise with the spiritual value a book like this has for our people. I’ve been told that its return will also mean a tikkun neshama [soul rectification] for its author in Gan Eden.” He said the entire story of the retrieval of this book is still obscured in mystery on many different levels, including the mundane one of how it ended up in the monastery. While a stamp on the title page indicates it was once in Jewish hands, it has been historically “hidden from view” in New Norcia for nearly half- a-century. In 1966, however, Mr Harold Boas, a member of the Perth Jewish community, sent a microfilm copy of the text to Hebrew University, which has on record the existence of such a manuscript in “a monastery in Western Australia”. The monastery also has record of an inquiry made concerning a “Cabbalistic text” from around the same period of time.
Meanwhile, the Shoshan Sodot saga is extending its boundaries as David Solomon has been immersing himself in archival records in the British Museum and Oxford to compare the New Norcia version with the other extant copies on record (there are 17 known copies) as well as to shed more light on the mystery of its date. There is a possibility that it could be as old as the 16th century. Rabbi Eli Lewis, who is currently in Israel, where he has consulted the Admor of Biala and other rabbinic authorities, has presented digital CD copies of the text to Bar-Ilan University and Hebrew University.

From the WA weekly The Maccabean, November 6, 2002: Discovery of the Shoshan Sodot manuscript

KABBALISTIC MANUSCRIPT FOUND IN NEW NORCIA MONASTERY

A few months ago Shane Dowling, who works in the library of the New Norcia monastery, discovered a had-written Hebrew manuscript that had been lying for many years wrapped in paper in an old cupboard. Interested to find out exactly what type of manuscript it was, the head librarian, Susan Johnston contacted Rabbi Shalom Coleman and faxed him the manuscript’s title page.
Seeing that the manuscript related to kabbalah, Rabbi Coleman passed the information over to Rabbi Moshe Y. Bernstein, who has a particular interest in the study of Jewish mysticism.
Last week, on Rosh Chodesh Kislev, Wednesday, November 6th, Rabbi Bernstein organised a visit to New Norcia to view the manuscript. Accompanying him were rabbinic colleagues and Jewish Studies staff members Rabbi Elchanan Lewis and Rabbi Moshe Rothchild. Also, joining the rabbinic delegation was David Solomon, an academic expert in kabbalistic translations and manuscripts, who was in Perth for the levaya and shiva for his father, the late Dr. Geoff Solomon.
The Perth delegation met with Abbot Placid Spearritt, Susan Johnston and some of the other monks and monastery workers, where they were presented with a copy of the kabbalistic book-- Shoshan Sodot-- for examination.
The copy at the New Norcia monastery appears to be an antique copy of the original work, which was written by Rabbi Moshe ben Yaakov, possibly a student from the mystic school of Nachmanides (Ramban) in 1495. The book is a veritable encyclopaedia of kabbalistic thought and practice, containing many secrets which the author felt obliged to write down to ensure their preservation through a time of great oppression (the Inquisition and Spanish expulsion) for the Jewish people.
Later, the rabbinic delegation was given the opportunity to visit the monastery library, which contains many other volumes of Hebrew texts, though none of them in the highly esoteric and ancient category of the Shoshan Sodot.
The monastery was kind enough to agree to scan the pages of the manuscript onto a CD, which will be compared with other existing copies of the manuscript. Certain rabbis in Israel and Europe are also being consulted due to the extremely sensitive nature of such an esoteric manuscript.
The mystery of how this extremely sacred text ended up in the New Norcia monastery is still unclear and in the process of investigation. One thing is certain: the story of the discovery of this book in the New Norcia monastery could surely give Umberto Eco (The Name of the Rose) a run for his money. Stay tuned for any new developments regarding this exciting discovery!

PART III: The Kabbalah of the Future

by Moshe Y. Bernstein

What does the future hold in store for kabbalah, or, more accurately from a kabbalistic stance, what does kabbalah hold in store for the future?
While many would like to believe that the increased interest in all forms of mysticism is but a passing fad, there are persuasive reasons to consider otherwise.
Kabbalah’s proliferation to the general public was in many ways a reaction to the post-modern agenda of the last half of the twentieth century. That agenda deemed that there were no absolute truths (except for, ironically, the absolutism inherent in its own proclamation) and that all supposed pre-given “realities” were in fact shrouded in inter-subjective, cultural constructs. This philosophy gave way to the moral relativism now dominant in academic circles. More ominously, it also produced a generational complex of apathy and nihilism, which, unfortunately, we have not seen the end of.
In this brave, new, senseless world championed by post-modernism, a desperate need arose for meaning. People began seeking out answers to the existential questions that imbue life with a sense of purpose. Kabbalah, even in its tainted forms, provides many of those answers. In that sense, it serves a legitimate function for its adherents, supporting a meaningful framework for existence.
What it cannot provide, once it has been extricated from its Jewish origins, is an authentic experience. That can only occur when it is connected to its indigenous roots, the more peripheral dimensions of the Pardes Ha-Torah.
Another possible reason that kabbalah seems to reverberate with western culture is its erotic component. (As mentioned in part 1 this aspect has endured unfortunate historical abuses.) The notion of the patriarchal God has become embarrassingly passé; kabbalah enthrones the Shechina, the feminine aspect of Divine immanence, to a position of prominence commensurate with the advances of women today. With the exception of rare tantric practices in Tibet, sexuality in Buddhism is viewed as an obstacle to enlightenment. In kabbalah, by contrast, it is perceived as a means to such, emulating, as it does, the perpetual union of Divine forces.
When discussing the future of kabbalah in Jewish terms, it could be said that kabbalah is, in fact, the very future of the Jewish people.
To elaborate on this, it is first necessary to deconstruct a particular misconception in regard to kabbalah’s quintessential character. Rabbi Meshullam Faibush of Zavriza, a disciple of the Maggid of Mezrich, authored a brief but intensive mystical manual called Yosher Divrei Emes (The Integrity of Words of Truth), a descriptive code of ethics for kabbalists. He explains how a person can mentally absorb all the profound mysteries of kabbalah—the sefirot, the Tree of Life, the various partzufim (Divine expressions), etc. Yet, if that individual still displays arrogance, smugness, or other selfish traits, he cannot be deemed a true mystic. On the other hand, one who has no knowledge of kabbalistic terms, but, when humbly engaging in even the simple meaning of scriptural text, consequently experiences the dissolution of the borders of subject and object, of self and other, then that person has reached the goal of kabbalah: the revelation of Divine Spirit, i.e. the experience of non-dual reality.
When speaking here of kabbalah, therefore, it is important to bear in mind that I am referring not to the corpus of mystical knowledge per se (though, for many, this can indeed be a significant means to achieve the objective) but rather to the aim itself: the revelation of Spirit.
The concept of the Messianic Era is predicated on this revelation, nothing less than a transformation of consciousness as we know it. As articulated so poetically in Isaiah: “The knowledge of God will cover the earth as the waves cover the sea.” This zenith of human development is also described unequivocally in the prophetic book of Yoel: "And it shall come to pass afterwards, that I will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh; and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy. Your old men shall dream dreams; your young men shall see visions". All the other benefits of that future epoch— the return to Zion, peace, technological and medical advancements, global unity, prosperity—are mere subsidiaries of the unique revelation in consciousness that our tradition has foretold.
Unfortunately, even this lofty concept of the Messianic Era has been stymied, frequently by those most frantically waving the Messianic banner, to a very shallow level: When the world is depicted as incurably evil, and the Messiah idealised as an individual superhero who-- like the White Knight in the old Ajax detergent commercials-- will wave his magic wand and make all the dirty stuff disappear, the deeper perception of the Messiah, and correlatively of human responsibility, suffers tremendous erosion.
Many years ago in Israel I once attended a brit milah in one of the synagogues in Tsfat. When it was over, one of the congregants took a rubbish bag full of waste and tossed it over the balcony guardrail onto the adjoining property of a public park. Stunned, I asked him if he was not concerned to protect the natural environment God has so graciously bestowed upon us. His answer was that when Moshiach arrived, all the garbage would be taken care of.
I mention this anecdote because the erroneous perception of the Messiah as the White Knight “garbageman” of history is more prevalent then one would imagine, not just in regard to the trashing of our physical environment but even more so of our spiritual one. Do we not continue to harbour needless hatred towards others, to bear grudges, to speak lashon hora, to deliberately cause pain, to ignore those in need, to oppress those who are weaker? We think nothing of it, because…well, that’s just human nature, it’s the way things are. One bright day, however, the White Knight will appear and…presto! With one wave of his magic wand, he’ll clean up this whole mess. This distorted view of the Messiah is not only juvenile and unintelligible; it is ultimately a massive cop-out, an abnegation of the precious free will, with which we, as Jews and as human beings, have been endowed.
Fortunately, none of the great Torah luminaries who have recorded their vision of the Messianic era subscribe to such simplistic conceptions.
One of the most controversial works on this subject, first printed only in 1968, is a remarkable text called Kol Ha-Tor (Voice of the Turtle-Dove). Written by Rabbi Hillel Rivlin of Skhlov, a close disciple and relative of the Vilna Gaon, it purports to express the latter’s teachings of the transformation into Messianic consciousness.
It should be noted that already in the latter part of the 18th century the Gaon Rabbi Eliahu of Vilna was preparing the first group of his students to settle and work in the Holy Land. According to the Zohar, 1740 CE (5501) marked the dawning of the 6th millennium in the Jewish calendar. It was deemed to be the start of a five-hundred year transitional period that would ultimately usher in the Messianic era. The first half of that period was devoted primarily to the revelation of Moshiach ben Yosef (the Messiah, son of Joseph); the final half, which commenced in 1990, to Moshiach ben David (the Messiah son of David).
The Kol Ha-Tor elaborates extensively on the concept of the two Messiahs, one that is commonly misunderstood. According to the Gaon, Moshiach ben Yosef relates to revelation of Divine Spirit within the immanent sphere of nature. This refers to sociological, scientific and technological developments that are meant to pave the way for the transcendent revelation of Moshiach ben David to follow. For this reason, the Vilna Gaon, a hundred years prior to the formal beginnings of Zionism, was already engaged in settling the Holy Land to build the physical infrastructures essential to the spiritual fulfilment of the Messianic prophecies.
The Vilna Gaon advocated an integrated knowledge of both natural science and kabbalah as a prerequisite for the revelation of the Messiah, incorporating, as it did, both Divine immanence and transcendence. In Kol Ha-Tor reference is made to three levels of the Messianic process. The first, ruach ha-moshiach, is the ubiquitous evolutionary Spirit leading to the Messianic goal of Divine revelation; the second refers to the visionaries and mystics in every generation who are capable of embodying that Spirit; the third level is the receptivity of the human heart to partake in this progression of spiritual awakening. This depiction of the Messiah as a vast evolutionary and participatory process rather than a dubious one-man show has likewise been confirmed by other great thinkers such as the Ari, the Baal Shem Tov, Rabbi Moshe Chaim Luzzatto and Rabbi Abraham I. Kook.
The town of Skhlov, where Rav Hillel wrote the Kol Ha-Tor, is often referred to as the first manifestation of modernism in Russian-Jewish history. Like their revered teacher, the Vilna Gaon, its inhabitants were conversant in mathematics, physics, chemistry, medicine, engineering, music and other offshoot disciplines of the Seven Wisdoms (with which all rabbis are supposed to be au fait). Less known, however, is that the inhabitants of Skhlov were, again like their teacher, deeply immersed in the study of kabbalah. Their apparent “descent” into secularism was, from their mystical standpoint, an “ascent” towards the awareness necessary to facilitate the true, complete revelation of Godliness characterising the Messianic era.
Will the prophecies of the Messianic era come to pass? Many of them, particularly those referring to the advent of that occasion, already have. The Gemara, however, was adamant in its explicit “curse” of those who attempt to reckon the date of the Moshiach’s arrival. All of the eschatological events predicted for that period can only be comprehended according to their general contours; the actual details remain in the province of God alone. The Talmud also states that the Messiah will arrive only through a “vacuum of knowledge”, i.e. unpredictably and unexpectedly. If we are always gazing towards the future to discern the moment of Spirit’s revelation, we can easily forget that it is literally right at our fingertips this very instant.

PART II: The Relevance of Kabbalah Today

by Moshe Y. Bernstein

To better understand the vital relevance of kabbalah for Judaism today, it is necessary to know that the Torah, with both its written and oral components, has evolved over time, as has human consciousness itself. Like an exotic plant, its seed was implanted at Sinai and later germinated by the Judges, Prophets and finally, by the men of the Great Assembly who set the canons. The seedling thrived in the light of rabbinic Judaism as recorded in the Midrash, the Mishnah and the Gemara, the simple meaning of the Torah yielding to its allegorical and homiletic interpretations. Generations of Rishonim and Acharonim then reaped the leafy harvest of deeper, exegetical analysis, in both the domains of Jewish law and theology. From its ancient inception to its gradual emergence in history, the kabbalah—the domain in which the Divine is revealed-- signifies the maturity of this wondrous plant, celebrated with fragrant, colourful blossoms, allusions to the Torah’s mystical secrets.
This same concept is expressed—perhaps less poetically than my attempt—in the Jewish notion of Pardes Ha-Torah, the “Torah orchard”. The Pardes—the name also given to that ultimate level of reality to which the four rabbis aspired—is simultaneously the acronym for four levels of Torah study: Pshat (the literal meaning), Remez, (the allegorical meaning), Drash, (the homiletic and exegetical meaning) and Sod (the secret meaning). Although these levels are often visualised hierarchically, they are best comprehended, like an actual orchard, as three-dimensional with increasing interior depth.
The Pshat level is the surface-perception view from the edge of the orchard standing on the outside: it is represented by the literal stories of scripture. Stepping into the orchard, in Remez, the literal meaning acquiesces to the allegorical. The Midrash and the Mishnah symbolise this level. Going deeper still, in Drash, both in the legal and philosophical domains that characterise post-Talmudic Judaism, exegesis and homily-- commentaries upon the commentary-- characterise the engagement here. It is only, however, when one reaches the very centre of the orchard, the Sod, that one can fathom its actual depth. The realm of kabbalah surveys these most interior features.
Significantly, the master kabbalist the Ari of Tsfat claimed that when one removed the samech—the final letter of the Pardes acronym representing Sod­—the remaining letters form the word “pered”, which means “separation”. This refers to the theological “separation” between the individual and the Divine that occurs as a result of neglecting mystical wisdom. The individual becomes trapped “down here”, while God becomes a remote being somewhere “up there”. An alternative meaning of “pered” is mule, referring both to the irrational obstinacy of mysticism’s antagonists and, alternatively, to the “blinders” that render them deliberately oblivious to kabbalah’s wisdom.
It is from this exalted vantage point that kabbalah can illuminate and supply relevance for many of those seminal ideas of Judaism referred to in passing in Part 1. There are numerous Jewish theological concepts that cannot be fully understood without kabbalah: creation, free will, reward and punishment, the commandments, the soul and its transmigrations, the future world and the messianic era all contain mystical underpinnings. There is, however, one foundational proposal where I believe kabbalah plays a vital role in assisting our understanding. I am referring to the cornerstone of Jewish theology—the belief in one God.
You might be surprised to discover that a subliminal theme in many of the arguments between the pre-modern traditionalist and the modern rationalist relates to the very definition of monotheism, the way in which we “package” the Divine.
Judaism has traditionally been labelled the world’s first “monotheistic” religion. From a mystical perspective, this description is not entirely accurate. Technically, monotheism is the belief in a single deity. According to the mythical perspective common in the early medieval period, this belief manifested as the vision of an omnipotent, wise patriarchal figure—the father, the king-- abiding above the seven heavens but disengaged from the material world. This anthropomorphic picture of God (with a long, silvery beard, of course) is familiar to all of us; it remains imprinted in the subconscious from early childhood, when these are the only terms by which God can be apprehended.
Of course, this picture of the Divine is not only immature, it is inauthentic as well. In the Rambam’s Thirteen Articles of Faith we are taught that God is absolutely one, a Oneness that is unique and simple (not consisting of subordinate parts); that God has no beginning or end in time; that God has no bodily representation or spatial limits. Certainly, the standard mythic conception of God does not meet these criteria.
Why is it then that many people still retain an underdeveloped conception of God? It seems that, after imparting the pictorial image of a personalised, male God in the early years of childhood, normative religion—with no access to the treasury of kabbalah wisdom in its midst—has nothing more to add in that lofty realm. With no tools to spiritually develop the inadequate mythic notion, some people remain with that deficient image their entire lives.
When modernism burst onto the scene, bolstered by the Cartesian paradigm, science began its rational examination of all visible surfaces in the material world. And guess what? Lo and behold, no matter how hard they looked, they found no solid evidence of God, not up in the starry heavens and not even down here on earth, where a great, deterministic machine was deemed to be running the show. The deists (e.g. Sir Isaac Newton) believed that in a mysterious way, God, from high above, was still pushing the buttons on this complex machine. The pantheists held that the machine itself, i.e. nature, was God. Finally, modernism produced the popular belief in atheism: the machine was all there is, and it was running by itself.
Although atheism always gets a bashing in the ongoing conceptual debate between modernists and traditionalists, no less a figure than Rabbi Abraham I. Kook, saw the advance of atheism as a positive development, smashing the idolatrous mental picture of the mythic God:

“We avoid studying the true nature of the divine, and as a result, the concept of God has dimmed. The innermost point of the awareness of God has become so faint that the essence of God is conceived only as a stern power from whom you cannot escape, to whom you must subjugate yourself. If you submit to the service of God on this empty basis, you gradually lose your radiance by constricting your consciousness. The divine splendour is plucked from your soul…Every sensitive spirit feels compelled to discard such a conception of God. This denial [atheism] is the heresy that paves the way for the Messiah, when the knowledge of God runs dry in the world…”

Rabbi Kook, one of the greatest mystics of the 20th century, was suggesting that the rise of modern secularism occurred as a means to dissolve the dross from a stagnant perception of the Divine in order to pave the way for the more evolved notion characteristic of the Messianic Era. Atheism, deism and pantheism, were just temporary road stops in the evolution of consciousness to a more mature and inclusive conception of the Divine.
In the end, however, post-modernism demolished the rationalist’s claim to scientific absolutism; the new discoveries in quantum mechanics utterly collapsed those views that had hitherto idealised nature as a substantive reality. At its fundamental particle level, nature was now “without substance” and, more importantly, inextricably and existentially linked to consciousness itself. With that, modernity’s baffling quest to “know God” empirically was laid to rest: scientific materialism no longer reigned supreme.
It remains the task of kabbalah to supply an integral and viable meaning, one that transcends yet includes from its predecessors, to this most elementary premise of Judaism: the existence of one God.
In our daily morning prayers that precede the Shma we make two declarations about God. “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts! The entire earth is filled with his Glory!” This refers to the immanent (feminine) aspect of the Divine that reveals itself through the garment of nature. Simultaneously, we declare: “Blessed is the Glory of God from his place.” This verse implies that God’s place is somehow transcendent (masculine) to our world of physical space/time.
Though God appears to us as dual, with a transcendent and immanent aspect, the core of Jewish belief is that this duality is generated only by the limitation of our physical perspective. In the future this will be rectified. (“And on that day God will be one and his Name will be one!”); ultimately, we will know that Divine immanence and transcendence are in reality one and the same.
To the best of my knowledge, kabbalah, in both its theoretical and meditative aspects, is the only available address for the development of this awareness in a genuine Jewish context. Kabbalistic practice supplies both the knowledge and experience to seal that paradoxical gap between these two polarities. The kabbalists did not believe in waiting for the Messiah to realise the non-dual awareness of God. On the contrary, they believed that by realising this awareness, they were hastening the Messiah’s advent.
Of course, the real truth is that God is One right now at this very moment; it is just that we are less than fully conscious of the fact. As Rabbi Aryeh Kaplan described it, the reason our perception of God is obscured is not because He/She is too far away but rather because He/She is too close.
Like fish who cannot conceive of water, we are experiencing mystical Oneness every moment of the day without being aware of it. It is only when the fish jumps out of the water that it can acquire an awareness of what the water truly is. Likewise, it is the leap into mystical consciousness that makes us aware of the “water” of divinity that engulfs us at all times.
So, are you ready to take that leap?
Although, from a pure statistical perspective, your answer was probably no, you will be surprised to find out that, according to our tradition, sooner or later, everyone will.

PART I: The Post-Modern Emergence of Jewish Mysticism

By Moshe Y.Bernstein

For the past several years the world has witnessed a rather strange phenomenon. Kabbalah, the tradition of esoteric Judaism once accessible only to an elite group of Torah scholars, has become a worldwide phenomenon.
Madonna, Demi Moore, Ashton Kutcher, Roseanne Barr, Jeff Goldblum, Naomi Campbell, Jerry Hall… these are only a few of the celebrities who have found spiritual solace in the Jewish mystical tradition, primarily by means of the internationally-acclaimed Kabbalah Centre, founded by former insurance salesman Phillip Berg and currently managed by his wife and sons.
In general, the Jewish reaction to the hijacking of its secret tradition to the bright lights of Hollywood has been a mixed one. On the one hand, in that glittering world of pop spirituality where Buddhism, Sufism and Hinduism have previously enjoyed the public spotlight, it is somewhat of an honour that elements of Judaism can compete in the slick marketplace of meaningful ideas. On the other, we feel a sense of disappointment and discomfort that many of these legitimate ideas have been commercialised and, in the process, corrupted.
As one who has delved into the authentic Jewish mystical tradition for many years, I have to admit that I cringe every time I am confronted with the common response to the kabbalah phenomenon: “Oh, yes. Kabbalah! That’s about wearing a red thread on your wrist, right?”
Unfortunately, even prior to the current trend of pop spirituality, largely because of its chequered history, kabbalah has been the subject of gross misunderstandings by Jews and gentiles alike. The aim of this series of articles, therefore, is:

To understand the phenomenon of kabbalah’s emergence in the 21st century
To analyse the visceral opposition to kabbalah
To clarify some mistaken notions regarding the nature of Jewish mysticism
To examine whether or not kabbalah can assist in the future perpetuation of Judaism

First, in order to properly gauge the impact of kabbalah’s emergence today, it is significant to note that this occurrence is not limited to the adulterated version espoused by Madonna. In Israel, the number of yeshivot that study kabbalah from authentic Jewish sources and utilise kabbalistic meditations in daily prayer has jumped exponentially in the last decade. In addition, particularly in Jerusalem and Tsfat, a growing number of alternative kabbalists outside the yeshiva framework are combining genuine kabbalistic concepts with those that are now accessible from other mystical traditions across the planet. Furthermore, an increasing number of secular Israelis are partaking in this cross-cultural, mystical fertilisation. Commonly nicknamed ChaBaKuk (after the Jewish prophet), an acronym of the three most popularised forms of Jewish mysticism-- Chabad, Breslav and Rav Kook-- this movement is far more eclectic than its name implies.
Before suggesting the reasons for this surfacing of what was heretofore the concealed mystical tradition of Judaism, it is both necessary and informative to scrutinize the intense antagonism kabbalah has frequently engendered. Curiously, this antipathy has primarily stemmed from two opposing sources: modern rationalists and pre-modern traditionalists. (Ironically, when these two sides are not engaged in bashing kabbalah, they are frequently bashing each other. )
To the modern rationalists, particularly those aligned with today’s reform movements, kabbalah has always been a cause of embarrassment. Its magical texts with incantations to summon angelic forces, its imbuing the mitzvoth with cosmic significance to rectify the world’s imbalances and its focus on the messianic future are in contradiction to the rationalist’s emphasis on a logical but humanistic approach to religion.
To the traditionalist, where faith in a dogmatic system of belief frequently trumps the rational mind, the threat posed by kabbalah originates from a different basis. Exegetically, the conventional texts are replete with warnings of the trepidations of the mystical journey. The Talmudic legend of the four rabbis who ascended to the Pardes (defined by Rashi as a mystical level achieved through meditative techniques) is the classic example. According to this story, of the four rabbis who took part in this endeavour in expanded consciousness, only Rabbi Akiva ascended and descended in peace. Ben Zoma went mad, Acher became a heretic, and Ben Azzai passed away.
Historically, as well, kabbalah has posed an enormous threat to the religious establishment. The kabbalah of Shabbtai Tzvi in the 17th century led to an eschatological disaster for the Jewish people. Other messianic pretenders, like Jacob Frank, have utilised the erotic notions espoused in kabbalistic theory (e.g. the masculine aspect of Divine transcendence in union with the feminine aspect of Divine immanence) to promote an agenda of sexual debauchery. In the early generations of the Hasidic movement, the mass proliferation of kabbalah led to concerns over its trivialisation and abuse. Ultimately, some of the rabbinic of authorities of Europe decreed to restrict its practice (though not its theoretical study) to married men over 40 who had already mastered the exoteric, legal texts.
There is another reason, however, why traditionalists often feel threatened by kabbalah. The goal of kabbalah is nothing less than an experience of the Divine in this human body, the merging of “heaven and earth”. This experience completely transcends rigid dogma and demands a total transformation of the ego. To many people, it is much safer and simpler to nestle into the familiar, “translative” aspects of the Jewish religion, i.e. those that nurture and stabilise the ego (e.g. social, ritual, mythical, ethical) rather than the daunting—and often frightening—task of transforming it. It should be noted that those translative aspects of religion serve a perfectly legitimate social function for many people; they do not, however, satisfy the needs of those seeking authentic religious experience. This is possibly the reason that nearly 50% of practicing Buddhists in the U.S. are Jewish by birth.
Although the objections of both the modernists and traditionalists contain some validity, the problem occurs when we accordingly thrust aside the entire kabbalistic tradition and end up chucking out the baby with the bathwater, so to speak. Yes, kabbalah does contain elements of superstition (e.g. red threads on the wrist) that no longer sit well with the rational mind. Yes, it can be frightening to imagine the personal and/or historical dangers mysticism can pose. There are, nonetheless, aspects of kabbalah that are absolutely foundational to Jewish theology (to be discussed in Part II); by discarding its mystical component completely, we risk stripping Judaism of some of these elements most central to its teachings, thus eliminating its very heart and soul.
Consider for a moment the saintly models from our Jewish heritage: Avraham Avinu, Moshe Rabbeinu, the Prophets, Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai, Rabbi Akiva, the Ari, Rabbi Yosef Karo, Rabbeinu Bahya, Rabbi Moshe Chaim Luzzatto, the Vilna Gaon, the Baal Shem Tov, Rabbi Nachman of Breslav, Rabbi Shneur Zalman of Liadi and hosts of other personages who, each in their own way, followed the mystical path of our tradition. According to the rationalist, were all these exceptional individuals simply engaged in a program of nonsensical mumbo-jumbo? Did they, according to the traditionalists, constitute a grave threat to the tenets of normative Judaism?
On the contrary, all of these great mystics have been instrumental in preserving and perpetuating our Jewish legacy, precisely because Judaism, in its essence, is a mystical tradition. Were we to deny the greatness and achievements of these spiritual masters, we would be short-changing Judaism itself. Alternatively, if we acknowledge their greatness, we should feel compelled to explore the mystical path that brought them to those heights in our quest to discover the true depth, beauty and spirituality that is embodied in our heritage.
As one who has been involved in Jewish education for almost three decades, I can attest to the fact that the shell of normative Judaism-- neutered of its mystical aspect-- presented by the religious establishment very often fails to resonate with the younger generation. In particular, the brand of Diaspora Judaism that has hoisted the banner of Holocaust memorials and Zionism above the profundity of Torah wisdom offers very little in the way of real hope for future generations. To anyone who is looking, that banner is already in tatters, not only for the next generations but also, in many instances, for the flag-bearers themselves.
If we reduce all of the deep, ancient wisdom of our tradition to a reflexive “Oy, vey!” regarding the historical injustices of the past and the political machinations of the present, we are committing a grave injustice to both the Torah and generations of future Jews.
I believe it is high time that we lower those worn-out banners and allow ourselves a careful appraisal of the hidden treasure concealed in the Torah for time immemorial but within reach to all who seek it earnestly at any given moment with an open heart. We will be surprised to find that, rather than consisting of irrational twaddle or ominous peril, this sparkling treasure is more accessible, meaningful and relevant—particularly in the times we live in—than we had ever before imagined.