In our culture, one of the primary ways in which people learn new subjects is by buying a book or two, and reading up. This method is not the traditional Kabbalistic one; in contrast to the vast Jewish textual tradition, Kabbalah was defined in its early stages precisely by being dependent upon a teacher-student relationship. Perhaps more importantly, it can be hard to know where to turn, and there are a lot of bad books…
Kabbalah means “receiving,” and one of the connotations of that word is a teaching received directly from a teacher. Today, we are used to obtaining knowledge by reading books or websites, and it’s rare that we have the time or opportunity to learn from skilled teachers. And even when we do have that chance, it’s rarer still to be able to sit one-on-one, or in small groups, with teachers who are truly masters of their…
Learning Kabbalah requires interpretation and experience, and there are radically different approaches out there as to what that should mean. Should you learn traditionally, with all the requirements of Jewish observance and the articles of faith? Or esoterically, knowing that much of what you learn is of more recent derivation than it claims? Or in progressive spiritual environments? Academic ones? Let the seeker beware — and let the seeker also be mindful about which approach she…
If secret knowledge is experiential knowledge, and therefore the only way to obtain it is in some form of direct transmission from a teacher or experiential practice, what are we to make of the academic study of Kabbalah? Is it, as some contemporary figures say, misguided? As I have an academic background myself, clearly I don’t think academic study is misguided. By applying the tools of critical theory and close reading to the Kabbalah, scholars…
Rabbi Isaac Luria (1534-1572) is among the most influential, and remarkable, Kabbalists of all time. Called the Ari, or Holy Lion (the name is an acronym for Elohi Rabbi Isaac, or the Godly Rabbi Isaac), he is most associated with the renaissance of Kabbalah that occurred in Tsfat, a small town in northern Israel that is to this day a center of Jewish mysticism. Yet the Ari only lived in Tsfat for two years, and most…
The historical Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai was a Talmudic sage in the generation of the Tannaim, the senior rabbis of the Talmud. He was alive during the Bar Kochba revolt against the Romans (132-135 C.E.), and was one of the many rabbis who resisted the Romans during that period. His teacher, Rabbi Akiva, was martyred by the Romans, as was the rabbi who bestowed ordination upon him, Rabbi Yehuda ben Bava. Bar Yochai himself, it…
What is the soul? Look for it, and it can’t be seen; define it, and it eludes description. And yet, for many ancient cultures, the idea that life could exist without a soul was unimaginable. However, Talmudic and Kabbalistic rabbis were not entirely dualistic either. Unlike, for example, Plato, most Jewish thinkers had a notion of life-energy that was quasi-materialistic. The spiritual world and the material world were interwoven, and actions in one could directly…
Ayin Emptiness; nothingness. Binah Third of the sefirot, Binah means “understanding.” Binah is the “supernal mother,” the hidden Divine feminine, and the womb of the remaining sefirot. Binah is the first place of differentiation, which receives the seed of Hochmah and gives birth to the universe. Ein Sof Name given to the Divine infinite in Kabbalistic thought. Early kabbalists conceived of the Ein Sof as the absolute perfection in which there is no distinction or…
The following text is an apparently authentic letter by the Baal Shem Tov, the founder of Hasidism. In it, he describes a mystical ascent he performed by means of Kabbalistic techniques, and what he learned from the messiah in heaven. Some notes for study of the text appear at the end. This translation is based on that by David Sears in The Path of the Baal Shem Tov(Aronson), although I have edited it in several places.…
Nearly all religious traditions have some teaching regarding life after death. To many scholars, this is one of religion’s primary roles: to assuage our fear of death by promising that, on some way, some aspect of ourselves will survive it. Biblical Judaism is extremely vague on the afterlife. Some verses — “the dead do not praise Yah” (Psalm 115), for example — seem to suggest that there is no life after death of any meaningful…