Ask about Kabbalah

[zeek]

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[zeek]

OK, I read your introduction and find it fascinating. Please continue.

[agricola]

Part I:
chapter 1: Opening the World of Kabbalah
section 1: from concealment to revelation
There is a midrash (an explanatory story based on something from the Torah) that says that the particular form in which a teaching appears is appropriate to its time, and that God provides the remedy before the disease - so the reason we are seeing 'kabbalah' all over the place (that is, publicly) at the current time is because there is a reason for it.

So kabbalistic ideas may be around currently (that is, visible) because the world/humanity has a need for this type of insight into 'reality' (the kind of insights that give meaning to our lives and to events).

section 2: remembering who we are

Kabbalah tells us that the ultimate cause of our problems, from our personal lives to the widest range of humanity, is forgetting who we are. We have forgotten our true selves and our true purpose.
This teaching brings us some good news: In our deepest core, we do know who we are. when we rediscover it, we will recognize it because it is not alien to us. This teaching comes ultimately from the Bible, which clearly states that human beings are made in the divine image - that is who we truly are. Our purpose is to become clear mirrors of divinity.

I am reminded here of a phrase from our prayer book - "Lord, the soul you gave us is pure".

[agricola]

ch. 1 sec 2 continuing

Sin - Judaism focuses on sins as due to "misunderstanding, misperception, ignorance" -

A famous saying from the rabbinic tradition is that a person sins out of foolishness: If we only recognized the consequences of our actions and thoughts, we would not sin!

The Jewish mystics add another twist to this perspective [that sin is not embedded in our nature]. They say that our misunderstanding, based in our 'forgetting' of our divine origin, is actually necessary so that God's purpose in creating the earth can be accomplished. If we truly remembered accurately and clearly why we are here, we would not have free choice....
But if we are truly to manifest godliness, we cannot be programmed into our assignments [by knowing in advance] because one of the characteristics of being made in the divine image is the ability to create freely. Thus...by obscuring our origins, God was able to give us free choice...

Add insecurity and self-doubt to our 'forgetting' and we have - at best - challenges. We slide into a sea of false knowledge about ourselves and about the world.

We lose track of our status as 'made in the image of God' and we fail to understand that we are all connected to each other and to all creation.

We may want to believe we are made in the divine image, but they we undermine ourselves by saying 'We can't really know God. So what good is it anyway?"

Kabbalah is the discipline that teaches us directly about godliness, about divinity as we can relate to it in our lives. Scholars have called it a 'theosophy' which means 'wisdom about the Divine'. Only when we have a grasp of divinity and divine purpose can we possibly understand what we are here for. Intellectual work is thus an important part of Kabbalah.

It is important, says Frankiel, to both know and to understand, and never to just accept pat answers.

So why study Kabbalah? Precisely because these teachings are developed in order to work for this task (grasping the divine purpose and understanding everything) through life in the ordinary world...

'...our 'temple' is the home as well as the synagogue...marrying and raising children is just as holy as having a separate spiritual life...caring for our bodies and minds is as important as spiritual experience.

Fasting or spiritual retreats have their place, but it is limited - eventually, we must return to 'the real world' an integrate our spiritual enlightenment, so to speak, into our real lives -

We must then return to the world and integrate what we have received. This is the point of our effort, for the ultimate goal is that the whole world will become a vessel for divinity. When humans reach the point of 'From my flesh I will see God!' as Job says (19:26) the purpose of creation will be realized. We will have remembered and fully realized our divine image.

Basically, learning Kabbalah teaches us to always look for the deeper meaning and the spiritual connections to everything we do.

For Kabbalah, everything is a metaphor that provides access to ultimate reality. Problems that arise on one level can be resolved on another.

that last bit is important! I've run across the idea before - that you can do something relatively trivial (say the blessing over bread) and because it is a positive thing that is part of God's plan, then you can ACTUALLY affect the whole of creation AND God -



This is one of the ways that kabbalistic teachings became thought of as a kind of magic or witchcraft.
A 'magician' is also a 'mage', and a mage isn't someone who 'does magic tricks'. It is someone who is knowledgeable about the ultimate reality of things.

[agricola]

chapter 1 section 3
Is Kabbalah only for Jews?

No - BUT - Kabbalah is 'primarily about understanding what God is' and it goes about doing that from a Jewish perspective. So a non-Jew can certainly 'learn' (or practice) kabbalah, but if that same non-Jew isn't thoroughly steeped in Judaism and Jewish practice, he or she might have a difficult time (or, more likely, totally misunderstand everything).

If one studied kabbalistic texts without an appropriate background, one could easily misinterpret them.

But the general concepts are actually fairly well known, and were known to medieval and early modern Christian scholars (that is, to people outside the traditional Jewish community) so it isn't so much that these things are 'secret' as it is they are simply 'esoteric' (literally).

By the time of the Renaissance, says Frankiel, these ideas were in the current culture and

were regarded as part of the general heritage of Western mysticism.

However -

More intricate teachings are difficult to access from outside Judaism and it is probably wise to be suspicious of anyone who says they are teaching deep mysteries to people without a background in Judaism.

(which means more than just random Jews, because even many Jews don't have the background to really understand some of this material).

[agricola]

chapter 1 section 4
How Kabbalah Can Help You

because it is exciting - interesting - fun - engaging - challenging - all those reasons.

Kabbalah is a theology that gives rise to a cosmology and an anthropology. As a theology, it presents God as active, in dynamic interaction with the created world. As a cosmology, it shows how the world emanates from God. As an anthropology, it is a map of humanity in our effort to approach the Divine and to bring divinity into our corner of the cosmos - to 'make a dwelling place' for God...

[agricola]

Chapter 2 will offer an overall perspective of the cosmology and anthropology and will introduce vocabulary terms.

[teresa]

I'm interested in hearing more about it, also.

[zeek]

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[agricola]

Chapter 2: pt 1 - Where Is the Real World?

...the first basic principle of Kabbalah: The world we see is not the real world. More precisely, the world as we see it is not the real world....our sight is limited...The world that we can perceive is a mere slice of a multidimensional world beyond our senses...

...the world is a partial manifestation of a much larger ultimate reality, which we call God. The kabbalists called that reality Ein Sof "There is No End",or, more simply, the Infinite. The aspect of God that is reflected in our cosmos is the Light of the Infinite.

OK the concept of 'ein sof' is a difficult one. It means 'there is no end'. It means 'infinity'. It means NOTHING. God is the great NOTHING - the NO THING.

I'm going to recommend another book now, which addresses this a little bit - it is the account of the encounter between several rabbis - mostly orthodox and some strongly steeped in kabbalah, with the Dalai Lama. It is called 'The Jew in the Lotus' and it is by a poet who accompanied the rabbis to Nepal: Rodger Kamenetz

h**ps://smile.amazon.com/Jew-Lotus-Rediscovery-Identity-Buddhist/dp/0061367397/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1467681031&sr=8-1&
keywords=The+Jew+in+the+Lotus

So there's the first big vocabulary word: Ein Sof (pronounced Ayn (long A) Sof (long O).