Anyone attending an event in Los Angeles’ Jewish arts scene has heard of Erez Safar. He is an Orthodox Yemenite Jew and one of the top organizers of Jewish arts events in town, a music producer and the force behind the Sephardic Music Festival.
Now, Safar has authored “Light of the Infinite,” a series collecting his reflections of a two-year spiritual journey of Kabbalah and modern art and how it got his mind out from a dark, low place.
“Using each week’s Torah portion, delving deep into the text, the commentaries, and the Kabbalah connected to it, I’ll share insights that bring that inspiration and Light to life for me, and hopefully do the same for you,” Safar writes in the introduction.
The book begins with a tribute to his mother, Frida Levona bat Shalom, and his ex-wife’s mother, Yehudis Chava bat Yakov Dov. He lovingly refers to them as “my children’s grandmothers.” They both died within a year of each other in 2020. “When I think of these women, I think of tzedakah and chesed, words that are hard to translate because they capture the real depths of other adjectives like ‘generous’, ‘giving’, ‘loving’, and ‘kind,’” Safar wrote. “These two women embodied and exemplified these qualities to an angelic degree: so full of life, love, warmth, and light, at every turn, every single moment. Being around them inspired me to be more loving, more giving, more full of zest for each moment in life.”
What follows is a deep dive into scripture, history and his own self-reflection. Safar writes a breadth of detail and vulnerability. He quotes not just scripture but literature, popular film, music and art. He will oscillate from parsing Midrash to quoting the Death Cab for Cutie song, “Soul Meets Body.” On one page, he quotes Led Zeppelin, Wu-Tang Clan and Bereishit Rabbah. Another page ponders meaning in a finite life, but is done through referencing The Doors’ Jim Morrison, followed by an analysis of a scene from Safar’s favorite film, “Annie Hall.”
There is a dense potency to Safar’s words, but he told the Journal that if there is one section he would like readers to sample as a gateway to his experience, it is the chapter “How to Exist in Love: Tending to the Spirit.” In the subsection titled “Revealing Oneness through Each One You Encounter,” Safar shares a lesson from his father, a Rabbi in the U.S. Navy, about the word “Shalom.”
For readers who are new to these practices of Judaism, every page will have a new concept they can take with them on their own journey. In one example, he takes on the concept of aliyat neshama, which he defines as “that one elevates a person’s soul when doing a mitzvah in the person’s name or memory.”
“The Genesis of Light” is the first book in Safar’s “Light of the Infinite” series. He writes about how he overcame his self-doubt, the power of disconnecting to reconnect, and greeting hate with love. His writing aims to link the spiritual world with the physical world.
“The Exodus of Darkness,” the second book in the series, was published in November 2022, while the third volume, “The Sound of Illumination,” was published on February 7, 2023. There are two more books to be released in the series, each one coinciding with podcast episodes, and in typical fashion for Safar, a big party with great music.
When Safar isn’t hard at work on his next arts endeavor, he does find time to relax with his two young children. So while taking his children to a park in Los Angeles, Safar took the time to answer some questions about “Light of the Infinite.”
JJ: What was going on right before you started working on “Light of the Infinite?”
EREZ SAFAR: So it started a year after my ex’s mom (Yehudis Chava bat Yakov Dov) passed away. It was her Yahrzeit. That was the first time I ever wrote anything like this, which I never thought I would do. And then unfortunately, my mom (Frida Levona bat Shalom), passed away not too long after. And that was when I decided I would do a full year.
And at that point, one of my friends was distributing these pamphlets called Torah Wellspring. A lot of people were into it and she was going to 20 different synagogues and delivering them. So she gave me that idea to do this weekly as pamphlets and she would deliver them too. That motivated me. I don’t think there was much Torah like this where it was something inspirational — dealing with people that have fallen hard times or need to be inspired — but also bringing in modern elements like TV, or film or song lyrics. It was like continuously getting inspired by other people getting inspired to keep pushing me to do it.
JJ: It sounds like this was the book that you needed at the time, so you wrote it.
ES: When you’re learning, you’re continuously being inspired. Making this puts me around different people who inspire me. I think there’s so many people similar to me that are inspired by so many different things.
As you meet more and more people, you realize that so many are going through tough times — everybody needs inspiration. We see that on Instagram all the time. There’s obviously the bad stuff that trends, but there’s also a lot of positivity that trends and resonates with people, and they’re sharing it. It helped me to put together something that I feel like hadn’t been out there. And if you want to inspire other people, you’re by default, inspiring yourself.
JJ: What was the weekly writing grind like for you?
ES: I had a deadline every week where I wanted to write a chapter, but every week I would be freaking out that there’s no way I’m going to write another eight pages that are going to be on the level that I wanted it to be.
Similarly, we view ourselves as pretty limited compared to what we can actually do, and we forget the limitless part of us is the part where G-d comes in. We have these things that we think we could do, so we’re working on ‘em. But generally, if we really push and we’re open to actually succeeding and not limiting ourselves, we don’t realize how much more we’re capable of with G-d. You see that with music or acting or writing, anything creative.
JJ: It probably helps a lot to surround yourself with hard-working creative people.
ES: With Shabbat, you have a community, you’re automatically back in touch and spending time with these people in spiritual spaces. These people are aligned with you and just trying to create an environment that’s focused more on the spiritual than the physical needs. The cycle of the seven days is powerful.
“And also it brings people to all this rich Talmud history. It’s from a long time ago and these ideas are still being expanded upon through the arts — it’s a continuous living Torah in that sense.
To find out about Erez Safar’s “Light of the Infinite” book series, podcast and events, go to www.lightofinfinite.com or www.ErezSafar.com
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