Beyond the Hype

Sitting at Rosh Hashanah services tonight and tomorrow, imagine that the liturgy’s abstract ideas about the birth of the world, the fate of our souls, God’s relationship to the universe – that all of these ideas were so real to you, you could actually see them and touch them and feel them.

For many, that attainment – even setting it as a goal – is a long way off, if it is ever to be. But for growing numbers of Jews who have turned toward exploring Jewish mysticism, the words are not unfathomable, but are the lexicon of their everyday associations with Judaism.

So it’s fair to ask, is there anything there? What is it that is drawing in Jews and keeping them there?”What I am sensing is that we are living at a particular point in history when Jewish people are seeking more than the mere action of mitzvot, and would like to actually enjoy the journey of the Jewish commandments,” offers Laibl Wolf, author of “Practical Kabbalah” (Random House, 1999). “It’s a bit like charting a course of travel between two distant cities. You can take the most direct route on the main highway and that will get you there very quickly, or chart a course that runs along the coast and takes a little longer, but you gain great enjoyment from the journey.”

Kabbalah takes the deepest existential questions – the nature of God and souls, the structure of the universe, the afterlife, the purpose of existence – and forces these abstract thoughts into a rigid and rational system that becomes so airtight, the disparate pieces so neatly interlocking, that it can’t help but be astonishingly compelling.

To the kabbalist, for instance, the sound of the shofar is the crying of that unconscious part of your soul where your true self resides, where the distractions of body and living and life have not adulterated the true essence of you. Throughout the period of the High Holy Days, kabbalists teach, when the cosmic energies are aligned to be open to introspection and repentance, that part of your soul is yearning and begging to come out.

Or consider the kabbalistic vision of the birth of the world. The eternally existing God withdrew Himself to make room for physical creation, and in that process shattered, sending Divine sparks into every one of his children.

At the same time, kabbalah offers up a paradox to mainstream Jews, who, if they know nothing else about kabbalah, know that tradition holds that kabbalah is not to be touched until one is 40.

“Mystical tendencies have often been welcome as spiritual salve, as a source of comfort in times of personal and collective distress,” noted David Myers, professor of history at UCLA, who moderated a panel on kabbalah last year. “And yet rabbinic authorities have often been reticent to embrace mysticism, fearful of its anarchic, nihilistic potential.”

Especially with its New Age veneer today, kabbalah is often quickly dismissed as trendy, foreign, not really Judaism. And some of its practitioners, such as the worldwide Kabbalah Learning Center, seem ripe for media scrutiny (see sidebar, page 13).

But with the right teachers, in the right venue, an introductory dip into the study of kabbalistic concepts – just a wade, nowhere close to the deep end – can leave one with a sense that no matter how off-the-wall some components sound, taken as a whole, there is something solid and powerful there.

To research this article I initiated conversations with people in our community who make kabbalah the center of their lives. I did not conduct a thorough scholarly study, nor did I attempt to explore or list all the dozens of books, teachers, synagogues and organizations that either dabble in mystical teachings or make it central to their mission.

Rather, I let the story lead me from person to person, from teacher to student to healer to believer. Contrary to my presumptions, everyone I spoke with seemed sane and well grounded.

The journey took me to places I had never been in my 15 years of formal Jewish education and continuing informal study. And in classical Jewish fashion, the journey planted seeds I cannot get out of my head, seeds that leave me with more questions than answers.

But there is one thing of which I am convinced: It is a tragic farce that mainstream Judaism has left mysticism out of the canon, and thus removed from conversation its compelling insights into our relationship with the Divine, with each other, with our own selves.

The Scholar

What is kabbalah?

I pose the question to Dr. Pinchas Giller, author of the forthcoming “Reading the Zohar: The Canon of Jewish Mysticism” (Oxford University Press, due out October 2000) and a professor at the University of Judaism. His answer is very much like Giller’s own interest in kabbalah: on the one hand scholarly, on the other hand deeply spiritual.

Kabbalah, or the field of Jewish mysticism, originates with the end of prophecy, around the second century, Giller says. The Zohar, a 2,000-page midrash in Aramaic that is the focal point of kabbalistic belief and practice, recounts the activities of a group of second-century rabbis in the land of Israel. When the Zohar was actually written down is the source of debate, with traditionalists saying that it originates with the students of Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai, one of those second-century rabbis, while current scholarship suggests it is a compilation of works from the second to the 13th century.

While the Zohar didn’t emerge as a force in Judaism until the 12th and 13th centuries, Giller suggests kabbalistic notions were always present in Mishna and Talmud, the primary works of the Oral Law.

The 16th century witnessed the resurgence of kabbalah, with Rabbi Isaac Luria, known as the Ari Z’al, and his followers in the Galilee. Luria’s mystical practices, beliefs and writing set into motion the forces that would lead to the kabbalistic foundations of Chassidism, the mystical moralizing of the Mitnagdim (the anti-Chassidists) and the rich and magical tradition of Sephardic kabbalists, who founded what are still today some of the most significant mystical dynasties.

Kabbalah, Giller explains, sitting at his dining room table over an array of open books, is an intricate and expansive web of symbols that are windows into how God’s presence flows into the universe. Ultimately, this leads to an understanding of what the Torah and mitzvot really mean and a knowledge of each individual’s specific function in God’s world – their tikkun or mission of rectification.

Several different, and often conflicting, systems of kabbalah explain the nature of the universe and the divine flow. There are the 10 sefirot, the 10 conduits through which God manifests on earth and that are the building blocks of our souls. Those are connected by 22 two-way channels (corresponding to the letters of the Hebrew alphabet) into a structure known as the Tree of Life; there are the three levels of consciousness, the four worlds, the five visages, the 13 receptacles of mercy.

In all these systems, Giller says, “there is an underlying mythos of something very deep and profound going on beneath the surface of present reality, and that thing going on underneath is the real reality,” Giller says. “The present reality is a dream, a shadow, just an illusion. And every so often, guided by the way you live and the things you have to do and the learning you do, you have an insight and you see things as they really are. That’s the mystical life.”

The mitzvot we do, the ethics we follow, our every action – no matter how mundane or profound – affects that metaphysical reality in a concrete way.

“You take an action and you say, my action is centering cosmic forces. It is not something as if, it’s not to give me a warm, fuzzy feeling, it’s not because this is just what Jews do. But the actual mitzvah is channeling forces which are beyond what I have in front of me,” Giller says.

Giller says he himself was always drawn to kabbalah, but was pulled instead toward an intellectual, academic life of studying phi
losophy and classical Jewish texts. But while studying in Israel, “I just became overwhelmed by a certain emptiness that lay at the core, and at the same time I realized that kabbalah was really rising as the folk religion of Eretz Yisrael.”

He began to do anthropological research, going to kabbalistic synagogues where meditational prayers started before dawn and lasted four hours. He visited grave sites of righteous people that were being turned into shrines by the hundreds of people visiting them, from the secular, urbane Dizengoff types to the Chassidic women from Mea Shearim.

The mystical devotion arising in Israel now is exactly the kind the secular Israeli government tried to repress in the early 1950s, publicly humiliating the mekubalim (Kabbalistic rabbis) and the masses of their followers from Arab and North African nations. While Chassidism brought a more accessible kabbalah to Eastern European Jews, much of this was repressed, too, after the Holocaust.

That’s why Moshe Idel, a professor of kabbalah at Hebrew University in Jerusalem, who spoke at UCLA last year, says that rather than seeing today’s trend as a revolution, it should be viewed as the reemergence of the true nature of religion, which was repressed for just a few generations.

He points to some great halachic thinkers – Rabbi Joseph Karo and the Vilna Gaon – who were mystics.Giller says the current highly intellectualized, rational focus of American Jewry is, in fact, not a comfortable or natural state for a religious group.

“Everybody else in the world has holy places, they have the notion of the soul, of meditation, of drawing down divine energy, of the Divine flow into the world – and the Jews say that’s all pagan. But it’s not, it’s just healthy religion when religion is deeply felt,” Giller says. American Judaism, he says, is “devotionally crippled” by its insistence on being purely rational.

But Giller also points out that while kabbalah can pose and answer so many of the questions of spiritual seekers, it also has a dark side.

“In kabbalistic terms, evil might be an incarnate presence,” he says. Tumah, or ritual impurity, he says, might also be a palpable malaise. “It’s not easy for modern people to deal with that.”

He points to the renegade racist, Rabbi Yitzchak Ginsburg, a rabbi who studied kabbalah for 30 years in Kfar Chabad in Israel, who now teaches that gentiles have no souls.

Some kabbalists are ascetics, fasting and praying all day, fearful of unbridled sexuality.

The Zohar and other kabbalistic texts are dense and difficult, requiring not only a knowledge of Torah and Talmud, but familiarity with the mystical jargon and its nuances, with the cryptic and seemingly unending symbolism of every word and image.

With all that said, Giller, like so many others who have studied kabbalah, says he cannot fathom a Judaism devoid of the depth and devotion kabbalah provides.

“Philosophy can be end run by romance and aesthetics and art, and learning the Zohar is a kind of art,” he says. Giller draws another analogy:

“Love is not wholly rational, and yet we accept it as the basis for the way people should make life decisions. Religious belief is nothing if not that. There is always an internal leap.”

The Believer

Chaim Mekel thinks everyone should study the Zohar, starting as children.

“It says that whoever does not study the Zohar is putting a dent in the shechina [the divine presence],” he says.

And consider the converse.

“By being spiritual, being connected to the light force, to the Torah, you are connected to a metaphysical force that will protect you from harm,” he says. And if apparent harm should come your way, “then it is not something bad, because you understand that is what you need to go through.”

It is the power of ideas such as this one that gave Mekel, an internationally acclaimed artist, the strength he needed to recover from a serious car accident nine years ago and change the course of his life.

Mekel grew up as a secular Israeli. After achieving fame as an artist in Israel he moved to Los Angeles to gain a foothold in the American scene. He was successful. Today, his impressionistic works hang in museums, private collections – even in the offices of Sen. Ted Kennedy.

After the wake-up call of the accident, Mekel turned to the Kabbalah Center. He abandoned art and spent about eight years there.

“For me it was good,” he says of the Kabbalah Center. “I studied a lot, I shared a lot, it gave me a lot of information and knowledge and love and caring.” He left, he says, because it was simply time to go, to move on.

Today, he moves in the circles of Rabbi Yaakov Pinto, a descendant of the great Pinto family of mekubalim of Morocco.

Mekel wakes up at 2 or 3 every morning and goes to Pinto’s Pico-Robertson area synagogue, where we meet this morning, Mekel still in tallit and tefillin. Every day he studies Zohar and spends a few hours praying.

He started painting again two years ago, and has an art gallery/framing store down the block from Pinto’s beit midrash.

His paintings today – mostly impressionistic, peaceful landscapes – are a far cry from the work of his past, such as his “Heart of Darkness” study of Orson Welles.

“What I had with art is not even 1 percent of the light I receive from Torah and what I can share with people,” he says. After every exhibit, he was left feeling deflated and depressed, whereas today, with great certitude, he understands the purpose of creation.

“Everything, including the Zohar, is just a tool for you to reach a level that sounds very simple, of v’ahavta l’reicha kamocha, love your neighbor as yourself,” he says.

The trick is understanding yourself well enough to know your mission, which is something that can be helped along by studying kabbalah. The Zohar, he says, is the manna of the soul, and the only way to understand Torah.

Even without understanding the words, scanning the letter combinations in the Zohar, with their metaphysical powers, can open up channels of light into our souls, can promote harmony between body and soul, he says.

“I think that reading the Zohar – even if you don’t understand, but just with your eyes – you will be so filled with light. You can be so happy.”

But doesn’t that sound too easy, like magic?

“Yes, it is magic, but it’s white magic, it’s good. Black magic uses the dark forces,” he says. And, he adds with exasperated good humor, “What’s so bad about magic?”

To study with Chaim Mekel, call (310) 360-1021.

The Healer

If Rabbi Stephen Robbins weren’t so clearly sane and coherent and sincere, it might have been tempting to tuck his notions away, labeling them as interesting but unlikely.

But his unconventional ideas, thoroughly and solidly explicated in his soft, soothing voice, seem not only possible, but empirically true.

He believes science and spirituality are one. He and his wife, Cantor Eva Robbins, have produced a Jewish meditational and healing tape that has taken people through major surgery without anesthesia and relieved the symptoms of cancer treatment. His therapy practice aims at healing mind, body and spirit. His laying of hands and subtle voice kept his daughter alive in the ICU as she struggled on the brink of death after a serious car accident.

We are sitting in his midcity office late at night – a small table fountain trickling in the background; African, Indian and Jewish art all around; artistic photos of his family on the wall. A massage table stands in the middle of the room, just in front of a shelf holding neatly lined up bottles of naturopathic remedies.Robbins and his wife founded and lead N’vay Shalom, a congregation dedicated to renewal. He holds rabbinnic ordination from Hebrew Union College and has two PhDs, one in neuropsychology and one in naturopathy.

His classes on kabbalah and Jewish meditation at the University of Judaism are always full.Robbins usually declines interview requests he says, and shuns the
publicity. But tonight he is willing to talk and to teach.

The nature of kabbalah, he says, can be discerned by its very name, which means to receive.”We are taught how to unveil God’s presence, to draw it in, by being open to receiving. I think what Jews are hungry for is to receive. Jews for a long time have been asked to give, besides giving time or money or concern… they are told this is what is required, this is what God wants, without a sense there is something to receive,” he says.

“What kabbalah is about is receiving, knowing about the nearness, the constant sense of God’s presence and how each of us is a vessel for God’s presence.”

That knowledge, he says, “ennobles every person, it empowers every person to know that they have a sacred task to do. If you really accept that in your life that means that you live without having to try to prove anything… because you already know you are absolutely necessary and that you are a primary requirement for the development of this time and place.”

With this foundation, Robbins uses unified approach combining psychological work, spiritual development and natural healing, all set on the underlying principles of kabbalah.

But, he cautions, anyone looking for quick cosmic fix to life’s difficulties must understand that kabbalah is serious discipline, requiring study and commitment to introspection.

He himself was introduced to kabbalah as a child, he says, and though he was ordained in 1972 and studied for an additional 12 years, he started teaching mysticism only six years ago.

“We take the responsibility of this knowledge as both an honor and an enormous task to be handled with great care and patience, because of its preciousness.”

Rabbi Stephen Robbins can be reached at Congregation N’vay Shalom, which meets at Milken Community High School, (323) 463-7728.

The Woman

The study of kabbalah involves great awareness of the masculine and feminine. God’s manifestations, the sefirot, are all gendered, giving male and female characteristics to all the symbols connected to the sefirot.Understanding how the masculine and feminine qualities balance in each person can be a valuable tool in the quest to determine one’s purpose in the world, says Chana Weisberg, dean of Chabad’s Machon B’nos Menachem in Toronto and author of the “Crown of Creation” (Mosaic, 1996) and “The Feminine Soul” (Mosaic, due out winter 2000), both of which offer mystical and Chassidic insights into contemporary and ancient women.

“If we look at God’s breathing life into creation, God breaths in and breaths out. The outer direction is more male oriented – aggression and conquest. Woman is more inward focused, nurturing and protecting,” she says.

Woman’s purpose, she explains, is to bring holiness into creation, while man’s purpose is to send holiness outward to God. “The male role is fighting negativity, whereas women’s role is finding the godliness already impregnated in creation and making it shine,” she says.

Shabbat, for instance, is feminine, while the work week is masculine. “All week long we fight nature and conquer nature by doing and creating. On Shabbat, it is time to absorb the blessings that have collected all week long.”

She says it is only fitting, then, that it is specifically a women’s mitzvah to bring holiness down to earth, into our homes, by lighting candles on Shabbat, whereas men bless the havdalah candle, ushering Shabbat out.

“We’ve become very wary of saying there is any difference between men and women,” she observes. While every person at different times employs both feminine and masculine modes, “we have to be aware of what feminine is, so we can get strength and go further. We can not get joy or fulfillment out of life if we are not aware of what our role and purpose and missions and qualities are,” she says.

The 20-40 post-high school girls in Weisberg’s seminary all glean kabbalistic ideas through the study of chassidut, which she says is a legal obligation incumbent upon women, just as it is upon men.

“In order to love God and fear God, or have any relationship, you need to know who you are having a relationship with. That is what kabbalah and chassidut discuss,” she says.

The body of work produced by the Chassidic masters, she says, “doesn’t only take abstract ideas of kabbalah, it takes ideas that we can apply to our own lives. As a woman, I personally enjoy the study of chassidut, because it is not just theoretical knowledge, but can help make a better and more spiritual and more meaningful life.”

The Freelancer

Even before I reach the stairs down to B’nai David-Judea’s Gold Room, where Rabbi Michael Ozair teaches Mystical Wednesdays, my senses are tantalized. The usual smell of Shabbat morning kiddush – some vague mixture of tuna salad, marble cake and cholent – has been replaced by the New Agey smell of burning candles.

The chandelier is set on dim, and the candles are everywhere – on the floor, lining the walls, every few inches on the scarf-covered tables, configured in a horseshoe shape. In the center of the tables there are 10 candles, sitting in what appear to be fishbowls set on pedestals of varying heights. I find out later these represent the sefirot, the 10 aspects of God.

There are pillows and rugs set up in the back of the room, tea off to the side. About 50 people make themselves comfortable. Soft, airy music plays, and when class starts, Ozair, barefoot, wearing black pants and a loose coarse cotton shirt, bangs a gong.

A few days later, I ask Ozair about the set up.

Yeah, he admits, it’s shticky, but for good reason.

“We’re living in Los Angeles and the New Age is growing bigger and bigger, and it seems like every other religious or spiritual path has done packaging and marketing to the New Age community, to the spiritual seekers, except the Jews.”

But, adds Ozair, it goes beyond marketing. The look of the gathering is so contrary to what people might expect from a traditional Jewish teacher, that it dispels preconceptions and stereotypes, allowing people to enter with an open mind.

And, at a more basic level, there is a lot to be said for setting a mood.

“I combine the teaching of kabbalah with guided imagery, accupressure, color and sound and music for healing. It is a multisensory experience,” Ozair says of Mystical Wednesdays, which are sponsored by Olam Magazine.

Ozair, a disciple of Reb Shlomo Carlebach, is also a founder and leader of the Carlebach-style Happy Minyan, runs Shabbatons, teaches at Metivta: Center for Jewish Healing, and until last year taught at Shalhevet high school, where students voted him Best Teacher two years in a row.

Tonight, amid the flickering candlelight, we are ready to begin with some brief stretching, and then a meditation.

In his warm, smiling voice, Ozair guides us through focusing on the symbolism of the Hebrew letters and where, according to kabbalah, they correspond to the human body and to a behavior, which in turn corresponds to one of the sefirot, the aspects of God.

With those images in mind we do breathing exercises and mediations to expand our place of internal peace. We chant the word shalom (peace) to bring peace to ourselves, to others, to the world. If our head is tingling, we are doing the meditation right, Ozair intones. (I think my head is tingling because I am being asked to hold my breath for so long.)

When we are finally in the right mind, we look into the kabbalistic associations of Elul, the Jewish month preceding the New Year that is dedicated to teshuva (repentance).

The complicated edifice of symbols associated with the month is intricate and obscure, but at the same time self-contained, logically cumulative and so well-built there is nothing unstable about it. The outcome – a motivational and practical guide to teshuva – is compelling.

Ozair says he only occasionally includes real kabbalistic teachings in his classes.

“Most people who say they want to study kabbalah actually are just l
ooking for a meaningful, deep, spiritual form of Judaism,” he says. “When you teach real kabbalah you lose everybody, because it makes it more esoteric and confusing.”

Ozair has discovered that his audience is interested not only in lofty spiritual paths, but in basic Judaism. Now, he also teaches introductory prayer classes, elementary Hebrew and basic Judaism.

Ozair believes the changes being effected by the surge in spiritual seeking will not leave mainstream shuls unaffected.

“I feel that what we are doing is innovative and will have an influence on the mainstream. It will have to, because there is a certain stagnancy that shuls fall into when they seek to serve the status quo,” he says.”But genuine religion should not look to serve the comfort level of people and be in harmony with the status quo, but see right through it and go beyond it with something much more beautiful and divine.

To find out about Rabbi Michael Ozair’s Yom Kippur services or any of his classes, call (877) 783-5393 or go towww.hiddensplendor.com

The Student

With his untrimmed beard and gaunt frame, hooded in a tallit, Rabbi Zechariah Shamayim-V’aretz is probably what most people have in mind when they think of a mystic.

He is standing at the door to his small home study, his hand on the mezuzah. We have just studied a piece of kabbalah which talks about the frame of mind one needs to be in when kissing the mezuzah. He is demonstrating it now, concentrating on the distinct qualities and strengths of the right and left sides of his body, and the holiness of God’s name contained in the mezuzah, that can help fend off the demons that are at the left side of the doorpost.

Of course, he says, he doesn’t always spend five minutes in deep concentration when walking through a door.

Much of his life is run by the kabbalistic impulse. He often wakes up to study in the middle of the night. He meditates and goes to the mikvah every day. He doesn’t eat much, just what his required to keep his body going. He wears white on Shabbat, to draw God’s light in.

Shamayim-V’aretz (when they got married, he and his wife took on the last name, which means heaven and earth) has a few private students selectively chosen as people ready to commit not only to studying kabbalah, but to serious introspection and observance of mitzvot.

He himself is still a student, he says, and he is wary of those who call themselves masters of kabbalah.”When teachers cultivate personality cults and adoration of themselves and their approach to kabbalah, God is getting eclipsed, and that is very far from what real kabbalah is about,” he says.

His has been a long journey, from Modern Orthodox to yeshiva rebel to Brestlaver Chassid, with forays into yoga and psychology, before he stopped at mysticism.

He doesn’t view mysticism as a cure-all to life’s difficulties. He himself has been through years of therapy, something he says is necessary for the many people – teachers and students – who turn to kabbalah with loaded psychological portfolios.

“People attracted to kabbalah are usually people of spiritual sincerity, but typically spiritual sincerity goes along with a hefty amount of inner work necessary,” he says. “Sometimes it’s easier to learn kabbalah and practice kabbalah than to see one’s blindspots.”

He has harsh words, too, for those who call themselves teachers or students of kabbalah, but do not keep all the mitzvot.

“If persons are not even observing the most covenental aspects of Judaism, which requires the most minimal level of surrender and commitment and devotion, how can they throw themselves upon the highest rungs of spiritual aspiration?” he asks.

On the other hand, mainstream Judaism – of all denominations – could use an injection of kabbalah, at least of the more accessible ideas, as in chassidut. Without it, he says, Jewish practice can become meaningless.

“When I see what Judaism could be, and see what it is, it’s very heartbreaking.”

Rabbi Zechariah Shamayim-V’aretz can be reached at alephbet@mediaone.net His Web site can be found at www.devekut.com