“Even chance meetings are the result of karma…Things in life are fated by our previous lives. That even in the smallest events there’s no such thing as coincidence.”
Haruki Murakami, Kafka on the Shore

Sheer coincidence (?) fated that when visiting Tel Aviv last winter, I stayed not far from the “galleries zone” (Ben Jehuda and Gordon Streets).
It was already night and the galleries were closed. I walked by Tova Osman Art Gallery and a fleeting glance at the wheels and Hebrew letters painted on the rough jute sufficed. I stopped and glued myself to the gallery window in an attempt to gain a clearer view. The blue letters of the phrase "Matching Hour" (Kabbalah for "time of erotic union") radiated despite the dim light. Those were Kabbalistic symbols.

Over the next few days I kept on returning to the gallery, which for some reason remained closed, and then to my dismay the paintings disappeared.

It was only on my last Friday in Israel that I found the gallery owner, who told me that the exhibit, “Following Sabtai Zvi,” was made by Nadav Bloch and Nechama Levendel, two Israeli artists and partners in life and work. Nadav Bloch, however, had just passed away. The gallery owner offered to connect me to Nechama Levendel. And so two days before my flight back to Toronto, I drove to Ein Hod, the artist village at the foot of Carmel Mountains, to meet with Nechama.

Nechama opened the door and for a few long minutes I couldn’t stop gazing at her hypnotizing black eyes. We stepped into the serene, monastic space of the stone house and studio, which was devoid of most of the standard commodities typical to a living space. The gallery, right at the entrance, presented the works of both artists. Kabbalistic wheels, words and letters in different languages (Hebrew, Arab, Aramaic, Latin), filled the house with timeless presence.
We sat at the long wooden table next to the austere kitchen equipped with a mysterious little coffee machine that produced a most aromatic espresso.

Nechama and Nadav’s Sabbatian “adventures” began when they were invited to work and exhibit in the small Muslim town of Ulcinj in Montengro. They were sent to check out a gallery situated in an archeological site, once a fortress and now a mosque with a minaret, by the sea. Nadav had to struggle with an old iron key (almost 30 cm long) before he managed to unlock the heavy door. They entered a dark room, opened the windows to let in the light, and of all things, saw a Star of David and two trees carved on one of the walls.

After some inquiries, they found out that the exiled Sabbatai Sevi had been imprisoned in this old fortress, and that the tree is the symbol of Sevi, whose feet are on the ground yet head high up in heaven.

Not long after Sevi was exiled to Ulcinj, back then the far end of the Ottoman Empire, his followers joined him, to have their descendants live in the small Muslim town as “others” up to this day.
Determined to dedicate their exhibition to the gallery’s famous prisoner, Nadav and Nechama traveled first to Belgrade to look for materials on Sabbatai Sevi, then back to Israel where Nadav delved into reading anything related to Sevi, from historical works to works of fiction and Kabbalah.
“It was the Sabbatian idea of breaking limits,” says Nechama, “of erasing borders, not taking the given for granted, that appealed to Nadav who in his daring, sometimes naïve way, always questioned things and was open to the different and the other.”

That was their mode of creating. The two traveled all over the world and in each place worked with local materials. Their travels and work around the world took them to the Ambiante Historico Museum in Cuba. As always, Nadav explored the local markets and seeing the rice sacs came up with the idea of using jute for his painting. “Because culture is like merchandise, crossing borders importing ideas...”

The Sabbatai exhibit itself was a work in process and lasted for a month and a half, during which Nechama and Nadav stayed in the gallery in the old fortress and worked everyday to create “Following Shabtai Zvi.” (This YouTube link will take you to a video of Nadav and Nechama in Ulcinj.) The accompanying prayer is an Aramaic text from the Book of Daniel that tells about the coming of the Messiah.

And there were some strange, unexpected moments.

As the exhibition traveled and arrived at the National Gallery in Tirana, Albania, Nadav and Nechama were taking a walk in the local market when they were called back to the gallery to meet two visitors who had arrived to see them. One was a policeman who demanded to know why they had chosen Sevi for the subject of their exhibition. It turned out he was an avid researcher of Sabbatianism and was looking for Sabbatai’s grave. Tradition points at two places, so its whereabouts are uncertain. One is a small Albanian village in the mountains. During the Ottoman empire many intellectuals were exiled to this remote community. Mysteriously, until today, the village’s women instruct the children to put pebbles and light candles (a Jewish tradition) on a certain sacred yet unnamed grave. The encounter with the policeman ended peacefully, yet not without the latter warning the artists not to meddle too much with dangerous subjects like Sabbatai Sevi.

 

A less dramatic yet no less karmic incident transpired in Israel. Nadav came up with the logo “Esperamos a ti” meaning in Ladino (the Judeo-Spanish language) “We wait for you” and looked for a print house that would print this logo on T-shirts. The printer they finally found was no other than the descendant of Jonathan Eibeschutz, a famous Prague rabbi who still today is the subject of controversy for his Sabbatian tendencies (and who was the inspiration for one of the figures in my Kabbalistic mystery, Gateway of Souls).

Nechama herself is far from believing in coincidences, let alone mystical practices. Apart for having collaborated on the Sabbatian paintings (after all, the theme of erotic union, for instance, is not necessarily Sabbatian), she works with ancient texts and collects old books destined for disposal, which she converts into “book-objects.” It's an idea very much in line with Walter Benjamin’s aesthetics of redemption: to save the forgotten from oblivion, to reveal that which has been defeated by history and give it a new existence, an idea that can already be found in Kabbalah.
And in Nadav’s mode, seriousness must be questioned and inverted. Nechama told me how when they arrived at Cordova in Spain, Nadav couldn’t resist placing one of his Sevi T-shirts on a sculpture of Maimonides, the great 12th century Jewish philosopher who composed a code of Jewish law and is known for his strict rationalism.

Here you can see the photo of Maimonides, the arc rationalist, embracing in his lap the T-shirt printed with the expectation for one of the most mystical figures in Jewish history.

 

 

Article first published as Kabbalah: Nechama Levendel, Nadav Bloch – Sabbatian Artists, Ein Hod Israel on Blogcritics.

Lilith Sternin, one of my favorite sitcom characters, is the significant ex-other of Frasier, the pompous but lovable celebrity psychologist. Lilith, a psychologist herself, is a self-controlled, cold woman with dark sexual energies she works hard to repress. True to her name, she is a modern, sophisticated version of the Jewish demon Lilith, one of the most fascinating figures in Jewish demonology.

Lilith, the demon, originated from Babylonian mythology that featured male and female spirits called Lilin or Lilith. Whereas the male spirits had no specific role, the female Lilith were considered harmful to babies, and already an old Hebrew amulet from the eighth century BCE from north Syria contains a spell to ward her off.

In the ancient Akkadian culture (around 2000 BCE) she appeared as Lilitho, a nocturnal winged being that accompanied Ishtar, the goddess of fertility, love, sex, and war. Lilith was the shadowy aspect of sex, the dark side of lovemaking. The Akkadians believed she lurked awaiting sleeping men, tempted them, and bore them demon offspring.

Lilith the ensnaring demon found her way into most ancient cultures and later to the three monotheistic religions, including Judaism which omitted the “o” from her name. The Bible mentions her in the Book of Isaiah in a passage that describes the devastation of the land in the Day of God; Lilith is a winged creature that dwells in desolate places.

Although she appears only once in the Bible, she became “popular” in the Talmud and its legends as Adam’s first wife. Her figure helped the commentators to account for the two biblical versions of
creation; the first version says “...man and female created he them”
(Genesis, 1:27). Hence the commentators concluded that like Adam, she was formed from dust. (In the second version God created man first, and when he complained of his loneliness, God created Eva from Adam’s rib. Genesis 2:21-23).

The Talmud says that Lilith was a sturdy woman who stood up for her rights in all matters, including sex. When Adam refused to allow her the missionary position, she furiously uttered God’s forbidden name and flew away.

 

Per Adam’s request, God sent after her three angels, Snwy, Snsnwy and Smnglf, who found her in the Red Sea. The angels threatened to kill each day 100 of her demon sons unless she returned. Lilith refused, claiming she was destined by God to weaken and control human babies after their birth. To maintain her freedom, she swore to spare a baby whenever she'd see an amulet bearing the angels’ forms.

This legend reappeared in slightly different versions in Christian literature. Lilith was given different names and the angels became three saints (Sines, Sisinnios, Synodoros). Lilith was adopted also by Islam as Karina or Tabi’a. A Jewish Muslim legend claimed Lilith was half-human half-jinn. In a late translation of the Book of Job from the fifth century, Lilith appears as the Queen of Sheba, the very symbol of the foreign temptress.

In the Kabbalah Lilith gained further reputation as nocturnal creature that lures men and bears them numerous demons. She became the head of a demonic flock, one of the four matriarchs of the Sitra Achra, the “other” evil parallel world. Lilith, who was also the spouse of Samael, ruler the evil other side, was the “mother” of every defilement. Christian demonology adopted Lilith as queen of witches who had nightly orgies with Satan and other demons.

Her role as babies’ killer and demonic temptress lasted through the centuries, and from the 18th century onward we find amulets featuring the three angels’ names and their forms, and at times even Lilith’s own image locked in chains.

Lilith, the lustful demon of monotheistic religions and the pedagogic counter-example of proper sexuality, made it to our times and figures in popular culture, where she continues to haunt men with new tactics.

However, next week I will bring a new interpretation of Kabbalistic texts that sheds a whole new and surprising light on this all too feminine figure.

 

“From death, from the fear of death arises all knowledge of the All.”
- Franz Rosenzweig, The Star of Redemption

 

Writing from the Macedonian trenches of First World War, the Jewish philosopher Franz Rosenzweig sought redemption in the face of absolute annihilation. Rosenzweig’s opening line, that the fear of death is the beginning point of our belief in the transcendent, rebelled against Western philosophical tradition, which subordinated transcendence to Reason and repressed the fear of death.

While mysticism is often the attempt to “conquer” death by uniting with the divine, Sefer ha-Zohar presents a vivid approach that creates a practical relation between this world and the divine realms that await us.
Death, the mystery of annihilation or the return to divine origins, is depicted in Sefer ha-Zohar as the transition to an active afterworld, bustling with the souls of the dead, who are busy with either pleading for the living or greeting the souls of the newly dead, showing them around...

Death is anticipated and experienced by every night’s sleep which functions as a rehearsal, and when it finally occurs, it operates much like a well-organized journey run by efficient divine delegates.

The verdict of death is decided by Divine authority on Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish new year, delivered on the Day of Atonement (Yom Ha-Kippurim), and sealed on the day of great supplication (Hoshanah Rabah – the last day of the Holiday of Sukkot). Once judgment is sealed, the angels descent to collect the tzelem (likeness of the Creator) of the condemned, who from now on ceases to belong to the world of the living and whose soul becomes more and more reluctant to return from its nocturnal wanderings in the upper worlds.

The event of death itself is depicted as the terrible and sorrowful separation of the Ruach (the spirit part of the soul) from its body. The spirit wanders fiercely among the limbs, departing from each limb at a time. Meanwhile, the four elements, fire, water, wind, and earth, which are tied together in the body, struggle to dissolve their knot and disintegrate the body.
While body and soul are tormented by the pangs of severance, the dying person meets with Adam, whose sin introduced death in the first place. The purpose of this encounter is to have that person remember her own sins. An even more intimidating encounter occurs with the fiery angel of death – his jaw reaching the floor, his body covered with eyes, his cloths blazing, and whose infernal appearance marks the final moment as he grabs Nefesh, the lowest part of the soul. However, this notorious angel has no control over Neshama, the soul’s highest part, that is taken by the angel Gabriel.
Finally, death is announced in all the upper worlds. The Zohar mentions two hundred and seventy worlds, the numerical value of the Hebrew word Ra, evil. As a result, if the dying person was righteous, his death reverses evil into good; otherwise, he’s sentenced to suffering in these very worlds.
Naturally, these colorful, vivid descriptions have en educational purpose: there is an afterworld and our actions will bear severe, eternal consequences. Contemptus mundi is another intended lesson: the body is but the malbush, the earthly garment of the soul, who strives to return to the origin of origins.
And yet, paradoxically, the very righteous souls have to stay behind, and spend their eternal life in a special paradise (or return through incarnation), because their souls are needed to maintain the world of the living. Death thus is not the ultimate end but the transition into parallel worlds through which our souls continue to wander.

Article first published as The Life of the Dead in Sefer-ha-Zohar on Blogcritics.

“I am a Dreamer” - Marc Chagall, 1912

In the classical Kabbalah text of Sefer ha-Zohar, sleep is a perilous journey into the realms of death and destruction; the soul leaves the body and ascends into the upper world of the Sefirot, leaving only a fraction of itself to sustain physical existence. The night is ruled by Shekhinah (the feminine presence of God), and the darkness is the realm of the sitra achra – the “Other Side” of the destructive forces of evil and death (Lyla, "night" in Hebrew, comes from the same root as the name Lilith, the female arch-devil.)

The soul becomes hostage of the Shekhinah that keeps it in the Tree of Death and may or may not release it to its body in the morning.
While the body remains behind, subject to detrimental forces, the soul goes through defiled realms and confronts harmful angels and wicked spirits that try to capture her. Finally, the soul faces a trial and has to account not only for its actions on that day but also for every word that she has uttered.

Sleep is not a time of rest, to say the least, and dreams, too, have an ambivalent status.

On the one hand, only the pious and righteous souls can escape and reach Azilut (eternal divine realm), where those souls learn the secrets of the Torah and are rewarded with mystical insights that later on reappear in their wakeful state as prophecies or premonitions. On the other hand, the wicked souls receive demonic messages that will haunt them in their wakeful state.

Here Sefer ha-Zohar introduces an ontological dilemma; since malevolent spirits try to trick righteous souls (as part of the soul’s initiation into the divine), they feed them with lies and false prophecies. At the same time, every dream, even the most absurd one, may contain a grain of truth. How can we tell “real” dreams from “false” ones, authentic visions from fake?

Every dream needs a good interpreter that will be able to separate truth from falsehood. Sefer ha-Zohar adopts the Talmudic dictum that dreams “follow the mouth,” namely that they depend on their interpretation, but more importantly, that an un-deciphered dream is like an unread letter; to a large extent, our world rests on the construct of our words.

I just returned from the Chagall exhibition at the AGO in Toronto. Gazing at the flying figures that hover between heaven and earth, or the light that shines from his work, I felt as if I entered the mysterious fusion of dream and reality, as if the Zohar suddenly came to life in Chagall’s world.

Article first published as Kabbalah: Sefer ha-Zohar’s Mysterious Reality of Dreams on Blogcritics.

Kabbalah is the secret meaning of the Torah and as such it employs a unique method of interpretation. A classic Kabbalah text, Sefer ha-Bahir, composes clarifications and reflections on different quotes from the Torah along with sayings by ancient sages. Gimatria, the numerical value of the Hebrew alphabet, is another famous method of extracting or investing meaning; the very nature of Hebrew calls for wordplay. Above all, according to Kabbalistic tradition, God created the world with the Hebrew letters that thus gained for them an ontological status.

Following this tradition, the Bahir interprets biblical verses to create new ideas and symbols that will eventually become part and parcel of the Kabbalistic lore.
Although seemingly unsystematic, the Bahir follows its own logic of association and improvisation.
For instance, a discussion of God’s attributes, “Holy Forms” of mercy and restraint (judgment), leads to the comparison of these traits with gold and silver and next to the reflection on gold:

“Why is [gold] called ZaHaB? Because it includes three attributes. “

The Bahir elaborates on the three letters Z, H and B (pronounced V.)
The letter Z in Hebrew is the first letter of the word male (Zachar), and the Bahir refers to the male attribute of the first six lower sefirot.
The letter Heh is the fifth letter, whose value is five. Here the Bahir brings up the five names of the soul:
“Nefesh (Soul), Ruach (Wind-Spirit), Neshama (Breath), Chaya (Vitality), Yechida (Uniqueness).”
Finally, Bet is the sustenance of the entire creation. Bet, the second letter of the alphabet, is the first letter of the Torah. It represents the Sefira of Chokhma (Wisdom), that links God and his creation.
In the following passage, the Bahir takes those three elements and recombines them into a new constellation. As a result, the male is now God, the Bet stands for creation, and the soul is the window that allows us to glimpse our creator.
Another example is when the Bahir discusses the Divine Presence that is manifested through the seven lower Sefirot:

“I have already told you that the Blessed Holy One has seven Holy Forms. All of them have a counterpart in man, as it is written (Genesis 9:6), ‘for in the form of God He made Man.’ It is likewise written (Genesis 1:27), ‘In the form of God He made him, male and female He made them.”

The late Rabbi Aryeh Kaplan (a devout practitioner of kabbalistic meditation from New York) explains that in this passage the human body is considered a counterpart of the structure of the lower Sefirot. Since this structure was originally androgynous, Adam was both male and female. (A quick comparison with traditional interpretations demonstrates the boldness of such interpretation).
The Bahir continues this passage with the parable of a garden, a favorite symbol. Gardening entails the wisdom of creation, and the talk about trees and beautiful fruits leads to the question of the nature of beauty. Beauty, notes the Bahir, resides in all things, but ultimately, it relates to “the Female.” The feminine is of course the seventh Sefira, Malkhut-Kingship, that is also identified as the Divine Presence (Shechinah). Next, however, we find a not exactly “politically correct” discussion of the feminine:

“And why is the female called Nekevah? Because her orifices (Nekev) are wide. Also because she has more orifices than the male. What are they? They are the orifices of the breasts, the womb, and the receptacle.”

Aryeh Kaplan’s explanation ameliorates the situation. Although the word “Nekev” (orifice) refers to a woman in the physical sense, it points to the spiritual orifice of Malkhut-Kingship. It is through this Sefira that we can ascend into the spiritual realm.
The Bahir and Kaplan’s explanations give an ample example to demonstrate the rather playful nature of Kabbalistic reasoning. So much so, that it is sometimes hard to decide whether the meaning preceded the word or perhaps the alphabetic logic dictated the story.

 

Article first published as Kabbalah: The Secret Play of the Hebrew Letters on Blogcritics.

Sefer HaBahir, the book of Brightness, is one of the oldest and most important classical Kabbalah texts. Paradoxically, it is also one of the most puzzling and obscure books.

Historically, it first appeared in Southern France around 1176 and until its first printed version, it circulated only among small Kabbalistic circles. Its author is unknown, but the Kabbalist tradition ascribes it to Rabbi Nehuniah ben Hakana because the Bahir begins with his words. Rabbi Nehuniah was a Talmudic sage of the first century, known as the leader of a major mystical school that flourished in the Holy Land exploring speculations on the nature of the Divine, and introduced various new and central concepts into Kabbalah, like the system of the sefirot as divine potencies, or the symbol of the cosmic “tree that is all” as the source of being and souls.

For the first time, the Bahir uses sexual language to describe God, appearing as the combination of the perpetual dynamic of masculine and feminine forces. Sexual symbols are also an important tool for analyzing Hebrew letters and show their significance and connection to the human body on the one hand, and to the cosmic reality on the other. Some letters are phallic (anyway an abundant symbolism in the Bahir), a few yonic (pertaining to female sexuality), and, most interesting, some are considered hermaphroditic.
The anthropomorphic connection between the divine spheres and human body also produces a peculiar view of evil. The Bahir not only conceives Satan as an evil attribute of God, but concretizes Satan as the left hand that is the source of chaos (Tohu, from a root meaning “confounded”). This provocative idea claims that Tohu, the cosmic source evil, is as a matter of fact part of God. 

Scholem, the founder of academic Kabbalah, pointed out, this reminds us of Jung’s idea that a genuine God must have a diabolic aspect. This view (which had Kabbalistic followers) may have been the reason the Bahir was rejected by some prominent Kabbalists who couldn’t accept such a sacrilegious notion of God.

The problem of evil in Sefer Bahir is also related to the introduction of the idea of gilgul, re-incarnation (later developed in the Zohar, in Sefer Gilgulim and other writings of the Ari’s school). In the Bahir, re-incarnation explains the problem of injustice in this world; punishment and reward are a result of one’s previous life rather than a direct consequence of the present. As such, the idea of re-incarnation becomes a theodicy, i.e. the justification of the belief in divine providence. This is of course a rather unsettling scheme if one considers God’s satanic attribute...

Article first published as Kabbalah: Sefer HaBahir - Satanic Attribute of the Divine on Blogcritics.

 

 
“The truth of Malkhut, the only truth that shines in the night of the Sefirot, is that Wisdom is revealed naked in Malkhut, and its mystery lies not in existence but in the leaving of existence. Afterward, the Others begin again.”

 Umberto Eco, Foucault’s Pendulum

Reading Eco’s book, I was pleased to find the prophetic Kabbalist Abraham Abulafia and his system of meditation featured in a postmodern work of fiction, as no less than a personal computer.

Befitting its historical human precursor, Abulafia the computer generates the variations of God’s 720 names along secret files and possibly impossible schemes. The book reads like a coincidental conjunction of plots and subplots, much in the vein of Abulafia's (the historical) method of reaching the Absolute by permutations of words and names. As such, it is constantly reminiscent of the other infinitely potential plots, much like the God of the Kabbalah who created several worlds before he decided on ours.

This is postmodern fiction, which means it parodies the idea of a coherent, plausible logic of events. Consequently, it also puts on the same level mystical devotion, religious orders, the occult, and, to a certain extent, even science. It quotes equally from Abraham Abulafia, Eliphas Levi (19th century French occultist), Aleister Crowley (20th century British occultist and magician), Alexander Dumas, Woody Allen, Thomas Burnet (17th century British theologian) and many others. The juxtaposition of Kabbalists, mystics, theologians, and occultists with writers of fiction serves well to demonstrate the book's general attitude towards the credibility of the above.

And yet...The first chapter starts with a quotation from Isaac Luria (the Safed 16th century Kabbalist) describing the emanation of infinite light that initiated the creation of the world, and now, of the book. From there, the chapters’ names emulate the emanation of the sefirot in the Tree of Life, and different references and interpretations of Kabbalistic ideas weave a poetics of Kabbalah – for instance, the allusion to Zimzum, the act of self limitation the Absolute comitted in order to make room for the “Other.” As Eco puts it,

“...for creation had to be inspired by love of someone who is not ourselves.”

It's interesting to note that this beautiful interpretation of Luria has been already thought of by Chaim Volozin, an orthodox rabbi, whose ethical work (Nefesh Ha-Chaim, the Spirit, or Soul, of Life), is based on Isaac Luria’s system. Hence, by almost a coincidence of opposites (another Kabbalistic theme), Eco’s poetics meets Jewish mysticism.

However, the most apt undercurrent is the impossibility of being a total skeptic or an absolute believer. As one of the characters puts it:

“’It’s not true, but I believe in it? Well, I don’t believe in it, but it’s true.’”

One fact remains certain; there will be an end, of the book or of one’s life. It may be that mysticism is the wish to overcome this absolute, to conquer it. Or more humbly, perhaps mysticism is about finding consolation in the face of the only definite absolute.

 

 

Article first published as Kabbalah: Umberto Eco's Poetics Meets Jewish Mysticism on Blogcritics.

Abraham Abulafia remains one of the unique and fascinating figures in the history of Jewish thought. His creativity spun over various fields; philosophy and Kabbalah, science and mathematics, interpretation and linguistic along prophecy and meditation. His uniqueness lies not only in his specific system and opinions, but in his very style, soaked with imagination, secrets and oppositions. Abulafia was a figure of contradictions, an amalgamation of brilliant talents and awkward idiosyncrasies.

We know relatively much about his personal life since he included generously autobiographic details in his writings, revealing his hot temper and bitter disappointment of his students and fellow Kabbalists.

He was born in Zaragora, Spain, in 1240, a significant date on the Hebrew calender, which counts from the birth of Adam. Accordingly, Abulafia was born on the year 5000 that literally began a new millennium, a fact Abulafia was well aware of and cited as proof he was destined for extraordinary assignments.

He referred to himself as Messiah, meaning mostly that man should become his own redeemer by developing his spirituality and reaching mystical union. However, his opponents interpreted these expressions as Abulafia’s pretense to being a historical Messiah. This accusation was verified when in 1280, Abulafia, in one of the most dramatic adventures of his life, decided it was time to convert the Pope. This took place just a few days before Rosh Ha-Shanah, and the Pope was Nicholas III, best known for establishing the Vatican as the permanent base of papacy and for sending missionaries to Persia and China.
Abulafia himself documented this conversion attempt in his book Sefer HaEdot (Book of Testimony), calling himself Raziel, the angel who taught Adam the mysteries. As Abulafia noted, the numerical value of the angel’s name, 248, equals Abulafia’s first name- Abraham, and both names had the same number of letters, a fact that according to Abulafia enhanced the connection between him and this angel.

Abulafia arrived to Rome, planning to appear before the Pope on the day before Rosh-Ha-Shanah. The Pope who was at the time in Saronno, instructed the gatekeepers to lock up Abulafia and burn him at the stake. That night, as Abulafia recounts, he meditated and had wonderful visions and knew God would save him from his enemies.
The next day, as he was about to enter Rome, a messenger told him the Pope had died the previous night. From that moment on, Abulafia regarded his miraculous escape as a sign of the covenant between God and himself.

Apart for this incident, Abulafia referred to his system as spiritual messianism and prophetic Kabbalah that aims at releasing the mind and soul from earthly bonds to reach a union with the Divine.
He wrote forty two books but only a handful has survived since his work was condemned by prominent rabbis, including Kabbalists, although, he was highly esteemed by others, like the important Kabbalist Joseph Gikatilla.

Abulafia criticized theosophical Kabbalist (who concentrated on describing divine spheres) since his own Kabbalah was based on a rational system of meditation. He regarded God as the active intellect that surpasses everything, a kind of cosmic stream that endows being with forms. This force exists everywhere, certainly in the human soul. By meditating, we rid our physical being of its crudity ("Satan," for Abulafia who had issues with sexual desire...) and unite with the cosmic spirit.

Abulafia died around 1291 in Comino, a Maltese Island. His few surviving writings remain up to these days some of the most important sources for instructing Kabbalistic meditation through permutations and combinations of the Hebrew alphabet.

Article first published as Kabbalah - Abraham Abulafia the Prophetic Kabbalist on Blogcritics.

”...the contributions of Freud are to be understood largely as a contemporary version of, and a contemporary contribution to, the history of Jewish mysticism. Freud consciously, or unconsciously, secularized Jewish mysticism; and psychoanalysis can intelligently be viewed as such a secularization”

(David Bakan, Sigmund Freud and and the Jewish Mystical Tradition).    

 

While many will object to representing Freud as a mystic (and many others will not), mysticism and Kabbalah have been a source of inspiration for psychoanalysts. As I noted in my previous two articles (Rosh Ha-Shanah: The Journey for Redemption and Yom Kippur: Mystical Union), when seen in a psychoanalytic light, peculiar passages from kabbalistic texts render an exciting interpretation.

Indeed, Kabbalah and psychoanalysis share the quest for the laws of a hidden reality; both investigate and try to decipher a hidden truth that can be expressed only via symbols.
The Kabbalah believes in a transcendent, harmonious divine reality that connects with our visible world. It studies the inner laws and working of the Divine and its relationship to human existence.
Further, in Lurianic Kabbalah, the world was created as a result of the Absolute’s attempt to purge the Infinite of its evil potential. This therapeutic process resulted in a catastrophe, and parts of the infinite light fell into the realm of evil. From that point onward, humanity at large, and the Kabbalists in particular, have been engaged in a cosmic drama of restoration known as Tikkun –mending. The Lurianic system ascribes an essential role to the human soul in the process of Tikkun, and dedicates an entire work (Shaar Ha-gilgulim, the gate of re-incarnations) to the structure of the human soul and the idea of re-incarnation (gilgul). It divides the soul into five parts and conceives re-incarnation as the journey of these parts to unite with each other and finally with their divine origin.

Psychoanalysis is the quest for the hidden reality of the self and its restitution. It seeks knowledge and understanding of the laws and logic of the unconscious (Freud) or the psyche (Jung), in order to heal and achieve a sense of liberation from pathology.
While any relation between Freud’s theories and Kabbalah remains implicit and is a question of interpretation, it is clear that Jung was attracted to mysticism. In his later work he referred to Jewish mysticism and even claimed to have had Kabbalistic dreams and visions (his approach to Judaism remains nevertheless problematic). He also maintained that Jewish mysticism was a forerunner not only of his work, but of Freud’s as well.

 

Article first published as Kabbalah: The Mystical Origin of Psychoanalysis on Blogcritics.

 
Yom Kippur (Day of Atonement) and Purim (Day of Lots) seem to be diametrically opposed. The first is about atonement through ascetic practices, the second is a day of sensual indulgences: a specific commandment orders one to eat and drink to the point of excess.

A passage in Tikkunei Zohar (the later parts of the great Kabbalist work from the 13th century) notes that Yom Kippur should be read as yom ke-purim, meaning “a day like Purim,” indicating that Yom Kippur, the holiest of holidays, is almost as significant as Purim...

Purim is carnavalesque by nature; it is about masking and merrymaking, and mainly about forgetting boundaries. The Talmud instructs that one must drink on Purim to the point of not recognizing the difference between the expressions “cursed is Haman” (the gentile villain of Purim) and “blessed is Mordechai” (the Jewish Purim hero). As the contemporary Kabbalist Itamar Shwartz notes, the two expressions are equal in numerical value (502). Because Purim is the culmination of a yearly ritual (which has begun in the Passover), it reaches the point beyond ritual and marks the union with “him, blessed be he.”

Effacing boundaries is the mark of the mystical union. It is a bold and provocative step that pertains to the overall nature of the Kabbalah. Although Kabbalah is the secret interpretation of the Torah, it is also a subversive tradition. Whether it is about magic and amulets, anthropomorphic images, or bold speculations, the Kabbalah responds to undercurrents of desire and fear of both the collective and the personal.

Yom Kippur is a fearful day as it forces us to prepare for death; we fast from drink, food, and sex. We beg for forgiveness as if it were our last day, and some even wear their burial cloths. Heaven is opened, and we stand in the presence of great mystery.

Last week I mentioned Yom Kippur as the union of divine mother and daughter. My friend Rachel Israel, a prominent psychoanalyst, reacted with enthusiasm. It turns out that, in psychoanalysis, the relation between mother and daughter is a stormy one, not to say violent, due mainly to the lack of difference, or opposition, between female and female. Seen in a positive light, the unification between mother and daughter in Yom Kippur is an ultimate union that transcends all oppositions. It leads back to the undifferentiated state prior to Creation, and emulates the union with Divine Origin.

Read more: http://blogcritics.org/culture/article/kabbalah-yom-kippur-mystical-union/#ix...

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Article first published as Kabbalah: Yom Kippur - Mystical Union on Blogcritics.