Jewish Mysticism Explained | Exploring Kabbalah

[Applause] [Music] welcome to exploring Kabbalah an introduction to an ancient Jewish mystical tradition one that's inspired contemporary interest interpretation and practice we begin with a seemingly simple question how exactly is the very word pronounced for answers returned to Rabbi Ari soulish of Chabad in town in Atlanta an Orthodox Jewish community it's a great question so I've I've heard it many different ways I will tell you that Hebrew the traditional Hebrew way of pronouncing the word is Kabbalah Kabalah is a Hebrew word that means received or tradition and it's interested in to word you know Judaism is very much associated with tradition I think the song fiddler on the roof made it tradition made it very very popular so tradition is in Judaism a very important a very important element and in many cultures and societies and religion is very important but Jewish mysticism specifically is referred to as the Kabbalah which is the received wisdom although all of Jewish teaching Jewish thought has been received if you will by one generation from the previous generation it specifically associated with the Jewish Jewish mystical teachings and one of the reasons for that is because without the tradition the Kabbalah remains a locked work that cannot be open by the average individual a common understanding is that one cannot begin to study Kabbalah until you reach the age of 40 what I mean by a lot work is that the way that it's written the way that Kabbalah is written is it's pretty much encoded in a very cryptic language in order to keep it away from the masses this is an ancient one of the ancient protocols of the Kabbalah was to relegate it to a nivara to a very exclusive group of students very exclusive group of students that had gone through years of study and as you mentioned this is where I'll mention the the the age-old restriction of being 40 years old and it wasn't just the age 40 it was being 40 years of age as well as being well versed and learned in all areas of Judaism in in biblical text and Talmudic tax and madrasah tax and Jewish legal tax it's it's a person that was well versed an expert if you will in all of these texts and was 40 was deemed to be appropriate to to welcome into the circle of the Mystics of the Cabalists so it's not just the age the reason for 40 is that it says in Jewish tradition that until one is 40 one's understanding one's one's mind is not fully formed I can't comment on this scientifically or biologically the way we understand the brain today I don't know if there's a significance and our current scientific understandings of the age 40 but certainly a Jewish tradition it says that when a person turns 40 they gain and measure of beena being a means understanding so it was it was accepted as the tradition and then until one is 40 and one's mind is fully settled it's not a good idea to introduce esoteric wisdom that might confuse or befuddled the the student so that is have a solid foundation in in the rest of Jewish teachings have a solid have gained that type of settling of mine and then we can introduce the individual to Kabbalistic teachings now with that being said and I know this is something that we'll talk about a little bit later on as we progress through the generations of Kabbalistic teachings today that restriction is for the most part not adhere to and so people will study and teach Kabbalah even under the age of 40 and there's a reason why and and we can get into that I want to get into it now or if we can get into it soon just to mention quickly now the reason for that it's because the way Kabbalah is in the latter generations I mean over the last four or five centuries so Kabbalah has been taught in a way that is accessible to the masses the great mystics saw fit in in more more recent times to open up the floodgates to open up the the wisdom and make it accessible to to everyone for very specific reasons historically what were these teachings that were so complex they should remain hidden from the masses the way I usually explain it as Kabbalah speaks of two realities it speaks about the cosmic realities ie the spiritual realities of the universe God and the higher realms of existence and at the very same time at the very same time it speaks of the reality inside of us our spirit that we possess that we possess inside that drives us and animates us and inspires us and and and carries us through our life here on earth so really when you look at it Kabbalah speaks of the macrocosm and the microcosm it speaks very big very large it speaks about God and I'll use the term now that's a very classic couple of the term it speaks about sphere wrote which are divine and the native energies that are that are in the woven in the fabric of creation which we can talk about at greater length soon but it speaks of these these grand ideas and realms beyond our reality of existence and it speaks so seuss of these higher elements the same time it speaks about what's inside of us so it's like exploring the beyond and exploring the within and although it sounds like it couldn't these two these two areas of discussion of focus of study couldn't be further from each other that the truth is they are intimately connected because when you understand the spiritual energies in the universe you can understand the spiritual realities inside yourself and conversely when you understand the spiritual and inside yourself you can understand the patterns of spirituality in the universe itself it's almost like if you take a drop of water from the ocean you can get a sense of the type of water that is in the ocean itself you don't need to analyze all of the water to get a sense of what are the chemical with what are the what are the properties within these molecules of water in this specific body of water all you need is one sample and it's like and not not not any different than human DNA you take a small sample or just one hair follicle and you can get it get a reading on the entire system of of the human being so there's a verse there's a verse that that I believe King Solomon writes it's either King Solomon or King David it's in the Hebrew it's amoeba sorry and settle okay and the English what it means is from my flesh I perceive the divine and there are different ways of understanding this one simple way of understanding this is that the author is saying from where I stand I can still behold something greater than myself although I stand here on a physical reality I can still see I can gaze up and and look at and behold something greater than myself but there's another deeper way of understanding it and that is me but sorry from my own flesh when I look at my own self I can see patterns of the divine so knowing our own soul actually gives us insight into how God if you will operates as well so these I would say if we had to encapsulate what is Kabbalah what does it speak of you'll find one of two things either it's speaking about God or it's speaking about the soul that's pretty much it these mystical teachings are even believed to date to the time of creation as recounted in the Hebrew Scripture so the Jewish Bible via the Torah says that Adam and Eve are the first human beings Adam according to Jewish tradition was a Kabbalist so they yeah the very first human being wasn't just you know the guy who got kicked out of the Garden of Eden which he also was they both got kicked out for the but he was also a mystic where do we see this so there's a tradition that Adam the first day that he was created and he was created as an adult it wasn't created as a as a baby so the first in his first few hours of existence says that he named all of the animals he gave them their Hebrew names now Hebrew is a very powerful language it's known as the language of creation itself the 22 letters of the Hebrew alphabet are actually the patterns of energy that are in that that are that that that's a fuse reality with life itself now that's another topic that we can get into but the point is that Hebrew Hebrew language the Hebrew letters and Hebrew words are very significant in sort of revealing the energy that drives that thing that's name with that name so it says that Adam named gave all of the animals their Hebrew names which means that he was able to peer into their soul and he was able to assess what type of spirit energy that animal had and give the appropriate hebrew name that reflected that energy because as I just mentioned every Hebrew letter and every Hebrew word carries with it or represents a certain type of divine energy and so Adam wasn't just the first human being but he was also the first human being that had insight into spirituality which makes sense because he was close to the origins of was closed close to the source with the capital S so it makes sense that he had he had some insights so this is that Adam was a catalyst Abraham was a capitalist Abraham according to many many commentaries Abraham wrote that mystical work called safer yet Sarah which means the book of formation which is a book that details many elements of how God created the universe and how that creation unfolds on a mystical spiritual level and it's also been said some of some viewers may know and have heard of this tradition of the goal the translate golem a Frankenstein esque type of creation that appears throughout Jewish history including probably most famously in Prague several centuries ago at the great Maharal of Prague who is the the tradition goes that he created this golem to protect the Jewish people against programs and other sorts of libelous and-and-and attacks against the community but all of the golems are created using the techniques of safer eat sirrah author by again according to many author by Abraham so if you want to know how to create how to take some clay and give it some life perhaps you can find the answer in Safe Routes your I've looked I haven't found it yet but but it says that that those that have those that have been able to somehow bring inanimate objects to life have you sacred sure but my point is really when we talk about the development of Kabbalah and who are some notable capitalists so we're talking about Adam we're talking about Abraham Isaac and Jacob the other patriarchs or all the Jewish patriarchs are also considered to been capitalist Moses was a capitalist and says Moses received the Torah from God at Sinai and he uses the word Cobell received like Kabbalah so the tradition goes that not only did he receive the simple elements of Jewish wisdom but he also received the esoteric wisdom as well the hidden wisdom about God and about the soul and about the core of everything though Kabbalah flowered in the 13th century in Spain with a publication of a comprehensive mystical commentary on the Hebrew Bible a text known as the Zohar Kabbalah's teachings and understandings of biblical interpretation were never stagnant but continuously evolving over the generations what happened between the ancient times times of Abraham Isaac Jacob Moses in the 1500s so Kabbalah and I kind of alluded to this for a Kabbalah was always taught but always taught in a very secretive group you had to be on the inside to get the wisdom you had it you had a note somebody that knew somebody to get invited hey meet me in the forest by the tree and we're gonna we have a we have a small study group over there so you had to be the right type of person you had to have the right amount of wisdom and you had to be trusted with this wisdom as well and the understanding is that because it speaks so much about God and due to the limitations of human language so there is some anthropomorphism used in other words there is some terminology that typically applies to human beings that is applied to and in the conversation about God and spiritual spiritual spirituality so therefore it's very important that the student of Kabbalah be very firmly grounded in belief in awareness of what God is an 11 so that this student is not confused by what he or she studies in the mystical tradition so that's another reason why a lot of restriction was put in place about who could study and when they could study etc but it was always taught it was taught it says that that that even the the the the prophetic tradition so all the Jewish prophets so the methodology and the way to summon if you will a prophetic experience that is also part of the mystical tradition the Kabbalistic tradition and that was taught from Moses to Joshua from Joshua who was that Josh was the next Jewish leader after Moses from Joshua to the subsequent Jewish leaders to all of the prophets and it was a tradition unbroken chain of tradition that was passed down in addition to this Moses when he was taught the Torah when he received the Torah at Mount Sinai so he received not only the written text of the Bible of the the five books of Moses but he received all of the explanations and all of the commentary if you will on that as well all of the explanations were taught to him and then he was told right down so write these words down but here's what it means but what does it mean it can mean different things on different levels there are traditionally four levels of Torah interpretation and it's known as the Paradise which is the orchard it stands for it's an acronym in Hebrew that stands for Anna I mentioned four Hebrew words and I'll explain what they mean chat Ramez drew sh and sewed so shat remiz drew showed the acronym the first letter of all those four words is powered ace which means Orchard if you ever encounter the the term orchard in a mystical sense it doesn't mean a bunch of apple trees what it means is what it means is the the different layers of interpretation that exists within within Jewish wisdom within Torah wisdom the first is the simple basic meaning of the verse the second is what we would call the allegorical meaning which means that it says one thing but it hints to something else something else that's kind of a parallel idea but one idea is kind of leading to another idea then you have drush jerusha's the homiletic elantra predation that is where you take an idea that's Todd in the Bible and you kind of you learn life lessons from it and you apply it in a way that can further our character for example some character driven life lessons from the blue text and then you have the fourth dimension which is known as sowed which literally means the secrets and so that's where the Kabbalah lies in that fourth dimension of of Jewish thought so it's almost like if you peel layers of an onion let's say so you have an outer layer you peel that back you have now a more inner layer you peel that back inner layer and then you get to the core of it the core of it is the secret the sowed that all four levels of Torah knowledge of Jewish wisdom that was all transmitted to Moses at Sinai and Moses then passed it down from he was the teacher from mentor to disciple and then fermented the disciple throughout the generations typically taught in smaller groups there were specific individuals throughout the ages that did a more I would say that went a little bit more public with the teachings so notably rabbi Shimon bar Yochai known as the rash B so he was a great sage that lived in the the first and second centuries of the Common Era it's around the Year 135 so we're talking 135 89 30 years ago whatever they almost 2,000 or so so in the Year 135 rabbi Shimon bar Yohai began opening up his wisdom he was a student of Rabbi Akiva who was also a mystic in fact the Talmud says parenthetically that Rabbi Akiva was one of four notable scholars who went into the orchard it says our barn if landslip our days for entered the orchard I mentioned before entering the orchard does not just walk him into a field into a place that things are growing it means entering into a mystical experience as well because it has now all four dimensions of scholarship so the Talmud says the four entered the orchard one died one became a heretic one went mad he lost the sanity and only Rabbi Akiva entered in peace and left in peace he clearly was of the command and by the way that's a cautionary tale of the Talmud says that not everyone is ready to jump into the secrets the deep secrets of Kabbalah because it can it can affect one in a very in a very dramatic way and not always the person able to handle that type of experience I can liken it to him if fewers are wondering like what does that actually mean maybe a physical analogy that we can give is gazing at the Sun so you would say what's wrong with the Sun the sun's a wonderful thing we ought the Sun we need the Sun to live you need something light you need warmth you and and the Sun is as bright it's beautiful so why not look at the Sun the answer is because the eye the eye is not designed to look at the Sun directly and if you look at the Sun directly it can actually harm the physical structure of the eye so the parallel is drawn that the same thing she with Kabakov Allah is such pure divine wisdom in its most brilliant form its most luminous form that just staring at it without sunglasses that the proper of protection so to speak could be could have a negative at the latias effect on the individual that is stunning it and so therefore the Talmud is telling us that for entered 3 didn't survive the experience in a healthy way 3 weren't able to integrate it in healthy way only rebbi akiva was he was able to enter in peace and exit in peace one of his primary students was rabbi Shimon bar Yohai and rabbi Shimon bar Yochai is known as one of the greatest mystics of all time in that not only did he know the tradition but that he taught the tradition in an unparalleled way so the it sits around the year 135 forever Shem bar Yohai he was wanted by the roman by by the romans there were severe roman decrees on Judea at that point the temp second temple had been destroyed in the year 70 the Jews many Jews millions of Jews had been brutally slain in the Roman conquering of the temple they destroyed the holy temple they raised it to the ground except for the western wall which exists today still today they lots of bloodshed and they expelled many of the Jews outside of the Land of Israel some pockets remained and then there was a certain point of time where there were revolts the Jews tried to throw overthrow the Romans that had overthrown them so to speak and so eventually the Romans really put down tighten the screws on the Jewish community they said there's no teaching Torah publicly there's no Jewish ritual that's allowed and and they just very very difficult decrees against Jewish life for Jewish continuity or one of those that defy these these these decrees was rubbish Shimon bar Yohai to the point that he was one that he was sought to be killed by the Roman government so the tradition has it tamo discusses this that he hid in a cave for 13 years with the son and it was in that time that he really formulated to a greater extent and taught to his son to a greater extent the teachings of Kabbalah of Jewish mysticism when he got out and he lived a number of years after that so he began teaching this a little bit more publicly and on the last day of his life he taught this to an even greater extent these teachings were written down and they form probably the most famous work of Kabbalah known as the Holy Zohar the Czar Hakadosh now Zohar is the name in Hebrew and it literally means radiance so you might see it in English that's called the book of radiance the book of radiance is the book of the Tsar and it contains a very comprehensive collection of Jewish mysticism so although I mentioned before safer he had seer of the book of formation I possibly possibly written by Abraham we don't find a thorough thorough and comprehensive work of Jewish mysticism of very expansive and comprehensive like the Zohar until about 135 of the Common Era and it's then that he teaches rubbish Shimon bar Yohai expounds these teachings and and they are written down now there's a very interesting story with the book of the Czar because it was not published until about eleven hundred years later in the 13th century 12th and 13th century I think was in the 1200 by Rabbi Moses de Lyonne Moshe de Lyon of of Spain now it wasn't it did not see a public exposure until the 13th century so you will have some scholars today that argue that the Zohar does not date back to rabbi Shimon bar Yohai in the year 135 but rather originates in Spain in the the 1200s but but every but all traditional Jewish thought and scholars at that time they accepted the Zohar to have much earlier origins in other words in the 12 hundreds when this was published it was understood then and all the writings that we have from that era of the rabbi's and the scholars that oversaw the project of its publication and study there are unanimous in this thought that it dates back to a much earlier period now how did it where was it for a thousand years and how did it resurface there are different origin theories some say that a scholar Ram bonamana Dee's he had it with him that it was it was this work had been passed down from rabbi Shimon bar Yochai and his students who wrote it down from generation to generation throughout the ages it was passed down in secret in manuscript form and this rabbi had it in Israel he sent it to spate he sent it to Spain to his son but it ended up in the wrong address with moses de Lyonne he got a hold of it and he published it so that's one origin story there are other origin stories that some someone found it somewhere buried somewhere or locked away somewhere in some ancient place of manuscripts where there's different origin stories I don't know which one is correct I don't think anyone knows which one is accurate but the general consensus amongst amongst traditional Jewish scholars dating back centuries is that the Zohar was written by rubbish in Boracay he was this profound mystic in in and around the year 135 he didn't author it himself he taught it but his students wrote it down and it was much much later so that serves as a seminal work of Kabbalistic thought the Tsar however if anybody wants to open up the Tsar you know crack it open and and and read it extremely cryptic very difficult to understand so a student without Kabbalistic training and without knowing how to read it is not really gonna get anything tangible what you'll get is esoterics what you're gonna get is wow this sounds really profound it sounds up there but I have no idea what it means the student of Kabbalah would need a key to unlock the code find out when that key appears and we're in the next edition of exploring Kabbalah [Music]

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Keywords: kabbalah, mysticism, Rabbi Ari Sollish, Hebrew, Jews, Jewish, Bible, Israel, Holy Land, kabalah, kabala, kabbala, kabbalah centre, cabala, qabbalah, kaballah, plata y kabbalah, o que é kabbalah, kabbalah y dinero, estudar kabbalah, kabbalah history, kabbalah secrets, estudo da kabbalah, kabbalah revealed, kabbalah tree of life, kabbalah principles, kabbalah centre brasil, kabalah aplicada, basic kabbalah principles, torah

Id: pGBnJxFwiVs

Length: 27min 55sec (1675 seconds)

Published: Thu Jun 28 2018