Kabbalist Explains Kabbalah and How it Originated

the term Kabbalah yes has a lot of appeal yes in the General market I'm not sure if the General market really knows its true meaning and you are a fan of definitions and terms would you sure let's just start with what what what is Kabbalah can we Define it [Music] I'm David Kaplan I'm from Chicago Illinois I am married with two children I work in marketing and I like to say that I'm a hussard in training wonderful I'm labeled wolf I hail from Australia although I was born in Poland I'm a child of Holocaust Survivors raised in Australia from the age of two and a half and most recently founded a rather creative called Spirit grow which emphasizes the wellness of Mind and Spirit well it's a pleasure to speak with you we're we're label wolf has ended up in the in the realm of spirituality and Maybe by others have defined you as a great kabbalist is the the term Kabbalah yes has um a lot of appeal yes in the General market yes and I I'm not sure if the General market really knows its true meaning and you are a fan of definitions and terms would you sure let's just start with what what what is Kabbalah can we Define it all right firstly it certainly became a buzzword when Madonna adopts it it must have some general relevancy and I think it was that General quest for meaning and spirituality that people's Quest looked for a Jewish equivalent of something which is concurrently spiritual and contemporary while being ancient at the same time the word Kabbalah fitted perfectly what was the Fairly superficial perception of what it was in truth Kabbalah simply means the process of receiving when Moshe rabena when Moses came down from parasinai and taught the Torah he taught it at four distinct levels all of us there you were there I was there that's where we met for the first time you don't remember uh I don't remember I I do we we haven't met them sure okay so he taught everyone the basic meaning of the Torah that's called shut then he took a smaller grouping of people and taught them a deeper level and that became known as Remus Remus means hint or Illusion whereas means plain meaning so smaller group deeper illusion then he took an even smaller grouping of people and taught them the drush level drush is meaning it's so profound that I have to move away from the subject matter for you to understand it which seems like a strange thing to say so I'll give an example from Albert Einstein a young man approaches Albert Einstein and says teach me the theory of relativity so Einstein asks if have you studied any math no physics no so instances no problem I'll teach it to you it goes like this if you're sitting on a sofa with your girlfriend for 10 minutes it'll feel like a mere 10 seconds but if you're sitting on a very hot stove for 10 seconds it'll feel like a full 10 minutes he says that's relativity okay that's what drush is drush is to move away from the subject matter use some analog more truly analogy metaphor and then come back that's why the midrashic literature is full of anecdotes and stories quaint stories which some people say childlike it's not childlike it's a veneer for immense depth and then finally and now getting to your question my sharabina taught the fourth level which was known as sod the word sod in Hebrew means secret it's where reality is abstracted into forces and energetic correlations that lead to creation and speak in terms of the animation of the world and the light and the multi-worlds all right and that big tradition was passed on singularly from teacher to student the student received the teaching the Hebrew infinitive to receive Le cable the noun Kabbalah so that's where the word originates from but that became a Subterranean secretive tradition for reasons which I'll share until we find ourselves in the third century and in the third Century it becomes codified in the person of ravish he codifies it the first written down version but it doesn't become published till 11 900 to A Thousand Years Later by Moses de Leon and he calls that work the Zohar so you've got now a further publication of it but even then it remains a very very limited tradition until we move to the uh 17th century in svat Israel where the mystics start to study it in groups so it's a little bit wider and then finally the balcantov comes along and he popularizes the teachings of it but still only broad Strokes and finally the altered the first Lebow comes and he makes it intelligible through analysis and explanation so that everyone is able to understand it and that's what hasidism does to Kabbalah because Kabbalah as itself the Zohar is inscrutable it's codified there's no way so a long answer to a short question so when people became enamored by Kabbalah in the 1970s and 80s Etc it was an illusion that they became enamored too but it was something they felt was important but I think that those who are genuine searched behind the popularity of the superficial and discovered and therefore generally began to understand what it was that Moses taught at the fourth level at Mount Sinai so maybe that's that's one of the answers because in reality Kabbalah is the inner workings of the Torah okay it's not for beginners though though you know beginners or just people that are curious are searching for meaning and they they in their minds thought well this is a nice venue to capture that but maybe the answer is instead of grasping it at Concepts that they don't really understand you you're you're in your last sentence I think you said hey maybe maybe come to the Chabad house where they teach where they teach this as you know as part of holistic Jewish absolutely correct but as perhaps I would just uh place of different Nuance on one of the things that you said when you said it's not for beginners you see it's important to meet people at the level they're at Once Upon a Time even a mere 100 years ago yeah it was a graduated evolution in Poland or wherever you were and you studied alif base and you got to learn Etc then you progressed the mission and then when you progressed to Gomorrah and then you progressed to the analytics of it etc etc we're not in that world anymore not because we're not in the stator but we're a completely different world where the majority of Jewish people are disconnected from their Judaism now that's a phenomenon that's possibly unique in history now therefore at quite a different strategic approach needs to be employed in the way that we connect and relate to Jewish people who are disconnected from the roots and may not even have interests as such so when I say it's not when you say it's not for beginners I find that we're talking today to a mature age audience whose intellectual prowess is developed whose curiosity levels may be peaked and therefore you have to speak in sophisticated terms and therefore I find no problems starting with the depth of Judaism which is teasingly attractive to speak especially today in a world that tends to wish to be spiritual although the word spiritual today with small s means so many means so many things you know ecological concern environmental concern non-animal testing meditation mindfulness you name it this is all under small s spirituality but it does include spirituality as well and therefore start where they're interested and work your way back to the aleph base so it's the exact reverse process of what perhaps traditionally has always been Jewish Education so I think it is for the beginners in this day and age I I'm going to validate that and support it you you've influenced me you won me over because what I see with my friends and colleagues who a lot of them have been disconnected with Judaism and maybe still some are is they they have a a deep interest in the spiritual side you know who am I why am I here what's the purpose of life is this your God sure why do bad things happen to good people yeah and they're less interested in the United States yeah when do I stand up in Shoal so so I guess it's more of a comment than a question I guess I want to validate and endorse what you're saying and that's been my experience that's been my experience with with my colleagues in the I call them beginners that's probably not a fair term just curious those who are curious and sure aren't as observant as others I think that's one of the things that I have to be careful of is not to emulate The Wider Community sense of spiritual interest meaning many spiritual teachers and many traditions remain at the Airy fairy spiritual level whereas Jewish spirituality tries to bring you back to Earth and by that I mean is yeah you can Fascinate people with the acrobatics of spirituality in Kabbalah and things like that but you have to also allow that to reach the ordinary everyday mundane level of the world and to be able to lift that to a point of interest that it's too is spiritual like for example I'm a I'm writing a book right now which is basically 24 hours in the life of a spiritual Jew I want to demonstrate that waking up is a spiritual experience washing is a spiritual experience dressing is a spiritual experience eating Etc and I take the the reader back to all those and yes I do endorse the high level abstract spirituality but I want to relate it to the ordinary why do you move your hands in this way why do you do things in right and left and up and down and why do we have layers of clothing and what etc etc all of it and it's meaningful right why do we put on our right shoe first if that if I write you first and tie the left shoelace first yes yeah which many people will laugh at and yet it's got very profound spiritual implications right which I'm just learning but I knew there was there's Judaism has a position on everything down to how you should put your shoes on but to interrupt you it has to why because everything has been created and therefore there's an animating Force for everything in existence which is another way of saying that everything is Meaningful and therefore if we can as a human analog align to the meaningfulness of creation then we're actually emulating the creative Force everything has meaning every person that we meet has meaning every action every experience down to putting on your shoes exactly okay awesome so I want to tap into something you said just a little bit earlier about um something that you do in your lectures yes which is to you take take Concepts which I would call complex Concepts and make it understandable to the every man and I want to ask you a specific question next about venting yes I think that's you have a powerful message to share there but I do want to ask you first what is the primary message you seek to convey in your maybe your lectures as a whole or maybe even just the individual lectures like on mindfulness or anger it's not an easy question to answer um I think it's probably integration unification that no matter what the lecture is what the subject matter is it's somewhere on the circumference where all radii points to a Common Center in other words I may be speaking about meditation and mindfulness and people expect me therefore therefore to be able to teach techniques of meditation but I will ask them why meditate what's it just because everyone's saying well you have to meditate but why it's just another technology of human endeavor it doesn't have a goal if it doesn't have a purpose if it isn't part of your total Mission why do it isn't an end in its own right it's only a pathway to something more so meditate you have a goal for example his bonus is a very traditional form of Hasidic meditation what is it is to take a wisdom teaching and integrate it with yourself so you become a living exposition of that teaching so that that day that wisdom teaching becomes practiced that's one format of meditation another form of meditation is a more common one and that is health of the body the body is the vehicle for the expression it's the technology for the expression of the energy of the Soul if the body is not intact then the nashama can't express optimally so it's a very special thing to keep the body in good shape whether that's with eating practices or whether with the exercise practices but also most importantly with Consciousness practices in other words what's the Ambiance of our inner being if it's not a sense of amona and faith and trust then we're open to the vagaries of economic uncertainty geopolitical conflict and violence interpersonal quarrelsome natures and everything else now how do you overcome that so some people say oh well that's reality you've got to live with it but that's not true it's how you view it it's how you frame reality it's how you interpret it and if you can interpret it positively rather than negatively it makes a huge difference not just in your quality of life but the health of your body because as we know full well our mindset is translated down to the cellular level of the body to the chemistry of the body and even things as vague as feeling confident in the presence of one's therapist already is a healing process for yourself as a patient or as a client so all these things are so terribly important in context of what it is that we're able to seek so coming back to your question which was quite different like I speak about different subjects and what would be the primary uh uh Mission or message that I want to give is that everything is interrelated it and everything's part of what we call Oneness and therefore everything that happens to us in life is related appropriately to every circumstance that we happen to be living in in the world at that moment feel comfortable you're part of the plan but we're also the Wild Card of uh creation because we have free choice and that's another subject Choose Wisely sure the Oneness right that yeah if you would ask me what's the what's the comprehensive message it would and that bitter Khan is that there is only good there is only good ultimately ultimately even though it's sometimes it's painful yes and as you stated in your lecture you know bad things are you know um tragic things are occurring we should not accept them we should be sad and cry in the shoulders of those who are suffering we should but at the same time have an underlying sense of reality there's somehow or other a redeeming virtue which we cannot see we cannot understand but having that as a residual in the back of our mind and believing it completely reframes the circumstances indeed [Music]

Channel: Jewish Learning Institute

Views: 156,120

Keywords: jli, Jewish Learning Institute

Id: i3Q_5ulFRD0

Length: 19min 58sec (1198 seconds)

Published: Sun Nov 06 2022