Rabbi Isaac Luria (Arizal) - Visionary Teacher & Spiritual Mystic, a lecture by Rabbi Pini Dunner

we begin this evening's talk as part of our series of great personalities of Jewish history rabbi isaac luria I'm going to refer to him throughout as a result we see in a minute why a result as a visionary teacher and as a spiritual mystic that's really a very interesting topic because it covers a lot of ground and it covers ground that you are somewhat familiar with but you have no idea that you are and I'll tell you what I mean because we're everyone here is familiar with the Jewish calendar and things that we do in Jewish life but what you don't know is that some of the things that you do in Jewish life are not as old as Mount Sinai and they're not as old as the Talmud and not as old as the Midrash and not as old as begun in order ish on him but they actually emanate from a small group of people relatively small under 40 people who lived in a city in Israel called Swat during the 16th century I'm going to give you an example of something that you are so familiar with and you probably think is one of the oldest customs in the Jewish custom book or law book who here has sang lahardee on Friday night everybody right we've all sang dejado de Mikado D didn't exist before the Arizal and his group of followers the concept of embracing Shabbat using the six chapters of Tehillim of the Psalms and singing like a Dodi and embracing the color that is Shabbat as part of the process of wealth welcoming Shabbat and beginning Shabbat is something that comes from a Kabbalistic group of people living in a small town in northern Israel in the Galilee in the 1500s incredible I'll give you another example that some of you may be familiar with hopefully most of you we have a festival that we celebrate on Sukkot it's not mentioned anyway in the Torah it's not mentioned anyway in the Talmud it's called hoshanah Rabbah on hoshanah Rabbah which is the last day of challah made Sukkot we have this incredible governing praying that we do in the morning and we say a whole bunch of penitential prayers the concept being that even though on Yom Kippur the end of Yom Kippur we have an ela which concludes the repentance process which is Authority made to shebar the ten days of penitence of repentance between the beginning of Rosh Hashanah and the end of Yom Kippur actually it carries over carries forward and the kneeler of nila if I can put it that way is on hoshanah Rabbah and we come to the synagogue and as we shake lulav and then we take our ABAT we bang them on the floor we say certain prayers it's quite a long a long doubling on the morning of hoshanah Rabbah there's no basis for it in the Talmud there's no basis for it in the Torah it emanates from a small group of Cabalists who lived in fact in the sixteenth century now I'm just giving you two examples there's many more of things that we do and that we're familiar with Jews whether we are Sephardic Ashkenazim whether we are Hassidim or mitnagdim whatever walk of life we come from whichever country our families may have originated we do these things as part of ordinary Jewish religious life and they have their roots in the Ariza and his group of disciples so I think it makes a lot of sense to really understand who that Ariza was III don't know if you recall last time we spoke about Maimonides and Maimonides is the originator of this idea of codifying Jewish law in a very set law book type of way and the way we observed Judaism is based on Maimonides system he systemized Judaism was all very disorganized before and he systemized it they're a result did something else and that's what we're going to see and much of what he did is reflected in things that you and I do and I have to tell you the most obvious example of that and and here I'm going to end is the concept of the messianic age so although mushiya was something the idea of a messiah is something that originates long before that ariza this yearning for mushiya that permeates every aspect of our Jewish existence is something which he developed in the 16th century and which we have embraced and it had its aberrational moments such as with shut tight sphere who we've spoken about before but the fact that we have this concept that so much of what we do is is to prepare ourselves for a messianic age as you're going to see is very much a central theme of the era's all's cabbalistic ideas so I'm going to begin by saying that the average layman knows very little about the ariza that's a fact we know that he existed we know that he was a Kabbalist and that's really it you know we may know his name you tuck Ben Lauria Ashkenazi and he's known as the IRAs al re because some say it's a and a it's it stands for L okey Robby get stuck which is the godly man rabbi Isaac it could be that he's just because he was a lion of the faith re means lion in Hebrew zal is the Cronulla bracha are easel or re huh Kadosh the Holy lion that's how he's referred to and that's how we here you may have heard him quoted a rabbi speaking and says I'm going to tell you now something that be our easel said or somebody quoted the ariza in one of the books that you've studied there Ariza he was a leader of this group of Cabalists who lived in sput we're going to hear much more about that later on and 16th centuries fact in particular and fat is a town in northern Israel you may know not sure that you do that he died very young so you would assume that someone who had such a profound impact on Jewish life lived to a ripe old age he died at the age of 38 so in his very short lifespan he managed to have this incredible impact on Jewish life and you should know something else that many of the people who we are familiar with in terms of Jewish learning take Maimonides as an example were prolific writers and because they had many students both in the place that they lived and beyond their writings were adopted and became part and parcel ubiquitous in terms of Jewish life we know very little about the writings of the ariza he may have written much more than we're aware of or familiar with that we're actually only knowledgeable about what the a result thought because of the writings of his disciples of his students the main one being a man called are behind Vittal that there are many others and a behind Beatle recorded the teachings of his of his Rebbe of his mentor of his cabbalistic teacher and that was the our result and a result words are recorded through the reflections of what his students heard particularly a behind Beatle now he did write some things he wrote some zoomy wrote that we sing on Shabbat Young's le strat L is is one of the zamira that we sing on Friday night that was written by the IRAs all full of cabbalistic allusions and many other zoomy rots that he wrote to Minot back many two or three others of me wrote that we are familiar with and we're going to see that he participated in one of the most important projects of Talmudic explanations and that's not widely known in the sixteenth century we'll get to that you may know as I've already mentioned that his Kabbalistic teachings and his method of Kabbalah and we haven't yet defined Kabbalah were an inspiration to generations and centuries of Rabbis all the way to this day but not always for the right reasons or not always with good effect so shabby tights fee who was a false messiah used the teachings mainly actually not shoved a three but his his so-called prophet Nathan of Gaza used the teachings of Ariza as a way to propagate this myth this lie that sham tights fee was the Messiah who'd come to liberate the Jews from exile that's something which emanated from the teachings of a result and Hassidim Hasidism in the in the 18th century there was a man called Israel bhishan Tov Rabbi Israel Baal Shem Tov and he came up with this idea he popularized this idea of infusing Judaism with spirituality mysticism and he had many many Talmud dim they became known as Hassidim and those Hassidim really found their inspiration in the teachings of Arisa so if anybody here has been inspired by Hassidim by the music by the singing by the learning by the spirituality of the Hasidic movement they owe their thanks not necessarily also to rubber is rava Shem Tov but they owe their thanks to Ariza who came up with the concepts on that with a platform for the Hasidic movement to begin there's much that we don't know about a reason even I have to tell you that we're going to have a lecture dare I'm not sure exactly how long it's going to last me or forgive me if I go a little bit over the hour but there's much that we don't know about him even the very broad information that we have based on his teachings doesn't tell us much about his his life and you know what he ate for dinner or who his friends were we know his students were we know a lot about the things that he taught we know something about his personality and he was the first person really in Jewish history about whom a huge amount of hagiography emerged because there were so many gas it's in his biography years after he died they wrote a book about him called Shiv K her easel or chef K Hari and that contained many stories some of which might have been true it's possible but many of them were fanciful many of them reported great miracles that he'd done and certainly they were very elaborate and then they were elaborated upon so much of what we know about Ariza has to be drawn from the nuggets of evidence that we have about his life and to the extent that we can extract that information I will try and share some of it with you tonight and we'll find out a lot about him somewhat but it won't tell us much about why he became who he became because really what I want to help you understand and perhaps help myself understand is why he became this inspirational figure why did this young Kabbalist emerge as one of the most important spiritual and mystical teachers of Jewish history the other thing is I want to talk about Safford it's fat we're going to hear about Tsfat fat is not a place which lends itself at least you know if you've been there too this idea that it is the center of Jewish life where is the center of Jewish life we all know the answer to that Jerusalem if you look at the Talmud the Talmud teaches us in Magilla that Eretz Israel is a very holy place then you've got Jerusalem which is even holier as it were than the rest of arity style then you have Temple Mount which is even holier than the rest of Jerusalem then you have the McKee - the temple and then you have the Holy of Holies and it goes up in ascending order in terms of holiness now you can look at the Gemara as much as you want you won't find that mention as one of the holiest places in the Land of Israel so how did it emerge why did it become this Center of Kabbalah and to this day people visit they go on they go on pilgrimages to visits fat and they draw inspiration from fats they go into Ahri's mikvah and the you know I think we have a slide of the Aries mikvah and I reassure the synagogue in which he purportedly prayed and they go visit his graveside and say prayers there where did this begin why did Tsfat become such a center of Jewish mysticism and and Kabbalah so I'm going to try and answer some of these questions I'm not going to manage to answer them all mainly because of limitations of time and also because we don't have all the answers and you're going to see sometimes it's not important to have every answer sometimes in fact the question is or no answer to the question is better than the answer okay so we're going to see a little bit about Ariza spat in Kabbalah tonight and try and put this package together you'll walk away this evening being a little better informed as to why arizal Kabbalah and Tsfat had such a profound impact on your lives to this day use you are part of a system that embraced our ezel and his teachings and you participate in many things that have his imprimatur on them have his stamp on them let's begin with an introduction to Kabbalah what is Kabbalah the word in Hebrew or modern Hebrew it means a receipt that's not what it means in classical Hebrew and in fact the word Kabbalah is it is a word that we use to mean Jewish mysticism but it means received wisdom Kabbalah means like a bell to receive but in most literature written by Cabalists they don't use the word Kabbalah they use different words they use the words mists are hidden hidden teachings they use the word sword to mean secrets things about Judaism which are secret which aren't widely known and every religion any religion anyone who's done a study of comparative religions will know that doesn't matter which religion you go to you'll find mystical teachings mystical teachings are really is so teracle understandings of theological basis basics you know that we know God exists so that's a fact if you're a person of faith you accept that God exists but what is God right so we we've heard last time when we spoke about Maimonides we heard the philosophical answers to those questions but Kabbalah mysticism has its own answers what is the meaning of God what is the meaning of creation how does creation exist if God is all-powerful and permeates every aspect of existence what is this is this chair God is this table God how are we meant to understand the existence of a physical universe which appears to be devoid of God if God exists in every realm and in every sphere so there are three branches of Kabbalah obviously I'm not going to this is not a comparative religions class I'm not going to tell you about Sufi Islam or you know mysticism within Christianity I'm going to specifically talk about Judaism about Kabbalah and I'm going to tell you that there's three different types of Kabbalah the first is meditative Kabbalah and that really is the foundation of of this concept of Jewish mysticism and the one which was most widely known before ariza land before this group of Safford Kabbalist what is meditative Kabbalah it's the idea that through actions and thought techniques you can reach a higher realm and it's not necessarily about knowledge it's about achieving spirituality and a mystical understanding through devotions through prayer and through and through the things that you do in the course of your religious practice that's meditated Kabbalah and it doesn't really discuss the theories involved in the existence of the world then you've got the Kabbalah that many people are familiar with or at least associate the concept of Kabbalah with Maddie's magic tricks okay practical Kabbalah and miracles miracle workers what is that that the manipulation of mystical knowledge to change nature whatever that means I'm not going to pretend to you as you've heard me say many times we fall about so many subjects I'm not going to pretend to you I understand what I'm talking about I'm simply repeating to you what you all know which is that apparently Cabalists have this ability to use their knowledge of mysticism of the spiritual realms to achieve certain objectives which counter nature I'm going to put that to the side because I have to tell you that in terms of kabalists it's the least important part of Kabbalah you would think because you know you've never met a magician a real magician before I'm not talking about a trickster who's the sleight of hand so for this for you would be a fascinating topic if I could stand here for an hour and teach you some Kabbalah magic tricks that would be fascinating but for kabalists this is the least important element of Kabbalah the third and the one that we're going to focus on this evening in terms of understanding her result is what is termed theoretical Kabbalah and theoretical doesn't mean that it's a theory and it needs to be proven and you can go to a laboratory and you can do some type of experiment and discover whether it's true theoretical Kabbalah is the information behind the mysticism of Judaism so all the things that you're going to hear this evening are ideas that were expressed by Ariza and his disciples and in fact his teachers as well which give us information about the origins of creation about what our purpose is here as human beings a sentient intelligent human beings as creatures who can connected to the divine that's theoretical Kabbalah and that really was the principal subject that concerned a result and his circle of catalysts theoretical Kabbalah if you want to boil it down to one piece of information discusses the relationship between the physical world and the spiritual realms you're going to hear me talk about spiritual realms what spiritual realms are in terms of the way that we can relate to them or it is God anything that isn't physical but has some existence has to be spiritual if that exists and we believe in its existence whatever it is whether it be angels whether it be heaven whether it be seven heavens whatever it's going to be that's going to be God the question then becomes what is the physical world which isn't a spiritual realm we look around us there's nothing spiritual surrounding us here in Beverly Hills unless of course you beg to differ I don't know you may have other ideas but the facts are that we live in a physical world which isn't spiritual which leads to the question where is God so understanding this tension between a physical world which we inhabit and the spiritual realms which is God is the focus of theoretical Kabbalah for 2,000 years from the time the Torah was given and maybe more two and a half thousand years three thousand years the study of Kabbalah was done via a particular medium - but one in the main and that was the vision of Ezekiel Yehezkel was one of the prophets and there was is a discussion in the Talmud as to whether we should have included the Book of Ezekiel in the Canon because it's so confounding and it's so difficult to understand and relate to the perhaps it would have been better if we would have avoided it completely but the decision was made at some point to include the book of your Haskel in the Canon but it can contain this confounding information and particularly we're talking about the mass simmer cover what's a mass simmer cover it's in Chapter one and it describes the vision that you're Haskell Ezekiel had of a heavenly chariot and the heavenly chariot is made up of heavenly beings which are physical appearances which are described in vivid detail in the Book of Ezekiel and that was the medium through which people discussed mysticism and the spiritual realms the Talmud in-car Giga it's mentioned elsewhere but the Talmud MK Giga goes through this subject of Massa Merkava in great detail so we have a lot of information about the correct approach to understanding these very weird depictions in the Book of Ezekiel and it's found in Khadijah I don't encourage you to go home grab your art scroll car Giga off the shelf and look through it because as much as you'll read the English translation it will make less sense not more sense and the facts are that The Book of Ezekiel contains this weird depiction and it's not really meant for people who have not been initiated into this concept of Massa Merkava it's like if I were to hand you I hope there's no you know astrophysicists in the room okay there's an astrophysicist in here please be quiet but if I would hand you a book on astrophysics this you know very advanced concepts contained in physics and your basic education has taken you to calculus and not beyond you can look at the book you'll see equations you'll understand that this is an equation but you won't have the faintest idea what it means because you don't know the concepts that lie behind all the things that are contained in this textbook similarly if you're not a medical doctor and you look you may see a medical book or pick up a medical journal somewhere you may understand certain words and concepts but you're not going to become an expert at medicine you certainly wouldn't dare go into an operating room and and perform an operation on somebody sim because you saw the YouTube video that is the concept of the first chapter of your Haskell we don't really have the information required the pre information required to enable us to understand what is contained in that chapter similarly Maya Sieber a what we call in English the creation narrative which begins with creation itself in Genesis chapter 1 and continues in Genesis chapter 2 with this interesting story of Adam and Eve and we read it we see a story we see a narrative we get the basic you know what's going on and the first thing created this second they created that but we don't really have any idea what any of this means what was there before creation so these were the primary texts of Kabbalah in the period before a result and this Safford Kabbalist moment in Jewish history I have to tell you that the Talmud generally presents mystical experiences and attempts to encounter mysticism and Jewish spirituality very negatively and I'm going to share with you one example the example is of four great rabbis Talmudic rabbis who attempted to encounter mysticism and spirituality and find out more about the spiritual realms described in the Talmud as ascending to the paired s not really if we don't understand what the process is we know the word means garden but we don't know what it means they ascended there whether it was some type of physical thing that they did whether it was in their minds they meditated than they achieved they got to that destination but there were four of them they were ben azzai Ben Zoma a man called elisha ben abu you who is known in the talmud as a hare because you'll see in a minute why because he's not even referred to by name and the final the fourth one was Rabbi Akiva Rabbi Akiva is the only one who entered in peace and departed in peace then as I immediately died according to the Talmud Ben Zoma went crazy for the rest of his life he was no longer sane a hair became a heretic there's all the stories about her in Heidegger which describe his relationship with one of his disciples called rabbi meir who tried to bring him back on track but a her departed from normative Judaism of his day and became a heretic and the Gemara the Talmud tells us it's only because he attempted to encounter the divine and that was the net result what is this what's the message in that story even after hagigah has been through all the details of Ezekiel 1 the message of the story is stay away from Jewish mysticism in parentheses unless you're a buyer kiva now you have to be pretty confident to imagine yourself to be Rabbi Akiva and begin studying Jewish mysticism the idea behind all this is you don't need it it's not important you can be a good Jew a devout Jew a faithful Jew a faithful servant of God without ever having to encounter the issues that are dealt with by Jewish mysticism now as time evolved Jewish mysticism gathered pace but it never gathered pace as a mainstream aspect of Jewish life so I will describe to you some Cabalists that you may have heard of there was a man called rabbi yehuda HOF acid a Buda acid was from a group a circle of Kabbalist known as Casa de Ashkenazi the Hasidim de pietistic ganas in Germany and they lived in the Rhineland and they had their own group and they kept themselves together we know some some of the things that they did many we don't they were Cabalists but at no stage that they attempt to influence Judaism with the Kabbalah that they were studying and the whole idea of Kabbalah as I said earlier the word Kabbalah means you receive it from a mentor and you pass it on to a disciple so there is this chain of kabbalah switch we must presume dates back to Mount Sinai goes all the way through the wilderness years and the years before the first temple was built and during the Exile Second Temple Talmud etc comes to medieval times suddenly we know much more about it we know that they exist but we don't know so much about the Kabbalah that they were studying or what it meant to them there was there's another man who is a very famous Kabbalist Rambam nut man ADIZ and he he wrote a parish a commentary in the torah we often study it he is a counterpoint to Maimonides philosophy and you should know that there is this conflict this tension between philosophy rational philosophy and kabbalah which is seemingly irrational for many reasons and Rambin often describes some type of question that he has or issue that comes up arises out of the text of the Torah and he says I'm not going to tell you the answer it's a sword it's a secret I'm not going to delve into the answer you should know there is an answer but that answer is not something I'm going to share with you now there were others there was something called Isaac the blind there was Bahia been uh sure in the thirteenth century there's a man called machete de Leon Masha de Leon is a very interesting man at some point he announced that he had the manuscript of a book that's mentioned elsewhere previously that has never been in in any kind of full manuscript form before this period it's called the Zohar the Zohar is written by rabbi Shimon bar Yohai now I have to tell you it's a very controversial topic and I'm not going to go into it tonight other than to say that the authorship in terms of the text of the Zohar that we have today is very controversial so to suggest as Marcia de Leon did that the text that he produced and that we had is the text that was written by Shimon bar Yohai is controversial and refuted by quite a number of people not least of whom was a great kabbalist of the 18th century who I've mentioned in other talks rabbi yaakov Emden he wrote an entire book to refute this idea that the Zohar was authored by rabbi Shimon bar Yohai I think the consensus is that it contains the information that was conveyed mentor to disciple etc beginning with rabbi Shimon bar Yohai but by the time he got to Michele DeLeon and he may have imagined that this text that he had and which he probably helped edit and compile was a pure text that had originated we were asharam by a high and that he wrote it now I'm going to compare the two texts the Talmud and the Zohar both are written in Aramaic the Talmud was very carefully edited and as there are hundreds thousands maybe of manuscript pages dating back to who knows when of Talmud and you can find them in the Vatican you can find them in the Bodleian library you can find them all over the world the Talmud was a book that was very carefully put together for the specific purpose to be studied as the source of Jewish practice in Jewish law the Zohar never went through such a process the psalm was always a hidden book it was a book that only was allowed to be studied by those who are initiated into Kabbalah and therefore by definition it's you know not passed down in this very edited form if it exists at all it exists in small scraps of information or maybe it is Torah sure but I'll pay for the Cabalists and they pass it only orally on to each other in which case the texts that we have from the 12th century from the 13th century is is not the original form of the arc of Emden describes and shows how the Aramaic that is used in the Zohar wasn't prevalent at the time that rabbi Shimon bar Yohai lived never it's not possible that he wrote some of those words connected words even sentences whole sentences and yet this is fascinating there are sections of our prayers which we recite on a regular basis I'm going to give you one which we recite after we take the Torah out of the arc they're on ha'qodesh we recite a prayer in Aramaic brick Chimay that the greatness of God's name the greatness of God and the truth of God that is a passage from the Zohar and if you open rebuke of Emden siddur you'll find it in there so clearly he wasn't suggesting that the Zohar was a forgery as some of the masculine the enlightened scholars of the 19th century claimed he wasn't suggesting it was a forgery he was suggesting that to treat the text of the Zohar with caution but the concepts that are contained in the Zohar and the ideas that they contained that it contains of course are true and do emanate originally with the Kabbalists who studied under rabbi Shimon bar Yohai and passed it on generation to generation the important point to remember before we begin talking about the Ariza is that Kabbalah this idea of mysticism was not something that affected day to day Jewish life you didn't need to know anything about the Zohar in order to be a good Jew you want to observe Mitzvahed halakhah you want to where it sits it okay you want to make it theirs how the high you look at the various texts that exist on the creation the fabrication of TTT and that's fine you don't need to know much more than that in order to put on at allit or a garment that has to sit on it are their cabbalistic concepts which are attached to teach it of course there are we didn't need to know them and in fact they didn't find their way into the Jewish Way of life even during this period when Kabbalah was being studied by great rabbis but Jewish mysticism as I said became the counterpoint to Jewish philosophy dealing with theological questions from a mystical perspective some of the answers which Kabbalah gives to the questions the great questions of the origin of the universe are problematic in a sense sometimes it's better if we wouldn't have the answer because we can make no sense of them and I want to share with you some very basic concepts of Kabbalah so that we understand what we're talking about and what our resolve was dealing with together with his with his group with his circle and I have to add the rider so that you really understand this I'm not an expert by any means on Kabbalah this is not a couple a class and so what I'm telling you is really basic knowledge basic information terminology so that we so that we get an appreciation of what it is we're talking about the first is that God isn't referred to as God in Kabbalah he's referred to as Ain soft that which has no end that's what in soft means the infinite in soft means the infinite he's the ultimate source of all reality both spiritual that makes sense and physical ain't sauce is completely unknowable that means we cannot know the infinite God and it's unfathomable and fathomable to the human mind God is pure perfection this idea is similar to Maimonides negative theology that we've once discussed that means we can know what God is by knowing what he is not right because everything any definition that we give of God reduces him to that definition even if we give 20 definitions of God he now becomes reduced to those 20 definitions so he's not that and he's not something else he's nothing he's nothing that we can use no word that we can use to describe him because he is infinite he's beyond any definition that is how Maimonides wants to understand God but it goes further so the Kabbalistic understanding of God goes much further and I'll tell you what I mean because Cabalists refer to God by what is known as ten Sephirot I think we have an image of us if you rot up there Speirs aspects realms through which god is manifested so rather than defining God as that it is the way through which we can understand God it's slightly different isn't it so if I say somebody is a happy person okay I'm describing the person as happy not sad but if somebody makes me happy I'm not describing the person I'm describing my own reaction it's not a perfect definition I'm not trying to pretend that this is a perfect definition but it's looking at something from a totally different perspective God is available to us through ten different aspects of personality of it's referred to by Restless clothing as external clothing because we can't possibly understand who God is and soft and the sefirot make up the upper world the spiritual realm that I've been describing the world of purity God's domain as it were the lower world that's our world that's Beverly Hills California or anywhere else you're going to be in the physical universe doesn't matter how vast the universe is because God is beyond time and space we can't describe God as old or young or big or small but the physical world can be described in those in that way that is the lower world and it's only made possible and this is the second term that I want you to hear a third time I said spirit I've told you about in soft the third term is symptom concealment God concealed himself withdrew himself as it were again don't ask me to explain it and by the way if you want to know what the great debate was between Mitton 'god in those who posed opposed the Hasidim and Hassidim it was the understanding of what this word concept symptom means so if you're a Chabad kasi and you study the works of thee as they refer him the altar ever the bal Hetalia the ballot tanya describes God's imminence in the world in everything that surrounds us but the Vilna got on and his talmud his disciple great kabbalist s-- rabbi hyman lodging the Vilna gan described symptom in a totally different way so how that works don't search me I don't know but symptom is this idea that God withdraws himself to enable the illusion of a physical world everything that you see around you is only there because God has withdrawn himself now the big question of Kabbalah as I mentioned is how does this spiritual I'm pointing upwards it could be down right it's not in a physical place we always when we talk about heaven we point up right bashar Mayumi map al we say but me mal doesn't be in a physical place it means above our understanding above the physical world in terms of our ability to relate to it what's the relationship with that world and this world and the answer to that question according to kabbalah is with great trauma and great stress it's not a simple relationship the upper world is a perfectly calibrated machine everything is perfect everything makes sense every cog fits in where it's found the lower world is full of at least potential but usually in reality full of brokenness and full of destruction and every aspect of our world this is the we're now coming to the kabbalah of the saffet Kabbalist every aspect of our world has a counterpart in the upper world each part of our world has as it were a spiritual dimension so if you can and we talk about our us having a neshama right we have a soul do animals have souls well not in the way that human beings have a soul but they have a spiritual dimension does a table have a soul but really but there is a spiritual dimension to it there's a spiritual dimension to events there's a spiritual dimension to a group of people which is different than than the individuals within that group and their spiritual dimension every aspect of the physical world has a spiritual dimension and human beings are central in this scheme and particularly the Jews as God's chosen people we are at the very center of this relationship between the physical world and the spiritual realm this means that out and this is where I'm coming to the important point what we do our actions have an effect on the upper world both positively and negatively so particularly if we do something wrong it results in disharmony between the physical world that we occupy and the spiritual world where things are perfect so the thing that we ought not have done was never done in the spiritual world in the god world but it's done here so that creates a tension and particularly according to the Kabbalah between two of the sefirot this TIF eret and malkhut those are the two spirits where the tension is most apparent by the way if we do something good and this is going to be very important in the results work we do something worse - if we do what we refer to as a mitzvah but he takes it further he uses the word tikkun if we do that it has the opposite effect it does it has an effect on the spiritual realm so the core of the radical difference between Jewish philosophy and Kabbalah is the effect that we can have on God as it were this is the way the Cabalists described it we can cause harm to God if you're looking at me as if I know the answer to the question that's on your mind what you mean you can harm God God is perfection so that's true in classical theology in Judaism that we all known that we all grow with when we sin what happens we harm ourselves right we are Manish Sharma we've done the wrong thing God is upset with us but in Kabbalah the harm is extended what is the harm that we do Cabalists in this pre-law trionic cabbalistic period focused a lot of attention on correcting this disharmony between what's going on in our world and in the spiritual realms trying to avert the potential danger that this can cause and that's the ball that the Ariza picked up and ran and ran and continued to run and the Judaism that we observe is very much a reflection of his understanding of this cabbalistic notion of Timpson and tycoon as we will see in a world where God is constantly present in every aspect of human life there needs to be constant awareness an action of the things that we do so in a devotional sense it's not just about letting on Sukkot taking the new laverna Trog and shaking it because that's what we have to do there's something about doing that which is having a cosmic effect on all of creation you a little guy in shul on Sukkot taking a loo levana Trog is having a powerful impact on all of creation by doing this mitzvah doing this act so now we're going to begin to mention some names the first mate name I'm going to mention is somebody's referred to by the Cabalists as remark rabbi moshe cordovero born in 1522 he died in 1570 and another man is quite important his name was rabbi al kibbutz he was born in 1500 he was a brother-in-law of remark and he died in 1576 they chose to take this idea and impose personal exile on themselves and asceticism Arab Slama al kibbutz is the one who composed lahardee and he's the one who created this idea that Cabalists not all jews Kabbalist should go out to the fields on Arif Shabbat just before Shabbat comes in and say these Psalms embrace and welcome the Shabbat and sing this song lahardee come to me my beloved welcome the Shabbat it wasn't something that they had in mind for every Jew for you and me in our shoes wherever we may be but that's what he did his brother-in-law was rabbi moshe cordovero and there's another very good friend who lived in Swat and his name was Robert Yosef karo he's an important man you know why is important because he also composed the shoe Camaros the Chicano rock which is a codified form of Jewish law the ultimate the final codification on which we depend in terms of our observance of Jewish law all the things that we do in Halawa was composed by a Kabbalist called rabbi rabbi yosef Carol or about yourself Carol and this is another important piece of information we're going to hear was somebody who came from Spain originated in Spain and the expulsion in 1492 was a cataclysmic event in Jewish history comparable in some way at least by many of those who experienced it to the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem because Spain was this perfect model of Jewish life where people were observant where people studied where people were interested involved etc and suddenly the you know the rug was ripped out from under underneath them and they were expelled and had to scatter all over the world and find places to live this cataclysmic event is one of the things that propelled the Kabbalistic movement because suddenly was it became evident there's no safety and unless we're doing the things that we need to do in order to achieve that which God wants us to achieve as Jews we're not safe anywhere in fact God is going to do these things to us until we achieve those objectives now rabbi Alka Betsy's teacher and he's the first Safford catalyst was a man I don't know how to translate a to pronounce his name rabbi yosef bench Lamar titer Zach and he was an exile from Spain he was he came in 1492 and he settled in Salonika Turkey and one of the hallmarks the true Cabalists and we see it begin to be mentioned at this time was that they would not taught by a mentor a Kabbalistic mentor in the human sense of that word but their mentors were angels that would appear to them in visions whether they went into a trance or this is something that happened at night in dreams they would have what they refer to as a magnet and Rabbi Yosef Caro great rationalist who composed the code of Jewish law that we use had a mug heed he wrote a book called Megiddo Michel in which he describes his life and he talks about his relationship with his magid and they studied with this maggot who teaches them Kabbalah and then they spread the ideas which they've learnt from the maggot and discussed them and this is how Kabbalah begins to proliferate to a greater degree but I'm getting ahead of myself this I need to introduce to you the city of spat of Safed that I've spoken so much about anyone had been to spat been to the fat right whereas it mentioned in the in the Tanakh do you know anyone know where to mention dint enough I'm glad they won't put their hand up because it's not mentioned in tonight it was a trick question okay it's not mentioned anyway in the Tanakh there may be a possible mentioned possible mention of a place called Seth Seth in Josephus Josephus was a first century Jewish apologist historian a Roman lover who joined with the Romans in the Galil when everyone else he was with committed suicide and he witnesses the destruction of the Beit HaMikdash of Jerusalem in the year 16 years 69 70 of the Common Era Josephus mentions a place called Seth we have no idea if that is it's Fat Possum the first time we see the word fat appear anywhere in Jewish literature is a year ishani Yura Xiaomi is the fifth century and in the fifth century the Irish Army the Jerusalem Talmud mentions a place called Tsfat which is a very high place where they used to light those fires that would indicate that the new month had began there was these fires that are described in the mission in rosh hashanah and one of the places five places mentioned in the euro shall make and the Jerusalem Talmud is that because it was such a high place it's in fact the highest city in Aristotle it's at an elevation of about three thousand foot we have no information about who lived there what they did we don't know what the inhabitants look like what type of Jews they were if they were Jews we know nothing about saffet until the year 1099 anyone know why the year 1099 is significant their Crusades thank you Zellman the crusades 1099 around 1100 is the first time that Tsfat is mentioned in any kind of descriptive way by the way not by Jews it's mentioned by Crusaders who discussed this incredible place that they found with this high elevation and they want to build a fortress there and they created a place I don't know if you know this but a couple of hundred years there was a place in what we call today at Israel but even beyond the borders in what's today Jordan called the Kingdom of Jerusalem and it was created by the Knights Templar who had come over from Europe to reclaim the Holy Land because they shouldn't allow they didn't want to allow the Muslims to inhabit the Holy Land the place where their their Jesus had once walked and they creatively they actually presided over the country for a couple of hundred years board has changed their battles and wars with various Muslim invaders from all different sides but the Kingdom of Jerusalem was able to see if you if you see that where akka is almost parallel with that is the Sea of Galilee just to the north of the Sea of Galilee on the arrastra L side if it's fat that's where it is a very high mountain and it's native area it became a fortress for the Crusaders there was a man called King Falk of Jerusalem sir I think a phony name they just made these names up right because if he was the actually the count dongju he was a French knight who came to the land of Israel and declared himself as part of a process of who was taking the leadership as the king of Jerusalem and he built himself a castle there and Tsfat became this stronghold of the Knights the Crusader Knights who were defending the Land of Israel from the Muslim invaders the 12th century Jewish traveller Benjamin of Tudela came to the Land of Israel in the 12th century around 1170 and he visited Tsfat guess what new year 1170 there were no Jews in fact at all they didn't live there they lived elsewhere in Israel there were Jews in Israel but there were no Jews in Swat in 1188 few years later and the city of Swat was captured by Saladin and Saladin after a siege that lasted a year took hold of this city this town and he allowed to do the Jews to settle them I guess he threw all the Christians out and he wanted there to be a population so he left a few of his soldiers there garrison and the Jews settled there during the 13th century frats was briefly given back as part of a deal between the Muslims and the Christians was given back to the Christians but not for very long in 1266 it was recaptured by the Muslims a man called Sultan by Boris turns are fed into the administrative centre of the entire region I guess also because of its elevation similar to Jerusalem which is also on hills and therefore they can see the surrounding area very well SWAT began to thrive this was a modern city in those days and people moved then they build homes there and it began to thrive as a bustling commercial commercial center there was a vibrant Jewish presence in the early 16th century as we know the Ottomans took over the land of Israel from the other Muslims who were occupying it the Mamluk empire that was there before and they placed its fat under the jurisdiction of Damascus which is in Syria so it now became a satellite of Damascus and the Ottomans took advantage this is an interesting fact which people may not know the Jews were expelled with some terrible expulsion we know about Spain in 1492 and then a few years later four five years later there was another expulsion from Portugal so the Iberian Peninsula had no more Jews tens of hundreds of thousands of Jews were now displaced France also took the lead from Spain and also expelled or a bunch of it wasn't a countrywide expulsion but they also expelled juice that was by the time and that was by the way the time that many Jews began to move eastward and that's how Poland became a thriving Jewish center because of the expulsion from France and northern Spain you know there's a place in Poland called Galicia the name comes from the space Spanish region of the same name Galicia right so there were many Jews who were displaced all over the world and the ottomans thought wow one second these these people are very good businessman they're very well-connected they're very bright they're very loyal when they have to be only put unless we don't throw them out we don't throw them out they'll be very loyal and they encourage Jews to move to the Ottoman Empire Salonika became the thriving Jewish center Constantinople today it's called Istanbul became a thriving Jewish center because of the Spanish the Spanish expulsion the Spanish Inquisition and all the persecution that Jews suffered in Europe and one of the places that benefited from the Spanish expulsion was sat in northern Israel and a minute you're going to see that not only did it benefit from Jews moving there it actually became a very important commercial center in 1522 there are about 300 families there we can assume that's a thousand 1200 1400 people but that changed with this influx of refugees and the attraction of this fad anyone think of what an attraction would be in a place like spat in ancient in ancient times hmm nope astronomy doesn't make money it's fascinating we doesn't make money streams and water it became the center of cloth making in that region of the Middle East they manufactured cloth and the industry became because there was no one living there before a Jewish monopoly because it was more or less completely a Jewish town that I called David de Rossi David arose he was an Italian Jewish merchant he visited its fat in 1535 he makes the claim that during that year 1535 more than 15,000 suits were made cloth suits were like Macy's right you know it became the place he wanted to buy a new suit you'd come to trut or you had all the one from fat and they and they would send it to you the material success no pun intended were created a foundation for a strong assertive Jewish community you know whites what was successful no because they were very wealthy it was a very wealthy community what happens when you have a wealthy community they pay money they bring in rabbis they bring in you know it attracts people who are going to become part of the local service industry of a town where there's a lot of money so it's what begins to expand in size because you've got all these wealthy traders in cloth who live there and manufacture of cloth who lived there lot of visitors coming and going says a big I guess tourist or business tourist industry and a lot of people moved to trot and this enabled the local community to attract incredibly impressive rabbis and the community became extremely strong and vibrant it became one of the four Jewish centers in the Land of Israel a place that doesn't appear anywhere in Tanakh so we understand why you shall I'm is a vibrant Jewish center we understand why Heffron is a vibrant Jewish center we can understand that Tov area is a vibrant Jewish Center because in the time of the Talmud it was the most powerful Jewish community at one point in northern Israel SWAT SWAT becomes successful and vibrant as a result of the cloth industry important thing to know of course is that the vast majority of the Jews who live to a part of the community of the trut in the 16th century were not born there and a result is no exception so now I'm going to give you a little bit of a biography on our results with a long introduction here almost an hour it's not an hour we're going to talk about Ariza going to I try and understand who he was and then we're going to talk about Laurie Anika Berlin hopefully we'll all be home before breakfast Isaac when Solomon Lauria Ashkenazi was born in Ottoman Jerusalem in 1534 his birthplace we know exactly where he was born is now the site of a place called the old Yishuv court museum in the old city of jerusalem i think we have a slide his father was polish german an Ashkenazi hence his name Ashkenazi his mother was Sephardic we don't even know her name we know nothing about his forebears other than his father's name the population of Jerusalem was growing at the time in 1538 over 1600 Jews there by 15:53 there was almost 2500 Jews in Jerusalem and Jerusalem was going through a period as you know of renovation you've been to Jerusalem right you've seen the walls of Jerusalem the walls of Jerusalem were built during the 1500s by the Ottoman Turks so the walls that we're familiar with some of them are based on walls that I have a much earlier date others were created at that time it was being renovated it was being updated and the arre Saul's father was a businessman there unfortunately he died when Ariza was very young and their family moved to Egypt where he was brought up by an uncle his mother's brother a man called Mordechai Francis in Cairo Francis was a tax farmer tax farmer was quite a common profession in those days what happened was is that there was certain tax expectations of different parts of segment sections of the population and they would sell the rights to collect taxes to different people they could make a profit on it so for example if they're just going to make up this number they're expecting a hundred thousand dollars from a particular street they would sell the rights to collect that hundred thousand dollars to somebody for whatever the price was they collected the either a hundred thousand dollars maybe they collected a bit more whatever the difference was between what was expected from the stage from this tax farmer and what the person actually collected he would be his to keep tax farming was a very profitable profession now he had her easel had a number of Arabi's or associate so he was associated with a number of rabbis the most famous of whom is someone called Ruud Vaz Rabbi David Ben eben Abbey's Imre rod Vaz is a very important rabbi he became the chief rabbi more or less of Egypt but certainly in Cairo he was the leading rabbi of his time in that region and he was a Russia Shiva he had a big yeshiva in Cairo and he wrote three thousand to Shabbat respond sir Halleck answers to questions that came to him from all over the world rod Vaz is quoted in any Halleck discussion that you will see today it is likely that a result first heard about spat from rod Vaz because rod vos was also from these immigrants these refugees who came from Spain and his face family settled in Swat from this group who settled in fact immediately after they moved not right away first they settled a little bit in Turkey then they moved to smart read verses rabbi was the first significant rabbinic leader in fat a man called rabbi yosef surrogacy he's really the first rabbi that we are aware of who we could refer to in modern terminologies the chief rabbi of despot he was born in 1460 he died in 1507 and he was the first said cappen Kabbalist he's the one that we know he's not buried in this fat he's buried elsewhere a result other teacher in Cairo was a man called rabbi but solo Ben Avraham Ashkenazi another man of Ashkenazi origin and he is known to us by a compilation of commentaries on the Talmud that his study to this day called schita makuu bet set several volumes what he did was it there were a lot of existing manuscripts and he kill ated them all together edited them and put them in sequential order so that they corresponded to the pages of the talmud all the the talmud as it as it unfolded and he had a helper in this editing process ariza the original became his editing partner so when we study the Talmud and we look at sheet a Macbeth said you know I said before I read all never wrote anything it's true he never wrote anything on Kabbalah but he wrote on the Talmud because he took this information and he helped his Rebbe put it together he also cooperated in an arm a number of other Halak projects there's evidence of his stature as a rabbinic scholar and by the way he was only in his 20s at the time so it must have been a very very bright man a number of documents have also come to light I think we have a slide of one in the Cairo Genizah that tell us about his success as a businessman how you would you expect that this man was a great mystic very spiritual he's the founder of spiritualism of Jewish mysticism that we're familiar with today he was also very successful businessman you know what he did he sold pepper quite important you know and we imagine having you know chillins on Shabbos without pepper work and he was concerned that people should have tasty trolling so he became a pepper so I'm sure he can do for that reason he he did it because he wanted to be a successful provider for his family and we have evidence at the age of twenty already he was a successful businessman and in 1554 20 years old he sold a boatload of pepper to a man called gnat tank efforts for one hundred and fifty gold coins we have evidence of other pepper transactions he was involved in also loans that he made that he took out to provide him with the money so that he could buy these Goods and debt repayment arrangements he lent money to people as well business associates and even after moving to its fat in his 30s he was still involved in the pepper trade and he's mentioned in various documents that were discovered at the Cairo Genizah and clearly this he was a successful businessman by the way that's useful because if you want to spend your life studying and you have a successful business that's you know can be run either by your you know your associates your family people you trust you can devote the time to study which is exactly what we're going to see our easel did one last piece of information that we are familiar with at least we know there's much that we don't know ariza got married in Cairo and he married within his family married his first cousin the daughter of the uncle with whom he had been living now want to talk to you about a result the spiritual mystic we've heard he was a great rabbi a Hallett hist Talmudic we heard that he was involved in business we heard about the tragedy of his family lost his father at a young age but we know a result through his Kabbalah through his mysticism so who was it who was he as a as a Kabbalist our results first kabbalah teacher was Rudra's who himself as a great kabbalist who wrote a book he wrote two books on Kabbalah that we're familiar with one called McGinn David about the letters of the Hebrew alphabet I love Aleph bit what their meanings are their mystical meanings he wrote another book about the Hebrew alphabet and that one's called me through dad David about the shape of Hebrew letters how obscure is that subject as the topic for a book he wrote another book called McDowell David about sure hashira which is very Kabbalah stick and he taught he was we know our ezel ABI and but he wasn't the one who introduced a result to the Czar it's a very very important book for him to be introduced to that was a man also from Cairo called Rabbi Judah Musa Masood Masood rabbi Massoud is the first person in Jewish history to take the text of the Zohar which is Aramaic very difficult to understand aramaic and translate it into hebrew didn't translate the whole thing that wouldn't happen until the 20th century believe it or not but he translated certain sections of the zohar into hebrew he was familiar with the text of the Zohar there's a man in the 18th century we know as he dark I muted of it as who lie an Italian rabbi actually was born in artist Raquel who was very familiar with the traditions of Jewish history had a brilliant memory and he sought out information on Jewish history he wrote a book called Shem Hubbard Dolan about great rabbinic personalities and he describes how it was that I Rizal became so familiar with Kabbalah and became such a Kabbalistic giant in his late twenties he began secluding himself in complete solitude so that he could study Kabbalah whether it was Zohar or other texts we don't know presumably Zohar and this began it began in the 1560s this phase it lasted according to Heda for six or seven years now let me tell you what this means he would retire every week on Saturday night to an island the island is called Jazeera Al Radha it's in the middle of the Nile and it seems his uncle was a wealthy man owned a big tract of land may possibly even the whole island and he would sit on this island from Saturday night until Friday afternoon every single week alone in a cottage and study we don't know what he ate we don't know what he was doing there presumably this was the time when he was studying with his mug Eid mentor he would come home on every Shabbat and he would spend the Shabbat with his family but he know once he started this face he no longer spoke Arabic ever again he only spoke in Hebrew and only if he needed to speak he didn't want to waste his power of speech on mundane matters and immediately when Shabbat went out he would go back to the island and begin his contemplative study of Kabbalah in 1570 having completed this phase of his life and having achieved cabbalistic greatness and we don't know how we just were going to know in a minute what he came up with he went to its fat fat is the center of Jewish Cabalists in the world we heard Reb Moshe cordovero we heard about Rabbi kibbutz we heard about her Yosef cara but there were others and he went to disrupt and he probably went there to study with remark with Ramos a cut of arrow because he wanted to become an even greater kabalists unfortunately less than six months after he got there the master died and the disciple this great kabbalist Ariza who's only 36 years old becomes the master so it's an accident of fate he went to tried to study with revolution cordovero and because remotion cordovero died he now replaces him as the chief cabbalistic rabbi of and he died less than two years later during that time he gathered around him a circle an incredible circle of disciples we have 38 names which are listed by a behind beetle in four separate groups but I wanted to tell you how secretive these groups were behind the tower writes that in his group there were eleven people they seat was the most elevated group eleven people in the group and then he lists three other groups and he lists all the names one of them for example is Rabbi Moshe I'll she also wrote a commentary on the Torah lived in spat and then he writes at least I think these were the people in the group but I don't really know because nobody ever spoke about it so I presume based on the information that I have that these are the correct names we know for example he left some names out but you may not have known that they were part of the circle of our result we also know that there were rivalries between these different groups Cabalists who want to excel and be in a favorite of their master Kabbalist that ariza i want to end quite end by talking about the incredible system of lori anak kabbalah as it's known in english the method of kabbalah has put forward defined by a result this method that has impacted our judaism to this day first of all you should know that she had a very powerful personality well it's obvious he must have been an extremely charismatic individual if it did the age of 36 he can inspire people who were far older than him and who could have felt you know we don't want to listen to this young man but he clearly was a very powerful personality was also very pious of crying VTOL describes things that he did and how humble he was and pious he was in every aspect of his life not just as judaism in the way he related to people but the most important thing about him was the incredible new approach to cabal Abba he proposed and which became the accepted form of Kabbalah which is the foundation of Jewish mysticism to this day let me begin with this Arisa believed that he was Mashiach Ben Yossef who is Mashiach Ben Yossef we know about Mashiach Ben David Mashiach Ben Yossef according to certain traditions is the Messiah who will come before the Messiah comes to begin the process of the Messianic era and who's going to die during the wars that precede the Messianic era of Gog and Magog and he's descended from Joseph as opposed to from David mushiya ben Yosef and he believed that he was Mashiach Ben Yossef who had to create the platform the circumstances that would enable the Messianic era and it was extremely important as you may to see in addition to which he predicted that Messiah was going to come in 1575 that was the year according to the calculations that he came up with that mushiya was going to come it's something he advertised widely across the Jewish world but in his personal circle this is what he told them why is mashach so important why is this concept of a messianic age till urgent in the kabbalah of of their result and you have to understand what i've mentioned before and then combine it with this to really appreciate what he was trying to do if it's true to say that our world is imperfect and the only way that we can perfect it is through what he referred to as tikkun and by the way he said he loved rabbi moshe cordovero but i'm marcia cordovero is only concerned with what he referred to as the alarm had taught him where's the word talking from toes from creation Bereshit he's concerned with what was before creation what happened before the universe was created and somehow to relate that to his world he said I'm not I am concerned with that world but I'm actually also very concerned with in olam had he cool Dona mati kun is because the atrophy began the attrition began the moment of creation we know from the sin and he goes into great detail about the sins of Adam and Eve and Cain and Abel and all the various things that we know from the torrent Anna these are all things which have damaged the potential of the world to connect to its spiritual roots and God is suffering as a result of that break of the physical world with the spiritual realm and he says we have the obligation to be midtech Yngwie have to be the meta clean to duty in this world to enable the Messiah to come what is mushiya we ever heard the expression we say Kadesh young men who took Adam what does that mean what do you think that means Kadesh renew our days as of a time English we say as of old Ted M Khadem doesn't mean it means the very beginning the origin the origin was perfection that's when the world was created when Adam or whatever plan a was with Adam and cover in the Garden of Eden that is hadisha men who cook Adam that is the Messianic era we yearn for which can only be achieved through tikkun and the degeneration of the world is something that needs our input to correct and a result proposes methods of restoring the original harmony that existed between the I guess the or lamb had Tahu and the or lamb Hattie and eventually the two will be congruent with each other and will reunite and will be in harmony he talks about shirataki Lin XI rata Kelly means the breaking of the vessels what does that mean breaking the vessels is the only way you can achieve the perfection is if you break thing that you know imagine you take a car to a mechanic the guy looks at the car and he says I'm going to fix it how you gonna fix it I'm gonna look at it and it's going to fix itself that's not the way it works how does a mechanic work he takes all the pieces apart and then he puts them back together again now if you look at the car after the mechanic has taken everything out of it and it's all lying there on the floor in in the body shop the garage wherever it is you think my gosh everything's broken no no everything's in perfect order now it's going to be put back exactly where it's meant to go sure your attic a limit so we need to break the vessels down in order so that they can be put back together in their proper harmony this was is the essence of the aerosols teaching that we each have a role to play in harmonizing the physical world with the spiritual realm shirataki lim doesn't necessarily happen because we've done it some times it usually happens because it happened by itself that degeneration has occurred and now we're faced with a shop floor which is full of broken pieces and now we have to gather those pieces together find their sparks and match them up with other sparks you can feel the urgency now I'm not suggesting that you're my cabbalistic circle but can you imagine I'm not just you know a pawn on the chess board and the king and the queen everyone is a king and a queen and a prince and a princess who can in fact do that which needs to be done to bring mushiya it's so intense these were the teachings that the disciples of arizal drew out of the things that he was teaching them and propagated in first private manuscripts which they circled among themselves and eventually made their way out of the Land of Israel to Europe to North Africa and elsewhere in the Middle East and suddenly this urgency of a messianic era which is going to correct these aberrations such as the expulsion from Spain such as the persecutions that exist you know community massacres that took place in the Ukraine suddenly we can make the difference you know why her menisci killed Jews because we didn't do the property kunam to bring the Messiah and suddenly you have the possibility of people believing that shop tides fee a flawed personality a man who has what we recognize today who has bipolar syndrome and supported by you know crazy prophet nathan of gaza that he can be the messiah because they're yearning for mushiya it's so real to them it's so immediate to them it's so close to them because these doctrines had infused themselves into Jewish life I want to end on that note to help you understand that they are results effect on Judaism is so profound that we're not even aware of it in the same way as Maimonides effect on Judaism is so profound that we're not aware of it the fact that we have this urgent belief in mushiya is because the ariza turned it into something that we can achieve through our actions no I believe mashiac is going to come and I'm going to sit passive in her at home waiting for the announcement to come on CNN I can do something to bring him the Hasidic movement the idea that through joy you know the jumping around and the dancing and singing is part of this periodic a limb to do tikkun that's what the Hasidim believed that they need to reinforce meeting in order to pick all the sparks up and reconnect them to the divine the McNabb team didn't believe that they believed that it's only through the intensive study of Torah Ali Sh'ma not Tara because of knowledge I need to know what I need to do I study Torah because I need to study Torah in order for Messiah to come and I'm going to jump all the way forward to a renewed love of Eretz Israel which began in the nineteenth century among Jews starting with kibbutz Eon and ending with the Zionist movement and eventually the creation of the State of Israel imagine how is it that secular Jews people who didn't believe in keeping with spot could have this passion this yearning for Aristotle it came about as a result of a results infusion into Judaism of this incredible powerful idea that we you and me any one of us individually can make a powerful difference on the future of Jewish life and that is that is the contribution of ariza a spiritual mystic and visionary teacher who inspired not only his own circle of 38 or maybe a few more Kabbalist since but in the 1500s but continues to inspire us all over the Jewish world as he's done for centuries hundreds thousands millions of people thank you [Applause]

Channel: Beverly Hills Synagogue

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Id: VyZv6cUA3Ug

Length: 84min 53sec (5093 seconds)

Published: Tue Mar 13 2018