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September 18, 2014 at 7:30 pm · Filed under Articles, Books, What is Kabbalah?
Why Kabbalah Was Hidden Until Now
For 2,000 years, the study of Kabbalah was forbidden to women and men under age forty, and there was a reason for this restriction. In fact, all the books of Kabbalah, including the Torah (the Pentateuch), were written only for our time, when everyone needs to practice the science of Kabbalah. What we should all do now is open the Kabbalah books and begin to learn how to attain the upper world.
What Kabbalah Is and Isn’t
Kabbalists have expressed their frustration at the fact that we are still not using the study of Kabbalah as a springboard for the attainment of the upper worlds, since that is the one key to the gate of spirituality, the knowledge and the understanding of the wisdom of the upper world, which means eternal life, happiness, wholeness, and bounty for all humankind
Kabbalah is a science with clear and concise laws that must be studied. It has no connection with charms and blessings and other things that are done in its name, originating in the time Kabbalah was concealed from people and ascribed magical forces. The books of Kabbalah clearly explain what steps we need to take to acquire that knowledge.
The special thing about genuine books of Kabbalah is that they are suitable for all and contain the connection between the soul of the person who is studying them and the upper worlds, from which that person’s soul originates. The books direct us to develop in our own unique way, according to our inner structure and the root of our souls. This is much like the way a person chooses a profession in our world— according to personal character and the inclination of his or her heart.
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August 22, 2014 at 7:30 pm · Filed under Articles, Books
Who Was Baal HaSulam?
Since Abraham and Moses there have been many brilliant Kabbalists through the generations, writing some of the fundamental books of Kabbalah, The Zohar and the Ari’s writings being the most important among them.
However, in the end, neither The Zohar nor the writings of the Ari were intended for a systematic study of the Kabbalah. Although the Kabbalah is indeed a science, before the 20th century there never was a true textbook. It is only in our days that a comprehensive and concise method suitable for all souls of this world was established. To fill in the gaps, Rabbi Yehuda Ashlag, the great Kabbalist who was born in Warsaw in 1885 and lived in Jerusalem from 1922 until his death in 1954, wrote a commentary on the Zohar and the texts of the Ari. Rabbi Ashlag, called Baal HaSulam (Master of the Ladder), evolved while writing the commentaries and published his principal work, The Study of the Ten Sefirot (Talmud Eser Sefirot), considered the predominant Kabbalah study book of our time.
This textbook consists of six volumes, containing more than two thousand pages. It includes everything that Kabbalists have written since the dawn of time: the writings of the first man, Abraham the Patriarch, Moses, Rabbi Shimon Bar-Yochai, and the Holy Ari. This book displays Kabbalah in a concise manner, fit for study. Thus, we have with us today everything needed to learn how creation was made, how it comes down to us, and how we can influence it from below, all the way to the highest world, to have the future we’d like to have.
Why Kabbalah Is Completely Opposite to Other Spiritual Teachings
Today The Zohar is incomprehensible without the Sulam commentary. Yet, the method of Baal HaSulam is often misunderstood. To those who have not achieved spiritual fulfillment, the book may be perceived as dry, schematic, and unemotional. It can read like an instruction manual rather than something that moves our heart. But this perception stems from a lack of understanding.
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July 28, 2014 at 7:30 pm · Filed under Articles, Books, Zohar
What Secrets Lie in the Torah?
People search for all kinds of codes in the Torah and find all the possible interconnections among its parts. Indeed, the parts of the Torah are interconnected in an infinite number of ways— the number of the letters, the words, the verses, and the phrases have been calculated. Recently, a fantastic work of calculation analyzed the inner structure of the letters and parts of letters. But those calculations give us nothing. They don’t teach us what stands behind each symbol or dot, or the shape of the letters and their combinations.
What the Dots and Lines in the Torah Mean
The Torah was first written as a single word with no spaces. Only later was that single word divided into individual words and the words into letters, and those letters were further broken down to their parts. In the end, these parts become a point and a line that extends from it. A black point on a white background symbolizes the source of the light: the light emanates from the single point. If the light descends from the upper force, from the Creator to the creature, it is a vertical line; if the force is ascribed to the entire creation, it is a horizontal line.
This is all the information that we get from the Creator. All the possible combinations between dots and lines depend on those two signs sent to us from the Creator:
- The vertical line—a personal sign sent to humankind by the Creator
- The horizontal line—a general sign sent to humankind by the Creator
- All the situations in between
All the signs combined created the code for the relationship between God and humankind, and at any moment things can appear different because at any moment the soul is in a dif- ferent state.
Why The Book of Zohar Is the Key that Unlocks the Torah
A person who looks at the letters of the Torah, provided he or she has learned to read it correctly, can see his or her own past, present, and future through the combinations of dots and lines. But to see these things, one needs a key. With it, one can read the Torah like a tour guide to the spiritual world as opposed to simply a historic episode. This key is found in The Zohar, which interprets the Pentateuch and explains exactly what Moses meant by writing the Torah.
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April 28, 2014 at 7:30 pm · Filed under Articles, Books
How Kabbalah Was Kept Secret Up Until the Renaissance
In tune with the shifts that took place at the onset of the Renaissance, Kabbalists began to remove the veil from the wisdom of Kabbalah, or at least to speak in favor of removing it. Since the writing of The Book of Zohar, Kabbalists have set up various obstacles before those who wished to study. It began with Rashbi’s concealment of The Zohar and continued with declaring all sorts of prerequisites that one had to meet before receiving permission to study. The Mishnah, for instance, gives the apparently paradoxical instruction to avoid teaching Kabbalah to students who are not already wise and understand with their own mind, but the text does not specify how is one to come by wisdom if one is not permitted to study.
In the Babylonian Talmud, there is a well known allegory about four men who went into a PARDES (an acronym for all forms of spiritual study—Peshat (literal), Remez (Implied), Derush (interpretations), and the highest level being Sod, Kabbalah). Of the four, one died, one lost his sanity, one became heretical, and only one, Rabbi Akiva, who was a giant among Kabbalists—entered in peace and departed in peace. There are other deeper and more accurate explanations to this allegory, but the story was nonetheless used to intimidate and deter people from studying Kabbalah.
Another prerequisite that Kabbalists set up was to “fill one’s belly with” (be proficient in) Mishnah and Gemarah before one approaches the study of Kabbalah. To justify that condition, they cited the Babylonian Talmud, which warns that one must spend a third of one’s life studying the Bible, another third studying Mishnah, and the remaining third studying The Talmud.
This, of course, leaves no time to study Kabbalah, so when the time came for Kabbalists to permit the study, they had to “make room” in the day for the study of Kabbalah. Thus, Kabbalists such as Tzvi Hirsh of Zidichov, “detoured” the prohibition by declaring that every day, one must “fill one’s belly with” Mishnah and Gemarah, and then study Kabbalah.
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February 13, 2011 at 3:35 pm · Filed under Zohar
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