Rabbi Michael Leo Samuel

For those of you who are unfamiliar with the term gobbledygook, our word refers to any kind of text that containing unusual jargon that makes the subject matter difficult or even nearly impossible to understand. Our nation’s tax code is a good example of modern day gobbledygook. There is also another example of gobbledygook that is surprisingly obtuse and difficult to understand—not because the subject is profound, but because the subject matter is expressed in language only the elite can understand—Kabbalah!

Thanks to the Kabbalah Center, Chabad, and a host of other (genuine) scholars and hucksters, everyone has now heard about the Kabbalah. Kabbalah commercials can now be heard on the radio. We sometimes hear that “Plato studied Kabbalah,” or that the Kabbalah is a “4000 year old tradition.” Or, “You don’t even have to be Jewish to study the Kabbalah!” There is not a shred of historical evidence to support these outlandish claims. Kabbalah and capitalism make strange bed fellows.

You might wonder, “Why do people gravitate to these Kabbalah salespeople?” The answer is simple: So many of us hunger for mysticism is real because we have become disenchanted with the usual pathways offered by organized religion. The rote readings, the absence of heart, synagogue/church politics has often flattened and annestized the heart from feeling anything that can even remotely be described as “spiritual.”

Promoters of Kabbalah frequently strike me as individuals who enjoy attracting a cult following. Many of the teachers I have watched over the year tend to portray themselves as Jewish gurus. Of course there are many Kabbalah teachers who really offer something profound. But how does one tell the difference between real mysticism from the counterfeit imitations? Are all Kabbalistic teachings even suitable for ordinary consumption? Not really; in fact some ideas can prove to be even quite toxic. In general, here are several questions that might prove to be beneficial for those wishing to study Kabbalah for the first time from a teacher who really understands the subject matter:

• Look for clarity and simplicity. Many (if not most) Kabbalah teachers love to couch their material in esoteric language that really doesn’t say much about anything. If Kabbalah sounds like gobbledygook, then I suggest you look elsewhere for your enlightenment.

• Stay far away from any Kabbalistic text that teaches you that gentiles are an inferior level of humanity when compared to the Jew.[1]

• Stay away from any Kabbalah teacher who does not wish to answer tough questions about the accuracy of the Kabbalah and its proponents’ ideas.

• See whether the Kabbalah teachers really understand who Plato was, and what he taught. Ask them if they know anything about the Neo-Platonic thought of Plotinus or Philo of Alexandria and how they have indirectly influenced the formation of the Kabbalah. Gershom Scholem, Moshe Idel, Elliot Wolfson, and Daniel Matt all have written superb expositions of the Kabbalah in a clear and modern idiom.

Here are some examples taken from a Chabad website:

• The partzufim referred to here are the partzufim of Atzilut; the meaning is that Abba of Atzilut nests in Atzilut, while Ima of Atzilut descends and rests in Beriah, and so forth.All this simply means that, although each world possesses its own array of ten sefirot (in the form of their respective partzufim), each world is nonetheless pervaded by an overall consciousness that is an expression of one of the partzufim of Atzilut. Abba is the partzuf of chochmah, which is the consciousness of bitul (“self-nullification”); a person experiencing a flash of insight is not aware of himself but is rather absorbed totally in the experience of the revelation. This, overall, is the general consciousness of the world of Atzilut; the revelation of G-d in this world is so great that it leaves absolutely no room for self-awareness.

• As you know, Zeir Anpin develops through three states of consciousness: fetal [ibur], suckling [yenika], and mature [gadlut]. Similarly, every soul develops through these states of consciousness.

Navigating your way through this kind of Kabbalah labyrinth requires a good road-map and a skilled guide, not to mention—lots of Kiddush wine and vodka. If the truth from a Kabbalistic text is not something that is immediately understood and clear, why waste your time trying to figure it out?

Although the German philosopher Nietzsche was unfamiliar with the Kabbalah, his cautionary words about the meaninglessness of useless metaphors certainly applies as well to much of the Kabbalistic literature:

• What is truth? A mobile army of metaphors, metonymies, in short a sum of human relations which have been subjected to poetic and rhetorical intensification, translation, and decoration, and which, after they have been in use for a long time, strike a people as firmly established, canonical and binding; truths are illusions of which we have forgotten that they are illusions, metaphors which have become worn by frequent use and have lost all sensuous vigor, coins which, having lost their stamp, are now regarded as metal and no longer as coins (emphasis added).[2]

Positive Examples of Kabbalistic Writing

On the other hand, there are some (but not a lot, however) of Kabbalistic works that attempts to distill the Kabbalistic language, rendering it somewhat more intelligible. R. Abraham Isaac Kook (1865-1935) offers some lovely thoughts on spiritual yearning that does not require a lexicon to figure out what he was trying to say,

• Confirm me not in cages of substance, or of spirit I am lovesick. I thirst, I thirst for God. More than the deer for water brooks. I am bound to the world, to life; All creatures are my brothers. But how can I share with them my light?

• A life-giving illumination flows always from the source of the Torah, which brings to the world light from the highest realm of the divine. It embraces the values of the spiritual and the material, the temporal and the eternal, the moral and the practical, the individual and the social. These spell life to all who come in contact with them, and guard them in their purity.
• Meditation on the inner life and moral conformity must always go together with those qualified for this. They absorb the light pervading the world, which abides in all souls, and they present it as one whole. Through the influences radiating from their life and their fellowship with others, through the impact of their will and the greatness of their spiritual being, through their humility and love for all creatures, they then disseminate the treasure of life and of good to all. These men of upright heart are channels through which light and life reach to all creatures. They are vessels for radiating the light of eternal life. They are the servants of God, who heed His word, the messengers who do His will to revive those near death, to strengthen the weak, to awaken those who slumber.[3]

As you can see, not everything has to be written in Kabbalistic gobbledygook; some Jewish mystics actually can be quite articulate. For those readers interested in the heart of the Hassidic message, please read anything written by Martin Buber—who may well have been one of Judaism’s greatest 2oth century mystics. His “I and Thou” and “The Way of Man” are among the best books on the subject. In addition, Abraham Joshua Heschel’s “God in Search of Man,” “The Sabbath,” and “Man is not Alone” are among the best examples of Jewish mystical writing without the traditional Kabbalistic gobbledygook.

Notes:

[1]R. Sheneir Zalman of Liadi (a.k.a. the “Alter Rebbe”) writes in his Tanya: The souls of the nations of the world, however, emanate from the other, unclean kelipot which contain no good whatever, כמו שכתוב בע׳ חיים שער מ״ט פרק ג׳: וכל טיבו דעבדין האומות לגרמייהו עבדין as is written in Etz Chayim, Portal 49, ch. 3, that all the good that the nations do, is done out of selfish motives. Since their nefesh emanates from kelipot which contain no good, it follows that any good done by them is for selfish motives. וכדאיתא בגמרא על פסוק: וחסד לאומים חטאת — שכל צדקה וחסד שאומות העולם עושין אינן אלא להתייהר כו׳ So the Gemara comments on the verse, “The kindness of the nations is sin” — that all the charity and kindness done by the nations of the world is only for their self-glorification… (Tanya, Chapter 1)

The Chabad commentator writes, “When a Jew acts in a benevolent manner he is motivated mainly out of concern for the welfare of his fellow. The proof of this is that were his fellow not to need his help, this would give him greater pleasure than the gratification derived from his act of kindness. Concerning the nations of the world, however, this is not so. Their motivation is not the welfare of their fellow; rather, it stems from a self-serving motive — the desire for self-glorification, a feeling of gratification, and the like. It should be noted that among the nations of the world there are also to be found those whose souls are derived from kelipat nogah. Called “the pious ones of the nations of the world,” these righteous individuals are benevolent not out of selfish motives but out of a genuine concern for their fellow. The second, uniquely Jewish, soul is truly “a part of G-d above . . .” See http://www.chabad.org/library/tanya/tanya_cdo/aid/7880/jewish/Chapter-1.htm. Needless to say, this type of ideology strikes any modern reader as racist and the damage that this kind of Jewish “Herrenvolk” (master race) rhetoric creates and reenforces anti-Semitism.

[2] Friedrich Nietzsche, “On Truth and Lying in a Non-Moral Sense” in Friedrich Nietzsche, The birth of tragedy and other writings. Cambridge University Press, 1999), 146.

[3] Abraham Isaac Kook, Ben Zion Bokser (ed.) “Abraham Isaac Kook: The Lights of Penitence,The Moral Principles, Lights of Holiness, Essays, Letters, and Poems,” (Maweh, NJ: Paulist Press, 1978), 208-209.