Kabbalah:Divine Catastrophe And Human Redemption

Kabbalah, the culmination of mystical and esoteric traditions that stretch back thousands of years, has recently taken a more central place internationally as a source of spiritual inspiration. Kabbalah is seen today as Judaism’s most important gift to world culture. This may show that people, in an age impatient with more difficult material, still want to encounter works that are spiritually and imaginatively on the heights. Kabbalah accepts catastrophe as a fundamental reality of life, not exactly a vision that fosters positive thinking. It also concentrates on the absolute need for human responsibility, not a very comforting message for those looking for easy answers (and Kabbalah does not yield its secrets easily). Kabbalah as we know it today formed from opposing forces within Judaism, between the rational (represented by Aristotle) and the intuitive (represented by Plato), a dialectic that I will touch on. Kabbalistic teachings, however, were not well-known until very recently and in fact went through a two hundred year exile (exile being one of Kabbalah’s great themes), banished by rationalists of the Enlightenment, only to be resuscitated by people searching for their traditional roots and by some of the world’s most gifted scholars. Here I will give an overview of a few basic teachings from the central works of Kabbalah, with a focus on catastrophe and redemption. Human goodness as a way to heal the world, a cosmic drama in which everyone plays a part, is perhaps Kabbalah’s greatest lesson for global civilization

November 2020

https://digitalcommons.usm.maine.edu/jud_tempshalomnl/1040/thumbnail.jp

FAIVRE (Antoine), HANEGRAAFF (Wouter J.), éds., Western Esotericism and the Science ofReligion

Une nouvelle discipline académique est en train de naître. Il s’agit de l’étude de l’ésotérisme occidental. C’est ce que nous annonce W.J.H. dans son introduction à ce choix de contributions présentées au dernier colloque de l’International Association for the History of Religion (Mexico, 1995), lors d’une session spécifique portant le même titre que le recueil. En réalité la discipline devrait être considérée pour le moins adolescente, la première chaire universitaire à être consacrée à l’ét..

Hasidism:The People’s Kabbalah

Here I will discuss a few mythological perspectives of a traditional group: the Hasidim (Hasid meaning “Pious” in Hebrew). Beginning in eighteenth-century, in what is　today’s Eastern Poland and Western Ukraine, Hasidism brought together a constellation of values and practices from older spiritual traditions. Some may think that the word, “People’s,” in my title denotes liberal values: social equality and human rights from the Enlightenment (1685-1815). In the context of movements within Orthodox Judaism, however, I simply mean “non-elitist” (Schatz 1994:98). An intellectual class had always led movements in Judaism. The Hasidic movement, by contrast, founded by Israel ben Eleazar (c. 1698-1760), was spread by itinerate preachers (usually with no formal education) who addressed ordinary people directly, often outside established religious organizations (Dan 1983:6). What did Hasidism incorporate from earlier kabbalistic movements? How is it different from other Orthodox movements and from Conservative and Reform Judaism? These are just a couple of the questions I will consider here. Hasidism has been remarkably open, through its great optimism, toward democratizing experiential elements of Kabbalah, and this remains itstrademark today

La Visión de la escala en la mística judía a partir de 'El sueño de Jacob' de Anselm Kiefer

Un cuadro del artista alemán Anselm Kiefer (n. 1945) titulado 'Jakobs Traum' ('El sueño de Jacob', 1996) hace referencia al conocido pasaje bíblico de la visión de la escala de Jacob (Gén 28:12): «Tuvo un sueño en el que veía una escala que, apoyándose sobre la tierra, tocaba con la cabeza en los cielos, y que por ella subían y bajaban los ángeles de Dios.» En el cuadro, Jacob (el propio artista) se halla estirado, dormido, en medio de un paisaje desértico, de cara al cielo estrellado, al universo infinito La escala mística es un símbolo universal de ascenso místico o de crecimiento espiritual. En una de las mayores unidades textuales del corpus de la especulación de la mística judía, la oscura visión de Ez 1 del Carro celeste (merkâbâh) como Trono de la «Gloria» de Dios (kâbôd) , la literatura de los Hêyjâlôt (Hêyjâlôt Rabbatî, «Hêyjâlôt mayores», 15-23), la escala de Jacob se convierte en un símbolo de via mystica o de ascensión a través de los siete cielos (reqi'im) y los siete palacios divinos o moradas (hêyjâlôt) del alma hasta llegar al Trono de Dios

The Phenomenology of Everyday Experiences of Contemporary Mystics in the Jewish Traditions of Kabbalah

This phenomenological study was conducted in order to understand the everyday experiences of contemporary mystics in the Jewish traditions of Kabbalah. This author could find no available information about psychological research of this topic in psychological, educational or psychiatric databases. She used the applied phenomenological methodology of Howard Pollio and the Research Groups at the University of Tennessee. Interviews were conducted by this author with eight volunteer, living, adult participants who lived throughout the United States and ranged in age from 37 to 60+ years. These mystics were found through various means after they had described themselves, by their own definitions, as mystics in the Jewish traditions(s) of Kabbalah. There were six men and two women who participated; four were Jewish and four were not. The interviews ranged from one to three hours in length, were recorded, and later transcribed for confidential analyses. After analyzing the results, the Ground of the participants’ experience was determined to be Being Aware. The Thematic Structure of the participants’ everyday experiences of living with their mystical events and processes contained six themes: 1) Divine/Sacred, 2) Receiving/Calling/Gift, 3) Knowing/Realizing, 4) Practices/Body, 5)Developing/Stages, and 6) Struggling: Self/Others/World. Implications for this study suggest that the everyday experiences of these mystical participants are different in many ways from everyday experiences of non-mystics. There is some support for the ideas of spiritual intelligence, spiritual giftedness, consciousness advancement. Appreciating intuition, higher emotional states, and the deeper, yet usually hidden parts of human experience, along with learning to identify and support young people who are having mystical experiences is a worthwhile goal for psychologists