On the last day of January there was an event in Boston titled “Everything is God: A Boston Jewish Spiritual Woodstock“. (A similar event will happen in San Francisco on February 11. See Facebook.) Here is the description of the Boston even from its Facebook page:

LEARN: at an expert panel featuring Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg, recently named a finalist for the Sami Rohr Prize in Jewish Literature for her memoir Surprised by God; Jay Michaelson, recently named to the “Forward 50” list of “the men and women who are leading the American Jewish community into the 21st century;” and Seth Castleman, a former Buddhist monk who is being ordained as a rabbi this year. The panel will be introduced by Dr. Bernard Steinberg, President and Director of Harvard Hillel.

The panel will discuss the “new Jewish culture” and the new forms of Jewish spirituality emerging in the 21st century, how such forms resemble and differ from past ones, how the act of spiritual writing has evolved in the last twenty years, and what it means that Jews are post-denominationally and cross-culturally creating their own religious and secular approaches to Jewish spirituality.

CONNECT: The most exciting aspect of the evening will be the “Spiritual Woodstock” fair of contemporary organizations working and creating new spiritual and religious forms within the New Jewish Culture. The fair will provide an opportunity to encounter this new flowering of Jewish spiritual creativity firsthand, meeting directly with some of its leading institutions, including GesherCity, Keshet, Eden Village Camp, Kirtan Rabbi, the Kirva Institute, the Tremont Street Shul, Nehirim, and many others.

CELEBRATE the publication of the new book by Forward and Huffington Post columnist Jay Michaelson entitled Everything is God: The Radical Path of Nondual Judaism at a kosher reception with plenty of time to mingle and connect, and a performance by Boston Jewish hip-hop star Rakia.

Jewschool recorded and posted a lot of the event here.

The book’s/author’s website: everythingisgod.com

Rabbi Areyah Kaltmann, director of the Schottenstein Chabad House, has lost 60 pounds by following the teachings of Kabbalah. He developed a six-week class to help people look at food and self-control differently.

Full article in the Columbus Dispatch.

A newly discovered piece of stained, wrinkled paper conjures up the details of a Jewish exorcism that appears to have been performed sometime in the 18th or 19th century.

The ghostly document details the prayers that were performed on Qamar bat Rahmah to try to rid her of the spirit of her dead husband, Nissim ben Bonia. According to the handwritten but well-preserved Hebrew text, the rabbis asked the ghost to “leave this woman, Qamar bat Rahmah, [and forgo] all authority and control that it has over her; and Nissim ben Bonia shall have no more authority and control whatsoever over Qamar bat Rahmah in any form or manner at all.:

The 150-word text provides a haunting insight into the often forgotten world of the Jewish occult. While exorcisms are frequently described in Jewish texts from the Middle Ages on, this appears to be the first text that provides the prayer used in a specific exorcism.

“It has names, and you can kind of speculate as to some sort of story lurking behind the names,” said Yossi Chajes, an expert on Jewish magic and mysticism at the University of Haifa who was not involved in the unearthing of the text. “It’s an unusual document.”

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Professor Moshe Idel a leading professor of studying and teaching Kabbalah in an academic setting posted an entry on the Seforim blog about Kabbalah manuscripts kept in the Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana (Vatican Library). It is an expansion of remarks delivered at the February 2009 symposium hosted at the National Library of Israel, in Jerusalem.

In the summer of 1280, Abraham Abulafia (1240- c. 1291), a Kabbalist who founded the special prophetic or ecstatic version of the Kabbalah, attempted to meet Pope Nicholaus III in Rome. This special effort came as the result of a revelation he had ten years earlier in Barcelona, which presumably consisted in a command to go to Rome at the eve of the Jewish New Year, in a mission reminiscent of Moses’ encounter with Pharaoh: namely to discuss issues related to redemption….

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What do you make of those who say they are “spiritual, but not religious”?

I can’t stand that. Spiritual often just means some kind of wishy-washy me-ism, where I’m having a lovely experience without much discipline. You know, designer Kabbalah in Hollywood or designer yoga.

Yoga is not about aerobic exercise or finding the lovely oceanic peacefulness about yourself; it’s about dismantling the ego. It demands hours of practice every day, not just a yoga class once a week. We’ve watered it down to be some kind of feel-good thing.

Source: uscatholic.org

Mel Alexenberg is working on a new book titled “Photograph God: Kabbalah Through a Creative Lens.” and he is documenting the process and the book at the Photograph God blog. Here is how the top of his blog looks like that reveals the links to be followed there:

Edward Hoffman’s intentions with his box containing “The Kabbalah Deck: Pathway to the Soul” were evinced on page 4 of 160 page booklet:

“I’ve increasingly felt the need for an entirely new resource – one that would make the Kabbalah more dynamically personal and interactive. This format would certainly not replace the classic study of the Kabbalah, but significantly complement it by providing a more experiential pathway into the proverbial “garden” of Jewish mystical guidance. To this end, I’ve created the Kabbalah Deck. It’s been designed for two specific and unrelated purposes. The first is for contemplation and sacred study, and the second is for divination.”

As you can conclude from the above the Deck consists of cards, 35 by number and a booklet in a nice blue box. The back of the cards al gold colored, with black print on them using Middle eastern motifs, a Magen David (six pointed star) with an eye at its center and two fish at the shorter end of the cards. The fronts of the cards fall into one of three categories, but all of them are mostly white with minimal golden prints on them. The cards corresponding to the 22 letters of the Hebrew Alephbet have the letter’s English version on top in all lower case, the Hebrew version as you’d see them in the Torah scroll with their crowns in the center of the card. At the bottom of these and the three “Jolly joker” cards there is a line of barely visible six pointed stars as watermarks. The function of the three cards that simply have hamsa on them is to be used as any letter the user wants them to be, when spelling out something. This might be necessary if a word has a specific letter more than once in it. There are also ten cards, for each of the sephirot in the Tree of life. Each of these cards have the whole traditional chart of the Tree with one highlighted. Below the tree you will find the Hebrew and English name of the specific sephira.

The accompanying booklet has three major and several minor sections. After the acknowledgements and the introduction you find a seven page mini-essay on the wisdom of the Hebrew alephbet. About half of this is devoted to explaining how Abraham Abulafia’s repurposed it, but it also covers such roots of the topic as Ezra the Scribe, the Sefer Yetzirah and the Zohar. Then each of the letters get a two page treatment with 4-5 paragraphs each. These paragraphs explain the significance of the letter in Kabbalah. It is a great overview of the topic, although it never sites its sources fully. Often it talks about Kabbalah in general and sometimes he mentions that this particular explanation or that comes from the Zohar or from a Hassidic master. This kind of writing is in alignment with the intention I quoted above, but is not with my scientific or religious interest as both of these would want me to follow the sources and find out the original writings Hoffman incorporated. Nevertheless the content is truly remarkable. The last paragraph of each of these mini-chapters is about the purpose and method on how to meditate on that particular letter.

The second major section is about the Ten Sephirot. It follows the same patter of an opening 5-page mini-essay on their history and then two page of each of them. The last major section is titled “exercises for meditation and divination.” None of the twenty five exercises is longer than 14 lines. Some of them fall along the lines of team, family or trust building, but most of them are for introspection. As Hoffman is a clinical psychologist I am sure he harvested his knowledge of that field to combine it with Jewish mysticism to create something new. The exercises often include shuffling the cards and picking one. Then the deeper meaning of that card is the answer for the question you were supposed to focus on. It presumes of course that you are fully familiar with the meanings of the cards, the letters and the sephirot. The booklet will give you a good start to acquire the knowledge but it will not fulfill all the needs.

Hoffman’s book is full tiny nuggets of knowledge that are valuable I themselves for people interested in the connection of Kabbalah, psychology and (I am afraid I have to add) divination. He exposed the connection between the first two in one of his dozen books titled, “The Way of Splendor: Jewish mysticism and modern psychology.” The Kabbalah Deck is a splendid package for those who want to follow the divination path. Meanwhile I will go back and read his book instead.

The book at the publisher’s site (Chronicle Books)

The book @ Amazon.com

In celebration of Yehuda Berg’s new book “THE POWER TO CHANGE EVERYTHING”, Kabbalah Publishing is partnering with Eco-Libris and inviting you to take action and balance out this and future book purchases by planting trees with Eco-Libris.

For every tree planted, you will receive an Eco-Libris sticker to display on your book sleeves. For every five trees planted on your behalf, one more tree will be planted on behalf of Kabbalah Publishing as an appreciation of their commitment to the environment.

Source and place to balance out: http://www.ecolibris.net/yehudaberg.asp

As traditional Judaism is against divination I was hesitant to read the 133 page book(let) accompanying the deck of cars in the box labeled “Ask the Kabala Oracle Cards.” The cards themselves are nicely designed. The front has one of the 22 Hebrew letters, along with English transliteration on how to pronounce them. Each has an image, often nonfigurative or with simple symbols, never more than with 8-9 colors, which give the whole seta simplistic feeling. The back of all the cards has the same drawing: a tree with a bird at its center surround by a reddish, wavy edge.

The last page of the booklet gives information about the three authors, but doesn’t indicate who drew the cards. I think that’s a shame because it made it look like that half of the package’s content was disregarded, while some people might spend much more time with the visually pleasing cards than with the text. My guess is that the design was created either Charles McStravick, who is listed as responsible for “design” on the inside page of the book, or maybe Tracy Walker, who made the “interior illustrations”.

The headliner of the three authors is Deepak Chopra. He is much better known than the other two authors, so I suspect that’s why we have his name on top and bigger letters. I wonder thought how much of the book he has written and to what extent he just gave his name to the project. The only piece identified as written by him was the 11 page long introduction, mind you this is a small format book, so 11 pages aren’t that long. The second author mentioned on the cover is Michael “Zappy” Zapolin, the person behind the kabala.com website and a “lecturer to celebrities.” I never heard of him, but maybe his association of celebrities was a good enough selling point to include him. Finally, listed as “with,” we have Alys R. Yablon, an editor and ghostwriter according to her website. She might have done the majority of the writing.

Chopra’s introduction starts of with a comparison of his own, Vedic tradition and Kabbalah. After finding similarities he briefly characterizes the domains of the physical/mental/spiritual world, then he goes off to dive into the third that he calls the Theosphere’s domains: personal/collective/universal. That’s were he connects to the Kabablistic concepts of Atzilut/Beriya/Teyzira/Assiya and the sephirot again. He attempts to tie it a together with suggesting that you can ask Kabala a question and get an answer with the help of the cards, but you need to do the interpretation itself. He makes references to lots of people, concepts and theories in the attempt to show that they are all connected and how knowledgeable he is. He might, be but for me this section felt like a mixing good pieces of content with each other in lieu of putting attention and original thought to it.

Next there are two pages on how to use the booklet: shuffle the cards, focus on question/problem, pick one, meditate on the letter, read the story, listen to your intuition and find the answer. Then the impossible task of introducing the history of Kabala on 6 pages with a heavy focus on the Zohar is accomplished. Before we get into the stories themselves we get a surprisingly good and comprehensive ten page treatise on the mysteries of the aleph-bet.

The majority of the booklet is made up by the text corresponding to the 22 letters and the 22 cards. Each has 4-5 pages to itself, including a smaller, black and white replica of the appropriate card, a quote from the Torah (with citation) and an explanation of the quote and the story behind it along with a focus on a human issue, question, problem or moral dilemma. These chapters have nothing objectionable in them, they often follow traditional rabbinic discourse no a topic, always ending with a lesson we can all relate to and learn. But then each chapter ends with a clearly separated paragraph or two, that connects the letter to the lesson or feature, which doesn’t always connect to traditional interpretation. E.g.

Aleph – begin again
Bet – conflict
Gimmel –judgment
Dalet – paradox in relationship
Heh – transition
Vav – accept responsibility
Zayin – stillness
Chet – let go
Tet – appreciation
Yud – forgiveness
and so on

Depending on your stance, persuasion and interest, you may want to look at or not, use or not the pretty cards. Similarly you can read the whole booklet if you wish or just focus on the 22 Torah stories as that could be kosher for almost anybody.

Talk about the theme of light and how that plays into it for you.

Well, in a nutshell there’s Kabbalah. The Kabbalah talks, Jewish mysticism talks about the creation of the world, and the basic idea is that God when he wanted to create the world withdrew His light from the center of His being. His light is like all being. Everything is consumed within God. So in order for Him to create like the other, He had to sort of pull out His core being, pull like out His light from the center, and then He created this sort of void or this sort of empty space within, and then the world basically exists inside of that empty space.

Source.