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BecomingJewish.Org, a site that “offers information about Conversion to Judaism” published a summarizing article no the Zohar and later mysticism in January. Its eight paragraphs (and short bibliography) cover a lot of ground from a neutral point of view as possible.
The 6th annual Kabbalah Day at the JCC in Manhattan was this last Sunday. Its focus was Safed. The (New York) Jewish Week published an introductory article about it. At the organizers’ website (JInsider and JCC Manhattan) there wasn’t much information about the event. These were some of the workshops:
Jay Michaelson’s musings related to the movie Avatar in Forward compares and contrasts its message to that of Kabbalah in the areas of spiritual and practical environmentalisms. He connects mysticism and environmentalisms in two ways, namely:
“Avatar’s” deep ecology is interwoven with its pantheistic, quasi-kabbalistic notion of a “web of life.” Indeed, the latter necessitates the former: it’s impossible to believe that all life is deeply connected, and yet not be troubled when the sinews of that connection are frayed and destroyed…
A second convergence between “Avatar” and Jewish mysticism is the controversial point that while individual actions are important and individual responsibility remains a value, the communal matters more: the overall health of the system, the shared justice of a society.
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.”
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….
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
