Check it out.

• Key Teachings and Meditative Practices of the Safed Kabbalists
• Kabbalistic Influences on Prayer and Ritual
• Understanding the Moral Consideration of Animals in Kabbalistic Thought (the RAMAK)
• Can we Live a Kabbalistic Lifestyle?
• Tapping Into our Spiritual Guides (Maggid)
• The Devil and the Shekhina in Kabbalah
• Meet the Chief Rabbi of Safed, Shmuel Eliyahu
• Premiere showing of Shlomo Weprin’s film on Safed

“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.

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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

Full article in the Columbus Dispatch.

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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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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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

“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