The vertical-authoritarian model reflects an atavistic, anti-modern approach that relies on superstition and magic to express Jewish values, while the horizontal-dialogical model encapsulates the wisdom of Talmudic-Maimonidean tradition in a form of critical inquiry which seeks to empower human beings to free themselves of the shackles of magical irrationality.

Before he gets to this conclusion he lays down the arguments using quotes from Moshe Idel’s “Kabbalah: New Perspectives” and from his own teacher’s Jose Faur’s “The Horizontal Society: Understanding the Covenant and Alphabetic Judaism.” Shasha juxtaposes the democratic nature of language (everyone can speak and use it if given the the right tools (alphabet and grammar) and the top-down nature of revelatory ad mystical testimonies.

The kabbalist Abraham Abulafia journeyed to the Land of Israel at the age of 18, following the invasion of the Mongolians, risked his life attempting to meet the Pope, declared himself a prophet and Messiah, and was ultimately banned and isolated. Professor Moshe Idel’s survey clarifies how even amongst self-declared messiahs, the 13th century Abulafia was a unique figure; his thought focused on individual rather than national redemption and his techniques integrated intellectual and physical elements, some of which recall Eastern schools of thought.

…AVATAR echoes two major strands of religious wisdom that began in Jewish thought … the Kabbalistic metaphor of God as the Tree of Life, unfolding through successive emanations from the Infinite to the Incarnate so that its roots are in Heaven and its fruit is our world. This wisdom is notably “spiritual,” but has as its roots a political vision of sharing food among the whole community, and sharing God’s abundance with all living beings.

The Tree of Life, God’s greatest plentiful abundance, had vanished from human ken when the humans tried to gobble up all they food they saw, and thereby banished themselves from Eden. That banishment is what the Earthians of Avatar have done to themselves. By gobbling up the earth they live in, they have killed it and driven themselves to seek another in Pandora. But they have learned nothing. In the winter of their discontent, despair, they glimpse the Tree of Life, the Garden of Delight.

Like any film, AVATAR is meant for seeing. But unlike most films, it explicitly makes the act of seeing into a spiritual discipline. The watchword of the Na’vi is, “I see you.” For Pandora’s people, these words express what in Hebrew is “yodea,” interactive “knowing” that is emotional, intellectual, physical/ sexual, and spiritual all at one

Studies in English

• Daniel Abrams: The Virgin Mary as the Moon that Lacks the Sun – A Zoharic Polemic Against the Veneration of Mary
• Moshe Idel: Torah Hadashah – Messiah and the New Torah in Jewish Mysticism and Modern Scholarship
• Morris Faierstein: Two Radical Teachings in the Mei Ha-Shiloah and Their Sources

Studies in Hebrew

• Yehuda Liebes: The Pool, the Daughter and the Male in the Book Bahir
• Michael Schneider: The Angelomorophic Son of God, Yehoel and the Prince of Peace
• Ruth Kara-Ivanov Kaniel: Eve, the Gazelle and the Serpent: Narratives of Creation and Redemption, Myth and Gender
• Daniel Abrams: The Reception and Editing of Kabbalistic Works by Students of Jewish Esotericism in Ashkenaz After the Appearance of the Kabbalah (Collectanea of Early Works in a Leipzig Manuscript Copied in 1429)
• Shalom Sadik: Is ‘R. Abner’ R. Abner of Burgos?
• Maoz Kahana and Michael K. Silber: Deists, Sabbateans and Kabbalists in Prague: A Censored Sermon of R. Ezekiel Landau, 1770

“the commercialization of Kabbalah has been concealment, too. Whereas the secrets of Jewish mysticism had previously been obscured by difficult Aramaic texts, they’re now obscured beneath piles of literary manure.”

After  a brief detour on what to avoid (anything by The Kabbalah Center and anything spelled Qabalah) he suggests that Edward Hoffman’s new anthology, “The Kabbalah Reader” may be the best, because it includes original texts. Other books approved and annotated by Michaelson in this article are:

• Daniel Matt: The Essential Kabbalah
• Rabbi Louis Jacobs (ed): Schocken Book of Jewish Mystical Testimonies
• Alan Unterman: The Kabbalistic Tradition
• David Meltzer: The Secret Garden
• Rabbi Arthur Green: A Guide to the Zohar
• Rabbi David Cooper: God is a Verb
• Rabbi Lawrence Kushner: Honey from the Rock
• Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz: The Thirteen Petalled Rose
• Byron L. Sherwin: Kabbalah: An Introduction to Jewish Mysticism
• David Ariel: Kabbalah: The Mystic Quest in Judaism
• Rabbi Arthur Kurzweil: Kabbalah for Dummies
• Arthur Goldwag: The Beliefnet Guide to Kabbalah
• Melila Hellner-Eshed: A River Flows from Eden

The organized movement to attack the writings of Moses Maimonides, perhaps the most significant post-Talmudic sage over the course of Jewish history, originated in Ashkenazi rabbinic circles and was executed by a ban promulgated by their disciples in Christian Spain. It is intimately connected to the triumph of mystical occultism in Judaism.

Then he shares the various scholarly explanations given for the ban. Halfway through the article he introduces Moshe Idel, one of the most famous and influential contemporary scholar on Kabbalah as someone who “relentlessly promoted the pro-magic, neo-pagan, anti-rational strain of Jewish tradition.” Finally Sasha quotes Idel,

“a relatively organic evolution of Jewish mysticism [...] can also be rejected by philological or historical analysis of the texts.”

Sasha shows how this idea influenced the development of Zionism, the establishment of the State of Israel and contemporary Jewish culture and identity. He believes that because the mystical motif that spread within Judaism identifies itself as separate from the “other,” it (being “alien to universal civilization and the standards of science and rationality”)

“led to the rejection of Sephardic Jewish Humanism as formulated by Maimonides and an affirmation of an ethnocentric Jewish chauvinism based on the magical mysticism of Kabbalistic theurgy.”

I found the reasoning and its data points in it enlightening, but altogether do not fully accept the causation. They are correct as far as internal, within-Jewry  processes, but the main reason Jews thought of themselves as separate in the late middle ages, because they were treated as such, at least in the European countries. These mystical motifs, and the ideas they carried, helped them to understand their on situation. I am aware that Jewry outside Europe faced different challenges. Sasha is right that because Zionism grew out of Ashkenazim the Sephardi philosophy had less of an impact on the development of modern Jewry. This process goes as far as Sephardim in Israel considered the outgroup, while Ashkenazim are the norm.

In short, the author missed mentioning the external, historic reasons that lead to “Jewish chauvinism”, thus providing only half the picture.

MySefer.com

Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz
Rabbi Aryeh Kaplan
Rabbi Matityahu Glazerson
Rabbi Moshe Chaim Luzzatto (Ramchal)
Rabbi Nachman of Breslov
Rabbi Raphael Afilalo
Rabbi Yaakov Moshe Hillel
Rabbi Yitzchak Ginsburgh

As of now they have 134 books listed in this category, although some of those books are related to Kabbalah to a much lesser degree than others. But it’s a great source to get Religious Jewish works on the topic.

Check it out.

“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.

Read the full article.