Rabbi Jerry Winston, author of Colors from the Zohar: Drawn from the Classic of Jewish Mysticism and The Mystical Sabbath: Candlelight and Kabbalah has passed away on December 19, 2010

May his memory be for a blessing

Zalman Velvel, “writer, storyteller, speaker” has a comedy CD out titled Kabbalah You. I wish you Shabbat Shalom with a segment from it:

Patricia Waldygo created this meditation painting in the early 1980s, based on the viewpoint of an early theosophist, Dion Fortune. She issued a press release last week announcing that the prints of the paintings are available again. I am sharing this news, because  Samuel Weiser, Inc., the publisher, used it as a book cover for “The Mystical Qabalah” by Dion Fortune and as the cover of Weiser’s 1984-85 catalogue.

Here is a quote introducing an interview with Yedida Cohen from last week on the Israel National Radio:

Why did G-d create the world? What is our purpose in life? Why does evil exist? What should we be doing with our lives? Tamar interviews Yedida Cohen, author of the book, “A Tapestry of the Soul ” – In essence, this book is a study guide to the “Introduction to the Zohar” by Rabbi Yehudah Lev Ashlag. It is for those who want to learn directly from Rabbi Ashlag himself, without any intermediary or subjective additions by another author. It is meant to be used as a tool to explore who we are, what are our souls’ deepest desires are and how we can understand what we are here in this life for.

The full title of the book is:

A Tapestry for the Soul
The Introduction to the Zohar by Rabbi Yehudah Lev Ashlag
Explained using excerpts collated from his other writings including suggestions for inner work.
Compiled by Yedidah Cohen

It was published by Nehora Press in April. The publisher’s blog has a new entry each month. On the website proper site you will find lesson one of the book, a few blurbs, the table of contents and the synopsis. The latter is a really an extended version of the table of contents with a paragraph long summary of each of the 18 lessons. They are:

• Questions on the nature of God
• Inquiries into the nature of creation
• The ultimate aim and purpose of creation
• The substance of creation; the essence of the souls; affinity and difference of form
• The nature of evil; the different routes that body and soul travel; the purpose of the mitzvot in the healing of the will to receive for oneself alone; the means by which the higher levels of the soul are drawn to the person
• The states in which the souls exist simultaneously; free will; the nature and purpose of suffering
• The true nature of the body and its purpose; the end of suffering; where am I acting from?
• The essence of the soul; how desire begets needs and needs give birth to thoughts as to how to satisfy those needs; the differences between people
• The language of the branches; the revival of the dead; the true goal and fulfillment of the will to receive
• The work of our lives; further concerning the framework of uncleanness
• The purpose of the higher worlds; the final state of the souls; the development of the wills to receive
• The perception of the person who splits the shell of the will to receive for oneself alone
• The relationship of the soul with the higher worlds; the mitzvot
• The lights of the Sephirot, the vessels and the worlds; the ascension of the soul through the worlds
• The ascension of the soul (continued)
• The holographic nature of reality and its relationship to Torah; the nature of the book of the Zohar and its authorship
• The revelation of the Kabbalah in our generation and the nature of our generation compared to previous generations
• The innermost aspect of the Torah and its relationship to Israel and the world

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.

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….

Read full post

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

Marc Nichanian, the author of “Our Place in al-Andalus: Kabbalah, Philosophy, Literature in Arab Jewish Letters” (2002) has a new book out about genocide: “The Historiographic Perversion”. The Armenian Reporter summarizes Nichanian’s thesis this way:

Genocide is a matter of law. It is also a matter of history. And the denial of genocide – often called the last stage of genocide – attacks the foundations of both, argues philosopher and literary critic Marc Nichanian.

His Kabbalah related book

“addresses the representation of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries as the end of al-Andalus (Islamic Spain). Here, the end works to locate and separate Muslim from Christian Spain, Jews from Arabs, philosophy from Kabbalah, Kabbalah from literature, and texts from contexts.“

Lisa Erickson, the woman who runs the “Mommy Mystic: women’s spirituality in the 21st century” blog ran a series of 5 entries last summer, titled “5 religions, 5 women mystics.” The Jewish installment was about “Hannah Rachel Verbermacher, also known as ‘the maiden of Ludmir’.

“[She] was a nineteenth-century Hasidic Jewish woman popularly known as the only female Hasidic Rebbe, or religious leader, although she was never officially accorded that status….She lived alone in a small hut, engaged in Talmudic study and engaging in Kabbalistic mystic practices usually reserved only for Hasidic men. On the Sabbath, she would give religious discourses through a small window. Over time, she developed a reputation, and people would travel from all over Eastern Europe to hear her discourses, receive blessings, or ask for advice or healings.”

Erickson covers Verbermacher’s life in five paragraphs and points to two books for further studies published on her “The Maiden of Ludmir: A Jewish Holy Woman and Her World” by Nathaniel Deutsch and “The Receiving: Reclaiming Jewish Women’s Wisdom“, by Tirzah Firestone.

Nextbook.org relaunched its publication(s) in June. Instead of publishing the Nextbook Reader paper, It now has an online magazine called Tablet. All the content of past Nextbook Reader issues have been moved to the new venture. You can read more about the changes here.

This week Tablet magazine ran the profile of Naftali Imber, mostly known as the poet who wrote HaTikvah. He was much more colorful character than anauthor of a national anthem people think would be. He made prophetic announcements, some of which actually turned out to be accurate. He was also an alcoholic who made a living via occult sessions. According to the article he was known as the “apostle of the Kabbalah and the Emissary of the 37 masters”. Unfortunately I didn’t find any of his Kabbalistic writings, if he had any. As far as I can tell a full biography of Imber has not been published in English yet. Maybe when it will be we will have more access to his Kabbalistic ideas too.