No-thingness is Something Else
I search and I scan for the perfect metaphor Abhorring imprecision or worse selling out To the exigencies of a concocted cocktail A ballerina poising on a sharpened pinkie The tone of skin, voice or deafness. What can one say of no-thingness Without being led into a perjury trap Ayin or Ayn (in Hebrew) mean […]
The Postman Rings Twice
What does the electrician who is now a spiritual teacher and the postal worker who now interprets dreams share in common? Typically, we see metaphor as beyond the concrete and literal—traversing imaginative realms of our symbolic experience. The Kabbalah takes a hybrid position. If we were using a metaphor to explain the Kabbalah’s take on […]
Addressing Your Masks
God has given you one face, and you make yourself another. The Book of Genesis starts off with a bang and ends with some dust. In between it is one masquerade after another. The ball gets rolling from the beginning —energy slows down to parade as matter. Then comes the Eden story in which human […]
Melting ICE
The United States remains one of only a handful of countries to retain the Fahrenheit temperature system and therefore, we are aware that ice begins to melt as it reaches and moves beyond 32 degrees. How Daniel Fahrenheit’s system places water’s freezing (and melting) temperature at 32 degrees is a complicated story. The number 32, […]
“How to Win the Fight Against Fear” Guest Blog by KE Teacher, Rabbi Jamie Arnold
The principal of a local high school calls me up. “Hey rabbi, we had another anti-Semitic incident at our school. I’ve spoken to the student and his parents, but I’d like him to meet with you.” “Of course,” I said. A few days later, this burly seventeen year-old steps though the doors of the synagogue […]
Introduction to the Tree of Life by Dr. David Sanders This poem, a 2,000 year old description of Ten Sefirot is the basis for the Tree of Life –a map of the flow of energy from infinite to finite, or viewed another way they are different stages through which creative energy flows. Ten Sefirot of […]
The Intimate Picture
Louis Kahn, the great American architect, died in 1974 in a washroom at Penn Station. He was alone when his heart gave out. His only son, Nathan was eleven. A shadowy figure in his life, his famous Dad was busy at work, travelling abroad, and unbeknownst to Nathan, a father to his half siblings with […]
Holding Your Opposite
Which is it—grey or gray? Isn’t it fitting that there isn’t a black and white answer. Turns out they are both acceptable ways to spell my favorite color. Gray is a great color to represent ambiguity and grey is also a great color to represent ambivalence. The fourth principle of awareness: Hold opposites and recognize […]
Orchestrating Change
Awareness principle four: Live by setting intention. Be open to possibility—one door closing opens another. Measure success by effort not by outcome. In the Tree of Life this awareness principle is connected with the Sefirah energy called Netzach-Hebrew for the words Victory and Orchestration. Sometimes victory, such as the young shepherd boy David, […]
Accepting, Living, Surrendering
The voice synthesizer fell silent, the screen turned black. The vast network of neurons in his brain, much like the stars in the sky at dawn, began to recede from view as Stephen Hawking took his last thought with him beyond the space-time continuum. The screen reads: ACCEPT REALITY AS IT IS Hawking, […]