If you dream it
“I am asleep but my heart is awake.” This verse from the Song of Songs is the message of the Hebrew month of Kislev (Chanukah begins on the 25th of Kislev falling this year on December 8). In the earliest text of Kabbalah, Sefer Yetzirah, each month of the year is designated to a […]
Live and Unlearn
I first came across this gem in Joseph Campbell’s the Power of Myth. It is a penetrating story about unlearning— a phrase I reacquainted myself with this weekend when reading an author describe himself as a “slow unleaner.” Aren’t we all? Here is the story about the god Indra: There was a terrible […]
Infant Morality
Not a typo. The most prevalent question in classes today was, “Did you see the piece on 60 minutes last night about infants and morality?” This past Sunday, a segment on 60 Minutes featured a wife-husband team at Yale University whose experiments with infants provide compelling evidence that babies know the difference between […]
The Other Candidate
The earth is rotating just enough to reveal the first rays of sun on this Election Day 2012. A certain calm pervaded Kabbalah classes yesterday after weeks of expressing worries and concerns about the election. Perhaps it was tiredness or resignation or the anticipation of acting on convictions. Often the most challenging for us is […]
The Doors on the Bus Go Shut and Open
The doors on the bus closed as he answered my question, “Come to see me on Sunday at 10 a.m.” I have told this story many times about Reb Yossel, a chassidic Rebbe in Jerusalem who I was privileged to know when I was studying in Israel at age 17. The bus incident occurred when […]
Snap, Crackle, Pop
The bullet entered the front window, traced its way through the living room, dining room and exited the back window. Heard, but unnoticed. The boy bowed down in the natural rhythm of bending the knee and then lowering the head and body, in praise of God. Noticed, but unheard. Many of us were […]
Extrospection
You won’t find it in the dictionary. It is how we take our new found insights and extend them outward. As soon as Yom Kippur is over –we start on the construction of a small hut structure called a Sukkah—which we will dwell in for seven days. Our Sukkah is located on our patio which […]
No Regrets
Can we live a life with “no regrets”—I would answer, “If we have acted on our regrets.” One of the first steps in atonement, after acknowledging whatever it is we are atoning for, is a deep sense of regret. In this third week of Elul we must feel our regrets but not become stuck in […]
50 Days of Repentance Week 2
When I was in graduate school studying Freud I came across a short paper by the Jewish philosopher Martin Buber in which, if I recall correctly, he takes Freud to task for advocating that the psychoanalyst’s role is to relieve the person of the “burden” of guilt. Buber was not concerning himself with Freud’s view […]
50 Days of Repentance
Those who follow this blog know that in the spring of each year we count together the 50 days from Passover to the next major holiday—Shavuot. This is called the counting of the Omer. Many teachers of Kabbalah draw inspiration from a small booklet written by Rabbi Simon Jacobson on the counting of the Omer […]