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 […]
A Zohar in Every Nightstand
Daniel Matt, professor, scholar and student of Jewish mystical teachings arrives this Sunday at DIA. Dr. Matt’s scholar-in-residence week is a joint effort for the new Jewish learning collaborative of the Loup Jewish Community Center, Denver University’s Center for Judaic Studies and Kabbalah Experience. If you have time to ask only one question of […]
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 […]
Yom Kippur 5773. Disentangled. To what degree?
Attachment to a certain way of thinking or being is what often does me in. I was standing today, on Yom Kippur, in the same room as the story I related last week of the young girl whose hair was entangled in a scrunchie. I could not unbutton the top button of my white robe […]
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 […]
Vision Statement
News item from Jerusalem — It’s the latest prescription for ultra-Orthodox Jewish men who shun contact with the opposite sex: Glasses that blur their vision, so they don’t have to see women they consider to be immodestly dressed. Glasses with special blur-inducing stickers on their lenses are going for the “modest” price of $6. The […]