http://humanifesto.org/yehoshanah/2004/kabalah_to_many.htm

Title: KABALAH to many people many meanings...

Posted at http://opensourcejudaism.com
Forum-subject: All God's Children, They Got Vings

2004 10 28


I first heard of the Kabalah as a late teenager (I'm now 35).
I'd been looking for God in myself, inwards, in Eastern meditation.
I felt the Western God Scene had become particularly old fashioned.

Also determined to find spirituality in the wider Western Culture
I explored New Age Science in Frijof Capra's the Tao of Physics.
I had become vegetarian and explored my dreams in a waking state.

My parents preferred Judaism, "your own is better than Hinduism".
I soon met Jewish Chabad Hasidim who taught me "In the beginning".
A couple of months latter, I was off to Israel to discover "my own".

In Jerusalem, I quickly developed the awesome God City Syndrome.
I was as high as a kite on my own musings of The Divine Message.
Sure there's a long human history to discover, but here and now.

Meet any of Jewish devotees of the various schools at the Kotel,
the Western Wall of the Old City of Jerusalem, and you'll feel it.
They know they are on to something wonderful and also familiar.
So it doesn't take long for them to look in your eyes and wait.

There I was, at about midnight, towards the end of a 3 day seminar.
(One of the Kotel missionaries had already got to me - no surprise.)
See-sawing with a friend, in a little courtyard in the Jewish Quarter
he came from no where, from one of those tiny little winding alleys.
His name, Shalom Simcha, may he rest in peace, he still visits me.
I can't remember details, but 6 hours later I was still with him.
Before sunrise, like Rabbi Akiva's students, he had to go and pray.

From that night onwards I knew the Kabalah had a lot to teach me.
I became a student of every Jewish Kabalah school I could find.
I became a pilgrim, to burial sites and as a devoted Rebbi driver.
I slept, woke, washed, dressed, ate and sung to YHVH, night n' day.

I was not about to allow my over active intellect to sophisticate.
I was not about to give up on curving my sexual appetite either.
I sought every remedy to the power over heart, by mind and body.

Eventually I gave it all in, I was advised: marry, work and write.
Kabalah played a central role in a larger way of life in Jerusalem.

I tried to reinvent at every turn, I still believe in re-invention.
I am still looking for ways to bring the kernel of Torah to Life.
The Torah has its wondrous reformation in our lives as the Kabalah.

My teacher, by example, taught how to actualize revolutionary Torah.
Rabbi Sheinberger has taught his immediate family by participation.
His local community by continuos hosting in prayer and in his house.
His community of followers by initiating their settlement in Meron.

Rabbi Sheinberger was the original learning partner of R. Philip Berg.
These two learning partners both married into their teachers family.
They both believe in their psychological and socialist interpretation.
Torah has its Reception in a personal, social and historical process.

I don't want to get into the politics about Kabalah heir and archy.
I just want to find relevant personal, social and historical meaning.

I'm biased, I believe in Public License and not for profit cooperation.
I believe in ecology and in a ritualistic spiritualism, in freedom too.

I love working with very esoteric - archetypical pattern abstractions.
In seeking parallel sense holism to bridge diversity through our lives.
I love discovering the sense of pragmatism that sees through the crap.

That's why I find myself reading Rushkoff and replying in this forum.

Well that's it for now... thanks for listening, yehoshanah@humanifesto.org

Posted at http://opensourcejudaism.com
Forum-subject: All God's Children, They Got Vings

2004 10 28


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