Still Running Off at the Keyboard

NEW AGE JUDAISM

With the words of Gilles Quispel still ringing in my head, yesterday I began reading PRACTICAL KABBALAH: A GUIDE TO JEWISH WISDOM FOR EVERYDAY LIFE by Rabbi Laibl Wolf. As blogged yesterday, Quispel said:

As Gershom Scholem demonstrated, there were even a number of strict Pharisees in Palestine who handed down esoteric traditions known to the Gnostics and which later gave rise to a truly Jewish form of Gnosis, the Kabbalah.

Until recently it seemed impossible to find convincing evidence to show that the classic Gnosis of antiquity developed or was able to develop out of Judaism.

According to his website, Rabbi Laibl Wolf is an Orthodox Jewish Rabbi, a spiritual mentor and worldwide teacher of the mystical side of Judaism. Based in Melbourne, Australia, and founding lecturer in Jewish Mysticism and Spirituality at Melbourne University, Rabbi Wolf has lectured in over 350 cities across the globe.

His background includes training as a lawyer and an educational psychologist. The son of Polish Holocaust survivors, he is the Founder and Director of the Human Development Institute. His rabbinic ordination came from the Chief Rabbi of Israel, while his foremost mentor was the revered Lubavitcher Rebbe Rabbi Menachem M. Schneerson. While calling himself an Orthodox Hassidic Rabbi, he says that he is a master of, and draws his teachings from, the 4,000-year-old, esoteric and encrypted texts of the Kabbalah which provides a guide to the mysteries of cosmic and human consciousness and which is the source for much of the 'new age' wisdom that we are familiar with today.

Now for Rabbi Wolf's surprises...

* We will engage in simple imaging exercises and use as our guide the principles of Hassidic psychology as expressed through the school of Chabad Lubavitch Hassidism. (p. 2)

* While admitting that Moses de Lyon (Moses de Leon) published the major text of Kabbalah (p. 17), he refers to

Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai, the scholar who compiled the Zohar, (the "Book of Splendor--the repository of the major Kabbalistic teachings [sic]) (p. 7)...

had already handwritten this work a thousand years earlier in ancient Israel. And he had written it on the basis of an oral tradition that went back another seventeen hundred years.

The Kabbalah of the Torah...is incredibly old and can be traced back to Abraham, who is credited with having composed Kabbalistic works. But even predating this, we know that Noah and Adam were fully conversant with its teachings. (pp. 17-18)

* While he doesn't cite his source, Rabbi Wolf tells us that Abraham was tall and gaunt and that he impressed those around him with his regal bearing and the clarity of his vision. (p. 18) He also says that Abraham was thrown into the fiery furnace by the Mesopotamian king and defied all the laws of nature by surviving the intense heat without a blemish. (p. 19) He says further that

When Abraham heeded G-d's order he was already fully proficient in what was to become known as Kabbalah. He had even authored a major Kabbalistic text--Sefer HaYetzira...He was an acclaimed astrologer and conversant in the magic and witchcraft of the East....[He] adopted the pathway of spiritual monotheism. This rebellious stance earned him his calling card--the Ivri, meaning the "other-sider," or the "outsider." The word Ivri became anglicized as "Hebrew." (p. 19-20)

* According to Rabbi Wolf, Abraham's plans for succeeding generations were pinned to Isaac, and so he cast out Hagar's sons, attempting in the process to teach them the nature of evil and the dark side of higher reality. These sons of Hagar who had been a poor influence on Isaac because of their entanglement with beliefs in the prevailing polytheistic and witchcraft cults, went to India, and that is the reason there are remarkable parallels between mystical Judaism and the Eastern pathways of Buddhism and Hinduism. (p. 20-21)

* He tells us that Brahman is merely a rearrangement of the basic letters of the father's name--ABRAHAM. (p. 22)

* Reincarnation is affirmed on p. 22:

Apart from terminological similarities, we can also discern conceptual parallels. For example, a concept like reincarnation, tulku in the East, is the Hebrew teaching of Gilgul HaNefesh, the cyclical reincarnation of the wandering of the soul. Karma, the "baggage" carried from the previous lifetime, reminds one of the Hebrew hashgacha pratit, the specific cause-and-effect relationship molded by past lives. (p. 22)

* We are told to empty our mind:

Emptying the mind, which is another Eastern meditational teaching, is akin to the Kabbalistic teaching that the world derives from a void, an emptiness known as halal...Emptying the mind creates the basis for the contemplative filling process, memalleh, known in Hasidic meditation as hitbonenut. (p. 24)

* We are told that Abraham was a kabbalist, and that he learned Kabbalah in the Academy of Shem and Eiver (Noah's son and great-grandson.) Isaac and Jacob were also tutored at this school. Jacob's son, Judah, opened a branch of this school in Egypt, and it functioned secretly throughout the four hundred years of exile and slavery in Egypt. (pp. 24-25)

* According to Rabbi Laibl Adam was an androgyn who was later divided into a masculine Adam and a feminine Eve, and that latent femininity resides in the male and latent masculinity resides in the female even now. This masculine-feminine duality encompasses all of creation. (p. 25-26)

* Adam, we are told, created the Hebrew alphabet, transposing the mystical pathways he saw into twenty-two distinct shapes. Each became a letter in the Hebrew alphabet and he understood the energies associated with each of these letters. (p. 27)

* Rabbi Wolf teaches us that directing our will and desire incorrectly creates an internal adversary--that is, trouble--within and without. Directing it correctly brings enlightenment and clarity of spirit. (p. 28) Seemingly this could be understood as evidence that Wolf believes we are responsible for our own adversity.

And that is only the first chapter!

Many of these concepts are basic to Gnosticism/New Age/Theosophy. Yet here we have an Orthodox Rabbi telling us that these are really Jewish concepts that derive from the Jewish Kabbalah. What then are we to make of Popes who seem to be encouraging us to see in the Jews our elder brothers in the faith, without providing a clarification? What are to make of the fact that a Vatican document condemning New Age is issued at the same time this approachment to Judaism is being encouraged? It does appear that in Rome the right hand doesn't know what the left hand is doing. If the faithful are confused and taking up New Age, Rome bears significant responsibility for it.