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Cover Story: Lure of the Mystics -- By Matti Friedman
Far from the glitz of the American kabbalah fad, Jewish mysticism in Israel takes on more modest and earthy tones. In and around Safed, the traditional hometown of kabbalah, and farther south on a cliff overlooking the Dead Sea, mysticism is alive and well and most definitely open to interpretation.
During the Days of Awe, Jewish mysticism was getting more prime-time attention in Israel than it ever had before, thanks to an American rock star with a most un-Jewish name. The country was anticipating a Rosh Hashanah visit from Madonna, a member of the Los Angeles-based Kabbalah Center, and kabbalah was in the headlines, having somehow morphed from the Jewish people�s traditionally secret, subversive, mystical tradition into another U.S. import, like Doritos or MTV. While the Material Girl and other red string-wearing adherents of the Kabbalah Center�s version of Jewish mysticism may see Israel as its home, there is no Israeli equivalent to the American craze, no flocks of Israelis rushing to study the hidden wisdom of Judaism�s ancient mystic tradition. The term "kabbalist" is still most often used in Israel to describe rabbis, popular mainly among Jews of Sephardic origin, who claim to use the kabbalah�s powers to dispense blessings and miraculous amulets. Kabbalah is studied with critical distance in university departments of Jewish philosophy, and is central in certain hasidic sects, but remains otherwise rather obscure.
A mystic tradition existed in Judea and the Galilee at the time of the Mishnah and Talmud, in the first to fifth centuries CE, but kabbalah -- literally, "that which is received" -- really took off in the Diaspora. Historians agree that the Zohar, the seminal Jewish mystic text, was composed in 13th-century Spain (even if believers still attribute it to second-century Rabbi Shimon Bar Yohai), and the secrets of the inner Torah, as adherents call the body of knowledge, quickly caught on across Europe and in Egypt. Only after the expulsion of Jews from Spain did it reach the Holy Land, where the town of Safed became a feverish hotbed of mysticism in the 1500s. It set the stage for false messiah Shabbtai Zvi in the 17th century, found new followers in the Eastern European hasidic movements of the 18th century, and made its way to the new world where, in the twilight of the 20th century, thoroughly repackaged as New Age wisdom by a West Coast entrepreneur of religion, Rabbi Philip Berg, it found Madonna and Britney Spears.
But while kabbalah has not achieved the pop-culture cachet in Israel that it has in the U.S., even in Israel a body of knowledge that was traditionally studied only by elite students of Jewish law over the age of 40 is being explored by more people from more diverse backgrounds. The Israelis studying kabbalah range from ultra-Orthodox to neo-hippie, from particularists to universalists, from black-hatted to barefoot. Four visits around the country turned up adherents interpreting and living the kabbalah in unexpected and radically divergent ways.
OR HAGANUZ
Just before 4 a.m., dark silhouettes materialize from the darkness, gravitating quietly toward the synagogue. There, under fluorescent lights, the shapes become people: bleary-eyed men with beards and sidelocks, long coats and hats. Every morning at the Galilee community of Or Haganuz starts like this, with two hours of kabbalah study before prayers, before the green hulk of Mt. Meron becomes visible to the south. Some men appear to have been here all night; one is fast asleep, his cheek mashed against the dense Hebrew lines of an open book.
Avraham Mor-Yosef, 31, brings over two identical books and sits down next to me. You would never guess that Mor-Yosef, with his black hat tipped back on his head and his unkempt brown beard, was raised in a secular home in Ra�ananah, near Tel Aviv. He found his way to ultra-Orthodoxy through the kabbalistic teachings of Rabbi Mordechai Sheinberger, a well-known Jerusalem scholar. Nearly all of the residents of Or Haganuz have similar stories. The community, nestled under the steep rise of Mt. Meron, is a religious commune that revolves around the Jewish mystical tradition. Its name is a nod at that tradition: "Or Haganuz" means "the hidden light," and refers to the original light of creation that shone before the sun existed.
There are 65 families at Or Haganuz. Most live in neat, white-walled houses with flat roofs, and the rest are housed in mobile homes, awaiting the next round of construction. Residents do not spend their days studying Torah. They work: as teachers, in maintenance jobs in the community, in one of Or Haganuz�s two glatt kosher supermarkets -- one here and one in the nearby town of Hatzor -- in the printing house, small cracker factory or school of Chinese medicine.
The book that Mor-Yosef brings is Sefer Hahakdamot, a commentary on the Zohar. It was authored by Rabbi Yehudah Ashlag, known as Ba�al Hasulam, which means both "master of the ladder" and "author of the Sulam," his extensive commentary and Hebrew translation of the Zohar�s pseudo-Aramaic text. Ashlag (1886-1955) was one of the most prominent kabbalists of the last century, and Sheinberger�s disciples here at Or Haganuz consider their rabbi to be his heir.
Mor-Yosef opens the book to a passage on the human will to receive. This sounds like an esoteric philosophical point -- one which I fear won�t be engaging enough to help me resist my body�s insistent demands that I immediately go back to bed -- but turns out to be the ideological basis for this community�s unique experiment in mystic socialism.
The human being�s desire to receive -- wisdom, wealth, happiness, or anything else -- is what differentiates us from God, Mor-Yosef explains, paraphrasing the book. God cannot aspire to receive anything, because that would mean He is not perfect. In all other aspects the human soul is like God, in the way that a small stone is like the mountain from which it was chipped; different only in quantity, not in quality. This will to receive -- lekabel, in Hebrew, from the same root as the word kabbalah -- is our defining characteristic.
"If you�re receiving for your own benefit, that�s impure," Avraham explains, "even if you�re studying all day in a yeshivah." The way to make that will pure is to receive in order to give to others, he continues, and the ideal way to do this is in a place whose very makeup ensures that everything you do is for your neighbor, a place where all people are linked economically and socially. Ashlag, the ultra-Orthodox kabbalist, is talking about a kibbutz.
"Ba�al Hasulam met with kibbutznikim in the 1940s," Michael Mayost, one of Or Haganuz�s veteran members, explains to me after morning prayers. "He told them they were doing the right thing, but that they were making one mistake: they were doing it for themselves, not for Heaven. They weren�t doing it to fulfill the commandment, �Love thy neighbor as thyself.� The kibbutz worked as long as people were idealists. But who promised the idealist that his son would be an idealist? Here, �Love thy neighbor� is a religious ideal, and our children grow up believing in it."
Mayost, 42, grew up in Dimonah and heard Sheinberger teach when he was in high school. "I went to his house in Jerusalem on Hannukah, and I knew I had found what I was looking for. I didn�t understand what he was talking about, but I loved it," he says, smiling at the memory. In the early 1980s, a group of 40 families -- all newly religious Israelis influenced by Sheinberger -- decided that they would try to found a community that would allow them to put their ideas into practice. In 1989, the first four families moved into tattered mobile homes in the shadow of Mt. Meron; a year later there were 14. "We�ve never had any money or political backing," Mayost says. "The fact that the community has developed as it has is a miracle, pure and simple.
"Ba�al Hasulam thought that kabbalah was the fuel that would get people to follow the idea of �love thy neighbor,�" Mayost continues. "The kabbalah is a great light. It gives a reason for things. The Bible is important, but it�s the covering, the outside. The Zohar is what gives light to the world."
HAMAKOM, THE JUDEAN DESERT
Rabbi Ohad Ezrahi greets me at his trailer at Metzukei Dragot, on a desert cliff in the West Bank overlooking the Dead Sea. Ezrahi, 39, has long curly hair going a bit thin at the top; a round Buddha-style belly protrudes above baggy linen pants that are the only thing he�s wearing. Ezrahi�s life has taken him from a secular home in a Haifa suburb to a yeshivah for Belz hasidim in Jerusalem, to another ultra-Orthodox yeshivah specializing in the study of kabbalah, to the far-right, mystically oriented Etzion Bloc settlement of Bat Ayin, then out of the Orthodox world to Hebrew University, and to this Judean desert commune and learning center -- called Hamakom, or "the place," also a reference to God -- which he founded four years ago, and where he now lives and teaches Jewish mysticism.
Hamakom rents space at Metzukei Dragot, a youth hostel and desert tourism center an hour south of Jerusalem. Residents live in trailer homes at this beautiful, remote spot, up a treacherous, switchback strip of asphalt that splits off from the road down the western edge of the Dead Sea.
"The inner Torah can teach us how to realize our goals, how to love more," Ezrahi says, reclining on a mattress on the floor. "People don�t walk around here wearing kabbalah labels. But everything I teach comes from the way I understand the kabbalah." Hamakom was established, Ezrahi says, "to give space for the study of the inner Torah, and to provide a place for a meeting with other religions on an equal footing -- without self-righteousness, on one hand, but without being ingratiating either."
Hamakom�s eclectic approach is on display in the community�s beit midrash (study hall), a permanent structure where shelves are home both to books of Jewish law like the Shulhan Arukh and to "The Autobiography of a Yogi." There is also a modest collection of old LPs, including one of hasidic melodies and another of Kris Kristofferson tunes. "For us, Judaism isn�t an ideology," Ezrahi says, "It�s who we are. It�s like inheriting your grandmother�s house: It�s a great house, you love it, but you don�t want to leave it exactly how it was."
Hamakom�s residents number about 20 -- "secular searchers," in Ezrahi�s words -- most of them in their late 30s, along with a handful of their children. Some work in the center, some outside, and their finances are independent. They participate in weekly communal meetings, study sessions, musical gatherings and social-action projects, like a shelter for troubled youths and a program for spiritual counselors at hospitals. They also offer classes on Jewish mysticism to people from the outside; Ezrahi says that there are around 600 participants in Hamakom activities every year.
The center�s location was chosen with the mystic tradition in mind. "Living in nature is crucial," Ezrahi says. "In the Zohar, many of the stories take place outside: In the shade of a tree, next to a spring, in a cave. It�s an associative way of learning, and the surroundings are not coincidental."
For Ezrahi, not only can kabbalah be studied outside the strictures of Orthodoxy, it should be. "The old approach allowed disciplined people access to kabbalah," he says, "but the tradition needs creative people, people in touch with their souls. Also, the kabbalah was written by men. It appreciates feminine energy -- the shekhinah, the divine spirit, is feminine -- but men wrote it. I want to see women kabbalists, approaching the tradition with a female point of view. That�s also impossible in the framework of Orthodoxy."
Tamara Lieberman moved here from Tel Aviv, and has been at Hamakom for 2� years. "People are cut off from Judaism, and they look for spirituality in India instead of here in Israel," says Lieberman, a brown-haired woman in her 30s wearing a red tank top, shorts and flip-flops. "But there�s a reason you�re born Jewish. Judaism has become archaic, and that�s what drives people away. There need to be more ways to approach the tradition -- like this place." Lieberman is now studying with Ezrahi to become a rabbi.
After four years in the Judean Desert, Ezrahi says, the searchers of Hamakom are thinking about moving on, as a community, to what he calls "the next stage": an inter-religious peace village where people tapped into the mystic traditions of their own religions will be able to come, share ideas and find ways to use faith to bring peace to the Middle East. "Kabbalah talks about unification," Ezrahi says. "What could be a more ultimate unification than making peace here?"
DAVID FRIEDMAN�S STUDIO, SAFED
If you took a cup of Kabbalah, added a teaspoon of Eastern mysticism, and mixed all that with a sprinkling of rock album covers from the 1970s, you would get David Friedman�s art. Friedman, 47, has been living in Safed since 1979, translating his take on mysticism into the brightly hued watercolors that cover the white walls of his studio. There could be no better place for such an enterprise than this hilltop city in the Galilee, which has maintained its reputation as the hometown of kabbalah more or less since a young mystic rabbi named Isaac Luria showed up here in the 16th century, taught for two years, and died. Luria�s idea that doing good deeds unites divine sparks scattered at the time of creation, repairs the world and leads to final redemption, has become one of the dominant streams in kabbalistic thinking since then.
"I got into mysticism in high school in Denver," says Friedman in a soft, slow voice. "It was the early 1970s, and people were into it. Everyone was reading Castaneda and Herman Hesse." Friedman began incorporating Buddhist motifs -- visual meditations called "yantras" -- into his paintings.
"But then," he remembers, "instead of going to India, I got into our own traditions." After spending a year at the Rhode Island School of Design, Friedman left, became ultra-Orthodox, moved to Jerusalem, studied in a yeshivah, met his wife, and moved to Safed. His first kabbalah-inspired piece depicts with concentric circles the levels of meaning in holy texts: from the simple and straightforward interpretation, the pshat, to the inner, secret meaning, the sod -- the kabbalah. Looking at the painting, one�s eye is drawn from tiny, colorful Biblical figures in the outside circle to a tree in the center, representing the sod.
In the mid-1980s, Friedman was diagnosed with Hodgkin�s disease, went through eight months of chemotherapy, and began to rethink his life. He became disillusioned with the ultra-Orthodox world. He began to meditate, and discovered that a little-known meditative tradition existed in Judaism. In Sefer Hayetzirah (the Book of Formation), an early kabbalistic text traditionally attributed to Abraham -- and which was legendarily used to create the Golem of Prague -- Friedman found what he identified as mantras. "Ten sefirot of nothingness," begins one chapter, referring to the 10 receptacles of God�s light in the mystic tradition, depicted in kabbalistic diagrams as interconnected circles. "Ten and not nine. Ten and not eleven. Their end embedded in their beginning, and their beginning in their end."
"Most people wouldn�t identify that as a mantra," Friedman says, "but if you�ve had experience in meditation, you see it that way." The book also puts forward the idea that there are three "mother letters" in Hebrew -- shin, aleph and mem -- linking them to the elements fire, air and water. Friedman matched the letters to the three primary colors and to the basic shapes -- triangle, circle, square -- and made them the building blocks of his art. "In this way," he says, "I can talk about kabbalistic precepts with anyone, even with children. Colors and shapes are a universal language."
In abandoning the particularism of the ultra-Orthodox world, Friedman accepted the idea that the basic ideas of kabbalah can also be found elsewhere. One of his paintings incorporates the three mother letters, a woman sitting in the lotus position, and elements that can be interpreted as a cross and as the Arabic word for God, allah. "There�s a lot of universality in this," he says. "The basic principles -- unity, balance, harmony -- are expressed beautifully in the kabbalah, but they exist in other cultures as well."
TOMB OF SHIMON BAR YOHAI, MERON
On MT. Meron, two tour buses are disgorging middle-aged women at the tomb of Rabbi Shimon Bar Yohai. Bar Yohai, a student of Rabbi Akiva during the second-century Bar Kokhba revolt, is traditionally considered to be the author of the Zohar, though modern scholars analyzing its decidedly medieval language agree the book was actually composed in Spain a millennium after his death. Meron is traditionally considered Bar Yohai�s gravesite, though no one really knows if that�s true either. This is the place where a guy who didn�t write the Zohar probably isn�t buried, but historical accuracy is entirely beside the point. It is Bar Yohai�s kabbalah connection, more than his credentials as an important mishnaic scholar, that makes his grave at Meron one of the most popular pilgrimage sites in the country.
Meron attracts its biggest crowds on the holiday of Lag Ba�omer, when some 200,000 people come to the gravesite for a mystical, messianic party that lasts for days. But even on a regular weekday, the prayer rooms around the tomb are well-used, and the beggars and candle vendors outside are doing a brisk business. The men�s side of the tomb complex is full of black-clad yeshivah students, hippie-hasidim in baggy white shirts and white knitted yarmulkes, men in jeans and sneakers, and a few spiky-haired teenagers in shorts, tank-tops and small yarmulkes: a cross-section of traditional Israel.
A young, bearded man named Aryeh is sitting on a bench inside, rattling a fistful of coins at people walking by. His enormous white crocheted kippah is emblazoned with the mantra "Na nah nahma nahman mi-Uman" -- this identifies him as a "nah-nah," a member of a counterculture offshoot of the Bratslav hasidic sect. The "nah-nahs" believe that repeating that sentence will bring on a redemption spearheaded by the revered mystic Rabbi Nahman of Bratslav, buried in the Ukrainian town of Uman.
I drop a few shekels into his hand and sit down. Did I want a blessing from Rabbi Shimon, he asks me, referring to Shimon Bar Yohai. "I�ll ask for you to be blessed," Aryeh suggests, "and the merits of Rabbi Shimon will bring you a blessing from heaven." I can�t refuse. Aryeh asks for my name, then looks up, closes his eyes, and requests that God bless me and my family, "on the merit of Rabbi Shimon, the Torah, and the great book of the Zohar that he bestowed upon us."
Outside the tomb again, another young Bratslaver named Tzvi approaches me, offering a book written by Rabbi Yisrael Odesser, the spiritual father of the "nah-nahs." In 1921, more than a century after Rabbi Nahman�s death, Odesser claimed to have found a note from him, pressed between the pages of a book. Written in Hebrew and Yiddish, the note contained the "Na Nah Nahman" mantra, and promised, "My fire will burn until the coming of the messiah." The redemption has tarried, but the mantra is seen stuck on car bumpers and spray-painted onto walls nationwide, ubiquitous to the point of inspiring numerous satirical takeoffs.
Tzvi, who appears to be in his mid-20s, is originally from Tel Aviv, and has been religious for three years. He gets very excited when he talks, his mouth quivering under his beard. The kabbalah, he says, teaches us that the soul of Moses is reincarnated in every generation, and one of those incarnations was Rabbi Nahman. More and more people are coming to realize this, Tzvi tells me, pushing Odesser�s book -- one of the most recent additions to the Jewish mystical library -- into my hands. Called "Shemah Yisrael," it is a rambling collection of autobiographical tidbits, including the "Miracle of the Note," transcribed from tape recordings made when Odesser was alive. Even in print, you can still pick up a strangely cadenced Hebrew; it isn�t hard to imagine an old man talking. "There are," Odesser writes, "a few people who ask: �Did it come down from heaven? The note, what color was it? Was it damp, what color?� It was all the colors!"
A bit further from the entrance to the tomb is a kind of mystical convenience store where visitors can purchase a wide selection of Shimon Bar Yohai key chains, tiny books of Psalms, yarmulkes, candles and bags of stones from the gravesite -- "For forgetfulness, peace in the home, and to ward off the evil eye," according to the label. A bottle of Shimon Bar Yohai wine goes for 10 shekels; Shimon Bar Yohai arak goes for 15. Omer, a young man with a reddish beard who is manning the shop, highly recommends the wine. "It�s Rabbi Shimon�s secret," he tells me. "Buy the wine, take it inside, and put it on the grave. Drink it on the eve of Rosh Hashanah, and you won�t see a doctor all year." I notice that a regular wine label sticks out from under the "Shimon Bar Yohai" label on the bottle; Omer is entirely unfazed when I point this out. "It�s regular wine," he explains, "but when you buy it here it�s blessed."
Omer is wearing no fewer than five leather amulets around his neck, small rectangular pouches branded with a metal letter heh, representing the name of God. "Of our matriarchs, Sarah, Rivkah, Rachel and Leah," Omer explains when I ask about his jewelry, "all of them had a heh at the end of their name, except for Rachel. And she was barren. She pleaded to God for a child, he sent her a heh, and she gave birth." And the contents of the pouch? "The holy Zohar," Omer tells me, waving around a cigarette that he bummed off a passing visitor and presenting me with an amulet. (I will later cut it open and discover a book of Psalms, not the Zohar.) "It�s a blessing for you and your family from Shimon Bar Yohai, from the Holy One Blessed Be He. Now say amen," Omer commands, and looks at me expectantly. "Amen," I say, a bit surprised.
At Or Haganuz, a five-minute drive away, the residents rise every morning at 4 a.m. to study the Zohar. Here, Omer tells me, all I have to do is wear it. "It will bring you protection," he says, putting the amulet around my neck. "The secret of Shimon Bar Yohai and the Holy Zohar will bless you and the entire People of Israel with a good year. Now say amen!"
October 4, 2004
Israel
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