Imbolc Anniversary Moon
Kabbalah. Last night at Beth Evergreen we dipped our toes in an ancient lake, one so esoteric that information about it was not written down until the time of the Spanish Inquisition. The kabbalah, it was felt, needed nuanced interpretation and written down it could be read by those who might misunderstand its teachings.
But during the Inquisition so many scholars were killed that many were concerned the teachings might be lost, so books began to be written. The Zohar is the famous Kabbalah text, a central work on Jewish mysticism.
Isaac Luria, a rabbi of 16th century Safed, a town in Galilee, at that time in Syria, is a key figure in contemporary Kabbalah.
Years ago Kate wanted me to go to Hawai’i with her for a continuing medical education event. I said, no thanks. She insisted. I went. My expectations were completely wrong. I had a cheesy hula dancer dashboard ornament, loud shirt, noisy American tourist understanding of Hawai’i. We went to Maui and the Big Island that year. I wanted to stay.
My sense of kabbalah comes from a teeny understanding of it as mysticism and the fact that Madonna got into it some time back. Its popularity among celebrities at that point made me avoid it then and colored my anticipation of what Jamie would have to offer. Last night I wanted to stay.
In kabbalah parlance in both instances I donned a mask of cultured (actually ignorant in these cases) sophistication. This mask has its advantages as it helps me avoid wasting time on matters I don’t consider important. But the instance of Hawai’i and kabbalah teaches me that this mask also excludes rich experiences if I know too little about them.
A key point of kabbalah is awareness of the masks (personas) we use and being able, eventually, to take them off and put them on when appropriate. Sounds like a long ride.
