Mystical Seekers Find Meaning in Kabbalah Without Madonna-like Flair

c. 2005 Religion News Service (UNDATED) If you want to find Len Robinson, a longtime practitioner of the Jewish mystical path Kabbalah, it won’t be through his local synagogue. The best way to Robinson, the Kabbalist, is through theater circles _ he is a director and actor in Grand Rapids, Mich. To be the best […]

c. 2005 Religion News Service

(UNDATED) If you want to find Len Robinson, a longtime practitioner of the Jewish mystical path Kabbalah, it won’t be through his local synagogue.

The best way to Robinson, the Kabbalist, is through theater circles _ he is a director and actor in Grand Rapids, Mich.


To be the best director he can be is at the heart of his Kabbalah practice.

“I direct Kabbalistically,” he said. “I have to sit back and go into exile to allow creativity to happen.”

Which is how, according to Kabbalah practitioners, God created the world. “God wanted to share, and the only way to share was `tzim tzum,’ to pull back,” Robinson explained.

It is this dramatic pulling back _ holding the breath only to empty it mightily into this “not God space,” as Kabbalists put it _ that created the world. The world as a vessel, however, soon was overloaded.

“There was a shattering. There were all these broken pieces. Things suddenly didn’t work right,” said Steve McAfee, a Kabbalah lecturer at the Lakeshore Interfaith Institute in Ganges, Mich.

The shattering created sparks, which entered each human soul. “The spark remembers home. It remembers love never ends. It remembers peace, but it’s in this body that has violence happen to it. It’s in a body that experiences sorrow, gets sick, and dies,” McAfee said.

“What if we could free that spark? The `merkavah’ teaching says you can.”

Kabbalah means “received” in Hebrew. “Merkavah,” which is translated as “chariot,” or “wagon,” refers to the prophet Ezekiel’s chariot.


Kabbalah is an ancient form of Jewish mysticism, handed down in oral form, dating back to well before Jesus, McAfee said.

What was passed in oral tradition from teacher to student was codified by a Spanish Jewish mystic named Moses de Leon in the 13th century. He was said to be bringing to text the work of Rabbi Shi’mon, son of Yohai, in the Zohar, the Jewish book of enlightenment.

It is not to be taken lightly, said Rabbi Hendel Weingarten of Chabad House in Grand Rapids. Hassidic Jews such as Weingarten consider themselves teachers and guardians of a way that is deeply mystical and intended for only serious scholars of the Torah.

“The Kabbalah is so deep and so pure that it states that Kabbalah shouldn’t be studied until you’re 40,” Weingarten said. “You can’t take a two-week course. A person who is 40, with a complete background of the Torah, can touch aspects of the Kabbalah. It’s something you have to be familiar with, or you’ll create things that aren’t there or take it out of context.”

Many Kabbalists say pop culture and Madonna have it way out of context. Few appear to wear Madonna’s red string _ to ward off evil spirits. While they don’t judge the singer, Weingarten said, “we are talking about the Torah. The Torah is not commercial. The Torah is the foundation of the world.”

At one time, Jewish children were warned away from Kabbalah and Jewish mysticism with the cautionary tale of four rabbis who attempted to study it. One went insane, one became a permanent infant, one died and one survived, recounted Debbie Aliya of the Creative Cultural Center in Grand Rapids, who remembered the story from her childhood.


“Normal Jewish people don’t study this stuff because it can be dangerous,” said Aliya, an interfaith educator. It’s especially bad when people want to co-opt that portion of the faith for personal gain, she said.

“We do create our own reality and it’s important to get that message out,” she said. “But if you’re creating your own reality, so could everybody else be also, and there’s 6 billion people on the planet.”

Kabbalah was never meant for the masses, said McAfee, a Methodist who runs a meditation center in Fort Wayne, Ind.

“There is evidence that Jesus taught a mystical path. He never taught it to the public. He taught it person to person,” he said. “Every single time it says (in the Bible) `Jesus took his disciples away with him,’ it never says what he said.”

That’s why Kabbalists such as Robinson want a low profile.

“It was never really meant to be out there,” said Robinson. “It was meant to be hidden.” A lifelong Jew, Robinson said his grandmother whispered those secrets to him when he was bedridden as a child.

“She would sit with me and say, `Do you want to know the secrets of the universe?’ That was exciting,” he said. “In a Jewish sense, it was just part of Judaism.”


To scholars, Kabbalah is a set of esoteric teachings, many of which are hidden within the words of the Torah. It also encompasses meditative techniques, mystical literature and chants that emphasize different aspects of God.

But to Robinson, it comes down to balance. He explained a basic tenet of Kabbalah called the Tree of Life. At one point the tree branches off into the concept of judgment or mercy. The concepts are neutral, but choices are not. If someone errs too far on the side of judgment, it’s at the cost of mercy. Show too much mercy, however, and all legitimate judgment is at risk.

Down the Tree of Life Robinson goes: dark and light, male and female aspects are found in every human response to circumstances. There are constant counter-balancing dichotomies, such as between power and awe.

“For a person who loves power, Kabbalists would have him sit and understand the awe of a mountain,” Robinson said.

There also is the balance in human relationships. Service to the poor, for instance, is a good thing that can go out of balance when poor people are not allowed to give something back, or to help themselves, thereby giving them “the bread of shame,” Robinson said.

Every member of a society is responsible for righting its wrongs, according to these deeper teachings. “People ask: Where was God in the Holocaust? I would say there wasn’t enough God there. God flows through us to make changes in the world,” Robinson said.


Likewise, Hurricane Katrina laid out our societal ills, and true Kabbalists will ask themselves what they can do to change those circumstances.

That’s much more potent than Madonna’s red string, which Robinson called “sort of a silly thing.”

Kabbalah “has been passed down for thousands of years,” he said. “And it makes sense to me. Living a good life and treating your neighbor right is more important than anything else. All of this Kabbalah stuff is on top of living a good life.”

(Juanita Westaby writes for The Grand Rapids Press in Grand Rapids, Mich.)

MO/PH END RNS

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