Does Satan exist? A Jewish Perspective....

Last night, I caught part of a debate on Nightline as to whether Satan was real, or a mythical being. It got me to thinking about the Jewish answer to this question.

Usually, Satan is not given much prominence in Jewish thought and the Old Testament, although he's mentioned in the Book of Job. Here he's an angel in the service of God, who's role is to test an individual's faith. He's not God's adversary, or cosmic opponent. It is usually God seen as the one delivering punishment for wrong-doing and it's not mentioned that those being punished whether in Sodom, or Nineveh, are being tempted by Satan, or anyone else. Rather the emphasis is on personal responsibility for the actions of the wrongdoers.

Judaism, especially Kabbalah, sees evil not as something separate and personified, but as an imbalance in cosmic energies (the Sefirot) that need's to be corrected. It is the individual human being, as God's co-creator and the only creature with free-will that has the responsibility of restoring universal balance and turning it towards goodness.

This all changes with the rise of Christianity which sees humans as sinful, fallen beings and Satan/Lucifer as the arch-enemy of Jesus. It creates for great drama and I believe was meant to help convert the pagans of the Roman Empire, who were familiar with myths of celestial battles between gods and demons. It's part of the process of Christianity, as the official religion of the empire, assimilating foreign beliefs into itself and becoming the religion about Jesus instead of the faith of Jesus.

If Satan does exist, I tend to believe he's one of the angels, or creative forces, in service to God as depicted in the Book of Job. He works only with God's permission and is not his opponent. It would be totally consistent with Jewish theology to say that he represents mankinds animal nature, or basic instincts that tempt his higher consciousness with a multitude of physical desires. This is metaphorically told in the first chapters of Genesis as the fall of Adam and Eve from the oneness of the spiritual realm where they were in communion with God to the seeming diversity and separateness of this physical world. We will discuss this further in the near future.

Thanks for reading. I'll keep you posted (ha, ha!).

Shmuel

Tzimtzum: Contraction to Creation

In our last post, we began to explore the Jewish mystical concept of creation and the human role as God's conscience and co-creator. Many of these concepts are from the teachings of Rabbi Isaac Luria, also known as the Ari (Lion). I'd like to go into a little more detail on the Lurianic interpretation of creation here.

Many scholars consider the Ari to be the greatest medieval Kabbalist. His teachings would not only have the largest impact on later Jewish mystics, but also inspire many who would have otherwise found Judaism too unenlightened and restrictive. One Kabbalist stated in the 1400's that without the Zohar (Kabbalah's most popular book), Judaism would be incomprehensible. Many credit Rabbi Luria with making the Zohar comprehensible. So what did he say about the process of creation and it's purpose?

The Ari taught that creation began with tzimtzum, or the contraction of the Divine from a portion of itself to form a void where creation could occur. He then emanated a single light into the void to form Adam Kadmon, the spiritual archetype for humanity. Light then streamed out of Adam Kadmon's eyes, nose and mouth as ten aspects of God, or Sefirot. These are the 10 times God spoke in Genesis, or the creative forces of the universe. But the light was too strong to be contained and the vessels carrying it broke. The upper vessels cracked and the lower vessels shattered completely. Our physical world is made up of this mixture of broken vessels and sparks of light. This is the source of evil, which is seen simply as the concealment of light within the shards of broken Sefirot. It is the role of humanity to find and restore the light to it's source.

Luria goes on to explain that the Adam in the Garden of Eden was originally intended to be the only human created. Within him were contained all of the souls of future humanity. Had he been able to stay spiritually pure, creation would have been restored to the oneness of God. But due to his fall in consciousness, it is now up to each individual soul to complete it's assigned tasks and to return the light to its Divine Source. When the last spark has been returned, evil will cease to exist and the Messianic age will be ushered in.

Rabbi Luria saw this gathering of the sparks as the spiritual reason and cause of the Diaspora, or scattering of the Jewish people throughout the countries of the world. Only by this dispersal could all of these sparks be found and returned. This thought has inspired and sustained the Jewish people throughout many persecutions and hardships. For they had a divine mission to repair and return the universe to it's spiritual origin.

Again we find that humanity's role is to repair the world and return it to its original divine status as God's conscience and co-creator. It is through us that goodness is introduced into the universe through the individual choices we make. The secret is that the world is continually divine and it is only our limited perception that prevents us from seeing this "heaven on earth." By seeking and practicing goodness in our life, we will restore these buried sparks one by one to God and return the world to it's idyllic spiritual state of Gan Eden. Then all will be known to be aspects of the Divine without a separate existence of their own. This is another secret of Judaism that we will explore later...the act of finding the divine and holy within the mundane of everyday life.

Until next time....

Shmuel

God's conscience....

One of the spiritual questions that many of us have is why did God create this world. Actually, according to Jewish mystical tradition this is not the first universe created, but the seventh. The ones before this one were imbalanced with too much judgement and not enough mercy. As they were irreparable, they were destroyed and creation began anew. The underlying principle of this universe then is balance and mercy. But why create it in the first place?

The answer the rabbis give is for God to know himself. But what does that mean? Can we really understand the mind of God?

It was Freud who said that a newborn infant doesn't begin to form it's identity until it sees it's mother and realizes that there is something outside of itself. Before then, it sees the entire world as an extension of it's own being. It takes knowing what it is not before it can come to understand what it is.

This is then what the rabbis mean that the universe was created in order that God could know himself. God emanates aspects of himself into the Void (referred to in Genesis) in order to evolve his level of understanding to a higher consciousness of his own attributes. These includes aspects such as goodness and compassion. Can you really understand what is good without a comparison of what is evil? Of course, the mystic also knows that the seemingly many aspects of creation are in reality parts of the whole and that all is really One. It is only our limited perception that makes the illusion of many seem real.

So what is our role in creation? Jewish tradition teaches that we are God's conscience. This is illustrated by Abraham's plea for the sparing of the righteous of Sodom from God's wrath and destruction. Like a lawyer, he questions whether it would be right to destroy the good with the evil. And he wins! God reconsiders his position and agrees to spare the righteous individuals living within the city even if there are only a few.

So who are we to question God? Isn't he all knowing? Of course he is and we must believe that he already knows that we will question seemingly bad decisions and fight for justice. We are the only creatures given free will and so the only ones capable of understanding the difference between right and wrong. We are God's conscience wrestling with itself to do what is right. For we are aspects of Divinity. It is through us that this world will receive mercy and compassion thus being perfected and spared the fate of the previous universes.

Thanks for reading....

Shmuel

The "La La" House

Today is more of a thought of the day rather than a long, in-depth discussion. Coming soon, I want to touch more upon the human role in healing the universe, the concept of a constitutional republic in Israel/Palestine, Jewish environmentalism and why even be Jewish at all? But honestly, I'm writing during a quick lunch break at work and didn't yet get the chance to gather my thoughts and do my homework for those discussions. I've been little distracted this past week, as the transmission in my car decided to quit working and I was lucky enough to find out that the cost of the repair was more than the car was worth. So I've unexpectedly had to search for another used car that fit within my tiny budget. It really gets you to thinking about "Why Bad Things Happen To Good People," as written about by Rabbi Harold Kuschner.

Today's thought actually comes courtesy of my two year old son. Every night as he goes to bed, I sing him to sleep with Sabbath songs and some Jewish folk music (for the most part). He loves it and it's a good way to get him familiar with the melodies at an early age. He loves going to synagogue and I fairly frequently bribe him into going to sleep on a Thursday night by telling him that we'll go to synagogue "tomorrow," if he goes to sleep. I explain that "tomorrow" only comes if he goes to sleep. Not totally accurate, but it works for a two year old's comprehension. Anyhow, I told him that a couple of weeks ago and got this response..."Go La, La House?" Obviously, the word synagogue is difficult for him and so he came up with his own description. But think about it? For many of us, going to synagogue is an uninspiring, sometimes dreaded chore. But through the eyes of a youth it can be fun and exciting with encouragement. My son loves music and dancing and that's the part that he focused on. But each of us should ask ourselves what we like about being Jewish. If we were to describe our faith to someone who never heard of Judaism, what would we say? Would we be positive in our viewpoint, or negative? Like I've mentioned before, this is really the subject matter that I want to cover here. What has inspired so many of our ancestors to fight for the right to live their faith and why have so many more voluntarily chosen the Jewish faith as their own? Sometimes it's the "little wonders" that can be the most miraculous and inspiring, such as when my son called the synagogue the "La, La House." Maybe this is just the amazement of a proud father, but I hope you found some inspiration as well. Talk to you soon.

Restoring Universal Balance

When we last spoke, we discussed the role of reincarnation in mystical Jewish thought, which is a side of Judaism that comes as a surprise to many. Like I said, I had thought that I needed to seek such belief in Eastern Religions, if I was to be faithful to the spiritual calling of my heart that told me that it was true. But then I found Kabbalah and the fact that meditation and reincarnation were part of a long tradition within Judaism.

I'm not a rabbi, but a student and spiritual seeker. As such, I will learn more and grow spiritually everyday and will share some of that growth with you. This is the case today, as I learned a new historical context for the Jewish belief in reincarnation just this past week. It has to do with one of the oldest Kabbalistic texts, the Sefir HaBahir.

The Sefir HaBahir, or Book of Brightness came out in the late 1100's in Southern France. Scholars debate it's exact age, as it's language suggests that it is much older and that this edition may just have been the latest revision of the text. It is the first book to compile the 10 aspects of God (Sefirot), reincarnation and the role of humans in repairing the universe in a single source. These are the hallmarks of later Kabbalistic belief and the core of Jewish mysticism today.

What I didn't know before is the historical context in which the Sefir HaBahir came out. Apparently, this same time period was the height of the Cathari Heresy and it's battle for the soul of Christianity with the Catholic Church...it's rival and persecutor. The Cathars believed that this universe had been created by Satan, who posed as the God of the Old Testament. They too believed in reincarnation, but felt that the recycling of human souls from body to body was the way that the devil kept them from reuniting with their Divine Source in Heaven. The only way to break this cycle was to completely abstain from indulgence in the material world and human desire, including procreation. The part of this abstention that caused their persecution was their complete repudiation of the Catholic Church as a part of the corrupting influence of the material world. Sounds like a medieval version of the Matrix to me, huh?

What I found interesting is that although equally persecuted, the Jewish form of reincarnation expressed in the Bahir is a much more positive belief. For Jews, reincarnation is seen not as a way of separating humans from their divine source, but as a process of purification of the soul until it reemerges with the Divine Presence.

The Bahir also describes the Sefirot, or 10 aspects of God, as the mediums through which divine energy flows into and out of the material universe. Evil is seen not as something that is separate from God, as the Cathari believed, but as an imbalance of these divine energies (ex: too much judgement (gevurah) and not enough mercy, or Chesed). Through ethical behavior, humans have the ability to restore balance in the cosmos and to heal their world. This is the concept of Tikkun.

This optimistic view of creating heaven on earth is something I believe differentiates Judaism from many of the other world faiths that in various ways tend to emphasize escape from this world which is seen as a place of suffering and despair. It is a perspective that drew me back to the faith I was born into at a time I was searching for answers. It is a concept that I believe is in real need by the world today. Not many peoples can claim to have suffered as much as the Jews, but throughout it all we've held our head high and sought the proverbial silver lining within the cloud. Our heaven is not a place to be sought elsewhere, but a state of mind that leads to a better world right here on earth. It is one of the secrets of our survival and a source of spiritual strength which we should share with the world.

If you'd like to read it for yourself, my source for learning the historical context that ties the Sefir HaBahir and the Cathari Heresy is "The Beliefnet Guide To Kabbalah" by Arthur Goldwag. While I'm still completing the book, I can say its been informative and appears to be accurate based on my previous readings into Kabbalah and Jewish Mysticism.

Until next time....

Shmuel

Jews Believe In Reincarnation?

Like many of my fellow Jews, I was attracted to the reincarnation traditions of Eastern Religions, such as Buddhism and Hinduism. In my heart of hearts the concept just made sense to me, but it did not seem to be part of my Jewish heritage. Or is it?

Many scholars believe that Jews were exposed to the concept of reincarnation, or transmigration through the teachings of the Greek philosopher, Pythagoras, who taught that souls are "recycled" through many lifetimes until they are pure enough to return to the gods. I personally believe that it is quite likely that a Jewish tradition of reincarnation could have existed beforehand, most likely influenced and as an outgrowth of the Egyptian solar religions which taught that the Sun-god (at various times called Ra, Aton, Amun, Amun-Ra, etc.) descended into the underworld each night and was reborn the following morning. We also know that the Hebrew word for reincarnation is gilgulim and that it comes from the route gilgal, or circle of stones. Many people don't know that there is a site called Gilgal between Jerusalem and Tel Aviv where a circle of stones resembling a miniture Stonehenge is located. Tradition says these are the 12 stones pulled from the Jordan River by the crossing Israelites at the direction of Joshua. Could this tie into a belief in reincarnation in an early form?

The first positive historical Jewish tradition of reincarnation is with the anti-rabbinical Karaites in the 8th Century. Other Jewish scholars dismissed these ideas as nonsense, but it became part of Kabbalistic tradition in the twelve hundreds. For Jewish mystics it provided an answer of how a just God could allow bad things to happen to good people, especially innocent children. It was thought these individuals had sinned in a previous lifetime.

By the 16th Century, a Jewish belief in reincarnation, or transmigration was considered indispensible and was a core part of the teachings of Rabbi Luria and his mystic followers in Safed. He taught that all souls come from the original Primordial Adam (who contained all of the souls of all future-born generations) and that they migrate from body to body in a continuing state of purification until the coming of the Messiah. Those that are good will be born into human bodies and those that are not so good are born into animals and inanimate objects. A soul born into a human host is blissfully unaware of its former extistence, while those born into animals and inanimate objects are painfully aware.

The Hasidic Masters followed up on the teachings of Rabbi Luria and taught that it was through faith, meditation and performance of good deeds that a soul was elevated to union with the Divine and could break this repetitive cycle. Hasidic and other Kabbalists taught the concept of the ibbur, or impregnation of a host body by another soul. The concept is that a good soul, who may have neglected to perform a certain mitzvot, or commandment could temporarily reside in a host body to complete that task. It was also believed that this provided a way for a weaker soul to grow spiritually with the assistance of the ibbur. Lurianic Kabbalah taught that a body could hold up to two such ibburs, as long as they both came from the same original body part of the Primordial Adam (ex. if they both came from the arm, but not from an arm and an eye). If a soul was too evil to transmigrate, it became a dybbuk (Yiddish for "cleavage of an evil spirit") and wandered throughout the world in search of weak souls to possess.

In the 1800's, a more rationalist approach to Judaism saw teachings such as gilgulim as foolish superstition and tried to remove them from modern Jewish thought. But faith requires more than logic and ethical behavior to inspire individuals and Jews went searching for a more direct, mystical connection with God elsewhere. It's been estimated that as much as 60-70% of American attendees at Buddhist monasteries and transcendental meditation classes are of Jewish birth. But since the 1960's with the rediscovery of reincarnation and meditative practices within Judaism many of these individuals are returning and reinvigorating the faith of their fathers. Thanks in large part to the translations and teachings of great rabbis such as Aryeh Kaplan and Zalman Shachter there is a renewal of interest in Kabbalah and other esoteric teachings by Jews and non-Jews alike. I believe this can only enrich and grow Judaism. It provides answers to questions being asked and helps to satisfy a spiritual hunger being felt by many Jews today. This is in large part what we'll be exploring on www.jewsmuse.com as we explore a more meaningful Judaism and why interested non-Jews should consider making it their own faith. Thanks for checking in. I'll talk to you soon.

Shmuel