Introduction

Since earliest times, man has searched for God. Amidst the hustle and bustle of our daily lives, it is often difficult to transcend the mundane. And yet, man feels a need for spirituality, a need to find meaning and purpose to his fleeting existence.

Judaism teaches that man’s highest purpose is to link his will to God’s eternal Will, through the study of Torah and the observance of its commandments. (See, for example, the conclusion of the book of Ecclesiastes.) Certainly, the study of Torah and observance of the commandments are the primary means by which a Jew can approach God. Yet, in the day-to-day practice of Judaism, a certain amount of rote often sets in; and even in the study of Torah too often there is an emphasis on detail, while losing sight of the spirit within the Torah. Thus, there may be a tendency to lose sight of the divine spirit that flows through the body of the Torah and its commandments, enabling us to rise above the earthly and mundane.

While observance of halakha (Jewish law) has intrinsic value of its own, for many that value may be greatly enhanced through an understanding of the spiritual basis underlying Torah and halakha. The search for spirituality is an age-old quest; but in our generation that quest has taken on a heightened intensity.

In the last decades of the 20th century, amid the growing secularism of the western world, within the Jewish world there arose a yearning for spiritual values. Thousands of Jews reared in non-observant homes began to awaken to religious life. And among already-observant Jews a transformation occurred as well, as growing numbers were drawn to Kabbalah as a means of enhancing their personal relationship with the divine.

But Kabbalah – the Jewish field of study of the divine realm, and the ways in which the divine realm interacts with the physical world and with man – is a very esoteric subject, and even Jews who have a strong background in Jewish learning may be ill-equipped to approach its study. Kabbalah is not generally on the curriculum in most yeshivot, and most books of Kabbalah are purposely written in a manner that makes them almost impenetrable to the uninitiated.

The purpose of this blog is to introduce the basic ideas of Kabbalah to the serious student of Torah who wants to learn about the processes by which the divine realm interacts with our world. Unfortunately, much of what has been written about Kabbalah is gross distortion, often written by people who have little if any knowledge of the Zohar, the central book of Kabbalah. This blog aims to present ideas of the Zohar and other primary Kabbalistic texts in undistorted, authentic form.


© Copyright 2009 by Ben Roshgolin. All rights reserved.