The Kabbalah

peppermint
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The Kabbalah

My Jewish friend reccomended I read the Kabbalah (no, not the Hollywood version, the Jewish book) to get a better understanding of his religion. I'd like to learn more about it. Does anyone know of a good place to start, such as a skeptics site or even a neutral site?

*Our world is far more complex than the rigid structure we want to assign to it, and we will probably never fully understand it.*

"Those believers who are sophisticated enough to understand the paradox have found exciting ways to bend logic into pretzel shapes in order to defend the indefensible." - Hamby


A_Nony_Mouse
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peppermint wrote:My Jewish

peppermint wrote:

My Jewish friend reccomended I read the Kabbalah (no, not the Hollywood version, the Jewish book) to get a better understanding of his religion. I'd like to learn more about it. Does anyone know of a good place to start, such as a skeptics site or even a neutral site?

If your friend's Rebbe heard that there was likely a lot of garment rending. (And people wonder why so many Jews are tailors.) Even to the Orthodox the followers of the Kaballah are the snake-handling sect of Judaism. It specializes in occult knowledge, hidden wisdom and getting Madonna to advertise her interest in it. It was centered in Babylon/Iraq until recent times.

If you have come across some oddly detailed knowledge of angels in Christianity such as their ranks and how many in each rank it derived from these folks. There are like three named angels and their are 72 perturbations of the letters in their names therefore there are 72 angels of that rank -- Thrones I think -- and the perturbations are their names. "Knowing" things like this is what passes for occult knowledge and hidden wisdom in Kabbalah. Do not get your hopes up on knowledge and wisdom. You will get more out of Kung Fu movies.

All of the methodology is similar to discovering the names of the angels and equally useful unless you want to make a Golem which comes from the same tradition. The next step up from Kabbalah is the primitive Orthodox primarily in Israel whose rabbbs supplement their income dealing in blessings and curses. They also relieve curses for a price.

Teaching Kabbalah has become a franchised business -- see Madonna above -- rather like Scientology its prices are not cheap.

If a friend recommended Kabbalah the only obvious reason is he gets a kickback for new recruits.

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I don't know Kabbalah very

I don't know Kabbalah very well, but I know other esoteric teachings. Esoteric, literally hidden knowledge isn't hidden from your sight, you can go to a shop and buy the book. But it's hidden from reader's understanding. There is usually a lot of jargon terms you would have to learn, and which are very unfamiliar, even if you learn them. Ancient esoterics is usually in original form, not explained in our contemporary language.
What it is about? Generally, it's about everything, it's sort of an alternative, parallel look on physics, cosmology, psychology,  physiology, history, and many other things. Where science didn't yet develop, esoterics begins, and where the borders overlays, there nowadays appears stuff like Tesla's practice or Bohm's theory. Bohm was a friend of Indian mystic Jiddu Krishnamurti, who also appeared in the beginning of the Zeitgeist 2 film. As you see, esoterics requires a systemic thinking, a very broad overview and interest in many areas of knowledge. Esoteric look, compared to the scientific on the same subject may be interesting.

Considering that you're not an active Jew, nor educated in general esoterics, then if you want to begin with something, go for modern, western esoterics, preferably some beginner's introductory guide. For this I can recommend a small book called Ageless Wisdom Teaching written by Annie Besant. Then you can look at Kabbalah if you see some relationships. There's a theory, that all the esoterics in the world has a common basis, besides some outer form, which is local. The purpose of all esoterics is a self-improvement.

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the interesting thing about

the interesting thing about kabbalah is that it wasn't until the current craze for it that females were allowed to know it exists. The mysticism that is kabbalah was restricted to rabbinical students over the age of 40 or 45; I forget which.

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