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This is really two questions, but they’re interrelated, so I’ll ask. Do you need to study (or know) Hebrew to (fully) understand the coded messages in the texts and is this something that can be learned through self-study?
Hi Sean,
Knowing Hebrew is helpful, but you don’t really need to learn Hebrew to study Kabbalah. All of our materials are professionally translated to English and many other languages.
But does the translation pass the full spiritual meaning? No. Hebrew is a language built for passing spiritual meaning, not just the meaning of the words, but every single letter and shape of the letter is a code for a spiritual state. So any translation is good but it will never give you 100% of the true spiritual meaning, it’s impossible.
So how big is the loss? For a person who is not yet in spirituality, the loss is very very small, even minuscule. In fact we have thousands of students worldwide studying with us on a daily basis, in a language other than Hebrew. Whenever Rav Laitman visits these groups, he always remarks how there is no difference in the spiritual advancement between these students and the students in front of him (all Hebrew speakers) that he studies with daily. This is because spirituality does not depend on knowledge but only on the desire. If we build the right desire for spirituality, we will feel it, if not, then no.
If you want an in depth explanation of the significance of the Hebrew language, check out this article. The ties between letters, words, and numbers:
http://www.kabbalah.info/eng/content/view/frame/60270?/eng/content/view/full/60270&main
Albert @ KabU
Hi Sharon,
It’s possible. But since the Kabbalistic writings don’t talk about them, we can’t say for sure. So we could speculate one way or another, but these would just be speculations. We should keep in mind that Kabbalah is a science. Kabbalah only deals with the correction of our egoistic nature and the revelation of the Creator. It has no connection to faith, religion, or religious leaders.
But ultimately these things are not so opposed. Both talk about the importance of loving others as yourself. Kabbalah goes even further and gives us a method to actualize loving others to such an extent that we can reveal in our lives the Creator, the general force of love and bestowal.
Albert @ KabU
SO if one doesn’t need to be jewish to practice Kabbalah, and Kabbalah existed before religions, then why for example is the teacher above jewish and many others who are part of KabU ( I presume ~ they are wearing kippahs)?
Does Kabbalah transform its practitioners into authentic jews?
Hi Asahd,
They do it out of respect for the culture and traditions they grew up with. We should keep in mind that Kabbalah and religion are two separate things. Let’s put a few things into perspective to understand this:
Kabbalah is the method of correcting our egoistic nature and thereby revealing the Creator, the general force of love and bestowal. The first one to actualize this was Adam. His name gives us a hint at this since Adam comes from the Hebrew word “Dome”, meaning “similar to”. He was not the first one alive, but rather the first one to reveal the Creator by becoming similar to this quality of bestowal.
This wisdom gets passed on ward from Adam until Abraham who adapted it to the people of his generation and made the wisdom more practical. Abraham put together a large group of Babylonians who were interested in actualizing this method. These people later on became the Israeli nation. The word Israel comes from the Hebrew words “Yashar” “El” meaning straight to God. These are the people who had an active point in the heart in those days and were interested in revealing the Creator.
These people greatly succeeded in this method. The peak of their success was symbolized in the building of the first and second temple, which reflected the level of unity and bestowal they were able to reach. At a certain point, they lost the spiritual connection between them (the destruction of the 2nd temple) and what remained was just these external symbols of their connection.
At this point the wisdom of Kabbalah became concealed. People still had the holy books, Torah and etc, but they did not know how to use them. Since the Torah is written in the language of roots and branches. Meaning it uses words of our world to describe spiritual phenomena. But if a person does not have this spiritual connection through which he can see this, then he thinks this book is talking about this world, history, morals, commandments, etc. From this emerges the Jewish religion.
From all the above we see that Kabbalah itself is not connected to any religion and that the modern religions came out due to the concealment of Kabbalah. At the same time, Kabbalah is not against religions. In fact we have millions of students worldwide, from many different backgrounds and religions. Many of them do choose to maintain their religion or to perform certain religious customs while studying Kabbalah and there is nothing wrong with that. Just like with any other science, a person can be religious and also be a chemist or physicist. Likewise a person can be religious and also study the science of Kabbalah. Baal HaSulam writes that even after the full spiritual correction people can still keep their religions.
Check out this blog post from Rav Laitman for more details: https://laitman.com/2015/12/the-wisdom-of-kabbalah-and-the-other-religions/
Albert @ KabU
I have been studying Kabballah through the perspective of Chassidut. Lessons in Tanya are a tremendous way of learning but it needs a spinal cord I can find in KABU.
I wonder why we have not spoken about Simon Bar Yochai, the Arizal, the Baal Shem Tov.
Please don’t get me wrong, but I sense that a history of how it came written, those who contributed to clarify like the Arizal.
Hi Ariel,
We’ll learn about the history of Kabbalah throughout the course. But yes, these are the pillars of the Wisdom of Kabbalah. After the Ari and Baal Shem Tov come Baal HaSulam and Rabash. They continued the work of the Kabbalists before them and adapted the Wisdom of Kabbalah to our generation.
We’ll learn more about them throughout the course, but in the meantime, checkout this blog post from Rav Laitman for more details: https://laitman.com/2015/11/the-great-kabbalists-and-their-works/
Albert @ KabU
In my understanding, it’s like everything in this world, if you receive anything you are not ready for, not only you will not understand what have you received, but you will not be able to use it appropriately and more important, keep it. It takes a certain level of maturity to receive and appreciate and grow from/because of the gift.
What was the ultimate reason behind waiting so long for Kabbalah to be “revealed” to the world? Why couldn’t this have been revealed to humanity long ago?
Hi Joseph, great question!
Kabbalah is the method of correction of our egoistic nature, thereby revealing the Creator, the general force of love and bestowal. Why was it necessary to conceal such a wisdom? Because egoism was still not yet fully developed. For example: if you compare Kabbalah to a medicine that can cure a rare disease, obviously you can’t take the medicine before you’re diagnosed with the disease, but once the disease actually manifests, you can take the medicine and be cured of it.
It’s just like the 5 stages development of a disease within a person. First a person is healthy. Then he is sick, but he does not feel it. Then the disease spreads to the point that he starts to feel pain and symptoms of the disease. This then pushes him to go to a doctor to get diagnosed and find the cure, and etc.
2000 years ago, egoism was still on a very low level, there was no need to correct it. Starting from the days of the Ari, egoism already grew to a certain extent (and technically the prohibition on Kabbalah ended there), but humanity still didn’t feel sick, on the contrary the ego was the main driving force of all of our development. Then from around 1995 egoism peaked and began to show itself as bad, like a cancer that begins to kill the host body. This is the peak at which there was a true need for the cure. Which in essence is what the Kabbalists have been waiting for all these years, for the desire, for egoism to fully ripen.
Albert @ KabU
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