The Great Patriarchs of Kabbalah

I'm back from an amazing, life changing trip to Israel. I went for Rosh Hashana and stayed through Yom Kippur, which is when there is an opening in the cosmos to essentially write and produce your life's movie for the upcoming year. I went by myself, but met some cool people who I'll stay in touch with for sure. Too many highlights to report. The kind of trip that has you look at your life and get serious with yourself. They say when you study Kabbalah, it gets harder as you go. I'm starting my third year of study. I get that now. I see the tests for what they are. And I don't always want to pass them. Therein lies the rub.

I think I'll make this a more serious post, although I'm sourcing my facts from "The Complete Idiot's Guide to Kabbalah" by Rav Michael Laitman, Ph.D (Rav means teacher) with Collin Canright. Put your Bibleschool lessons aside a minute so you can make sense out of this. Remember, the Bible and the Torah came to us in code. The Zohar (Kabbalah text) helps us crack the code. Why wasn't the Zohar around earlier? It was actually...but we weren't ready to receive it. Our collective consciousness wasn't ready. So it's been hidden from the masses for more than 5,000 years. Until now. I'll explain.

To make this short and simple, let's start with evolution (wink). OK. So, you'll notice five phases before a major change occurs: inanimate, vegetative, animate, human and spiritual.

Adam represents the root phase of human spirituality. He was the first soul, which is why we refer to him as the first man. He was the first to write a Kabbalah book, "The Angel of God's Secret" (Hamalaach Raziel). It's a small book with a few drawings and tables, written 5,767 years ago. (Search "Raziel" on Amazon.com). I wrote more about Adam on an earlier blog post -- 10/15/06.

Abraham the patriarch was the second Kabbalist, 20 generations after Adam. Actually, Kabbalists consider Abraham to be the first known Kabbalist. He saw the wonders of human existence and asked questions of the Creator, and the Upper Worlds were revealed to him. Abraham passed that knowledge on to later generations. In this way, Kabbalah was transferred from teacher to student for many centuries. He wrote, The Book of Creation (Sefer Yetzira), the next important text after "The Angel of God's Secret". It's hard to study correctly, because it's written for people living thousands of years ago whose souls were not as course as those of us living today -- meaning, they could actually understand it. If you want to give it a try, you'll find a copy of it at mysefer.com or Amazon.com.

While in Israel, I went on several Kabbalah "energy tours". On one tour, we boarded a bulletproof bus and went to Hebron to visit the tombs of some of the matriarchs and patriarchs.




We saw Abraham. We couldn't see Isaac because it was in another section of the place and given the Arab holiday -- Islamic religious observance, Ramadan -- there were too many of us to be discrete and respectful. But we did see Jacob. Their tombs are in the building shown in picture #1 above, in a shrine behind gates. Here is Abraham's tomb. I still can't quite believe it. Here before my eyes lies Abraham, the Patriarch.





Here's Jacob's tomb.



And Leah's right behind Jacob's.


Leah is Rachel's sister. We visited Rachel's tomb in Bethlehem. A very heavy energy there. Rachel is the spiritual energy connected with Malchut (that's the 1% reality we see around us). That's why she chose to be buried separate from the other Matriarchs and Patriarchs. She's the protector of the people. And lemme tell ya, the people need it. I have some video of the people -- young and old -- "suffering" at Rachel's tomb. It was such a thick energy. But I got something out of it. I asked for help in building a family. That's what her energy is for, so I tapped it. Rachel is the inventor of the Red String - a tool to protect us against the evil eye.


OK, back to the story. After Abraham, we have Moses. Moses comes from the Hebrew word Moshech (pulling), as in pulling out of this world. Moses was different than other Kabbalists in that, alongside his other revelations, he was ordered to publicize it to humankind in writing. Moses had 70 disciples. Yehoshua Ben Nun (Joshua, son of Nun) inherited from him.

Moses created a method in his book, The Torah (Pentateuch), from the word Ohr (Light). It contains instructions on how to use the Light as a means to enter the spiritual world. All people can uncover the entire picture of creation, though they may experience just a tiny fraction of it. They can reach the desired outcome and reach the final goal that Moses wanted to attain. That is what a person who studies by the method that Moses developed gradually comes to. Using this method, anyone can attain Moses' degree of spirituality. One learns to exit this world and enter the Upper World and the entire creation.

If you are familiar with the 72 names of God and the way you need to scan it, you know the secret to how Moses parted the Red Sea.

The Book of the Zohar is the next major work in Kabbalah. It's written by Rabbi Shimon Bar Yochai, around the year 150 C.E. He was a student of Rabbi Akiva (40 C.E.-135 C.E.) famed first and formost for his maxim: love thy friend as thyself. Rabbi Akiva is one of the 10 most enlightened souls ever to come to the earth. He and several of his disciples were tortured and killed by the Romans (damn Romans! I swear!), who felt threatened by his teaching of Kabbalah. They flayed his skin and stripped his bones with an iron scraper used for cleaning their horses.

Here's a short clip of some of the tour groups coming through to celebrate and connect with the energy of Rabbi Akiva.




The left side of the picture is where Rabbi Akiva is buried. The right side is where the students study. Religious people put up the divider. It doesn't have any relevance to Kabbalah.

Before Rabbi Akiva was killed, a plague killed almost all of Rabbi Akiva's 24,000 students except a handful, among which was Rabbi Shimon Bar-Yochai (the Rashbi). Kabbalists saw this plague as a result of their growing egoism, which led them to unfounded hatred. Following the death of Rabbi Akiva's 24,000 disciples, Rabbi Shimon Bar Yochai was authorized by Rabbi Akiva and Rabbi Yehuda Ben Baba to teach future generations the Kabbalah as it had been taught to him. It was believed that only those who hadn't fallen into this unfounded hatred survived and they wrote the next great chapter of Kabbalah, The Book of Zohar.

Following the capture and imprisonment of Rabbi Akiva, Rabbi Shimon Bar Yochai escaped with his son to a cave for 13 years. In the cave, he reached the highest level a person can achieve during one's life in this world. We didn't visit the cave on this trip, but here is a picture of it from an earlier trip.

They told us a story that the Rashbi had to bury himself up to his neck when he was downloading this wisdom in order to ground this energy, otherwise the Light would fry him. After 13 years, he emerged from the cave and a bird flew over his head and burned up in the sky -- the Light was so bright. (I love it!). We had an interesting conversation about it. It would seem that to complete the circuitry and not go around frying birds, the Rashbi needed to share this wisdom. (Based on the three columns of energy...core principles of kabbalah and physics, which I won't get into here).

This is the Idra, where Rabbi Shimon Bar Yochai wrote the Zohar.


Actually, he dictated it to Rabbi Aba, who wrote it in such a way that only those who are worthy of understanding would be able to do so. I did a Wikipedia search on the Idra. It explains that here, R. Shim‘on b. Yohai convenes with nine other scholars, and they gather in the sacred אִדְרָא, or threshing field, where they thresh out secrets. Each scholar expounds various configurations of the partsufin, and three of them die in ecstasy while doing so.

I've heard that about reaching Nirvana too. If you were to achieve the state of Enlightenment -- have all 7 energy centers (chakras) open and spinning -- you'd immediately die. Our vessels are not built to handle that energy on this plane. That's why the Rashbi had to bury himself up to his neck.

Almost done. The next period of Kabbalah takes us to Safed in the middle of the 1500s with the Ari, Rabbi Isaac Luria, who proclaimed the start of a period of open mass study of Kabbalah.



Extraordinary energy here in Safed.

The Ari created the transition between two methods of Kabbalah study. The older, more emotional method, where intuition prevails with a more scientific approach that is needed today. He wrote The Tree of Life, Mavo She'arim (the Entrance to the Gates) among other works that explain the creation of the world. He died at the age of 38. His writings were buried along with him, according to his last wish, in order not to reveal his doctrine before the time was ripe. That time is now. So good to be alive, ain't it?

History gets faster now. In 1698, we had Yisrael Ben Eliezer, later known as the Baal Shem Tov (The Master of the Good Name) who founded an institution where those worthy of study had access to this work.

Rabbi Yehuda Ashlag, born 1884 in Lodz, Poland (my people!), was a judge and teacher in Warsaw before immigrating to Israel (Palestine back then) with his family. He tackled a fully comprehensive and updated commentary of The Zohar and the writings of the Ari. In Kabbalah, we celebrate him bigtime because he helped make sense out of this ancient wisdom so we can digest it.

We visited Rav Ashlag's gravesite. And his student, Rav Brandwein, who is buried next to him. I heard a story on this trip that a few days after Rav Ashlag died, he visited Rav Brandwein in a dream. He said that the souls around him were being disturbed by how much light was eminating from this gravesite. It embarrassed them. So, Rav Ashlag asked to have his tomb covered so as not to disturb those around him. Rav Brandwein went to great lengths to make that happen.

R. Ashlag



R. Brandwein


That takes us up to date. Rav Berg, who is the highest Kabbalist in this lineage alive today, is Rav Brandwein's student. It's only through his wife Karen Berg, that this wisdom is so trendy and readily available to all of us today. Why? Because it is time. Their sons Michael and Yehuda Berg are currently making huge contributions to this movement as prolific (and good) writers who explain this wisdom in a way we can understand.

Michael Berg devoted more than a decade to editing the first-ever English translation of The Zohar. Originally composed in the ancient language of Aramaic, it had been translated only into Hebrew. Under the guidance of his father, Rav Berg and the great kabbalists before him, he opened the concealed wisdom of this great text to the entire world through a series of 22 volumes in English — including the original Aramaic, the English translation, and commentary.

That's it. I wrote this mostly for myself so I can remember what I saw and what I learned, but if anyone actually read this and followed along with it, I hope I shared something of value to you. Here's a 9min video that captures some of what I just shared.