What Is Kabbala?

BaMidbar, BaMidbar

Based on Parasha U’Pishra by Rabbi Moshe Grylak

Blond, blue-eyed, and all of six years old, Davy ran into the kitchen breathless and flushed. “Mommy, mommy! You won’t believe what Rachel just brought home from school! Come quickly!”
 

Davy’s mother dried her hands on a dish towel and followed her youngest son out into the living room. Rachel sat on the couch cradling something carefully between her two hands. Davy and their mother peered over Rachel’s shoulder to see a small egg.

“Mom, can we keep it? I want the baby bird to hatch and then we can set it free,” said Rachel.

“Sure,” replied their mother. Davy was thrilled.

From that day on, Davy’s favorite activity was checking on the egg to see whether it had hatched. “Give it time,” his mother warned.

But one day Davy felt like he just couldn’t wait. Rushing to Rachel’s room where the egg lay nestled in a softly lined shoe-box, Davy gently poked a small hole in the delicate shell. Seeing that nothing had happened, Davy poked another hole, and another. When Davy finally caught sight of his beloved baby bird, he realized that something had gone terribly wrong.

“Mommy, mommy! Something’s wrong with the birdy! It came out of its egg but it isn’t moving!”

Davy’s mother walked into Rachel’s room to find the tiny baby bird lying still. It was dead. How could she explain to Davy that his eagerness had killed the very thing he had been yearning for?

Those Who Know Don’t Tell and Those Who Tell Don’t Know

Yearning is a double-edged sword. It is the irreplaceable gasoline fueling us to pursue our dreams and aspirations. It can also push us too far, too fast, into situations where the very thing we yearned for is spoiled by our prematurity.

A common example of this today is the popularity of so-called kabala. Some spell it qabbala, some call it Jewish mysticism, but no matter what they call it they are all missing the point. Because those who know don’t say and those who say don’t know.

Real kabbala is the deepest inner secrets of the Torah. Just as you can rip away dry wall to see the plumbing and electrical wiring running a home, so too this part of Torah reveals the mechanisms and structures that makeup the bone marrow of all of creation.

Longing to come close to G-d can translate as a longing to know His secrets. Kabala is certainly His secrets, but if you don’t know  the secret code you will not understand it. Just as word pain in English means “uncomfortable sensation” and in French means “bread”, so too the very words will mean something entirely different in your language. Worse still, the concepts being conveyed will have no meaning to you at all. It will be like someone trying to describe the color blue to a blind person.

Until we have studied and integrated the entire Torah, we remain blind. We simply do not have the sensitivities and perceptual abilities to “see” what kabala describes.

But the problem with trying grab a hold of something beyond our grasp in every sense of the word is that we delude ourselves. We read words on a page and think we understand what they are talking about. We listen to a lecture or meditate on the Tetragrammaton and think we have gained a new way of being. A few days later we go home and lose our temper at our kids. Again.

We are like David’s little bird, stillborn. Where there was an opening, a place where truth may have lodged deep in our hearts, there is now a cancerous lie. We have filled the opening, the yearning place where we longed to drink of cool, true waters, with misconceptions that lead us to painful consequences. That dog won’t hunt. Lies and misconceptions serve us poorly.

Don’t answer a question unless the question is real and the answer is real, warns the Torah. Like the metaphor of David’s mother, Torah cautions us that everything must come in the right time.

Sacred and Dangerous

Parashas BaMidbar depicts this vividly. Although the Jewish people traveled through the desert in a formation that provided every tribe with their own space and status, everything centered around the tribe of Levi, bearers and guardians of the Mishkan (tabernacle) :

“The Children of Israel shall encamp, every man at his camp and every man at his banner, according to their legions. The Levites shall encamp around the Mishkan…” (BaMidbar-Numbers 1:52-53)

As for the Levites themselves, the honor of their position was great, but so was the danger. Their mission placed them closer to the holy vessels of the Mishkan than anyone else. When the Jewish nation was stationary, the Levites’ job was to assemble the parts of the Mishkan together for use. When the Jews traveled, their job was to carry them.

They were privileged to carry even the very aron itself, the ark of the covenant. The aron, unspeakably beautiful, bore the original tablets of the Torah and others of the most sacred, powerful objects in the universe. It was the meeting point between heaven and earth, the physical location where Moshe (Moses) and Aharon (Aaron) heard that voice of the Almighty speak.

Carved golden angels spread their wings on the top of the aron, coming close or distancing from each other to divinely indicate the temperature of the relationship between the Jewish People and their Creator on a moment-to-moment basis.

What would you have given to see such an object? But no one could gaze at the aron and live unless very specifically appointed to the task. The Levites were warned:

“Thus shall you do for them so that they shall live and not die when they approach the kodesh hakodashim (holy of holies)… They shall not come and look as the holy is inserted, lest they die.” (ibid 4:19-20)

Rashi explains that this verse commanded the vessels of the Mishkan to be wrapped in cloth before and during travel lest the Levites take a fatal peek.

Laws of Spiritual Nature

Just as there are physical laws of nature, so there are spiritual laws of nature. Gravity is neither vengeful nor forgiving. It is what it is.

Looking at the aron caused death. Period. Attempting to study kabala out of the context of a genuinely ripened Torah personality causes spiritual stillbirth. It isn’t personal, it’s just a fact. A reaction as simple as the exposure of a fetus to air before it has grown lungs.

Besides, Torah is rich and satisfying every step of the way. We don’t need to warp ourselves with the heroine of false spirituality when a lasting, genuine high is so accessible. We can ride our yearning like a stallion, making sure that it takes us where we really want to go.

 

Thanks to photographer Seba Chuffer for the beautiful image.