The literal account of the five books of Moses is almost impossible to appreciate without assistance. Hundreds of commentaries exist and, as we might imagine, many offer interpretations that contradict one another. Nobody agrees that there is a definitively "correct" way to read the Torah. In fact the oral tradition suggests that there are at least 600,000 different interpretations, representing the number of those who received the Torah through Moses at Mt. Sinai. This is what makes the study of Torah so interesting. If we simply accept the literal meaning of what it says, then it is merely a book with many interesting stories. If we engage it, however, work with it and use a variety of methods to analyze the text, it yields hidden clues that lead us on to further investigation. Study like this, a continuous give and take, becomes a mystical relationship between the text and the one studying it.

The Talmud records a wonderful story of a debate over an esoteric point of law in which one sage, Rabbi Eliezer, stood alone against dozens of other sages. He tried every conceivable argument to convince his peers, to no avail. Finally, exasperated, he said, "If the Law [God] agrees with me, let this carob tree prove that I am right." At that moment, the carob tree flew out of the ground. Some say it moved 150 feet, others say 600 feet. But the sages were not convinced and they responded, "You cannot prove anything from a carob tree."

The mystical approach to the difficult issue of divine providence brings us a wholly different perspective to the question of reward and punishment. The original sin recorded in the Torah is eating the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge, as if God did not want it to happen. We could ask, did the eating happen by accident? Were Adam and Eve programmed to eat the forbidden fruit? Was it pre-ordained that they should eat? And if it were any of these, where does the punishment fit in? It seems that they did what had to be done; it was divine providence. If so, how does divine providence work?

Many stories describe the difference between heaven and hell. In one, a person who dies is met by the heavenly gate keeper. "What does hell look like?" wonders the newly deceased. She is taken to a room with a large table surrounded by people. The table is set with delectable things to eat and drink. But the people are continuously angry and miserable, starving because their arms are encased in locked, metal sleeves and they cannot bend their arms to bring their hands to their mouths no matter how hard they try. Heaven is the room next door. It also has a table filled with food and the people in this room also wear sleeves over their arms. But the people in this room are happy and calm, for they have learned to feed each other.

Judaism, in general, is a rich and diverse tradition. It is filled with ritual and observance. The study of Torah and Talmud is extraordinary. The daily life of a practicing Jew is quite demanding, requiring close attention to details in every matter, how and what we eat, when to pray, how to relate to others, the ethics of business, moral codes of behavior, and, of course, how we relate to God. The mystical component of Judaism, often called Kabbalah as a generic, is more interested in the esoteric nature of creation. What is God? How did creation occur? What are the hidden meanings of the teachings of the Torah? What is the architecture of the cosmos? What is ultimate truth? This is not an easy field of study. Much of it is veiled behind technical language, arcane concepts, and intentionally obscure codes. Only a handful of Kabbalists wrote about their experiences. Most, however, chose to remain hidden in anonymity.

In September, 1981, not long after our wedding, Shoshana and I made an exploratory trip to Israel to decide if it was a place we would want to live and study. We arrived just before Rosh Hashana and were invited to over two dozen homes of religiously observant families for festive Holy Day and Sabbath meals during that month. It was a marvelous experience in almost every way, but a single theme pervaded throughout our visit that deeply bothered us and almost discouraged us from returning. Rosh Hashana is viewed as the day marking the creation of the world. It is Adam and Eve's birthday, so to speak. On an esoteric level it is a day of judgment, when each person's name is inscribed in a heavenly book for life or death in the coming year. My curiosity was piqued at one of the first households we visited when Elisha, our host, held firm to a fundamentalist belief that Adam and Eve were real people and that creation had occurred 5,742 years earlier. According to Elisha, nothing had existed prior to this.

We can appreciate the soul better when we get to know her sister. Just as the soul transcends the limits of time and space, so does her sister: love. Does love have time boundaries? Can we give love shape? Sometimes it may seem to have qualities when we put limits on it. In fact, in some situations, we are able to feel the symptoms of love. But this is transient and love remains indeterminate, unbounded, timeless and completely beyond our comprehension. Love can be viewed as a unity, a ubiquitous oneness. Yet we experience love in its multiplicity: paternal love, maternal love, romantic love, passionate love, divine love, familial love, brotherly love, and so forth. Each of these expressions of love has a different quality. Each is its own reality

The body is composed of different organs and millions of cells. Each cell is a shell containing a soul-spark. The body itself is a physical shell for millions of soul-sparks. Who "owns" the physical shell? Is this my body? Is that your body? And if it is mine, where am I? Where does the "I" live that owns it? When we follow an inquiry of where, who, what, why, and how in reference to our "selves," it becomes a hall of mirrors that regresses into infinity. We are not our names. We are not our addresses or our telephone numbers. We are not our identities. We are something other than the person we watch as we brush our teeth. We are something more than the accumulation of experiences since birth. Indeed, as we pursue this inquire, we ultimately come to realize that this body is a caretaker for the source that gives it its light. Our body is not our essence, it is simply physical matter.

There are three traditional methods to attain expanded consciousness. The first approach is to immerse in activities and studies that have provocative content and meaning. In a Jewish context this means scrutinizing one's own behavior, developing a regular rhythm of study of inspirational works, paying more attention to one's spiritual life, devoting one day a week to spiritual practice, and so forth. This approach, common in many spiritual traditions, is based upon the principle of adaptation. We adapt to our surroundings, the food we eat, the words we read, and the exercises we undertake.

SLEEP IS ONE SIXTIETH OF DEATH While we are awake, the soul hovers above us. When we sleep, however, an aspect of the soul travels to the higher realms. Sometimes an angel reveals future events to this traveling soul, but sometimes it does not deserve this revelation and the soul "falls into the hands of the Other Side [evil] who lies to her about the future." The unworthy person is thus shown a happy but false dream to draw him or her further from the path of truth. Each night our souls enter a magical theater of high drama

Mystics say that energy flows in cycles. Daytime cycles are related to the rotation of the earth, monthly cycles to the moon, annual cycles to the relative position of the sun and stars. Light and dark are connected with expansion and contraction, loving kindness and restraint. Kabbalists apply this mystical cosmic framework to everything, including angelic and demonic energies. Mainstream Judaism determines the beginning of a day from sundown to sundown. Kabbalists naturally follow this calculation from the point of view of Jewish law, but from an energetic perspective, the daily kabbalistic cycle flows between the zenith of high noon and the nadir of midnight.

Death fascinates the living. We want to know as much about it as we can. We do not want to believe that death is the end, so we explore wisdom teachings that are thousands of years old to find a clue. Almost all traditions suggest that death is not an end but a transition. It is intriguing that the world wisdom teachings agree on this point. Despite a wide variety of interpretations of what happens, how it happens, or where it happens, the end result is that death is a gateway to other realities. We do not know what part of us death takes, or even if we should identify with what is taken. We cannot say that there is something to "look forward to." Yet, mystical traditions throughout the history of humankind have said that reality as we experience it is nothing but a drop in an ocean of possibilities.

WHAT IS THE EXPANDED CONSCIOUSNESS OF “BIG MIND”? Throughout the Zohar the theme of higher and lower worlds repeats itself dozens of times: "The Holy One has disposed all things in such a way that everything in this world should be a replica of something in the world above." "There is a realm above in supernal holiness, and a realm below." "When the Holy One puts on its 'crowns,' It receives them from above and below." The language of "above" and "below" should not be understood literally in a linear fashion. It is referring to realms of consciousness. Higher and lower realms of consciousness are not separated by space; rather, they are dimensions that represent a proximity of relationship to ultimate truth. The higher the consciousness, the less there is an illusion of separateness.

Death of children is perplexing, cruel and seems so senseless. How do we deal with it? Visions of other worlds do not alleviate the pain of heartbroken parents who lose a child, especially a young child who never had a chance to experience life. Our friends, Yakov and Miriam asked us to be the godparents of their firstborn son, Hanoch. At his circumcision, something caught my attention. Normally, the quick surgery results in a fair amount of blood. The infant cries for a few seconds until a cotton ball dipped in wine is placed between his lips. But Hanoch bled only a slight amount and hardly cried at all. It was as if he knew something the rest of us had missed.

The traditional approach to the concept of reward and punishment is that the hand of providence is in everything as a payment for past deeds. Good actions receive good payments; actions that are not good can pay a heavy price. Traditionally, we learn through revelation or prophesy about what we are supposed to do, and then must live our lives accordingly. In theory, this idea may seem logical. In reality, we see that it does not work this way. We discover through experience that people who live good, clean lives often suffer greatly, while others who are not so careful often seem to have everything they need. This raises the issue of why bad things happen to good people? The ancient rabbis were greatly troubled by this question.

THE KABBALISTIC VIEW OF DEMONS Demons are ubiquitous, but are not cited in the literature as often as angels. The head of the demons is Satan, who is also named Samael and Beelzebub; while the king of demons is called Asmodeus. Asmodeus married Agrath, the queen of the demons, and they are attended by tens of thousands of other demons. Just as there are many types of angels, there are various types of demons, which include shedim (devils), se'irim (hairy demons, satyrs), mavet (death), dever (pestilence), and azazel (the demon to whom the scapegoat is sent on Yom Kippur). Demons are viewed as between angels and humans. They have "wings" like angels and can move quickly, assume any form, and have the ability to read the future. But they eat, drink, propagate and die.

The universe can be viewed as a metaphysical magnet with one pole called good and the other called evil. Good is represented by God and evil by Satan. The more we engage in certain activities, the closer we are drawn to God. Of course the opposite is also true. It is important to keep in mind that we are discussing God not Ein Sof. Ein Sof is beyond good and evil, we must not attribute "goodness" to It. To do so would exclude evil, and this would leave it deficient--which it is not. Of course, it would be just as foolish to call it evil as to call it good. Simply said, Ein Sof embraces everything, including the totality of good and evil.

In all, the Tree of Life has ten primordial elements. These ten are based on the opening to the Torah, in which there are ten statements that use the words va-omer elohim, "And Elohim [God] said..." These ten statements are considered to be divine emanations out of which the world was created. Each emanation is an archetype, which in combination with other emanations provides the mystical elements necessary to form everything in creation, whether physical, emotional, intellectual, or spiritual. The emanations are referred to as sefirot (numbers) because every possible number in creation is a combination of the ten basic numbers from zero to nine. Kabbalists believe that every time the number ten is written in the Torah, it is related in some way to the Tree of Life. Ten plagues in the story of Exodus, ten commandments, ten days of judgment from Rosh Hashana to Yom Kippur. Even the fact that we have ten fingers and ten toes is related to the Tree of Life.

THE SOULS TRANSITION AFTER DEATH A traditional Jewish ritual during the last hours of life is to light a candle in the room of a dying person to symbolize the flickering of a human soul. We give deference to her or his final wishes. A person is gently encouraged to confess and ask for atonement. This confession can be as simple as "May my death be an atonement." A person often recites the Shema when preparing for death. It is said in the Talmud that being with someone when she or he dies is considered a great deed of loving kindness, for a soul in transition is comforted by a soul in a peaceful state. In Jewish tradition, we say that someone has died when breathing has stopped and there is no pulse. Traditionally a feather is put across the lips and watched for any sign of movement for eight minutes. The eyes are gently closed and the arms and hands are extended alongside the body. Water standing in the vicinity is poured out. The body is never left alone, for its vital soul is temporarily disoriented. During the period between death and burial, traditionally about twenty-four hours, or less, psalms are read continuously the help ease the passage.

The ten sefirot are connected by a series of twenty-two lines. Each of the twenty-two connectors represents one of the letters of the Hebrew alphabet. These twenty-two letters plus the ten are referred to as the thirty-two paths of wisdom. As each of the sefirot represents a vowel, and every connecting link is a consonant, we can readily see that every word in the Hebrew language is a combination of different paths in this schematic. This opens up a huge potential for analyzing words.