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Forum -> Judaism

Kabbalah

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amother

Mon, Nov 04 2019, 7:20 pm

What place does Kabbalah have in our day-to-day practice of Judaism? What place should it have?

I am a rationalist and don't really believe that mysticism has its place in our lives. The only time I'd subscribe by doing something for Kabbalistic reasons is if it's brought down in the Gemara or by the early Rishonim, and even that would have to be through a strong mesorah.

It irks me to no end when people go to the ends of the world to find a mekubal for this, that, and the next thing. It says that many people entered Parde"s and only Rabbi Akiva came out safely on the other side. Shouldn't that tell us something about the loftiness of Kabbalah?

Just because it says something in the Zohar, does that mean we should live our lives by it?

zaq

Mon, Nov 04 2019, 8:23 pm

You’ll get no argument from me. And the authorship of the Zohar is somewhat suspect.

PinkFridge

Mon, Nov 04 2019, 8:49 pm

I won't call myself a rationalist, but I am a Litvak. I will say that there is much below the surface, the pardes, as you said. If you listen to or read someone like Rabbi Tatz (or other students of Rabbi Moshe Shapiro, zt"l) and others, you'll get some sort of glimpse of what lies below, but what's distilled for the masses (and it can still get pretty heavy) doesn't even scratch the surface.

Continuous Torah study, and exposure to bracing machshava definitely enhances my avodas Hashem, but I don't seek to make kabbala a fixture or a practical part of my life.

amother

Yellow

Mon, Nov 04 2019, 9:09 pm

We are not into kaballa. At all.
But there are some minhagim that are part of our mesorah which come from kabbalah as apposed to Halacha and we do them because it’s part of our mesorah to be careful about them .
Like the 18 min discussed on another thread. We do it because our mesorah teaches it, and our Rabbis go by it.
That’s the type of Kabbalah that my family does even though we aren’t at all kabalistic.

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