Shabbat Gathering: Kabbalah vs. Facism.

Gud Shabbos Khaveyrim, as is our custom, we will gather tonight at 5.45p ct to welcome Shabbat. These are the coordinates:

Zoom
Meeting ID: 883 8469 4181
Password: 822665
Phone: +1 312 626 6799

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Here we go.

R.Danya Ruttenberg is a familiar name to regular readers of this Shabbat Gathering newsletter. I’ll confess that I don’t read every issue of her newsletter, but I do read the subject lines to see if the topic is something that grabs me. This week, I was grabbed. “Kabbalah Against Fascism: The Day The Jewish Mystics Tried To Take Down Hitler. Literally.” Yep. I’ll read that.

First, define terms.

Kabbalah is the mystical part of Judaism. It has something to do with the folk traditions that some of us observe. And some of it has to do with pondering such questions such as how Hashem created the world. Kabbalah has everything to do with teachings that are concealed, hidden. It’s based on texts such as the Zohar, Tanya, and the Sefer Yetzirah — texts that the average synagogue doesn’t typically delve into. And more. Among other things, it has to do with magic.

R.Danya recounts how some Jews tried using the magic of Kabbalah to protect us from Hitler and Stalin. Really. She relates several anecdotes about the specific ways people tried to cast magic spells. Some are funny. Some are gross. And they all have something to say about how Jews — along with the rest of us — have to band together to push aside evil. (I won’t steal the rabbi’s punchline.)

Yes, no, both.

I think R.Danya has done both a service and disservice the way she describes earnest rabbis doing the best they could to staunch and maybe even reverse the progress of fascism during WWII and Stalin’s Soviet Union. Chickens, airplanes, ceremonial sacrifice… R.Danya renders it as if it were a scene from a Mel Brooks movie and not one of Brooks’ best ones.

The way R.Danya describes the earnest efforts of the rabbis, she makes it all too easy for us to laugh at them and perhaps feel superior to them. Certainly more sophisticated. Me? I have a tendency to admire people who follow their beliefs to the frontiers of art, faith, passion, and maybe even sanity. Who am I to poo-poo doing something so freighted with cries to Hashem for mercy? The world is very big, and I can but apprehend a smidgen. The rest, the part beyond the breadth of my reason, is something I relate to with imagination and faith and … magic.

And may it be for all of us a blessing.

See you tonight!
Mit vareme grusn,
(With warm regards,)

All my love,
brian.

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