What Kabbalah / Qabbalah / Cabala is Not: Free Online Video Lessons on This Jewish Wisdom

If you are feeling under the weather and not having much fun, you need to read the latest installment of "The Alphabet According to JerseyNana," a series full of wit, wisdom, and... letters, an alphabet soup for the soul! In her latest article, on K (here), she refers to the Kabbalah; in fact, so do I in my most recent article (here).

What is going on? Pop diva Madonna studies Kabbalah, and so do many other women and men, Jewish and gentile, although for centuries, study of this esoteric Jewish wisdom (Wikipedia article here) was reserved for Jewish men, over the age of forty, who were husbands and fathers. Like Madonna, at least I meet the age requirement.

Kabbalah? Qabbalah? Cabala?

It is tricky to deal with words from languages that do not use our (Roman) alphabet, as I explained in an article (here) about Hanukkah or Channukah. For example, if while traveling in China, you send a postcard saying, "I ate Peking duck in Beijing," you would be referring to the same city (Beijing, Peking) twice.

There is a convention regarding the three versions of the word Kabbalah (based on the verb "to receive," in Hebrew, קַבָּלָה). Kabbalah refers to the original mystical teachings of Judaism, while Cabala usually refers to the study of those teachings by Christians during the Renaissance, and Qabbalah is used for the study of the tradition within occultist and Hermetic (see my article on Hermes Trismegistus here) groups, especially in England. Regardless of spelling, Kabbalah is not one book. It is a wide range of teachings, covering many centuries.

Teaching Kabbalah today

If you are not Jewish and do not read Hebrew, there are two main providers of instruction in the Kabbalah for you: the Kabbalah Centre and Bnai Baruch. Both have ardent supporters as well as equally ardent critics. With respect for the tradition of Kabbalah, I am going to link only to their own websites.

The Kabbalah Center (website) is the best known group for studying Kabbalah, since its students include a number of celebrities. It offers a page "What Is Kabbalah?" (here).

Bnai Baruch (website) means "sons of Baruch," that is, Kabbalistic teacher Baruch Ashlag. Their page,"Kabbalah Sources" (here) is another good introduction.

What Kabbalah is not

I first discovered Bnai Baruch when I saw a listing for one of their broadcasts on JLTV, Jewish Life Television (website). That first program I watched is available online to watch or to download for free from this page. If you are impatient, you can just download the transcript, but you will miss the engaging personality of Tony Kosinec, who presents this lesson.

Since I emphasize in my title what Kabbalah is not (I do not know enough to say what Kabbalah is), here is Kosinec's list from this video lesson of what Kabbalah is not. It is not Jewish mysticism, and yet, I referred to the "mystical traditions of Judaism" earlier. So, trust the guy who has the video.

In fact, he says that it is not religion, mysticism, or magic. It is not something that has prerequisites for study, such as being Jewish or having completed other studies. It does not involve holy water, amulets and other means of supernatural protection, such as good luck charms. It is not the same as "Eastern teachings," and it will not drive you mad. I emphasize that those are Tony Kosinec's teachings, not mine, since all points on that list of his face objections from various sources.

From that page, you can access four other free video lessons (from the top right corner), as well as a huge book of information about Kabbalah that you can download for free (lower right corner), and there are links to other free materials about the Kabbalah.

What I am not

I have written about a variety of other spiritual traditions, and I have index pages about my articles on Christianity (here), Gnosticism (here) and Buddhism (here). For this article, I need to emphasize that I am not a Kabbalist, and I am not Jewish. I do not even call myself a student of Kabbalah. At this point, I'm just a dabbler, motivated by curiosity about Kabbalah and tempered by respect for the traditions of Kabbalah.

For sources, check the links throughout this article.