Madonna isn't the only Hollywood star to have joined an ancient Jewish cult dating back to the Middle Ages. It's also being embraced by a lot of everyday people. Join Charles Morris and a Christian Jewish Scholar for a program called "Why the Kabbalah Craze?"
March 22, 2006
Why the Kabbalah Craze?
Welcome to Haven Today. I’m Charles Morris where we’re telling the great story, it’s all about Jesus. In the next few minutes we’re going to look at something that comes out of Judaism but started in the Middle Ages and has recently seen a massive resurgence. At the end of the program, I want to give you some details about a special trip to Alaska that we’re taking this September and I want you to join us. In a few minutes we’ll also share some thoughts from people attending the North American Kabbalah conference of 2005 put on by the organization Bnei Baruch. Now though, let’s get started in our time together. Let’s turn our minds and our hearts to worship the one true living God.
Song:
Performed by:
“As soon as I got here I immediately felt the love between friends and I just became lured and I fell into it and it was natural from the start.” (unknown speaker)
(Music from Kabbalah Conference)
This is Haven Today and what you were just listening to was not from a Christian convention, it was a Kabbalah meeting. And we’ll talk more about that later and that’s a way for me to introduce our guest. A friend that we’ve had on the program before and he’s back with us in studio in LA today, Reverend Fred Klett, who’s the founder of Chaim, an evangelistic organization reaching to Jews in the greater Philadelphia area but then beyond. So Reverend Fred Klett, welcome to Haven Today.
FK: Shalom Charles it’s good to be here back with you again in the studio.
CM: And you forgot your shofar this time Fred.
FK: Didn’t bring the shofar but I understand that made all your meters go off, off the charts, so
CM: We had to run a few algorithms to make it even work over the year, but thank you for joining us today. And I wanted to have you on, and we gave everybody a little taste at the beginning, the question we’re asking today is “Why the Kabbalah craze?” it’s gone beyond the Jewish community
FK: Absolutely.
CM: We’ve got some people listening that are saying, “What in the world is that man on the radio talking about?” But as these things go, it’s going main stream, so first of all, what is Kabbalah?
FK: Well, that’s a very important question and you know, it’s important for the church to be aware of what’s going on out there, not just to ridicule it, but to understand what people are doing, because we have to be equipped to answer these things and to show how the truth of Jesus is greater than any of these things. So we need to be aware of what the Devil is up to.
CM: OOO, you got pretty strong pretty fast there.
FK: Well, I guess I could put it more mildly, but
CM: But bottom line, your sense would be that what came out of traditional Judaism – Kabbalah – and kind of wears that veneer to it, is something Christians need to be aware of is not entirely Kosher.
FK: Absolutely, and Kabbalah goes way beyond Judaism. As a matter of fact, Kabbalah mixed with hermetic magic out of Egypt is the foundation of all Western Occultism. So if you go to any kind of Wiccan book, you’ll find the same kind of imagery of Kabbalah and you’ll find that Kabbalah is the basis of not only Hassidic Judaism and influential in Judaism in general and branching out now, but historically it has been part of the occult system. There’s a book called, “What Witches Do” and they define Kabbalah like this, “It’s the ancient Hebrew system of esoteric philosophy, probably the biggest single influence on western occult tradition.” One of the well known occultists, Dionne Fortune says, “it’s the ground plan of western esoteric tradition.” So we’re talking about something that started out in the Jewish world and crossed over quite a while ago into the Gentile world, but it’s now resurfacing again with the alternate spiritualities that are coming online.
CM: A Couple of things, first of all if anyone listening knows a little bit about Kabbalah, they would have heard of it in terms of it being a big fad with celebrities like Paris Hilton or Brittney Spears,
FK: Madonna
CM: Madonna, yes, yes!
FK: People wearing the red string bracelets and so on.
CM: That’s right and a friend of mine in Jerusalem telling me about Madonna going to Israel last year and how the rabbis, the conservative Hassidic rabbis, orthodox rabbis there were just appalled, because in traditional Kabbalah a woman would not practice Kabbalah and much less you, didn’t you have to have been a expert in the Torah before you could ever have studied it?
FK: in traditional Judaism you had to have a certain level of attainment of the Torah and the rabbinic law Talmud before you got into Kabbalah, but there in Hassidic Judaism has been much more of an openness to Kabbalah and now it’s thought, even in more traditional circles, that we’ve now reached the age of humanity where it’s time. It’s time now that this should be open.
CM: Wow
FK: People should study it. You don’t have to have any prerequisite courses, so to speak.
CM: You don’t have to be over 30 years old.
FK: You don’t have to be over 30 years old.
CM: And you can be a woman and study it.
FK: Anybody can study it, you can be a Gentile, so now there’s sort of a new idea of, this is the time for Kabbalah to come to the world.
CM: Before we look at it in its modern forms that anyone listening to this program may encounter, or a Hollywood celebrity is encountering, let’s go back. How old is Kabbalah which comes out of traditional Judaism?
FK: yeah, let me talk about that a little bit. Well, let me mention what Kabbalah is first.
CM: Oh yeah, yeah, we never truly defined it did we?
FK: We never really defined it and there’s a number of ways we can look at it. First it’s a system of Jewish mysticism simply, that doesn’t tell you a lot. It’s the world view of Hassidic Judaism. Now people look at Hassidic Jews as being ultra orthodox, that’s not really accurate. They’re ultra orthodox in their practice, but they’re very mystical Gnostic in their theology and we’ll talk about that a little bit later.
CM: OK. And if you were in New York City if you went to Brooklyn or the Diamond District in Manhattan or even in Jerusalem, you would see Hassidic Jews and you can tell by dress.
FK: That’s exactly right, different Hassidic groups have different sort of dress, some have fur hats, some have fedoras. They’ll all have payos, a little side curls,
CM: Curling, yes, hair on the men.
FK: Because you’re not supposed to cut the corners of your head, so you grow it long to make sure you don’t cut it. But they’re all into Kabbalah, that is the world view, really of all Hassidic Judaism. And it’s had an influence on all of Orthodox Judaism. Originally liberal Judaism rejected it because it wasn’t modern, it wasn’t rational or scientific. Now even liberal Judaism has begun to re-embrace Kabbalah because of the New Age and interest in mysticism and spirituality and that sort of thing.
CM: And it has a feel, doesn’t it Fred, of Eastern Religion, almost Buddhism comes to my mind.
FK: well, it’s interesting, when I’ve talked about it to people who were into Hinduism, and looking at serious Hinduism, not kind of “folk Hinduism” but serious Hindu philosophy, it’s very similar in some ways to Kabbalah. Kabbalah is also a metaphysical system that, as I mentioned, has greatly influenced Gentile occultism, although there’s also been some cross fertilization apparently Madam Lebatsky who was one of the leading occultists around the turn of the century had emissaries go back and take it back to India and reinvigorate Hinduism. Of course we’re most aware of it now as a popular New Age cult movement that Madonna and so on are into. The word Kabbalah means “reception”.
CM: OK.
FK: That’s all it means, very simply. As a matter of fact, if you go to Israel and you go to a hotel and you want to check in, there’s a sign there that says –
CM: It might say -
FK: No, it says, “Kabbalah”. It means, that’s the reception, that’s where you go in.
CM: Right.
FK: It was originally studied in small groups. You had to have sort of a teacher or guru or rabbi, a Kabbalistic expert who would teach you and you studied it in small groups. And it was considered controversial when it began. The word “Kabbal” means, well it comes from the word “Kabbalah”
CM: OK
FK: OK, it means this little group is kind of studying these esoteric things, so that’s where we get our word in English kabbal
CM: Seeking to receive something then.
FK: Seeking to receive something, but as I said, it originally came out of the idea that they studied Kabbalah in small groups. Now there are a number of books that Kabbalah comes out of. First you have something called the Sepher Yetzirah, the Book of Creation and that’s sort of pre-Kabbalistic, it’s mystical.
CM: Does that go back to the Medieval Ages?
FK: Well it probably, you know, it might go back as early as the 4th century or so. And it has to do with really taking Greek philosophy, pithagorianism and looking at God creating the world through numbers and letters being recombined and so on and this sort of thing. It’s not a very long book. You also had a tradition of Jewish mysticism called throne mysticism or Kava mysticism where you tried to recreate the path that Ezekiel took to have a vision of God on the throne. It’s called echalote literature, I’m not going to get into too much of that, but you have this mystical tradition in Judaism.
CM: And that would go to Gnosticism back to even pre-Christ wouldn’t it? There was a Jewish Gnosticism.
FK: Yes, I mean Kabbalah is Jewish Gnosticism, absolutely.
CM: OK, OK.
FK: Then you had a book called The Bahir, The Book of Brightness in the 12th century. And that’s a very difficult book it kind of leaves you with a lot of questions, but the main work of Kabbalah is the Zohar that goes to the 13th century with Moses Deleon. Zohar means like radiance. He claimed he was copying a manuscript a thousand years earlier,
CM: OK.
FK: which a lot of rabbinic writings do. They’ll claim it goes all the way back to Moses. People claim Abraham was a Kabbalist. But there’s pretty good evidence that Moses Deleon wrote it himself because after he died and his widow was left destitute, a very wealthy man went to her and said, “I will buy the original manuscript that your husband was copying from for a great sum of money.” And she said, “There isn’t one. He was making it up as he went along.” Now there are linguistic issues as well that show you that the language of the Zohar is much later than when it was claimed. And then after those books you have Hassidic writings like the Tamya by Shneirzomon of Liaty in the 18th century. Then you have modern Kabbalists, Yahuda Oschlag is one, Emmanuel Shochia, Mike Leightman, and then there are modern academic scholars. One of the top scholars, serious scholars is Gorsham Scholem who showed the Gnostic connection. There are others, Daniel Matt who is translating the Kabbalah into English, the Pritzker edition is coming out. There are other authors, Joseph Dan, Arthur Green, Isaiah Tishby. These are legitimate academic scholars.
CM: Modern day people that are looking at it.
FK: Modern day scholars. Gorsham Scholem really was the father of this more critical look at Kabbalah.
CM: I know for one thing, the goal I’ve read of Kabbalah is to get back to the Garden of Eden by doing good works, so that’s one thing that some of our listeners could hang on. I think of Kabbalah too as advocating reincarnation.
FK: Absolutely, but it even goes way beyond getting back to the Garden of Eden.
CM: OK, all right, OK.
FK: Let me talk about some basic concepts. First of all, the god of Kabbalah is completely unknowable, he’s absolutely one, he’s beyond anything, he’s the Ain Soph. You can’t say anything about God and his essence according to Kabbalah. Now this came in through the Greeks. Maimonides who was not a Kabbalist at all brought Aristotle into Judaism through Muslim influence. He was a court physician to the caliphate in Egypt. And the Muslims had for several hundred years been very into Aristotle and Maimonides brought this in. But you can’t really live with a god that you can say nothing of. They said that you can only say, “God is not unholy, he is not non-loving.” You have to speak in double negatives they would say. Of course that’s kind of frustrating you have this completely unknown god.
CM: Explain that again, a double negative is the way that you can relate to God.
FK: Yeah, it’s called via negativa, you cannot say anything positive about God because he’s so out there, so wholly other, so transcendent, so beyond our mind that he’s this undifferentiated pure spiritual essence of whom our language is completely incapable of speaking, and so we can only speak in double negative and say, “God is not unholy, he is not non-loving, he is not unwise,” that sort of thing, so you can positive anything about God and his essence. Of course you have a problem at that point, right?
CM: That’s right, yes.
FK: Because the Bible does speak of who God is.
CM: And even though that’s coming out of traditional Judaism, that’s something that’s not found in the Hebrew Bible or the Bible that Christians have with the New Testament added.
FK: That’s right.
CM: It’s not there!
FK: It’s pagan, it’s Greek. It’s not a biblical view of God. A lot of people think that Orthodox Jews have basically the same idea of God as Christians do. They’re not Trinitarian, but otherwise…oh no! Not necessarily. There’s a lot more to it.
CM: If you have just joined us, we have Reverend Fred Klett with us. He’s the founder and director of Chaim which is a ministry, and pardon, Jews listening for my Hebrew pronunciation or lack thereof, but Fred is fluent in Hebrew. And we’re talking about “Why the Kabbalah Craze?” Kabbalah is not something that’s safe! You started it out by saying this is from the Devil.
FK: Well I think if I can bring it one step forward a little bit you’ll begin to see why.
CM: OK.
FK: Because you have this unknown god, according to Kabbalistic thinking he emanated 10 Sephiroth, personal divine subsistencies. Some of them are masculine, some of them are feminism. Now these are all part of the one god, but yet they all have a certain individual life of their own. They have relationships with each other, male and female marriage kind of relationships. Now you don’t have to take any of this too seriously, these are symbolic anthropomorphisms; they are expressing a deep mystery unfolded in the godhead. But you see, you have on one hand god who you can’t say anything about, and then you have these emanations
CM: These representations
FK: These emanations, these personal subsistencies, these 10 emanations you see, that’s who you can say positive things about but they almost become a system of mini gods and goddesses.
CM: It’s an idolatry within an idolatry then, isn’t it?
FK: Yeah, really. So when you see this unknowable god, the Ain Soph, and the 10 emanations, the 10 Sephiroth, this is not the God of the Bible at all.
CM: And if you’ve never heard of Kabbalah believe me it’s been in People Magazine and you’re going to see it there again. Fred, we’ll have you back tomorrow, we’ve got to ferret this thing out because this is a growing cult, it’s a growing religion, whatever. And how is a Christian to think about this?
FK: Well, you know, we have the revelation of God. And God has spoken about himself. He said, “Be holy because I am holy.” We don’t have to speak of him in double negatives. He has spoken to us, revealed who he is to us and given us the capacity – in a limited way, of course – to understand who he is because
CM: And we can know this God through Jesus Christ.
FK: We can know this God personally. We don’t have to go through all sorts of mystical techniques and ascending back up the tree of life, and we’ll talk about that. We can know him personally through the Messiah, through Jesus, because this God is able to be present in our lives. He was present in the person of the Son, that’s how we can know him. He provided the way back through what he did on the cross for us.
CM: Amen. My brother in Christ, Fred Klett thank you. Come back again tomorrow, right?
FK: Absolutely.
Song: Nothing But the Blood
Performed by: Haven
The name of the program is “Why the Kabbalah Craze?” And as I just said, tomorrow we will have part 2 with Reverend Fred Klett back with us again. If you’ve heard of Kabbalah or want to know more about it and you just heard about it today, we have a special fact sheet called, “Exposing the Mysteries of Kabbalah”. We have that available for you and we would like to send it to you at no charge. We are listener supported, so if you can send us a gift of any amount that would be appreciated but we would really like to get this fact sheet into your hands as well. You can call us right now at 1-800-65-HAVEN, that’s 1-800-654-2836. Just say you’d like the Mysteries of Kabbalah fact sheet, that way you don’t have to know how to spell it – there are many spellings to the word Kabbalah by the way – and we’ll get it out to you right away. Or you can go to our internet site, that’s haventoday.org, haventoday.org and you can sign up there and we’ll get it out in the mail to you as quickly as we possibly can. Here’s our mailing address too, where you can ask for this special fact sheet on Kabbalah, and we’re spelling it k-a-b-b-a-l-a-h, “Exposing the Mysteries of Kabbalah”. Ask for that when you write to us at:
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And when you write us or get in touch with us and ask for “Exposing the Mysteries of Kabbalah” please let us know the radio station you’re listening to and if you can include a gift of any amount, we would greatly appreciate that as well. I also mentioned when we got started that we’re going to Alaska this September and we’d love to have you join us. We’re going to be boarding a cruise ship for a 7 day cruise aboard the Holland America’s MS Ryndam, it’ll be a wonderful time to see God’s creation and to worship together. You can find out more information by going to haventoday.org or by calling this special phone number, 1-866-681-7327 for the Alaska cruise this September with Haven Ministries, it’s 1-866-681-7327. I’m Charles Morris and thank you for being with me and with Reverend Fred Klett who’ll be back with us again tomorrow. Join us then when again we’ll be telling the great story, it’s all about Jesus here on Haven Today.
