The main obstacles to learning Kabalah are  the books that purportedly  give simple introductions to Kabalah.
I can't go into the many ways of learning Kabalah in the wrong way right now. But I will spend a few minutes trying to convince people to learn it the right way.

Obviously the first step is the have a solid background in Talmud and Torah. But after that the basic step is the Eitz Chaim [the book called the Tree of Life, עץ חיים] of the Ari  [Isaac Luria (האריז''ל)].
This is an extremely simple book, and easy to understand on the very first reading. All the introductions to it only make what is simple sound complex. And usually they are trying to expand their own agenda in the name of Kabalah. All kabalistic ashkenazic books have this serious flaw, and are because of this less than worthless.
Where the Ari gets difficult is when you get to the Eight Gates and try to apply its world view to the verse of the Torah. [Later note: I was trying to say that how the Ari applies his system to any particular verse of subject is  things get complicated. My advice for this problem is to first learn all the writings o the Ari in order from the beginning to end. That is the Eitz Chaim, Pri Eitz Chaim, and the whole set of  the Eight Gates. Altogether that is about twenty books. The way to do that is to have place marker and to read a little every day until you turn the page. Put in the place marker and the second day start from where you left off. It takes some time but eventually you get through it. And don't take any Kabalah classes for heavens sake. Not only will you learn nothing from them but they are traps to entice you into different cults.  ]

However I should mention the Reshash (רש''ש) (R. Shalom Sharabi). He has a pretty good system, but it seems to me that it should be reserved for a fourth year or graduate kabalah student.
The Reshash  is not the simple explanation of the Ari. And the simple explanation (not like the Reshash) of the Ari is how the Ramchal (רמח''ל) [Moshe Chaim Lutzato] understands the Ari and also  Yaakov Avuchatzaira. And it is largely based on an essay that he brings that is not a part of the canonical books of the Ari. (דרוש הדעת)
If you do not have the Eitz Chaim, or want a different approach, the Mavo Shearim (מבוא שערים) is a parallel version of the same, and also pretty good. Personally, I think nothing can compare with the Eitz  Chaim as a masterpiece of power and beauty.
 Incidentally, the system of the Ari is a highly evolved Neo Platonic system as so it is not to be expected that any Protestants can understand it. You need to have intuitively a Platonic world view in order to understand Kabalah. Also the Protestant bias against the very idea of keeping mitzvas stands in the way of understanding Kabalah. [Understanding spiritual light that doing mitzvahs as cause to bring into the world is a basic function of Kabalah. If.If you think as Protestants do that mitzvahs are worthless relics of a bygone era then there is no way they can understand what the kabalah is trying to accomplish.]
Now, I know the Rambam is highly Aristotelian and it does sees a mystic understanding of the Rambam is possible as we see in Avraham Abulafia. However in this essay here I am referring on to the Ari.

[Also I should mention that it is in fact in the Reshash that you find the two systems of Plato and Aristotle combined. In the  view of the Reshash all the higher worlds of the Forms become horizontal Universals contained in "things in themselves." (Dinge An Sich)]


Also I should mention that university Kabalah is Medieval Kabalah  and has nothing to do with the Ari'zal (Issaac Luria). It is an interesting subject in itself, but it is not what I am talking about in this essay. Gershom Sholem [The Professor at Hebrew University that made medieval  Kabalah into a respectable academic discipline] and his followers simply were doing work in a different area than the kabalah of Isaac Luria and Moshe Kordovaro.
It does seem to be likely that Hegel did some amount of borrowing from the Ari and put it into rational and philosophic terminology. Actually Hegel seems mostly to be like the Reshash with his triadic system. But I can't imagine Hegel had heard of the Reshash. But Hegel certainly did borrow from the Ari. So maybe it is just that both Hegel and the Reshash both came to the same conclusions based on the Ari. Though Hegel to it in the direction of Metaphysics

  Just in case Christians are reading this who want a definition of repentance, let me clarify. Repentance means this: There are  laws in the Old Testament. "Sin" is defined as not keeping any one of those laws. "Repentance" is deciding to get back on track, and start keeping that law.
  It has nothing to do with playing cards or drinking alcohol. These might be bad things, but they are no including in the definition of "repentance." [To know how to repent you have to focus on any particular law  that you suspect you might not be keeping, and rigorously clarify exactly what it is forbidden and what it is not, --(and you aren't allowed to add or subtract from that definition).
   For example, after my wife left me, I  could find no girl friend or wife. [On the subject of girl friends: see the Book of Chronicles, Book I, chapter two [2:46] and four concerning Caleb ben Yefuna  (כלב בן יפונה). He is the only person in the entire Bible that it says the unique phrase, וימלא אחרי השם "He walked completely after God." He had two girl friends. So it can not be a sin.

  Instead of getting mad at young adults that are interested in sex or ignoring the issue, I recommend getting married early. Jews in Morocco and Yemen were generally married at very early ages.

  Now on a more urgent issue it is mentioned in that chapter that doing repentance/teshuva is connected to the Divine name  in Exodus "I will be".  [This is mistranslated by Christians to "I am"] [It does  not mean "I am." If I want to say, "I will be in the store," I say 'Ani Ehye Bachanut"אני אהיה בחנות מחר . If I want to say, "I am in the store," I say Ani Bachnut. אני בחנות]

"What is wrong with America"--posted here from my other blog because of its importance.

What is wrong with America is this. Money influences the news, and the news influences public opinion, and public opinion influences public policy. [People do not make up their own system of values. They  get it from somewhere in their environment. You can see this in yourself. Are your values completely original, or did you pick them up from someplace? With no more authority to parents, where do you think people are picking up their opinions from?]
 While capitalism is not bad in itself, this system is insidious.

There is no question that the few people in the world that still believe in freedom and in the the American Constitution will find themselves in a deadly war with Islam. [The number of people that believe in the American Constitution is getting less every day. How many people do you know that Believe in freedom of speech--or that it is more important not to offend Muslims or Blacks? How many people do you know believe in the second amendment --the right bear arms? How many people do you know that think that powers not given to the federal government  are powers that it does not have, and if it tries to assume these powers, revolution is in order. For example the power to force you to buy insurance. Do you believe that now you have a right to publicly and politically advocate  revolt against the Government of the USA because it has usurped power? Or are you afraid of a audit on your taxes if you do.]




It will be instructive for people to learn how Islam destroyed the communities of the Zoroastrians in Iraq and Iran. It is the same method they are using in Europe and in the USA. First they start with a few good benign Muslims moving nearby. As long as they are small in numbers, they act exemplary. Then the numbers grow, and the youth are sent in to do theft and rape. Then the community starts to feel harnessed. This process goes on until the community is destroyed.

Rosh Hashanah in Uman.If Reb Nahman had said anything that would have indicated that he wanted people to come to his grave site on Rosh HaShanah do you think that Reb Nathan would have omitted it?

This was certainly assumed by Reb Nathan his disciple. However this has been a source of ambiguity. We see things that imply it. First of all his well known promise to people that would come to his grave site and say the ten psalms that he specified. (note 1) ["I will pull them by their hair out of Hell."]
However in the five  books of Nahman we do not find any specific connection between Rosh HaShanah and his grave site. He never took  two two witnesses saying to come to his grave on Rosh HaShanah like he did for the Tikun Haklali (note 1). 


If Reb Nahman had said anything that would have indicated that he wanted people to come to his grave site on Rosh HaShanah do you think that Reb Nathan would have omitted it?(note 2) We know  Nahman from Breslov wanted people to come to his grave to say the Ten Psalms because he took two reliable witnesses [neither of whom was Reb Natan] and declared this in front of them. And said specially that he would do everything  to help that person. But he never took two witnesses about Rosh Hashana nor even said a simple statement like, "Come to my grave on Rosh Hashanah."

When he wanted people to come to his grave he said so openly. When he wanted people to come to him, while he was alive, on Rosh Hashanah, he also said so openly. But he never said or implied to come to his grave on Rosh Hashanah. And in fact no one, including Reb Nathan, came to his grave on Rosh Hashanah. They came to Uman, but not to his grave.
When he wanted to discuss his grave he did so in many ways. But his grave was never mentioned in the context of Rosh Hashanah.
[The obvious question then is: why did he not take again two witnesses and testify before them concerning some connection between Rosh Hashanah and coming to his grave? In theory he could have one so. And why was Reb Nathan not one of the two witnesses?] This does not mean that it is not a good idea to go to Uman for Rosh Hashanah. But there is no mitzvah in saying that Reb Nahman specifically said to do so. He certainly did not. Appendix:
(note 1) 16,32, 41,42, 59, 77, 90, 105, 137, 150 (Russians have a different way of numbering the psalms because they consider nine and ten to be the same psalm. So to them the numbers are different.)

(note 2) Reb Nathan did in fact begin the coming to Uman on the very first Rosh Hashanah after Reb Nahman had passed away. So it seems clear that Reb Nathan understood this to be a good thing though not explicitly  stated as such by Reb Nahman. However the saying of the ten psalms by his grave site was in fact explicit. 

All people have implicit and often explicit evil.

All people have implicit and often explicit evil. Some institutions and organizations reinforce this evil and some subdue it.

This fact is well known. And we can see this principle in action every day in the news. Muslims, though by nature may be the sweetest people in the world, but after many years of imbibing the lessons of the Koran can one day wake up and decide that today is the day for Jihad and to go out in a flame of glory by killing a couple of Jews or Christian infidels.

But I would like to suggest further that certain organizations can reinforce specific types of evil, while at the same time be lessening other types of evil.

A good example of this would be a school which does evil by emasculating the boys that go to it and yet lessens other kinds of evil.

Musar (learning mediaeval Ethics is great but need to be coupled with philosophy.)

The major--and I mean major-- problem with Musar is lack of philosophical sophistication--[i.e the movement started by R. Israel Salanter to influence everybody to learn the texts of Jewish Ethics written during the Middle Ages]. [That is the movement was founded on Ethics and almost ignored the thought behind the Ethics. That is: it needs to have the mediaeval philosophy of the Rambam and Saadia Gaon to back it up.]

The two essential works of Musar are the Obligations of the Heart (by Ibn Pakuda) and the Light of Israel (by Isaac Blazzer, a disciple of Israel Salanter).



This is not to imply  that the texts themselves lack philosophical sophistication, but that the whole movement morphed. Valid questions are ignored and by ignoring these questions we think we have answered them. Or we accept foreign ideologies and try to claim that they are what Musar says. And even worse,  the failure in the one thing it is supposed to be doing--character development.


The philosophy that backs it up  is in the Guide for the Perplexed, Joseph Albo and  Ibn Gavirol that people do not learn.
That is: the Musar of the Rishonim is highly linked with their philosophy. If you do not know this, then you can't even begin to understand their Musar.


What are you going to do? Just teach Musar and assume people will fill in the blanks with the basic philosophy behind it? Or you think people will not worry about justification for the ideas? Teaching Ethics from the Middle Ages is a great idea--but only if it is coupled with the philosophy of the Middle Ages. The Guide, Saadia Gaon, etc.

Maybe I am too ambitious here as to what people can reasonable be expected to learn.

So to make things simple get one book of authentic Musar [Obligations  of the Heart perhaps]. And one book of world view like the Guide of the Rambam.

Simcha Zissel from Kelm is one well known disciple of Reb Israel Salanter. In his yeshiva in Kelm people learned Musar most of the day.

There is another possible flaw that the movement was not coupled to practice. What better way to learn good character except by teamwork and outdoor skills. Self reliance, keeping your word, loyalty, working together a a team,- how better to learn these things except by camping and working on survival skills in a group? The general result of Musar without this outdoor component is that people that learning Musar seldom can be relied on to keep their word or help one in time of trouble.
Musar is just as important as Reb Israel Salanter said but it has to be coupled with outdoor skills and team work and also the philosophy of Torah

Appendix:

Ethics of Torah= Musar. Many aspects are contained in the Mediaeval Musar books.
The Sexual Ethics of Torah is not the same as Catholics understand it. Sex with one's girl friend is allowed. We find this with King David and Solomon and Calev Ben Yefuna in Chronicles where the list of his wives and girl friends is given.
See the Book of Chronicles, Volume One, chapter two [2:46] and four concerning Kalev ben Yefuna (כלב בן יפונה). He is the only person in the entire Bible that it says the unique phrase, וימלא אחרי השם "He walked completely after God." He had two girl friends.]

I hold that the Remak (R. Moshe Kordovaro) and the Arizal (Isaac Luria) were in fact privy to deep mystical secrets.

It should be clear to my dear readers that I do not consider the Zohar to be from R. Shimon Ben Yochai.
Perhaps people think that from that point on I ought to repudiate the validity of the Kabalah of the Remak and the Ari which are based on the Zohar.
But this would be a false conclusion. I hold that the Remak and the Arizal were in fact privy to deep mystical secrets. I admit that this conclusion is based on  criteria that most people would consider invalid. First is the most obvious fact that the Geon from Vilnius [aka Villna] held  strongly from the Kabalah.
 I consider Moshe De Leon putting the Zohar in the name of Rabbi Shimon to be a simple literary device that was common at the end of the Roman Empire and continued into the Middle Ages. Though I admit that by the time of Moshe De Leon, this device was rarely used. But being not a particularly smart person, I tend to defer judgment to people smarter than me like the Geon from Vilna.

[This whole subject came up when we were reading Genesis and I thought about the fact that the only explanation I have of most of the stories of Genesis are mystically based. For example the seven days of Creation I have thought for several years refer to the seven spheres of briah [the world of creation] and are not literal days.
In the same vein I consider the flood to refer to the feminine waters מיין נוקבין that did not have male waters מיין דוכרין coming to greet them. I don't think the flood was literal and I also think like the Rambam that many stories in Genesis are allegories.
[I don't think the Rambam was thinking exactly like Isaac Luria. The Rambam I think was more literal unless he had to explain things as allegories. The Ari is the first place see the whole Torah from beginning to end including the Talmud as mainly talking about the higher mystical worlds of Emanation etc and in fact having little to do with what goes on in the physical universe in the first place.].

[At any rate, I highly recommend the whole set of Isaac Luria. It is the size of a set of Encyclopedia Britannica, but you don't need to go through the whole thing to get the main idea. It is enough to go through the Eitz Chaim [or the Mavo Shearim] to get the theory and then  the  couple of the volumes which explain verses of the Torah like Shaar HaPesukim. ]
Also do this with the Shalom Sharabi 's Nahar Shalom if you can because of the problem that after about half of the Eitz Chaim, the Ari goes into the order of the worlds and it modifies everything he said up until that point. So to get it you need the Reshash. (At least that is my opinion.)

I any case that is how I did this. You could do it also with the Ramchal [Moshe Lutzatto] or Yaakov Abuchatzaira's writings also I imagine but that is not how I did it.