Kabbalistic Self Help JAAR

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Kabbalistic Self-Help: The Microcosm in Practice
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Kabbalah, self-help, Ethics, Therapeutic, Microcosm, History
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Kabbalistic Self-Help: The Microcosm in Practice
Kabbalistic self-improvement literature has a long history, spanning from about the
eleventh century until just now.1 These works share a set of conventions identifying tem as
a genre: they all imagine the ideal self as a microcosm for a divinized cosmos, and they
instruct their readers to conform to the ideal by means of ritual cognition, affect, ritual
practice, and social action based in Jewish law. They also assume existence within a
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community so that material care for others was crucial to ideal selfhood. In this way they
construct the model of the ideal self using a combination of religious and cosmological
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discourses. All contemporary examples of kabbalistic self-help actualize the microcosmic

model through cognition and affect, but only some retain the practice of ritual action and
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social responsibility derived from religious law. Different writers use the form differently,
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partly dependent on their religious affiliations. In the following I examine the

contemporary refunctioning of the early modern genre of kabbalistic self-improvement
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literature, which now takes the psychologized form of popular kabbalistic self-help.
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In the present, four major groups produce kabbalistic self-help. These include, first, Hasidic
organizations like Chabad and Breslover, second, neo-Hasidic communities, third, Western
Esotericists drawing on the teachings of organizations like the Golden Dawn, and fourth,
Kabbalistic self help begins with works of Jewish self-improvement literature written in
the eleventh century, which operated on a Aristotelian Neoplatonist cosmos. Kabbalistic
self-improvement literature is fully articulated as a genre in the 16th century. It shares
many generic features of its ethical-philosophical ancestors, but provides a kabbalistic
model of the cosmos instead of or in addition to the earlier cosmological models.
Crypto-Jewish groups2 like the Kabbalah Center.3 While they retain a microcosmic model
based in the ten sefirot of Jewish kabbalah, each of these conceptualizes the ideal self
differently, constructing it from different combinations of discourses. The most important
additions are psychotherapeutic discourses, economic discourses, and those from other
religions. As a result, they recommend different sorts of practices in actualizing the sefirotic
ideal, most notably in their attitudes toward religious law demanding material efforts
toward social justice. In this way they change both the discursive formulation and the
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function of the genre.
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To illuminate these changes in kabbalistic self-improvement literature, I will first

characterize the microcosmic model as it is articulated in medieval Jewish and early
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modern kabbalistic self-improvement literature. The medieval Jewish microcosm is at the
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root of the later kabbalistic ethic, and it is exemplified in the eleventh century writings of
Solomon ibn Gabirol and Bahya ibn Pakuda, which I will discuss briefly. However, I focus
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mainly on Moshe Cordoveros 16th C Tomer Devorah because it is the best developed
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It may seem provocative to call the Kabbalah Center a crypto-Jewish group; however the
group disavows any connection between kabbalah and Judaism while drawing explicitly
from Jewish discourses and recommending Jewish ritual action. They supply reasons for
following these principles without locating their authority in Jewish law but in other
discourses like science and reason or the literary logic of parallelism, much like the
Western Esotericist groups. For more information on the groups use of Jewish discourse
and practice, see Jody Myers Kabbalah and the Spiritual Quest: The Kabbalah Centre in
America. Westport, CT: Praeger Publishing, 2007. See also my forthcoming article: New
Age, New Media: Kabbalah on the Web, to appear in a special issue of Relegere entitled
New Age and NeoPagan Medievalisms, in winter, 2014.
3 To date, the Kabbalah Centre has published approximately 320 books on the topic, in
different languages.
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example of the genre kabbalistic self-improvement literature.4 I use it here as an example

for the sake of comparison to contemporary works. I then examine the refunctioning of the
genre in four contemporary kabbalistic self-help books, produced by a student of each
major school of kabbalah. The first is the Chabad Rabbi Laibl Wolfs Practical Kabbalah,
(first published in 1999 and reprinted 2011). Second is the Neo-Hasidic Jeff Roths Jewish
Meditation Practices for Everyday Life: Awakening your Heart and Connecting with God,
published in 2009. Third is the Western Esotericist Gahl Sassons and Steve Weinsteins A
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Wish Can Change your Life, published in 2003. Finally, I analyze Yehuda Bergs The Power of
Kabbalah, first published by the Kabbalah Centre in 2004 and reprinted in 2011.
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The Medieval Microcosm and Kabbalistic Ethics
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The microcosm is a key component in the model of the ideal self in kabbalistic self-
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improvement literature, and its function changes a great deal over time. As a genre, the
microcosm first appears in 5th-7th century medical works, in which it served mainly to
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organize information about the relation between the parts of the human body and the
cosmos as a whole,5 and to prescribe practices for maintaining health.6 In its 9th and 10th
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century Jewish forms, it served as a means of organizing knowledge about the world and as
Tomer Devorah very clearly maps a system of ethics onto a sefirotic cosmology, which is in
turn mapped onto the body and then actualized through cognition, affect, ritual, and social
action.
5 A.A. Diamandopoulos, P. Goudas and A.H. Diamandopoulou
The human skin, Vesalius, VII, 2, 94 - 1 0 1 , 2001, p 100 From the last five texts [classical
Greek to Early Modern] we trace the tendency of the medieval intellectuals to use the
various members of the human body as a mode of classification for scientific theories or
abstract ideas.
6 Early Jewish microcosms were found in medical treatises such as the 6th C work, Sefer
Assaf the 8th C rabbinic work, Avot de Rabbi Natan, and Shabbetai Donnolos 10th C Sefer
Hakhmoni. These works often paraphrased Galens medical writings.
a source of information about its creator.7 Eleventh century writers adapted it so that it
also served as a means of cultivating affect and as a basis for conceptualizing ethical action
through conformity to the structure of the whole. Central to its medieval function is an
emanative model of the cosmos derived from Neoplatonic Aristotelianism.8 The theory of
emanation held that the material universe originated from a transcendent first principle.
According to this theory, the universe, which is multiple, is generated from the One, which
is unitary, through the medium of a hierarchy of immaterial substances.9 In this way, they
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also saw the divine as enlivening the material world, and therefore embedded in it.
According to Jewish Neoplatonic Aristotelianism, they imagined the divine as intellect, so
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that thinking is way of imitating the divine. Medieval Jewish Neoplatonists10 such as Bahya
ibn Pakuda11 and Solomon ibn Gabirol12 also saw the cosmos as imparting information
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The best known of these is Shabbetai Donnolos Sefer Hakhmoni.

In the Middle Ages varieties of Neoplatonic Aristotelianism afforded the overarching
philosophical framework for most thoughtful Muslims, Jews and Christians. It was a
method [and a cosmology] founded by Plato and forged into a system by its synthesis with
the thought of Arsitotle. It postulates that reality and thought were pure gifts from the
highest actuality and pure thought is pure actuality. See Lenn Evan Goodman, ed.,
Neoplatonism and Jewish Thought, Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 1992, pp 1-2. This is to say that
this model of the cosmos saw human thought as participation in the divine and as such as
reality itself.
9 see A. Altmann, Studies in Religious Philosophy and Mysticism. Ithaca, NY: Cornell
University Press, I969, p. 41.
10 Bahyas Neoplatonism is the subject of an ongoing debate in the study of Jewish
philosophy. See Philosophers and Scholars: Wolfson, Gutmann, and Strauss on the History of
Jewish Philosophy, p 161. However, in my understanding, Neoplatonism serves as the basis
underlying a microcosmic ethics, in which the human body and the divine are enlivened by
a divine substance that inheres in the physical world. This is clearly the case in the writing
of Bahya.
11 In the 11th century Bahya ibn Pakuda wrote the Direction and Duties of the Heart, (1040)
which is the first systematic Jewish ethical work. For him, mitzvah (Jewish Law)
observance provides the means for actualizing the ideal self, but in his words, we cannot
perform the obligations of the limbs in full unless our hearts are willing.(Mansoor,
Menachem, Sara Arenson, and Shoshana Dannhauser, trs. Bahya ben Joseph ibn Pakudas
Book of Directions and Duties of the Heart (London: Littman Library, 2004, p. Introduction,
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about its creator, and they believed that meditation on the created world would yield a
model for imitation. This is a sort of cognitive mysticism,13 central to all the selfimprovement literature examined here.
With the emergence of kabbalah in the thirteenth century, the emanative model took a new
form. According to it, the cosmos was created by means of the ten sefirot, a series of divine
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p. x.) Thus he aims to cultivate an affective state that generates heartfelt action so that is
possible to meaningfully perform the commandments of the Torah. The ideal is achieved by
contemplation and action: Whoever contemplates the natural processes of the bodyhow
when food enters it, it is distributed to every part of the bodywill see such signs of
wisdom that he will be inspired to thank the Creator and praise Him. Finally, this
contemplation of the body ends in the readers control of it: The eye and heart are two
panders to sin: employ your eyes and your sense of sight in observing creation in order to
meditate on it (p. 413)You must make an effort, O Brother, to control your senses and the
movements of your exterior members(p. 414).
12
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Ibn Gabirols Improvement of the Moral Qualities (1045) was written just five years after
Bahyas Duties of the Heart, and as such it is the second independent, systematic work of
Jewish ethics. The work is aimed at the cultivation of an ideal self vigilantly observant of
personal, religious, and legal responsibilities. The work consists of five parts, each to
devoted to explaining the proper use of one of the five senses. The management of the
senses, based in a humoral model, is aimed at cultivating a state of hyper-vigilance over the
self, ones affairs, and observance of Jewish law. For example, here is his commentary on
sight: The soul has spiritual tints, which sometimes become apparent in the motion of the
eyelid. (quoting Platonic doctrine) Again he said, Keep watch over the sense of sight:
verily it may lead to various kinds of wrong: by some of its motions it may testify to your
having pride and haughtiness, and by others to your possession of meekness and humility.
Therefore, compel it to make the very best movements and restrain it from the most
ignoble. (Solomon ibn Gabirol, and Stephen Samuel Wise, tr. The improvement of the moral
qualities: an ethical treatise of the eleventh century by Solomon ibn Gabirol, printed from an
unique Arabic manuscript, together with a translation, and an essay on the place of Gabirol in
the history of the development of Jewish ethics. New York: Columbia University Press, 1901,
p. 36.) Here sight operates in two ways; first it internalizes what is external because proper
relation to the outside world leads to correct behavior while improper use leads to various
wrongs, and second, it externalizes internal character, by communicating moods and
proclivities to others. In this way, ethics is based on control of the body grounded in a
microcosmic humoral model.
13 See Lobel, Diana, A Sufi-Jewish Dialogue: Philosophy and Mysticism in Bahya Ibn Paquda's
"Duties of the Heart." Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2006.
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emanations. These emanations were simultaneously understood as aspects of God, parts of

the cosmos, and of the human personality. The production of kabbalistic literature of selfimprovement begins in the early modern period, with Moshe Cordoveros 16th Century
Tomer Devorah (Palm Tree of Deborah). This book shows the first systematic use of the
sefirotic microcosm in a kabbalistic work of self-improvement. In this way it instructs the
reader to model the body and the psyche on the sefirot, through contemplation, ritual and
social action. It instructs the reader to imitate the divine in order to achieve a messianic
end.
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Tomer Devorah was a popular book, central to the formation of the genre, with many
subsequent books modeled on it, especially in Hasidic circles. This systematic work
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grounds its ethics in the microcosm imagined according to the model of the ten sefirot. The
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book contains ten chapters, divided into three different sections. The first chapter (section
1) lists the thirteen attributes of God extracted from the Bible14 (and codified in liturgy and
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rabbinic literature), while the second section consists of eight chapters describing the
qualities of the ten sefirot15 and providing instructions to emulate them. Each of its
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chapters in turn contain three parts; first, they describe the attributes of each sefirah and
their corresponding human qualities; second, they include instructions to emulate those
qualities by regulating the movements of the body,16 and finally they give instruction for
ritual and social practices to form the character in the image of the divine, expressed
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These are described as the 13 middot, or divine qualities enumerated in Exodus 34:6-7
and developed in rabbinic sources and by Maimonides.
15 With chapter 8 combining the less important sefirot, and 9 dedicated to Shekhinah, one of
the most important.
16 As ibn Gabirol does. IN his Improvement of the Moral Qualities, he strives to inculcate
virtue by controlling relevant parts of the body.
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through the sefirotic model. Its aim is ultimately messianic; perfection of the self entails the
perfection of society, which in turn effects cosmic change.
Cordoveros fifth chapter on the sefirah Hesed, or Lovingkindness, exemplifies the structure
and the strategies of the work as a whole. It shows how his kabbalistic ethics locates human
improvement in emulation of divine qualities in personal traits, ritual practice, and acts of
social justice. For example, the work focuses a great deal on the commandment to love
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ones neighbor as oneself. Lovingkindess is a characteristic predicated of the creator, to be

enacted by the reader. However, this is not limited to affect, but it is shown in material
action:
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It is necessary, therefore, to know the types of Loving-kindness practiced among men,
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all of which he should do on his Creator's behalf in the upper worlds, if he wants to
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acquire the quality of Loving-kindness. We, therefore, state that the following are the
types of Loving-kindness: First, when man is born it is necessary to provide him with
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all his food Second, to circumcise the child Third, to visit the sick and heal them
Fourth, to give Tzedakka (Charity) to the poor Fifth, to welcome guests, Sixth, the
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living attending to the dead, Seventh: bringing the bride under the marriage canopy,
Eighth: to make peace between man and his neighbor.17
The actions specified here entail the fulfillment of specific social responsibilities toward
those in need. In this way social actions are mapped onto a divine attribute, and they are
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Cordovero, p. 134.
imagined to spur the celestial forces to action. Importantly, Cordovero argues that cosmic
action is impossible without social action.18
Cordovero conceived human improvement as human emulation of the divine, expressed

through the sefirot and enacted through cognition, affect, managing the body, ritual practice,
and social action. This is in the end meant to repair the cosmos, to effect Tikkun Olam,
which is a form of messianic action. The text contains clear instructions to use the body,
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part by part, to emulate the divine by acting in society. Subsequent works use different
combinations of these elements in constructing and enacting their model of the ideal self.
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This literary tradition, with its basis in Jewish law and kabbalistic cosmology, was
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embraced by Hasidism in the 18th century,19 and it has continued diversified but
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uninterrupted up to the present day. Even now, Hasidic groups like Chabad and Breslovers
produce ethical books that operate by shaping the human being in the divine image as it is
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articulated in Jewish law and kabbalistic cosmology. Other groups using this genre include
Western Esotericists drawing on the teachings of organizations like the Golden Dawn,
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Crypto-Jewish groups like the Kabbalah Center, and neo-Hasidic communities. In their
writings, kabbalistic-self-improvement literature becomes kabbalistic self-help, combining
kabbalistic discourses with others, including (but not limited to) psychological therapeutic
18
16th century Safed Jews also produced other ethical tracts called hanhagot, or codes of
behavior that they circulated among themselves and later compiled in the form of booklets.
In these works cosmic repair was inseparable from good character, diligent ritual practice,
and acts of social justice to ensure a properly functioning community. For more
information on this, see Lawrence Fine, Safed Spirituality: Rules of Mystical Piety, the
Beginning of Wisdom (Classics of Western Spirituality), New York: Paulist Press, 1984.
19 See Zeev Gries, Hasidism, Present State of Research, NumenVol. 34, Fasc. 1 (Jun., 1987),
pp. 97-108, p 1.
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discourse, economic discourses, and those from other religions such as Buddhism and the
New Thought Movement.20 Thus contemporary writers of kabbalistic self-help combine
older discourses with newer ones to reformulate identity symbols constituting the ideal
self, representing a qualitatively new language of the self,21 and changing the way the self
relates to the other and to society as a whole.22 The microcosm is transformed.
This change is partly attributable to the substitution of psychotherapeutic and economic
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discourses for religious ones emphasizing social justice. In Saving the Modern Soul, Eva
Illouz argues that the culture of psychotherapy causes social difficulties as works to resolve
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personal problems. First, she says that while psychology supposedly addresses and helps
to resolve our increasing difficulties entering and remaining in social relations, it actually
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encourages us to put our needs and preferences above our commitments to others.23
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Illouz argues that psy discourses make the practice of self-knowledge a simultaneously
epistemological and moral act, substituting self-knowledge for social action. The same
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holds true for economic discourses; in some contemporary literature, affect, feelings of
generosity and love for example, replaces material contributions that might enact such
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feelings. . The point is to render metaphorical the material commitments to the others well
being, as expressed in earlier kabbalistic self-improvement literature. All the contemporary
20
It is important to note that medieval self-improvement literature was also syncretistic,

but is used a different combination of discourses and as such it employed a different model
enacted differently.
21 In Saving the Modern Soul, Eva Illouz argues that therapeutic discourse has reformulated
the deepest level of identity symbols, Eva Illouz, Saving the Modern Soul: Therapy,
Emotions, and the Culture of Self-Help. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2008, p 5.
22 Illouz, p. 6
23 Illouz, pp. 2-3.
works studied hereinclude these psy discourses, but to varying extents, they temper their
drive toward self-gratification with religious discourses demanding social accountability.
Laibl Wolf: Practical Kabbalah

The first contemporary book examined here is Laibl Wolfs Practical Kabbalah, which was
first published in 1999. It was reprinted in 2003 and then again in 2010. Laibl Wolf calls
himself a mystic. He is affiliated with the Chabad movement, a Hasidic Orthodox group, and
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dean of SpiritGrow- The Joseph Kryss Wholistic Center.24 Because Wolf is affiliated with
Chabad, his kabbalah retains its traditional basis in Jewish law and in social action. Wolf
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understands self-improvement in religious and psychotherapeutic terms: Chabad

Hasidism, the theology and transpersonal psychology that explains and decodes the ancient
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kabbalah, seeks our physical, emotional, and mental well-being.25 He calls his practice
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Behavioral Kabbalah, focused on personal growth and emotional mastery in which he

uses the wisdom contained in the 4,000-year-old Kabalistic texts to reveal the inner
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workings of the mind-emotion balance.26 Wolf argues that the system works because It
[kabbalah] demonstrates that person and Cosmos are complementary and synergistic
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aspects of one greater Whole. It teaches that what we think, say, or do leaves a mark on the
universe27 For him, and in Hasidic thought generally, healing society is a messianic
action.28 Chabad theology combines the kabbalistic microcosm with religious psychological
24
Wolfs address is http://www.spiritgrowjosefkrysscenter.org/profile/laibl-wolf

Laibl Wolf, Practical Kabbalah : a guide to Jewish wisdom for everyday life. New York :
Three Rivers Press, 1999, p. 1.
26 Wolf, p. 1.
27 Wolf, p. 13.
28 Wolf, p. 13. Here, he argues that the individual is a microcosm for the cosmos as a whole,
and that individuals affect the cosmos through thought, words, and social action. Social
25
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discourse to understand individual change as the building block of social and then cosmic
change.29
Wolfs Practical Kabbalah employs a number of discourses from within Judaism and
outside it. He combines kabbalistic Jewish discourse with psychotherapeutic discourse and
those of Hinduism and Buddhism, which, according to the author, have derived some of
their most important practices from Judaism in early encounters with the Biblical figure of
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Abraham.30 Wolf uses Eastern religious discourse to universalize the authority of Hasidic
Judaism. To Wolf, kabbalah is an ancient tradition dating back to Abraham, author of the
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major kabbalistic text- Sefer Yetzirah, and an acclaimed astrologer conversant in magic and
the witchcraft of the east.31 According to our author, Abraham turned his back on the
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negative forces of tumah (spiritual blemish) and adopted the way of spiritual monotheism.
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(20) Soon thereafter, Wolf writes, Abraham departed for India, and there transmitted his
kabbalistic teachings to the indigenous peoples who even named the Indus River after
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him, and their deity BRAHMAN which is simply a rearrangement of the basic letters of the
Fathers name ABRAHAM.32 In this way, Wolf assigns a Jewish origin to Hindu belief in
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reincarnation and to meditative breathing practices.33 This enhances their authority in two
action is crucial for, he views dissension and personal estrangement as a pervasive ill in
society, for which this ancient tradition provides contemporary answers.
29 This messianic goal is common in kabbalistic self-help, and across New Age religion
generally, with major variations in the means of its achievement. Generally, New Age
kabbalistic texts posit that salvation can be achieved through individual affective and
cognitive transformation, taking place in the mind rather than in the social sphere.
30 Wolf, p. 18.
31 Wolf, p. 20.
32 Wolf, p. 22.
33 These beliefs and practices reincarnation and breathing meditations- appear in the
Jewish kabbalistic tradition in the 16th century and the 11th-13th centuries respectively. The
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ways; first, he gives kabbalistic practices a much earlier date than historians do, and second
he universalizes them.34
Wolfs microcosmic model combines Chasidic kabbalah with psychotherapeutic discourse

in the form of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy,35 a psychotherapeutic approach that
addresses dysfunctional emotions, maladaptive behaviors and cognitive processes and
contents through a number of goal-oriented, explicit systematic procedures.36 As in earlier
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works, this is a form of ritualized cognition meant to transform the reader.37 He begins with
the sefirotic model in which each of the ten sefirot corresponds to one aspect of the psyche
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and the actions attributed to it. Wolf combines the model with CBT when he uses the ten
sefirot to represent the different aspects of the psyche. The upper sefirot (Hochmah, Binah,
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and Daat) represent the mind, subconscious and conscious thought; the seven lower sefirot
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represent the realm of emotion, divided into internalized and externalized groups, with the
16th century Safed School kabbalists produced daily prayer books with marks providing
ritual instruction for breathing exercises. Jewish beliefs in reincarnation begin to be clearly
articulated as such in the Zohar, composed most likely between the eleventh and thirteenth
centuries, with the earliest strata originating in Byzantium and the later ones in Spain.
34 Most scholars date the Sefer Yetsirah between the 5th and 7th centuries, and emergence of
kabbalah to the 12th or 13th.
35 It is worth noting here that medieval and early modern microcosmic models are also
syncretistic. They combine Jewish discourse and ritual with medical discourse,
philosophical models, and even ritual practices from different religions known in their time
and place. Thus it is not the syncretism that distinguishes Wolfs kabbalah from earlier
models but the addition of psychotherapeutic discourse instead of medieval NeoAristotelianism, for example.
36 Schacter, D. L., Gilbert, D. T., & Wegner, D. M. Psychology. New York: Worth Pub, 2010, p.
600.
37 To the best of my knowledge, all works of Jewish self-improvement literature begin with
a recipe for ritualized cognition. These works include Solomon ibn Gabirols Improvement
of the Moral Qualities, Bahya ibn Pakudas Duties of the Heart, as does Cordoveros 16th
century Tomer Devorah, discussed earlier. Saadya Gaons 10th C Book of Beliefs and Opinions
and Maimonides 12th C Guide of the Perplexed, which are not works of self-improvement
literature per se, also contain instructions for ritualized cognition.
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two lower sefirot, Yesod and Shekhinah, representing action, the concrete manifestation of
thought and feeling.38 Wolf uses CBT to provide strategies and practices for conforming to
the sefirotic model. He includes visualization exercises specifically related to each of the
sefirot, and aimed specifically at changing negative thought patterns. For example, in the
section on Chochma, the thought sefirah of wisdom, he prescribes a standard CBT exercise
for discovering your Chochma profile- your automatic pilot setting39 In order to do this he
asks the reader to trace the occurrence of repeating thoughts by randomly setting an alarm,
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and recording the thoughts occurring when it rings in three steps: describing it, its origin,
and its value. He advises his reader to ask: If you are unhappy with the thought, how might
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you have thought otherwise?40 Thus actualizing kabbalistic discourse by conforming to the
sefirotic microcosm occurs first by means of the psychotherapeutic discourse of CBT. This
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is a form of ritualized cognition involving a structured navigation of a religious cosmology

of space and of the human psyche.
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At the same time, there are social and messianic components to this model. Self-mastery
results in social action, which in turn serves a messianic function. Wolf cites a classic
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Hasidic story to assert that the teller wanted us to understand that G-ds love can only
descend to earth when we support each other- the strong helping the weak and the weak
aspiring to strength.41 He asserts vigorously that Ordinary lives can transform creation
itself42 and that when we do a mitzvah we play a part in completing the unfinished act of
38
Wolf, pp. 64-6.

Wolf, p. 72.
40 Wolf, p. 72.
41 Wolf, p. 52.
42 Wolf, p. 39.
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creation.43 Social action, then, imitates God. In this sense too there is an eschatological
component, for according to the Hasidic interpretation of kabbalah, the completion of
creation will bring the messianic era. In this way Wolfs CBT uses a kabbalistic model of
God and cosmos to imagine the ideal self. Here the reader is taught to recognize that ideal
and to model his or her behavior on it through a series of behavior modification exercises
derived from kabbalistic ritual practices, authorized by Jewish and non-Jewish discourse,
and fused with psychologically conceived ritualized cognition. In this process Wolf uses
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discourses that reinforce, authorize, and transform one another; for example, when the
psychotherapeutic model and the sefirotic model are used together, they are together
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reimagined to reinforce the authority of Jewish law on the one hand, and to de-emphasize
the individualistic aspects of psychotherapeutic discourse on the other.
Jewish Meditation for Everyday Life
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Jeff Roths book, Jewish Meditation Practices for Everyday Life, was first published in 2009,
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and while it is still possible to purchase the book it is now offered free of charge44 on Roths
website for The Awakened Heart Project.45 Roth directs this group, which promotes
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Jewish meditation to cultivate an awareness of the Divine Presence along with the
particular qualities of wisdom, compassion and kindness from a Jewish perspective.46 Both
the project and the book are products of Roths Neo-Hasidic training in Jewish Renewal
43
Wolf, p. 39
The book is offered in exchange for a suggested donation of $5.00 for shipping and
handling.
45 Roths book and his website participate in the efforts of the Jewish Renewal movement,
demonstrated by the fact that his work is enthusiastically endorsed by movement leaders
Zalman Schacter-Shalomi and Sylvia Boorstein.
46 http://www.awakenedheartproject.org/#sthash.3m7diTa8.dpuf
44
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movement, a liberalized, egalitarian and socially committed form of Judaism that seeks to
re-energize Jewish piety by making it more emotionally satisfying, inclusive, experimental,
experiential, and compelling.47 While this group explicitly claims Kabbalistic and Hasidic
sources for their ideas and practices, they also use Buddhist discourses and practices that
enhance these goals. This is to say that they try to modernize Hasidism, taking from it the
ritual practices they deem meaningful and which accord with their liberal values and their
commitment to social justice, adding other religious discourses and practices to authorize
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that view and supplement Jewish sources.
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Like Wolf, Roth combines a syncretistic religious discourse with psychotherapeutic

discourse. Likewise, his aim is also messianic. However, Roth uses these discourses
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differently. Wolf uses Eastern religion to buttress the authority of Jewish discourse, and he
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creates a model of the human psyche by combining a kabbalistic cosmology with a CBT
theory of the mind. Roth creates an authoritative religious discourse by synthesizing Jewish
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and Buddhist belief and practice. Similarly, Roth derives a model of the human psyche from
Buddhist religious narrative mapped onto a microcosmic kabbalistic cosmology and its
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model of the human psyche. In his work non-religious psychotherapeutic discourse is

present but minimally used. In this way, Roth uses a combination of Jewish kabbalistic and
Buddhist discourses to model the mind, to create a religiously informed psychotherapeutic
discourse, and to transform it toward a messianic aim.
In constructing his model of the mind Roth draws upon both Buddhist and Jewish
47
Schacter-Shalomi, Rabbi Zalman. What is Jewish Renewal?

http://www.havurahshirhadash.org/rebzalman.html
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discourses. In describing the mental states we experience regularly he draws upon the
kabbalistic terms, mochin de katnut and mochin dgadlut. He explains these terms as
follows: Our normal, everyday state of mind can be called small mind, or mochin dekatnut, a term introduced by Jewish mystics to describe our conventional sense of reality
This dream-state consciousness is our usual state of mind most of the time.48 On the other
hand he argues that it is also possible to experience reality differently: But sometimes,
spontaneously or through practice, we can experience a much deeper and richer sense of
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what is actually occurring in the moment. This heightened state of mind can be called
mochin de-gadlut, or expanded awareness By this designation, Jewish mystics
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acknowledged that there are states of mind beyond what we normally experience.49 To
explain the way we process our experience, he uses the term mental formations, which is
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drawn from Buddhist psychology.50 The term mental formations (sankhara in Buddhist
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soures), describes the psychological conditioning (particularly the habit patterns of the
unconscious mind) that gives any individual human being his or her unique character and
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make-up at any given time.51 These are understood as volitional and such subject to
individual control. Thus kabbalistic terms are used to describe states of awareness and
Buddhist ones are used to describe thought patterns.
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48
Roth, p. 42.
Roth, p. 42.
50 Sakhra is derived from the prefix sa (=con), "together," and the verb karoti, "to
make" Thus sakhras are both things which put together, construct and compound other
things, and the things that are put together, constructed, and compounded. In the widest
sense, sakhra comprises all conditioned things, everything arisen from a combination of
conditions.' Bodhi, Bhikkhu, tr., The Connected Discourses of the Buddha: A Translation of
the Samyutta Nikaya. Boston: Wisdom Publications, 2000, p. 46.
51 Bodhi, p. 46.
49
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Roth maps this hybrid model of the psyche and its operations onto a kabbalistic cosmology,
making it function as a microcosm for the cosmos and society. He combines the models as
follows: We can label the thoughts that become part of our personal identity as mental
formations. The word formations will help us link this teaching to the language of the four
worlds of divine manifestation...52 The kabbalistic model of the four worlds begins with the
realm of formation, and in this move he combines Buddhist psychology and kabbalistic
cosmology to make the human psyche a microcosm for the whole. Like earlier Jewish
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literature of self-improvement, it operates on the concept of the microcosm, a

metaphorical way of visualizing the relationship between God and creation, and the idea,
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as expressed in the Zohar, that Gods actual essence is in the created universe,53 so that,
consistent with the conventions of the genre, acting on the universe is in actuality acting on
God.
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Also consistent with the genre, in this work human transformation should lead to social
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change: My interest in Judaism was linked to the prophetic traditions and its pursuit of
social justice I wanted to unite my activism with insights grounded in true and vital
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spiritual experience.54 To accomplish this he recommends practices that include prayer

and chanting, derived from the traditional liturgy, meditative practice derived from
Buddhist meditation models, and pronunciation of divine names from medieval Jewish
ecstatic mystical practice. These lead to personal transformation and in this, social change:
I believe that the wisdom and openheartedness acquired by following these practices
52
Roth, Rabbi Jeff (2011-02-07). Jewish Meditation Practices for Everyday Life: Awakening
Your Heart, Connecting with God (p. 44). Jewish Lights Publishing. Kindle Edition.
53 Roth, p. 44.
54 Roth, p. 1.
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naturally leads us to act in the world in helpful and compassionate ways.55 He says: When
we see this interconnection directly, we recognize that the suffering of the world is our
own suffering as well.56 He presents his meditative techniques as a way to alleviate both.
Thus as in earlier kabbalistic literature like Tomer Devorah, ritual practice is coupled with
social action intended to repair the universe, and to bring redemption. Roths book openly
claims Jewish discourse, but mediates it through Buddhist discourse and practice. Like
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Tomer Devorah, Roths work stresses active compassion, aimed at Tikkun and cultivated
through the mechanism of the microcosm, a metaphorical way of visualizing the
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relationship between God and creation,57 and the idea, as expressed in the Zohar, that
Gods actual essence is in the created universe.58 In this way, the author uses the
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combination of discourses described above, mostly Jewish Hasidic and kabbalistic
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discourse, to reconfigure the human being in the image of the macrocosm, including a
social justice component. Yet, unlike Wolfs book, and unlike earlier sources, this action is
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affect driven and not legally required. And while the book provides specific ritual
instruction it does not provide much in the way of instruction for particular social actions.
A Wish Can Change Your Life
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Gahl Sassons and Steve Weinsteins A Wish Can Change Your Life is written by a wellknown pair. Steve Weinstein is a journalist, and Gahl Sasson is something of a superstar in
the world of Western Esotericism in LA, voted LAs best astrologist, and widely
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Roth, p. 202.
57 Roth, p. 103.
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interviewed.59 He trained at the Fraternidad del Circulo Dorado, a study group focusing on
the research and practice of the Western Mystery Tradition. It bases its teachings on the
Golden Dawn and BOTA.60 The motivation behind del Circulo Dorado is to aid sincere
spiritual seekers who search for eternal wisdom and whose highest goal is to be at the
service of the light.61 According to its own mandate, The purpose of the school is to
spread the teachings of the Western Mysteries and to provide the magical and occult
training needed for men and women to incorporate spiritual principles into their lives that
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will contribute to expand their consciousness, manifest general wellbeing, health and
wealth, therefore, toward unity and fraternity among human beings.62 The book uses
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kabbalistic narratives to fulfill the mandate of the group. Here, the expansion of individual
consciousness and the individual manifestation of health and wealth itself transforms the
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whole. Social commitments are left out of this.
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These ideas and practices are authorized by the use of several discourses working together
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to elevate individual desire and its fulfillment. The book employs kabbalistic narratives
filtered through Western Esotericism and the New Thought Movement and framed by
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Joseph Campbells typology of myth, drawn from Carl Jungs psychology.63 Thus it begins
with the following invitation:
This book invites you to read it at your own pace as an innovative guide to world
mythologies, Kabbalah, and ageless spiritual tenets. But if you want to make use of
59
http://cosmicnavigator.com/about/gahl-sasson/about-gahl-sasson
David V. Barrett, A Brief Guide to Secret Religions, Running Press, 2011, p. 236.
61 Barrett, p. 236.
62 Barret, p. 237.
63 On the Psychology of the Unconscious, (1943) In: The collected works of C.G. Jung, R. F.
C. Hull, Tr., in H. Read et al. (Series Eds.) (vol. 7).
60
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its life-tested blueprint for wish-fulfillment, all you have to do is spend one week
basking in the radiance of each of the Trees ten archetypal energy spheres, one
after another from the top of the Tree to the bottom.64
The reader is instructed to meditate for one week on each of the ten sefirot, beginning at
the top with Keter. As in the microcosmic ethical literature, the reader is transformed to act
in the image of the divine, as represented by the sefirot.
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While sefirotic discourses of kabbalah provide a template for imitatio dei, they are also
used as a matrix through which to read other mythologies. Kabbalah serves as the road to
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the heros destination of wish fulfillment, as the reader is invited to travel the tree, which
operates within the enchanted world of synchronicity.65 Consistent with the ideals of the
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Golden Dawn, the sefirotic tree acts as a conceptual map and a point of nexus for different
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mythological traditions:
Over the ages, kabbalists have discerned that every sphere corresponds to a color, a
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planet, a number, a part of the body, and various real-world talismans. Mythic
personalities and folklore spring from each cosmic force as well. For example
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Beauty [sefirah number 6] represents the heart, Christ-consciousness, the folktale of

Beauty and the Beast, the colors gold and yellow, roses, the number 6, and the Sun at
the center of our solar system.66
64
Gahl Sasson and Steve Weinstein: A Wish Can Change Your Life: How to Use the Ancient
Wisdom of Kabbalah to Make Your Dreams Come True. New York: Simon and Schuster,
2010, p. 6.
65 Sasson and Weinstein, p. 6.
66 Sasson and Weinstein, p. 6.
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In this way, traveling the tree is a mythological journey. This is consistent with Western
Esotericist conceptions of knowledge which are based in the idea that adepts aim to
achieve a higher level of knowledge that would overarch all particular traditions and
initiations, which are only a means of access.67 In this way, the kabbalistic model can be
used as a means of access to the transcendent knowledge of all mystical traditions. This is
indeed a sort of perennialism common to Western Mystery traditions. Perennialism is the
general term referring to those who see all various world religious traditions as having
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common features and perhaps as deriving from common origins or spiritual archetypes,68
enacted here through the conglomeration of other, non-Jewish mythological systems
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experienced through the sefirot.
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The language of manifesting and the focus on individual desire show how the sefirotic
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model has been filtered through the New Thought Movement, originating in 19th century
America. New Thought, sometimes known as Higher Thought, promotes the ideas that
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Infinite Intelligence, or God, is everywhere, spirit is the totality of real things, true human
selfhood is divine, divine thought is a force for good, sickness originates in the mind, and
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"right thinking" has a healing effect.69 The same applies to prosperity. The writers
encourage us: You possess the power to emulate God. You are a Creator. Climb aboard the
67
Antoine Faivre, Access to Western Esotericism. Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 1994, p. 5.
Arthur Versluis, What is Esoteric? Methods in the Study of Western Esotericism, in
Esoterica, Volume IV.
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"In England the term Higher Thought was preferred at first, and this name was chosen
for the Higher Thought Centre, the first organization of its kind in England. This name did
not however represent a change in point of view, and the movement in England has been
similar to the therapeutic movement elsewhere." Dresser, Horatio Willis, A History of the
New Thought Movement, London: TY Crowell Co, 1919, p. 154.
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tree and create your wish come true.70 Thus it is possible to meditate on the sefirot to
achieve self-transformation to resemble the divine. In so doing it is also possible to achieve
health, wealth, and happiness.
Finally, these goals are recast as the archetypal Heros Journey according to Joseph
Campbells ideas, adapted in turn from Carl Jungs work.71 Campbell conceives The Heros
Journey as a pattern of narrative that describes the typical adventure of the archetype
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known as The Hero, the person who goes out and achieves great deeds on behalf of the
group, tribe, or civilization. Campbell discusses the dual nature of the journey as follows:
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Where we had thought to travel outward, we shall come to the center of our own
existence. And where we had thought to be alone, we shall be with all the world. Thus he
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argues that there are two types of deed. One is the physical deed, in which the hero
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performs a courageous act in battle or saves a life. The other kind is the spiritual deed, in
which the hero learns to experience the supernormal range of human spiritual life and then
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comes back with a message.72 Sassons and Weinsteins book positions the quest for
individual wish-fulfillment as a quest on behalf of the group. This is inconsistent with
70
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Sasson and Weinstein, p. 7.

Jung describes the hero as a wanderer and says that "The hero is like the wandering sun
and"...he is first and foremost a self-representation of the longing of the unconscious, of
its unquenched and unquenchable desire for the light of consciousness. But consciousness,
continually in danger of being led astray by its own light and of becoming a rootless will 'o
the wisp, longs for the healing power of nature, for the deep wells of being and for
unconscious communion with life in all its countless forms." R. F. C. Hull, Tr., in H. Read et
al. (Series Eds.) The collected works of C.G. Jung (vol. 5 p. 299). New York: Pantheon.
(Original work published 1948). IN this way desire is itself valorized as a quest for
communion. Campbell similarly valorizes human desire and transmutes it to a quest on
behalf of the whole, as adapted by Sasson and Weinstein.
72 Transcript of Campbells interview with Bill Moyers, from The Power of Myth, June 1991.
http://mythsdreamssymbols.com/herojourney.html
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Campbells model because there is no group in this book, only individuals, their goals, and
transformation through knowledge.
Individual desire attains the status of an elevated quest as its fulfillment is equated with
transcendent knowledge. At the end of the book, as a sort of surprise, the authors inform
their readers that their goal was not what they thought:
By embarking on this journey, you have certified that Your true wish was not for a
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boyfriend or more money or a house on the shore. Your true wish was to undertake
the journey, to engage in the universal process of creation, to experience the Tree of
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Life) But you have accomplished more than that. Through your courtship of these
ten archetypal powers You have stimulated the collective force of rectification of
all the spheres above.
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Heres another secret. Your higher self guided you to the tree of life because it too
harbors a wish: to repair all the shattered spheres of Creation.73
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This book connects human desire for material good for the self to the achievement of
transcendent knowledge, and in this, a desire to repair the cosmos. Social action has no
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place in this- it is the individual journey of the hero toward wish fulfillment and selfknowledge that transforms. It is exclusively a cognitive and affective transformation. This
second goal, transformation through knowledge, is introduced only at the end, so that the
desire for wish-fulfillment serves as a sort of initiation to gnosis. This is consistent with
Western Esotericist ideals, and in some ways with the desire for knowledge in order to
benefit the community as posited by Jung and Campbell, who were themselves at the heart
73
Sasson and Weinstein, pp. 271-2.
23
of the Western Esotericist movement in Europe in the mid-20th century.74 But the
community is changed from above, individual transformation changes the heavens, but
does not touch the community directly. Unlike the works examined previously, other
people are not part of this.
The Power of Kabbalah

Yehuda Bergs The Power of Kabbalah was first published in 2004 and reprinted in 2011. It
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is one of the Kabbalah Centers bestselling books, and it is positioned first on their
marketing website.75 The Kabbalah Centre is well known in both Jewish and non-Jewish
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circles, for they have had a controversial history, with Jews teaching kabbalah to all who
want to learn. Even more controversial is their conception of kabbalah, for they disavow its
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Jewish nature, and at least initially, they separate it from Jewish discourses and
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institutions.76 The book aims to solve the problem of human desire, helping people get
satisfaction in life by teaching them the rules of the game as understood through their
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version of kabbalah. Berg relies on religious, pseudoscientific, and economic authoritative

discourses. In this case he merges other religious narratives with pseudo-scientific
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Page 24 of 31
narrative to buttress the authority of his version of 16th C Lurianic kabbalah. Luria and his
works descend directly from Cordoverian kabbalah, and they retain and develop his sense
74
For more information on this, see Wouter Hanagraafs Beyond the Yates Paradigm: The
Study of Western Esotericism between Counterculture and New Complexity, in Aries, Vol.
1, No. 1, p.5-37. See also
75 The Kabbalah Centre was founded in 1965, but its founders, Philip Berg and Yehuda
Ashlag, began popularizing kabbalah and producing kabbalistic self-help books in the
1940s.
76 Jody Myers discusses these controversies at length in her book, Kabbalah and the
Spiritual Quest, cited above.
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of legal and social obligations.77 Berg, however reinterprets Lurianic kabbalah according to
an economic discourse of transformation of individual and society through gift exchange.
Accordingly, the book concludes with an advertisement for the purchase of the Kabbalah
Centers very expensive version of the Zohar, the core text of medieval Jewish kabbalah, but
which acts here as a talisman and not as a text for those purchasing it.78
In the book Berg combines pseudo-scientific and non-Jewish religious discourses in
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authorizing his version of kabbalah. He describes kabbalah as a universal wisdom, a

technology and a science: As Wolf does, Berg describes kabbalah as the source of wisdom
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underlying other religious traditions: suppose this wisdom was the true source of all
spiritual teachings and religions on this planet, predating Jesus, Muhammad, Moses, Adam,
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and Eve, and even the creation of the world itself79 Thus these other religions draw their
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vitality from kabbalah. Science and spirituality are joined in the following: Kabbalah is the
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77
According to tradition, Isaac Luria arrived in Safed on the exact day of the funeral of
Moshe Cordovero in 1570. Marvin Heller writes that Luria refers to Cordovero as his
master and teacher, testifying that Cordovero was completely free of sin, that both the
sages of the Mishnah and Elijah the prophet appeared to him, and that at Cordovero's
funeral a pillar of fire preceded his coffin. His hand did not leave hers until he was grown:
Two Little Known Works from Moses Cordovero (Ramak), 2001: Mose Rahmani. See also
Matthew Goldish, Spirit Possession in Judaism: Cases and Contexts from the Middle Ages to
the Present. Raphael Patai Series in Jewish Folklore and Anthropology. Detroit: Wayne State
University Press, 2003.
78 This idea is rooted in the writings of Levi Krakovsky, a little acknowledged founder of the
Kabbalah Centre. For more information see Jonatan Meir, The Beginnings of Kabbalah in
America: The Unpublished Manuscriptsof R. Levi Isaac Krakovsky, in ARIES 13 (2013)
237268. See also: Jody Myers, The Kabbalah Centre and the Spiritual Quest, cited above.
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79
Berg, p. v.
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science of the soul and the physics (and metaphysics) of fulfillment.80 And on their
website: Kabbalah is an ancient wisdom that provides practical tools for creating joy and
lasting fulfillment. Its an incredible system of technology that will completely change the
way you look at your world. We teach Kabbalah, not as a scholarly study but as a way of
creating a better life and a better world.81 In this way, other religious traditions show the
value of kabbalah, which is a technology for Tikkun Olam, repairing the world.
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Like Sasson and Weinberg, Berg views this better life as one of fulfilled desire. In
addressing the problem of human desire, he reframes the Lurianic narrative of divine
creation in terms of giving and receiving light, which is then transformed to material good
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such as such as financial success, health and personal happiness.82 According to the 16th C
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Lurianic creation myth,83 God existed before creation in the form of light, which filled the
entire universe. The first step was to clear space for creation by divine contraction
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(tzimtzum). Once this was done, according to the legend, God created vessels to hold divine
light (sefirot), which were themselves made of light. Human beings, created in this way,
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possess souls similarly made of light. According to the myth, God lost some light in the
creation process, and in order to repair God and the cosmos, human beings are obligated to
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Page 26 of 31
collect that light and return it to its divine source through observance of Jewish law, and
80
Berg, p. xii.
http://kabbalah.com
82 The more Light we have in our lives, the longer our desires remain fulfilled, and the
happier we are. Berg, p. 13.
83 Luria did not himself record his teachings. Instead his disciple, Hayyim Vital, transmitted
his teachings in his eight-volume work Etz Hayyim, circulated in manuscript form from the
early seventeenth century until it was finally published in Zolkieve by Isaac Satanow in
1772. Berg relies on Vitals work but also on Yehuda Ashlags 1926 translation and
commentary on the work, Panim Meirot Umasbirot, (The Countenance of the Brilliant
Shards).
81
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through acts of lovingkindness to others. Berg reframes this narrative by adding one more
element to the equation: human happiness achieved through gratified desire. We desire
constant happiness,84 which he calls light. He compares divine light to a candle behind a
series of curtains, so that kabbalah teaches us how to remove the layers of cloth, one
curtain at a time, to bring ever more Light into our life and into the world.85 This takes the
form of fulfilled desire for material good. In this way, Berg naturalizes human desire by
equating happiness with light and God.
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This concept becomes messianic when Berg imagines human perfection as the ability to
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receive in order to give to others. His messianic vision begins by naturalizing human desire.
Berg asks at the beginning of the book: Who are we? What is our basic makeup? What is
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our substance, our essence, our core being? What essential element are we made of? Did
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you ever stop and contemplate that question? Kabbalah defines us in one simple word:
Desire!86 Thus desire and its gratification are part of our makeup, as mandated by divine
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plan: The pursuit of happiness is not only inscribed into the constitution as an inalienable
right of US citizenship, it is also present in the blueprint of our universe. It is the inherited
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birthright of humanity.87 Thus he naturalizes desire, even more it becomes the driving
force in the human-divine and interpersonal relationships. According to Berg, Humans are
fundamentally desiring beings, created to receive. In order to avoid eating the bread of
shame, human beings began to resist receiving, in order to be able to give as well as to
84
Berg, p. 8.
Berg, p. 91.
86 Berg, p. 3.
87 Berg, p. 36.
85
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receive.88 We achieve our proper humanity in accepting our position as receivers. In this
way, the book is unabashedly market-driven, defining the relationship between human and
divine as one between divine giver and human receiver, locating human pain and evil in the
disruption of that relationship.
In Bergs book, God, the sefirot, humans, and human happiness (achieved via fulfilled
desire) are made of the same substance: light. He puts God, humans, and desire in the same
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category, and in this he divinizes human desire and its fulfillment, reinterpreting Lurianic
kabbalistic narrative according to an economic model of giving and receiving resources.
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Marcel Mausss work is helpful here: when has asks "What power resides in the object
given that causes its recipient to pay it back?"89 He asserts that the gift is a "total
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prestation," imbued with "spiritual mechanisms,90 which holds the power to create a
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system of reciprocity.91 The total prestation metonymically stands for every aspect of the
society it is part of.92 In this way the gift is a means of forming a relationship, and as this
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gift moves through the society it transforms that society because of the relationships
created by the exchange. As Mauss would have it, the Kabbalah Centres understanding of
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Page 28 of 31
spirituality hinges on the spiritual mechanisms of the gift, in which receiving light confers a
poorly articulated obligation to pay it back. The obligation is poorly articulated because
this occurs outside the context of either a religious or geographic community sharing
sacred legal discourses. This is to say that if the readers of the book lived in a
88
Berg, p. 36.
Mauss, Marcel. The Gift: The Form and Reason for Exchange in Archaic Societies. London.
Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1969, p. 3.
90 Mauss, p. 7.
91 Layton, R. An Introduction to Theory in Anthropology. Cambridge: CUP, 1997, p. 76.
92 Mauss, p. 65.
89.
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geographically or discursively defined community, it might be possible for the gift to act in
the way that Mauss describes. But since they do not, the transformation of others lives is
merely theoretical here.
In this way Berg imagines human and divine relationships established through gift
exchange- by receiving and giving Lurianic light. But at the same time, he subtracts the
Jewish legal and social obligations imposed by Lurianic kabbalah. At the same time, he
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renders that narrative economic so that material fulfillment serves as evidence for a proper
human-divine relationship, and as a means of transforming society. As in Sasson and
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Weinsteins work, individual happiness is tied to the whole, but while they elide the
material connection between individual material gain and the material benefit of the group,
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Berg acknowledges a connection but does not provide specific instruction for its
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application. The same is true of Roth, but because he accepts biblical discourse as
authoritative he is able to use the prophetic tradition to direct the reader to practice this
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insight in the pursuit of social justice as she conceives it. In Bergs work, though, because
there is neither geographic nor religious community, the kabbalistic narrative is thus
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transformed to exclude community and social action and to divinize individual happiness.
Conclusions:
Thus it seems that the genre of kabbalistic self improvement literature is alive and well,
and behaving differently in different contexts. As a genre it is characterized in the early
modern period by its formulation of a conception of the ideal self based on the model of the
microcosm and actualized by conformity to it through ritual cognition, affect, ritual practice,
29
and social action based in Jewish law. While early works operate on the assumption that
the ideal self cannot be actualized without action to improve society as a whole, this varies
significantly in contemporary uses of the genre. Contemporary works are overwhelmingly
characterized by the addition of psychotherapeutic and/or economic discourse. In Saving
the Modern Soul, Eva Illouz argues that therapeutic discourse has reformulated the
deepest level of identity symbols,93 representing a qualitatively new language of the self,
and changing the way the self relates to the other and to society as a whole.94 In
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contemporary kabbalistic self-help, psychotherapeutic discourse plays a prominent role in

modeling and actualizing the ideal self, sometimes replacing and sometimes supplementing
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ghd religious discourse of its ancestors. So too does economic discourse, as these together
reconfigure both the model of the ideal self and its actualization. Illouz describes this
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process as discourses align[ing] themselves along criscrossing and even merging
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tracks95 In this way, merging discourses generate new social models that link separate
spheres of action and reconstitute them, each in terms of the other. This is a refunctioning
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of the genre of kabbalistic ethics into a psychologized discourse of self-help and with the
addition of economic discourse in the form of a prosperity gospel.
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Page 30 of 31
Depending on the affiliation of the author, psychological discourse is used to different ends;
Wolf de-individualizes it and refocuses on the group by using CBT as a mode of
transpersonal psychology, theorizing wellness and completeness in relation to other
people and to divinity. Roth uses Buddhism for his model of the psyche and how it works,
93
Illouz, p. 5.
Illouz, p. 6.
95 Illouz, p. 107.
94
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shifting his emphasis to ritual cognition and to affect meant be enacted materially. Sasson
and Weinstein use Jungian psychological discourse via Joseph Campbell as they
mythologize the individual wish-fulfillment quest, giving it significance for the group as a
whole. As in Carl Jungs philosophy of the collective unconscious, individual desires,
symbols, and inner lives automatically participate in and represent the whole. And yet in
Sasson and Weinsteins work, this is not reinterpreted as the quest for communion with
others. Berg, on the other hand, employs an individualistic reinterpretation of Lurianic
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kabbalah that functions on the basis of the exchange of a strangely commodified light to
achieve material good which, as in Maussian theories of exchange, transforms the whole of
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society by conferring poorly articulated obligations with results that are not specified.
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In the end, all of these works stress ritualized cognition that transforms thought and affect.
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However, they differ in their use of religious discourse, and of psychotherapeutic and
economic discourse, and this matters a great deal in the means of actualizing the ideal self.
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It seems very clear that the greater the importance of the religious discourse, the greater
the importance of the well-being of the community as a whole in the actualization of an
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ideal self. The same is true in the inverse- the less important religious discourse is, the
greater the elevation of individual desire and the less important social action for the good
of the community. Thus the genre is refunctioned according to religious affiliation, and
according to the substitution of psychological and economic discourses for religious ones.
31

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Manuscripts submitted to Journal of the American Academy of Religion

Kabbalistic Self-Help: The Microcosm in Practice

Journal of the American Academy of Religion

Kabbalistic Self-Help: The Microcosm in Practice

discourses. All contemporary examples of kabbalistic self-help actualize the microcosmic

partly dependent on their religious affiliations. In the following I examine the

Manuscripts submitted to Journal of the American Academy of Religion

Manuscripts submitted to Journal of the American Academy of Religion

function of the genre.

To illuminate these changes in kabbalistic self-improvement literature, I will first

modern kabbalistic self-improvement literature. The medieval Jewish microcosm is at the

example of the genre kabbalistic self-improvement literature.4 I use it here as an example

The Medieval Microcosm and Kabbalistic Ethics

Manuscripts submitted to Journal of the American Academy of Religion

Manuscripts submitted to Journal of the American Academy of Religion

The best known of these is Shabbetai Donnolos Sefer Hakhmoni.

Manuscripts submitted to Journal of the American Academy of Religion

Manuscripts submitted to Journal of the American Academy of Religion

emanations. These emanations were simultaneously understood as aspects of God, parts of

ones neighbor as oneself. Lovingkindess is a characteristic predicated of the creator, to be

It is necessary, therefore, to know the types of Loving-kindness practiced among men,

Manuscripts submitted to Journal of the American Academy of Religion

Manuscripts submitted to Journal of the American Academy of Religion

Cordovero conceived human improvement as human emulation of the divine, expressed

This change is partly attributable to the substitution of psychotherapeutic and economic

Manuscripts submitted to Journal of the American Academy of Religion

It is important to note that medieval self-improvement literature was also syncretistic,

Manuscripts submitted to Journal of the American Academy of Religion

Laibl Wolf: Practical Kabbalah

understands self-improvement in religious and psychotherapeutic terms: Chabad

Behavioral Kabbalah, focused on personal growth and emotional mastery in which he

Wolfs address is http://www.spiritgrowjosefkrysscenter.org/profile/laibl-wolf

Manuscripts submitted to Journal of the American Academy of Religion

Manuscripts submitted to Journal of the American Academy of Religion

Wolfs microcosmic model combines Chasidic kabbalah with psychotherapeutic discourse

is a form of ritualized cognition involving a structured navigation of a religious cosmology

Manuscripts submitted to Journal of the American Academy of Religion

Wolf, pp. 64-6.

Manuscripts submitted to Journal of the American Academy of Religion

Jewish Meditation for Everyday Life

that view and supplement Jewish sources.

Like Wolf, Roth combines a syncretistic religious discourse with psychotherapeutic

Manuscripts submitted to Journal of the American Academy of Religion

model of the human psyche. In his work non-religious psychotherapeutic discourse is

Schacter-Shalomi, Rabbi Zalman. What is Jewish Renewal?

Manuscripts submitted to Journal of the American Academy of Religion

literature of self-improvement, it operates on the concept of the microcosm, a

Manuscripts submitted to Journal of the American Academy of Religion

spiritual experience.54 To accomplish this he recommends practices that include prayer

Manuscripts submitted to Journal of the American Academy of Religion

combination of discourses described above, mostly Jewish Hasidic and kabbalistic

A Wish Can Change Your Life

whole. Social commitments are left out of this.

Manuscripts submitted to Journal of the American Academy of Religion

Manuscripts submitted to Journal of the American Academy of Religion

Beauty [sefirah number 6] represents the heart, Christ-consciousness, the folktale of

experienced through the sefirot.

Manuscripts submitted to Journal of the American Academy of Religion

Manuscripts submitted to Journal of the American Academy of Religion

Sasson and Weinstein, p. 7.

Manuscripts submitted to Journal of the American Academy of Religion

Sasson and Weinstein, pp. 271-2.

Manuscripts submitted to Journal of the American Academy of Religion

The Power of Kabbalah