Neo-Tribalism

Full Moon Death and Love Celebration in Maui

Full Moon

Death and Love celebrations
of the Hebraic Kabalistic tradition

For thousands of years the full moon of August has been a sacred time in the Hebraic tradition. A celebration of Love and ecstasy that flows from the exploration of the dying process and a recorgnition of what’s in us that can never die.

The Radical-Kabalist teacher Rabbi Ohad Ezrahi from Israel and his partner Dawn Cherie,  founders of “The School for Love in Radical Kabala” are in Maui for a short visit, and are offering an open and egalitarian Shabat ceremony folowed by a day of experiential Radical Kabalistic teaching and practice.

Friday: 6:30pm to 10:30 pm an Ecstatic Shabat ceremony + pot luck feast. (the program will start at 7pm and will include Kabalistic teachings, devotional music, singing, chanting, story-telling, meditations and devotional dance).

Saturday: 10:30am to 6:30pm – the celebrations of Death & Love, a daylong workshop: Three two hour sessions of teaching and experimental work take you through the dyeing process to learn to live wide open AS Love and Freedom.

Following the ancient teaching on the energy of the August full moon, guided meditation will allow you to drop off all that needs to die in each of us. This is a careful and subtle process that breaks the heart open to explore the undoubted love force that’s alive in us all. Teaching and exercises, combined with meditation and movement will guide us to explore life and love from a different perspective – that of Radical Kabala.

• Rabbi Ohad will be available during his short visit in Maui for some private sessions, using palm reading, or his card reading method of “the BresLove Cards”. To book a private session call Dawn at (716) 491-4970.

After the workshop ends – all are invited to a full moon party. more details TBA.

Where: at Sam and Amanda’s 1880 Piiholo Rd. Makawao.

When: Friday-Saturday Aug 7^th-8^th . Friday at 6:30 pm \ Sat 10:30 am

How much: Friday – donation in a magic hat. Saturday workshop – sliding scale $45-$65. No one will be turned away for luck of funds.

What to bring: food to share. For the workshop bring your journal and a pen. Women come in white. Men please come in dark clothes.

for more details call (716) 491-4970

Neo-Tribalism

“Collective Consciousness” – A Workshop in New Mexico

Collective Consciousness

Kabalistic principals for living

and working in a healthy community

With Neo-Kabalist Rabbi Ohad Ezrahi*
and members of the Tribal Hebraic Community

• If a community is a living organism – what are the different organs of it and how do they give and receive abundance?
• What are the different qualities of leadership needed?
• How to balance between togetherness and the needs of the individual?
• How to prevent manipulations of power?
• The role of rituals in making sacred energy flow
• The rainbow of empowerment
• How to work wisely with Sexual attractions?
• And more….

The workshop will include teachings, rituals and practices of social and individual tools, combined with sacred live music, wisdom stories and exploration games.

Where: Arawaka, north-east of Santa-Fe

When: July 13^th-14^th

For registration and directions please call 575-421-7713

*Ohad Ezrahi is a Kabalistic spiritual teacher from Israel, an artist, a community leader and a constant student of life’s wisdom. Coming from the world of Radical Kabbala, trained in Torah, Talmud and with vast knowledge in Jewish inner wisdom, he reaches out to people of all nations with the search towards the co-creation of an enlightened society on Planet Earth.  Ezrahi was ordained by the elder of the Jewish Renewal movement – Rabbi Zalman Schakter-Shalomi as a Rabbi and a Spiritual Teacher. He was a scholar in residence at the University of Oregon in the Science, Gender and the Sacred research program. He is also the author of many books and projects including Worlds of Doubt ( a commentary on Job, about certainty and doubt); The Old Shall Be Renewed and the New Shall Be Sanctified (erotic aspects of the Hebraic Temple); Paths of Power (commentary on the  Rabbi Nachman of Braslov story “The Master of Prayer”); The BresLove Cards (based on The Master of Prayer); Whose Afraid of  Lilith (rectification of sexuality and fear in Lurianic Kabbalah); and In the Secrets of Leviathan (with Dr. Micha Ankori) Psycho-Mythology in Jewish Thought. He is also the author of hundreds of articles in contemporary Radical Kabalistic thought (mostly in Hebrew). R. Ohad was the founder of “Hamakom Community” and its Yeshiva-Ashram by the Dead Sea, and of “The School for Love in Kabala”. He is also an artist and his unique photography work is presented in various galleries.

Neo-Tribalism

The Hebraic Tribal Way

The Hebraic Tribal Way is

• -      Living with the Divine Living Spirit, and not by any set religious dogma.
• -      Drawing upon wisdom and inspiration from ALL the sources of Israel – including Kabala, Magic, Mysticism and Rabbinical Judaism, sources of secular philosophy and paths that were defined in the past as “heresy” or “blasphemy”. The Hebraic Tribal Way is inspired also from ancient Canaanite findings and from our foremothers who were inclusively worshiping the Queen of Heavens.
• -      Renewing rituals and meaningful ceremonies, but not fixing them as dogma. It’s always renewing and responding to the Divine Spirit “live on air”…
• -      Creative. The Hebraic Tribal Way sees art – dance and singing, painting and photography, computer graphics and environmental technology, theater and sacred architecture as unique flowers that flourish in the human soul. These forms are lovingly offered with awe to the Divine – to the One that through us creates reflections to Her wonderful world. The Hebraic Tribal Way sees art not only as Esthetics but as a potential for inner transformation.
• -      Passionate. The Hebraic Tribal Way believes that passion, attraction and Eros spring from a holy source, and that the flames of Love are divine flames “Shalhevet-Yah“. Therefore it does not repress them but to the contrary – praises, sanctifies and rejuvenates in their flow for is a means of celebrating the love of God, Nature and Humanity.
• -      Open to fruitful and meaningful meetings with other religions or spiritual paths, coming from simplicity, with no inferior or superior approach.
• -      Natural and loving nature, therefore ecological – seeking to live rightfully with Mother Earth, respecting the rights of animals to live and die with dignity and joy. The Hebraic Tribal Way aspires to use healthy nutrition for the inner ecology of the individual.
• -      Community oriented. Knowing that it is not good nor is it natural for the human being to live in alienation and separation, but rather to be part of a community or a tribe. Hence, looking to establish communities of all sorts and sizes that support and empower the development of the full potential of each individual – children and grownups.
• -      Peacemaking. Acknowledging the fact that oneness is not sameness – for just as the rainbow, it is made of different shades living side by side in peace, influencing and fertilizing one another – the Hebraic Tribal Way is seeking for ways to transform fear, suspicion and violence to love, trust and playfulness. The Hebraic Tribal Way is aiming to create a culture of peace on a green-blue planet Earth.

Neo-Tribalism

Towards the Ecology of Sacred Union

By Rabbi Ohad Ezrahi. 2001.

One of the most unique Kabbalists who ever lived, Rabbi Avraham Abulafiya (Spain, Italy & Greece, late 1200′s), said that the mystical secrets of the Torah are usually regarded as if they are contradicting its simple meaning. This is why in Hebrew the words “SeTeR” (hidden secret) and “SeTiRa” (contradiction) have the same root. Those who are accustomed only to the simple meaning of the Jewish tradition hear this inner meaning as heresy. It contradicts all that they know.  The Torah is full of holy paradoxes, and one needs to get to the hidden secret behind the paradox in order to see how the inner meaning needs the shell of the outer one to protect it, just as a nut receives protection from its hard shell. One of Abulafia’s great successors, Rabbi Josef Jikatilia, wrote that the mystic journey is symbolized as a journey into the heart of a hard nut. The fruit is inside, yet to enjoy it one needs to cross three layers of shells, or skins, and go beyond them. Each shell is a different veil that blocks the mind from grasping the seed of truth, but the shell is important. No fruit could ever grow with out it.

When we look in a shallow way at the Jewish tradition, we see it only as a masculine one, as a tradition that brought the abstract male God, the sole creator of the universe, into the psychic picture and rolled him over nature deities, giving mankind – that was created in God’s image (and therefore, according to this tradition, is not a real part of nature) – the right to dominate nature, and giving men the right to dominate woman, who were created after the male, in order to entertain him.

Much has been written about this in ecofeminist theology, blaming the “Judeo-Christian Tradition” for creating the cultural background and atmosphere in which the patriarchal and modern society could grow and flourish, and for abusing the feminine of all kinds – both concretely and symbolically, and causing the ecological crisis in which we are unfortunately living today.

In truth, however, Judaism is an ancient and complex tradition. It has so many layers, both historically and conceptually, that reducing its’ meaning into those shallow patterns is a tremendous mistake. Plunging into the mystical layers of Judaism brought me, several years ago, to conclusions that are similar to the theories of eco-feminism but are grounded within the Jewish tradition. In those days I knew nothing about ecofeminist theory. I was totally absorbed in traditional Jewish learning, which was the focus of my entire my life. Nevertheless, my research in Kabbalah and other mystical Jewish sources brought me to understand that nature is connected to the feminine aspect, that the ecological and cultural crisis in which we are today is caused by the over-masculinization of the culture, and that there is a deep process in the hidden layers of reality that calls the feminine energy to unfold, develop, grow and speak out. I saw this first in the way I understood one of the main myths of Lurianic Kabbalah – the Nesirah:

The Lurianic Kabbalah (Sfat, 16th century) speaks, in its unique and rich symbolic language, about a process, which can be seen as a historical process, a psychological process, a divine process and as all of those together. The Nesirah myth is a description of a process that takes place between the major symbols of masculinity and femininity in the language of Kabalah: Z”A is the term for the masculine, and Nukba is the name for the feminine. The Nesirah process has many details, but in summary, there are three stages to it:

The first stage is when Z”A and Nukba do not face each other. They turn their backs to each other, but they are not separated. They cannot separate. Like Siamese twins, they share the same back skin. But – Nukba is very small compared to Z”A.

The second stage is when things are changing: Z”A is falling asleep, becoming apathetic, unaware, unconscious, and Nukba is growing. She no longer receives her abundance from Z”A. Instead, she receives it directly from above. Her mind is being opened; she gets her nourishment in body, mind and spirit directly, not by the mediation of Z”A as before. In this stage Nukba is separating from Z”A as she becomes independent. She builds her own back and grows to the same height as Z”A. In this developmental process, in order to separate, Nukba uses a tough and sharp energy, known as Din. In order to separate and unfold as an autonomous being Nukba rebels against Z”A.

The third stage is described as the stage in which Z”A, the masculine, wakes up. Simultaneously, Nukba no longer needs the energy of Din, and the two turn around to face each other. They meet again, but now they are equal – actually, Nukba is even a little bit higher then Z”A. They are separate and independent beings, discovering that each of them is different, yet equal to the other. They can look eye-to-eye, face-to-face, soul-to-soul (in Hebrew the word Face – Panim – is written the same as the word for “the inner” – Pnim. So in kabbalah by saying “face to face” we mean to express that they share their inner world and meet soul to soul).

This symbolic myth can be clearly applied to the feminist process (though it was written in the 16th century): at the beginning, women were dominated (1st), then rebelling and developing  (2nd), and then the two genders are coming to the awareness that they have different voices, but equal rights and importance, and they come to a place of union – symbolized in the terminology of the mythic language by sexual unification (3rd).

But this is not the only application. In the psychological realm we need to apply it to the relationships between the male and female aspects of a person – Anima & Animus in C.G. Jung’s terminology. And to the relationships between the two in the mass psychology, which creates cultural trends and situations. Later I will apply this to the application of the subject to Human-Nature relationship as well, but first I want to examine the issue from a different and compromising kabalistic view:

When we say that “at the beginning Nukba is smaller then Z”A” we need to ask our selves was it really this way in the beginning of all? Does this myth of the Nesirah tell the whole story? Or did it take a point in the middle of a longer process and put it as a starting point? I felt this is so, and was guided to find some fascinating and never-before investigated material in the Lurianic Kabbalah.

This material regards an ancient myth in Jewish tradition, which has been reclaimed by many of the Jewish feminist women – the myth of Lilith. The story itself was an oral tradition for many centuries, and was put into writing in Babylon in the 10th century.  It is well known, but what is not known is the unique way that it is interpreted in Lurianic Kabbalah. The basic story goes like this:

When the creator created human beings, a man and a woman were created equally from clay. But this holy first couple could not work their relationship out, as each one of them wanted to lie above the other while having sex. The woman – who is later known as Lilith – does not surrender, escapes from paradise and coupling with the “Big Demon”. Only then comes the time in which Adam feels lonely and Eve is created (not from his rib, but according to the correct meaning of the biblical Hebrew term) from one of his sides, or aspects. According to the Talmudic sages, she is created from his the backside. If we put the two myths (i.e. the Nesirah and Lilith) together we can easily see that the Nesirah process begins not in the beginning of all, but only after the escape of Lilith. Adam and his female partner cannot establish good and healthy relationship on an equal base; so then God the creator accepts it and creates a second woman – Eve – that begins from a non-equal base. She is secondary in essence.

But Lurianic Kabbalah does not neglect Lilith as a demon. She is not left out as the bad girl.  Not at all. The vision in this unique tradition is looking for ways to redeem her, as an archetype, and to connect her with the archetype of Eve together to create the full cycle of the feminine. In fact – it can be understood that part of what happen in the second stage of the Nesirah process, is that those two feminine archetypes join together, and creates together the whole figure of the Nukbah.

Lurianic Kabbalah says that the reason for the rejection of Lilith is the fact that Adam (symbolizing all of the aspects of masculinity) is not developed enough, and cannot accept or understand a woman of her kind, who is higher then him in spirituality. Frightened by her, he rejects her and prefers to make his life with a woman of Eve-kind.

The second problem is connected to Lilith’s self image: she accepts the estimation that sees her as an evil creature, and as part of the demonic world. This is a self-exile, from the holiness of her soul, which needs to be fixed. The rejection of the shadow side of the feminine is a failure, caused mainly by the fears of men – the fears to face and embrace the shadow sides of the two genders as an important and a holy part of the full picture. Luria is studying the whole story as based in the biblical stories of Jacob and his wives. Partnering with my colleague and friend R. Mordechai Gafni, I was drawn into the research of seeking the Kabbalistic reading in those stories, and the deep meaning of them. This research evolved into a book that will be published soon in Hebrew and later in English, by the name of “Who’s Afraid of Lilith? A Jewish Transformation of Gender and Sexuality”.

One of the conclusions from this research in the writings of male Kabbalists, who were deported from Spain in the late 15th century and resettled themselves in northern Israel, is that a real transformation in the fabric of society can occur only when we are able to embrace the shadow aspect of our psyche as a part of the whole circle of being. Men have much to learn from women around this, and the process of raising the Anima within the personality is a critical part of reconnecting to the divine seed, which lies in the darkness of the rejected shadow aspect.

Our wild aspect, our ancient natural animal side has been rejected and usually seen as a dark shadow that needs to be dominated by the civilized one. But when this wild woman – Lilith – is rejected, she accepts this untrue assumption that sees her as an evil force, and develops a self-image of a Demon. When this happens, an endless struggle between the civilized and the wild aspects within human psychology is perpetuated. Lilith is rejected, and then tries to hit back and dominate men, using sexual power. Men feel disrespected and frightened, and battle back. Humans attempt to dominate nature, and nature pays back strongly through an ecological crisis, shattering the conditions in which life can blossom.

Another, more abstract and less mythic, system of symbols that is used to speak about the same issues, sometimes in deeper and more accurate ways, is the symbolism of the linear energy versus the circular energy of life. It is said in Lurianic Kabbalah that the whole universe is built by the compound and the balance of those two divine energies. The natural world, including the natural aspect of the human being, is mostly influenced by circular energy, which is also a feminine symbol, and the other side of the human condition, this side that makes us feel like strangers in nature, is influenced by linear energy, which is masculine.

During the period of time that I spent at the University of Oregon, as a fellow in the “Ecological Conversations – Science, Gender and the Sacred” Rockefeller program, I was blessed with the opportunity to dive deeply into the texts and the meaning that deals with those two symbols. My research from this experience will be published in Israel in my forthcoming anthology God, Nature and Us. What appeared in this research is that the mystical flow in the Hebrew and Jewish tradition is always trying to raise the circular awareness, and to bring it into many aspects of life: into the spiritual work, into social patterns of behavior, and even into political structures.

While the conclusions are too complex to summarize briefly, I will offer here some simple explanations that I hope will make sense in   the context of this article:

A straight line, one that has a beginning and an end, is a symbol of a target-oriented mind. It immediately appears as a scale that can measure and judge between each two points – determining which one is closer and which one is farther from the source. In the circle, all of the points are simply equal. There is no beginning and no end to the circle. Yet the circle is blocked within itself when the line is breaking through to infinity.

One important application of those Kabbalistic symbols to social paradigms is seeing morality as connected to the linear symbol, while mythology as connected to the circular symbol. As C.G. Jung once said – mythology describes the wholeness of life, while morality tries to improve it. Thus, in the spiritual tradition of the ancient Hebrews, which later turned to be “Judaism”, there was always a strong urge to break the circle of life as it is, to find connection with the holy abstract creator God. The linear tradition, which is most prevalent in the history of Judaism, made efforts not to accept life or nature as they are, but to fix them by the domination of the moral-ethical code of Torah. But this trend was always struggling with another strong trend, the mythic-mystic one, the circular one, which was trying to find its way back to the center.

Though many people around the world are accustomed to the opinion that Kabbalah was a mythic bomb that blew up in the 12th century in Judaism as the famous scholar Gershom Scholem said, new scholars are describing the roots of the Kabbalistic mythos in Talmudic times, and sowing that this unique mythology was not new to the Jewish tradition, rather it was kept mostly oral, until the medieval times. I postulate that even the Talmudic mythology was not an innovation. What Kabbalah was trying to raise up in medieval times was actually part of the belief system of the ancient Hebrews (and Shebrews…). The main stream of the bible is linear indeed, but the people in biblical times were far away from this mainstream monotheism. In many places in the bible prophets or the biblical editor condemn the people of Israel for not serving YHVH only, but serving other deities, gods and goddesses, as well.  In two places in Israel, archaeologists have found in excavations that common people were blessing each other on behalf of YHVH and his Asherah.  People in biblical times were worshiping YHWH the male god, together, in union with, his beloved goddess – the Asherah. But they were not the only deities worshipped - it is said that King Solomon built four temples and shrines in Jerusalem, one was for YHWH the God of Israel, but the other three were built to honor different deities, including Ashtoret, the goddess of fertility. The editors of the bible condemn Solomon for what he did, and put him down, saying that he was just told by his wives to worship their deities. But I doubt if this is the whole truth. I think that Solomon, who, as described in the bible, was deeply learned in eastern and Egyptian wisdom, had some different ideas about the meaning of the Hebrew religion. These ideas were quite different than those which were accepted later into the official Jewish tradition.

What Kabalists were trying to convey in medieval times – that the meaning of monotheism should not be taken only in the narrow linear way, but rather can be understood in a way that sees unity as being manifested through variety – King Solomon was trying to express by the building of those four temples. Kabalists were using philosophical language to express their vision, speaking about ten abstract Sefirot, or emanations, that manifest the One, and King Solomon was using the mystical language of his time – the language of mythology – to convey the One through the many. But it was not accepted by the editors of the bible as a legitimate monotheistic belief system. It took more then 16 hundreds of years until such a belief could be accepted into Judaism without threatening the ethical efforts of the mainstream.

Martin Buber wrote about the Theocratic Anarchy of the Hebrews, who did not have a king but God, not as a phrase but as a political leader, until the days of King Saul. From that time and on, we can witness a growing process that led the ancient people of Israel from their indigenous circle-tended life with divinity, which was close to nature, to the linear Jewish religion that in medieval times could not bear the situation any longer and brought the mystery of the circular mythology to the surface, known as “Kabbalah”, literary meaning “that which was recieved” by tradition. Kabbalah in its turn was developed by some religious groups – such as the Sabbatiens and the Hasidic – into a radical theology that was used in order to renew the lost parts of this old path of life, and to unite in a new way the linear and the circular, the feminine and the masculine.

Not that all that has to be done was done – not at all. The paradigm shift that needs to happen now, before it’s too late, must take serious steps in embracing and raising the circle-energy and deepen our understanding of the gift of the supreme masculine consciousness, including their shadow aspects, accepting the wholeness of the feminine, and making deep peace with nature.

This will occur only if the right balance between the linear and the circular, masculine and feminine (Z”A and Nukba) is achieved. From the sacred unification of the two – from the Heirus Gamus– the Oneness that is above and beyond binary will appear.