Kabbalah is NOT a religion

Kaballah is not a religion. There's a great article by Rabbi Shmuley Boteach that decries the gentile fad and the Kabbalah Centre's appeal to superstition.

I'm appalled at the shallow appeal of something like this, but I understand it. Mysticism is for most seekers a lifetime's journey within the realm of their own already-held faith; it is the reward for going deeper than the trappings of the religion's surface and reaching faith's heart through meditation, love, prayerfulness, and awareness. It is a journey whose purpose is the pilgrimmage, more than the arrival.

So when some author or speaker comes along and offers you this with all the convenience of newly bought ringtones, how tempting it must be to a busy person. Like some BeliefNet Ad I saw selling tapes with the catch phrase "Meditate deeper than a Zen Monk in ten minutes!", busy people might wonder if there's an end-run they can do to fix that missing hole in their life.

But think about this! A trappist monk will spend decades learning to meditate. Other than helping keep the abbey's grounds, making meals, and doing dishes, this is what they do - all the time! There's no shortcut to the "What is revealed" (what the word Kabbalah means, and what most mysticism is.) No huckster can offer that for you.

Similar to the exploitation of Jewish Kabbalah as a new age fad for gentiles, I saw some book in a Picton bookstore's religious section called "The Dark Night of the Soul" by a former monk named Thomas Moore.

But while the book draws on some of the ideas of St. John of the Cross's "Dark Night of the Soul", it strips the cross from St. John's mysticism, and instead offers the usual self-help new-age chicken-soup pap, quoting everyone from Gandhi to the piano player Glenn Gould.

How dreary and dull a thing - St. John's triumph over imprisonment and desolation reduced to self-rendered pop therapy. And that's what Kaballah fads (like Kabbalah Yoga) do. By stripping the rich 2100 year old interpretive tradition of Judaism - Maimonides, Martin Buber, even the Lubavitcher Rabbi all removed - Kabbalah is reduced to a bunch of red strings and home redecorations. It lacks all the depths that ten minute Zen monks also lack.