The Messianic Vision of Equality and Beyond
This essay can also be viewed in adobe pdf format.
This essay has been extracted from Sarah Yehudit’s larger study on the nature of gender in Kabbala. Please visit Kabbalistic Writings on the Nature of Masculine and Feminine to read a summary and browse through this book or buy it directly.
The Messianic Vision of Equality and Beyond
The Voice of the Bride[1]
by Rav Shneur Zalman of Liadi
Presented and Elucidated by Sarah Yehudit Schneider
Bare Bones Literacy
Summary:
Voice of the Bride by R. Schneur Zalman of Liadi takes the Ari’s model a step beyond and shows how the polarities of masculine and feminine will eventually invert. There will come a time, blessed and welcomed by all, when the feminine will have greater access to transcendent consciousness, and when that happens she will bestow and man will receive from her.
Continue Reading…
Studying Prayerfully
This essay can also be viewed in pdf format.
Studying Prayerfully
This essay was published in Bread and Fire: Jewish Women Find God in the Everyday, Rivkah Slonim (editor), (Urim Publications, Jerusalem), p. 75-79, which can be purchased at amazon.com and urimpublications.com
Avi, Adoni, Dodi , My father, my master, my friend, my beloved.
I enter into this study in order to draw close to You – for the sake of holy service and the fulfillment of Your will for me and for all of Israel and for this entire planet. Please assist my efforts and guide my understandings.
Let me internalize Your Torah to the depth of my being so that I become transformed by Your will and its truths.
Let neither myself nor anyone else come into stumbling as a result of this study.
Gal einai v’abita niflaot m’toratecha[1], Open my eyes that I may behold wonders from Your Torah.
This is a prayer I wrote many years ago, when I first began studying Torah . I continue to say this prayer every day before I begin learning, and I say it with my students before I begin teaching. To better understand this prayer and its deep roots, we must first put on a wide angle lens and examine some of the broad and archetypal themes that are raised by the Biblical story of Chana,[2] the quintessential role model of Jewish prayer. In particular, we want to look at the fact that Chana, a woman, had such an enormous impact on the way we, as Jews, pray. And secondly, we want to explore why it is that her watershed prayer was, significantly, a prayer for child.
There is perhaps no other instance of a woman having such a profound, direct and acknowledged impact on Jewish practice.[3] And it is not just prayer in general that we learn from Chana… it is our Amida, the silent prayer, the prayer that is the very essence of Jewish prayer. All other Jewish liturgy is either building up to or winding down from the Amida. The Talmud and Midrashim list many essential features of this prayer that are modeled after Chana’s prayer, including the fact that it is a whispered prayer, and even the fact that it comprises eighteen blessings.[4]
Textual Study As Meditation
This article can be viewed in adobe pdf format.
This essay was published in Meditation from the Heart of Judaism, edited by Avram Davis and can be purchased at amazon.com
Textual Study As Meditation
by Sarah Yehudit (Susie) Schneider
• The service of meditation is the spiritual and intellectual quest to know, comprehend, and feel an idea or truth of Torah to the fullest extent possible. By pursuing a matter to its depth, one draws his inherited and instinctive knowledge of God into a more revealed and conscious state. The purpose of meditation is to train a person to perceive reality more correctly. (Rabbi Yitzchok Ginsburgh , a contemporary teacher of Kabbalah)
• Meditation is a continuous flow of thought upon a particular object or point of focus. (Patanjali, a medieval yoga philosopher).
Any regular meditation practice, whether of Eastern, Western, Jewish or personal design, frees the mind from its bondage to surface layers and directs it to experience the infinite depth that is always available in each moment.
Every meditation has a point of focus. It could be a mantra such as a name of God or the Sh’ma, or another meaningful affirmation. It could be an object outside oneself such as a geometric image, a scribal design or even a candle. It could be one’s breath or the stillness that lies within each moment. It could even be an intellectual question about the nature of reality or the significance of some ritual law or how to apply Torah principles to a life problem.
When first learning to meditate, it is easier to choose a simple and concise object of focus—a single and static word or an image or a point of the body. The idea is to fix one’s attention on it for a set length of time. When the mind wanders, it is gently but firmly returned to the object of its meditation. As one grows skilled in this practice, it becomes possible to choose more complex and non‑static subjects. In this sense, textual study is a more advanced meditation. To do it properly, one must already know how to bring oneself into a meditative alpha state with ease. (Alpha state is a brain wave pattern and a psychological state that characterizes deep relaxation and associates with meditation.)
Miryam’s Circle Dance
This essay can be viewed in adobe pdf format.
This essay has been extracted from Sarah Yehudit’s larger study on the nature of gender in Kabbala. Please visit Kabbalistic Writings on the Nature of Masculine and Feminine to read a summary and browse through this book or buy it directly.
Miryam’s Circle Dance[1]
by Rav Kalonymous Kalman HaLevi Epstein (The Meor V’Shemesh)
Presented and Elucidated by Sarah Yehudit Schneider
Bare Bones Literacy
Summary:
Miryam’s Circle Dance by Meor V’Shemesh on Parshat Beshalach presents a glorious vision of the things that will change when woman recovers her full stature and feminine consciousness, now matured, exerts greater influence on the world and its values.
Vocabulary:
dinim (also called gevurot) – These terms mean literally, severities, and refer to the dark knots of unrectified potential that are the driving force behind our universe. Dinim and gevurot are generally associated with unconscious lights.
Hoshana Raba – (literally, Great Call for Redemption). The seventh (and last) day of Sukhot marked by elaborate beseechings for rain and redemption. On that day congregants circle the table that holds the Torah scroll seven times.
lights – Lights are always equivalent to consciousness in kabbalistic writings. Each sefira or spark is a light that transmits a particular insight or capacity for awareness.
malchut – The lowest of the ten sefirot is called malchut which means literally royalty and kingship. It corresponds to the physical plane and represents the final stage in light’s congealing into matter.
messianic era – The messianic era is a transitional time between this world and the next. It begins somewhere towards the end of the sixth millennium (we are now within the period of its likely beginnings) and will take us to the threshold of the world-to-come. It is the joyous stage of actualized perfection. Love of G‑d, love of neighbor, and love of Torah reign.
sefira / sefirot – The ten channels of Divine flow and emanation which link the Transcendent Light with Its evolving and apparently finite creation.
Shemini Atzeret – (literally, Eighth Day of Closure). A holiday that immediately follows the seven days of Sukhot. The eighth day, Shemini Atzeret, is the simplest festival of the Jewish calendar. It, in itself, has no special observances beyond the standard celebratory meals that mark each holiday.
Simchat Torah – (literally, Rejoicing of Torah). In the Diaspora, where each holiday lasts two days (instead of one, as in Israel), the second day of Shemini Atzeret (the ninth day of Sukhot), becomes Simchat Torah, a time of joyous celebration for the gift of Torah. The day is spent circle dancing around the Torah scrolls which are held by the congregants. In Israel, both Shmini Atzeret and Simchat Torah occur on the eighth day.
Sukhot – (literally, Tabernacles). The fall harvest festival where Jews voluntarily exile themselves from the security of their homes, and live for a week in fragile dwellings beneath the stars, to remind themselves of the impermanence and unreliability of the material world. Special prayers are recited throughout that week and in the morning liturgy, congregants, in procession, circle the table which holds the Torah scroll.
world to come – The seventh millenium and period following the messianic era that marks an entirely new state of existence where physicality dissolves and souls (with their new light bodies) experience an infinitely deepening ecstasy of relationship with G‑d.
worlds – refers both to the four planes of reality: physical, emotional, mental, spiritual; and to the sequential stages in creation’s unfolding (see map of the Unfolding of Worlds on p. 166).
Synopsis:
R. Epstein comments on a brief passage from the Torah that transpires after the miraculous parting of the Red Sea. With everyone safely secured on the other side, Moshe led the people in a hymn of thanksgiving. Immediately afterwards the Torah describes Miryam gathering the women for a celebration of music, song, and dance.
And Miryam the prophetess, the sister of Aaron, took the timbrel in her hand; and all the women went out after her with tambourines and with circle dances. And Miryam answered them: “Sing to the Lord, for he has triumphed gloriously; the horse and his rider has He thrown into the sea.”[2]
Evolutionary Creationism
This essay can also be viewed in adobe pdf format.
The expanded version of this study is available for purchase in book form: Evolutionary Creationism: Kabbala Solves the Riddle of Missing Links
The Original Version
EVOLUTIONARY CREATIONISM
Torah Solves the Problem of Missing Links
By Sarah Yehudit (Susan) Schneider
1
TORAH, SCIENCE, AND CREATIONISM
THREE FRAMES OF CONCEPTION AND MISCONCEPTION
The battle between Darwin and Creationism forcing classrooms and courtrooms to choose between faith and science has nothing to do with Torah. Each framework builds from non-Jewish premises.
When science[1] discovers the mechanics of a natural process it imagines itself to have proven the nonexistence of G-d in that realm, relegating Divinity to increasingly remote corners of reality, i.e. those areas not yet illuminated by the scientific mind. Wherever a natural explanation exists G-d cannot, and so it postulates a mutually exclusive relationship between science and religion.
Jewish theology asserts the opposite and practicing Jews affirm the principle in their twice daily recitation of faith (called the Shema), “Hear Israel, HaShem[2] our Lord, HaShem is one.” The two names of G-d here (HaShem and Lord) express two modes of Divine interaction with creation. HaShem (י/ה/ו/ה) the four-letter, unpronounceable name of G-d is the transcendent aspect of Divinity, perfect and absolute, that exists beyond time and space, and beyond name and form. Conversely, Lord (Elokim), is the name used throughout the creation chapter of Genesis. It refers to Divine expression that operates within the system of natural law that G-d devised to govern the world in accordance with His[3] will.
Torah teaches, through the Shema as its central article of faith, that the same G-d (HaShem) which does things that nature can’t do (i.e., miracles or creation ex nihilo) is the acting force within all that it does do (i.e. Elokim.) HaShem and Elokim are one. When science discovers the secrets of photosynthesis, the way a cell extracts energy from its food, or why it rains, they are simply articulating the mechanism of Divine manifestation as it operates through the physical world.
From a Torah perspective, as science exposes the breathtaking beauty of nature with its interpenetrating systems of such complexity that all our sophistications of technology cannot reproduce even one living cell, let alone an entire organism, it is revealing the work of a creative consciousness infinitely greater than our own. Einstein is considered the most brilliant of men because he discovered that E = mc2. He did not invent it, he did not create a universe based on that principle, he simply articulated a relationship that was already there. The Nobel prize should have gone to the One whose wisdom conceived the idea in the first place and Who designed the universe based on that and other yet to be discovered truths. It is like giving credit not to the inventor but to the one who made a generic imitation when the patent expired. Einstein himself believed in G-d, as did (and do) many of the greatest minds in physics. Their faith is not contingent upon unsolved riddles in nature, rather it derives from awe and humility before creation’s superhuman brilliance of design. It is no mark of intelligence to reject the notion of G-d. Many of science’s masters report their experience of a living Consciousness that permeates and organizes the natural world, and whom they meet, face to face, mind to mind, as they unlock creation’s secrets.[4]
Pages: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22
The Daughters Of Tslafchad
This article can be viewed in adobe pdf format.
This teaching was published in the following publications:
Torah of the Mothes is available for purchase on amazon.com or urimpublications.com
B’Or HaTorah #11, 1991 [ISBN 965-293-055-5] (Shamir: Jerusalem, Israel). p.177-182.
בס”ד
THE DAUGHTERS OF TSLAFCHAD:
Towards A Methodology Of Attitude Around Women’s Issues
by Sarah Yehudit (Susan) Schneider
We are blessed with a Torah of timeless truths, which means that every individual can find his or her own very personal story told somewhere in its sequence of words and verses. And since there is a one-to-one correspondence between root-souls and letters of the Torah (there being 600,000 of each) it follows, says R. Tzaddok haCohen, that each person is especially connected to the passage containing the letter that is the root of his or her particular soul.[1] And since the stories of the Torah spiral through history, each generation is also reliving some particular step in the Israelite’s forty-two stage journey from Egypt to the holy land.
A growing number of orthodox women are struggling to reconcile two aspirations which are not easily joined. One is the longing for marriage and children, the other a passion for study and more active participation in communal life. Successful role models are sparse and for many communities the impulse itself is questionable. Is it a holy urge, or one prompted by secular values unsupported by spiritual truths?
The question is real for any woman who seeks to live by spiritual law and who trusts the Torah as her guide. One method of resolution is to identify the scriptural passage that holds the archetype of this dilemma and examine its teachings for relevant advice. The obvious place to start is with the daughters of Tslafchad who present an unusual expression of femininity that draws unanimous positive regard. The encounter between these women and Moses evokes G‑d’s unqualified praise.
A petition was presented by the daughters of Tslafchad…and they stood before Moshe, Eleazar the priest, the princes and the entire community at the door of the Tent of Meeting with the following petition, “Our father died in the desert…without leaving any sons. Why should our father’s name be disadvantaged in his family merely because he had no son? Give to us a portion of land along with our father’s brothers.” Moshe brought their case before G‑d.
G‑d spoke to Moshe saying, “The daughters of Tslafchad have a just claim. Give them a hereditary portion of land alongside their father’s brothers. Let their father’s hereditary property thus pass over to them. Speak to the Israelites and tell them that if a man dies and has no sons, his hereditary property shall pass over to his daughter…(Num. 27:1-9).[2]
There are many teachings in this passage, relevant both to women seeking halakhic support for the changes they are experiencing, and to the rabbis who are ruling on their questions. The passage suggests a methodology of attitude that, if consciously adopted by both parties, will keep peace below and draw grace from on high. This paper explores the subject from both perspectives.
