Kabbalah???????????

Question

I am very much interested in and study different world religions. I am interested in learning more about Kabbalah. I know this is a very difficult subject to comprehend and being that I am an undergrad student alot of the information I find is hard to understand. Can anyone guide me to some introductory books that I can start with? Any info that would help me better understand this subject would be helpful. Thanks

Answer 1

Bnei Baruch is a study group for serious Kabbalah students. They offer free video courses twice a week (one for principles, one for technical explanations). The videos are also archived so you can watch at your own convenience. The videos go in order, so you'd have to catch up before you could understand the live lessons.

Bnei Baruch also offers beginner and advanced texts for download free of charge on their website. You can also buy physical copies of the books directly from them at cheap prices (usually half the list price). I don't know if they're still doing it, but for a while recently they were sending a free audiobook CD with any order (this wasn't advertised, they were just including it with orders).

Michael Laitman's "Kabbalah for Beginners" is an extremely basic starting book (I would download it... it's quite short and not really worth buying, but has the very basic information that you may not have seen before).

I strongly recommend Michael R. Kellogg's "Wondrous Wisdom" as a real starting point. I would personally follow up with Michael Laitman's "Attaining the Worlds Beyond," and then Michael Laitman's "Path of Kabbalah."

Authentic Kabbalah is a very lengthy and involved process (that is very much worth the investment of time and energy). To get to the point where you can understand the serious texts, it will take a lot of preparation. Fortunately, Bnei Baruch is set up perfectly to help beginners out and bring them right through the most sophisticated texts. Best of all, it's completely free and entirely available to you online. You do need to sign up on the web page, but you don't have to include any personal information outside of your email address (you can use a pseudonym in place of your real name).

The three links provided are 1) the video lessons, 2) the Bnei Baruch home page with all of the downloadable texts and a lot of audio/video, and 3) the Bnei Baruch online store. Enjoy!

Answer 2

Read the Zohar translated by Daniel Matt
God is a Verb: Kabbalah and the Practice of Mythical Judaism by Rabbi David Cooper
Idiot's Guide to Jewish Spirituality & Mysticism by Michael Levin
Study with a rabbi. They teach Zohar classes in some Jewish communities.
.

Answer 3

Go to your nearby Barnes & Noble bookstores and check out the Religion section. You can also find more information searching the term "Kabbala" at Amazon.com's book selections. They have alot of stuff on Kabbala, which is a "flavor" of Judaism.

Kabbalists believe that there are mystical prophesies and numerological mysteries contained in the Torah, Talmud, & Tanakh. For instance...

We find that Moses wandered 40 years in the desert. Noah floated 40 days and 40 nights, When moses ascended Mt. Sinai, he was there for 40 days and 40 nights. Jesus, likewise is written to have experienced the number 40 in some of his life events as well.

The numbers 10, 40, 7 and multiples of 7 are believed to be very lucky in Judaism and Kabbala.

Answer 4

I happen to be somewhat of an expert on Kabbalah. I would be glad to help. You can email me at [e-mail]. Some great websites to learn more about it are:
truekabbalah.com
askmoses.com - in the knowledge base go to Torah and then Kabbala
chabad.org - search for kabbala in their knowledge base
and for some good books on the subject I would reccomend:
Heaven Exposed by Tzvi Freeman,
Counting the Omer by Simon Jacobson,
Love Like Fire and Water: A Guide to Jewish Meditation by Rabbi David Sterne,
and anything written by Aryeh Kaplan.

Answer 5

Doesn't Chevrolet make them. A Chevy Kabbalah sounds familiar.

Answer 6

here's a basic start courtesy of Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kabbalah

Answer 7

modern magick by donald micheal craig--excellent for beginners!

Answer 8

I pretty much answered this here
http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index;_ylt=Au_.mEYWC0i8MBbkYKwuADfsy6IX?qid=20070218122508AA0X4C7&show=7#profile-info-18ea62e744c5a4e5826d483cc1fc7407aa