Jewish Mysticism Quotes

My Uncle Nissim studied Kabbalah. Just before he died, he gave this tiny book, its pages yellow with age. He said it had special powers. I had a feeling that the book helped to keep me safe. My daughter is called Nissim after him.

if we were forced to choose just one, there would be no way to deny that Judaism is the most important intellectual development in human history.

People don't know what Kabbalah is, and so they jump to conclusions. For me, studying Kabbalah is studying - is just - is asking questions. And I encourage all of my children to be that way, and I think people don't understand that. And so they make assumptions and they judge.

In 1913, the noted German actor and director Paul Wegener was making a film in Prague when he heard the legend of Rabbi Loew, who created a golem to protect the inhabitants of the Prague ghetto from persecution.

But it is a fact that within Jewry there exists a sect which engaged in these murders.

I started out in the Chabad movement, and I started pretty closed up, with the idea of there being that 'this is it.' I bought into that fully. I really explored in depth the Chabad ideology.

I'm studying Kabbalah, which is really the essence of Jewish spirituality.

In my tradition, one must wait until one has learned a lot of Bible and Talmud and the Prophets to handle mysticism. This isn't instant coffee. There is no instant mysticism.

They say you can't study Kabbalah until you are at least 40 years old. You know why? You have to have experienced at least one generation making the same mistakes as the previous one.

Judaism is interesting in that there is something there that I think you just can't understand if you're not a Jew - it moves into a realm of true mystery.

I'm not a practicing kabbalist. I'm not a spiritual master. I'm not a rabbi. I don't - but it's part of who I am.

There's this part of Judaism that I like. Tikun Alum. It said that the world is broken into pieces and everyone has to find it.

Of all the rabbinic sages of antiquity, perhaps none was more influential or famous than Rabbi Akiva.

I don't really know if I would consider myself anything in particular. I would say I'm inspired in a Hasidic way, but I certainly don't keep all the customs and rules I once did.

To the uninitiated, the Hasidim constitute a rather homogeneous sect of orthodox Jewry, but this is far from being true.

I guess I will say, going back to the Judaism questions, there are mental reflexes or patterns that I think of as Jewish in my own feelings about mysticism and theology.Franz Kafka is someone I very much revere. If I believed in holy texts I'd go to him as a touchstone. Not that I read Kafka all the time at this point. In a way, this is what I most want to talk about and it's the hardest to talk about.

Every universe, our own included, begins in conversation. Every golem in the history of the world, from Rabbi Hanina's delectable goat to the river-clay Frankenstein of Rabbi Judah Loew ben Bezalel, was summoned into existence through language, through murmuring, recital, and kabbalistic chitchat -- was, literally, talked into life.

Masonry is a search after Light. That search leads us directly back, as you see, to the Kabalah.