Inner Balance—What Is Kabbalah?

By Jean Weiss

No matter how happy you feel about your life—your work, your relationships, or your ability to have fun or build community—you may reach a point when you take stock and wonder: Isn’t there something more?

Stephanie Ross arrived at this crossroads a few years ago. Ross, now 50, has spent a lifetime developing the skills to examine life’s complexities with clarity. She’s had a productive psychotherapy practice for 18 years, two children, a divorce, a near-death experience when she birthed her first child, and most recently, a scare that involved almost losing her sister. Yet despite her ability to probe and question the why of life, Ross sensed something was missing.

“I love my work, but I felt that there was something that needed to be bridged between my spiritual life and my awareness of patterns and synchronicities,” she says. “I continued to long for something bigger and broader out there. I was looking for a bigger canvas to understand my own self and my own experiences.”

The canvas she chose? Kabbalah, considered both a philosophy and a spiritual discipline. Scholars of the Kabbalah link the tradition to the five books of Moses— known as the Torah—which date from 1280 BC and are thought to have been revealed to Moses by God. “It is the oral tradition of why the Bible was created in the first place,” says Karen Berg, co-founder of the Kabbalah Centre with her husband, former Rabbi Phil Berg and author of the book God Wears Lipstick (Kabbalah Learning Centre, 2006). “The Bible is the how, but the why is in the Kabbalah, the oral traditions.”

Kabbalah offers a direct connection with the divine through the study of the sefirot—the tree of life. The word Kabbalah means “to receive,” and those who study the discipline learn that being fully human encompasses that direct connection. “Kabbalah is a transformative path, not just intellectual knowledge,” says Jason Shulman, author of The Instruction Manual for Receiving God (Sounds True, 2006) and founder of A Society of Souls, a school of Kabbalistic healing and spiritual awakening. “The path transforms our body, mind, and spirit so that it becomes possible to conjoin with the divine. We are trying to unite, to become truly whole human beings—we are not trying to become avatars, not trying to become other-worldly—but human beings with the trust that when you are fully human, you are fully united with God.”

Traditionally, a private master taught Kabbalah to a select few: older men who had families, were stable members of their communities, and thus considered ready to accept a path that could shake the foundations of ego. Today certain aspects of the practice are available to anyone who has the desire to learn. The Bergs first brought Kabbalah to the public in the 1960s through their learning center, which has now expanded to an international network of schools. They are credited with opening the teachings to women for the first time. “There are two levels to Kabbalah,” says Berg. “One is called sitrai, the hidden, for the scholars. But the other part of Kabbalah is the reasoning, tamai. The why. This can be taught to a child of 6. That part is what we teach.”

Of course, it has not hurt Kabbalah’s newfound popularity that Madonna now devotes herself to its teachings. While the celebrity angle makes Kabbalah seem trendy, Shulman notes the teachings have been around for thousands of years. He attributes Kabbalah’s newfound popularity to its recent availability: “All the transcendent teachings have become accessible through the publication of what used to be formally secret,” says Shulman of Kabbalah’s more recent rise in popularity.

For the current zeitgeist, one appealing concept of Kabbalah lies in its belief that you can take charge of your destiny. “We are the motivators of our actions,” says Berg. “Things that are negative in our lives happen to us because there is another place that we have to get to. The more spiritual you are, the more difficulties you encounter. People understand that on a physical level, when it comes to exercise,” says Berg, referring to the idea of “no pain, no gain.” “But not when it comes to the spiritual,” she says. “Nothing happens in our lives that we don’t have the ability to overcome.”

Kabbalah also teaches us how to develop a direct relationship with the divine through accepting life’s complexities with humility and gentleness. Using meditation, prayer, and other tools, Kabbalah helps students embrace both the ordinary and extraordinary. “Often times, people come to a spiritual teaching that they feel is going to save them, very much like the Judeo-Christian belief,” says Berg. “We are saying that there is no such animal. You are responsible.”

Though Kabbalah stems from Judaism, many non-Jews choose to study it. Ross, for example, was raised Catholic. “One of the things I remember thinking is What’s this thing about Kabbalah, and why would I be drawn to that if I’m not Jewish?” she says. “As I read and was exposed to more and more, I [realized] this is about life, this is about God, this is bigger than a particular faith.”

For many, studying Kabbalah leads to an unfolding of understanding, a means to approach life’s deeper questions and feel comfortable in the unknown. To be engaged in life this way is reassuring, says Ross. Rather than leaving her with a sense of insecurity, for the most part, the teachings bring a sense of peace. “It’s not that the Kabbalah answered the questions, but it allows me to keep asking the questions,” says Ross. “At every unexpected turn my life takes, I have a deeper ability to accept change. I feel like I can be in the unknown much better than I used to,” she says. Sometimes I still get anxious about life and the future, but more often I feel enlivened.”

Jean Weiss, a Colorado-based writer, editor, and anti-idealogue, was so inspired by the interviews for this story that she’s looking into studying Kabbalah.