3) Thanks for the confirmation. I never thought that I’d learn some Torah here! (source fo the 36.)

4) What is the “physical part of divinity” – JC? Not according to Judaism – God is not physical in any way (if He is at all, that is).

Interesting that you assume that any one of us could be one of the 36 Hidden Righteous, upon whom the universe depends. The whole idea doesn’t make much sense, but it’s very positive to think so.

I don’t think that she included Hindus and Buddhists among the “billions of people worldwide who deify the messenger rather than the message.” I think that she basically meant the Christians – although there is a tradition that Abraham gave his other children gifts and sent them to the East. But I thought that Chinese and Indian religions predated Judaism anyway – they just got it “wrong”…

And I don’t think that she meant that it was the Jews who made the messy translations and misinterpretations – it was everyone else (although wayward Jews could have also).

P.S. – is there a way to get notification of new comments in a particular thread?

N.R.G.

We may never be able to “explain” absolutely everything, but life goes on, right?

Admitting as much doesn’t make you a “new age believer.”

The paragraph “Biblical scholars would agree that the ancient Hebraic texts were originally written to impart metaphysical truths, but any pure symbolic references have devolved through messy translation and misinterpretation, into a travesty that has rooted a God problem within the belief systems of billions of people worldwide who deify the messenger rather than the message.” makes no sense in English, and gives me a headache just trying to parse it out.

It seems to imply that Jewish Scripture caused the Hindus and the Buddhists to believe in God. Or caused them to stop believing in God. Or screwed up their notion of God. Or something.

It also seems to imply that Judaism has no idea how to translate it’s own Hebrew Scriptures into other languages, and has made a big mess of it all. And then forgot how to interpret what their Scriptures say — which created and “rooted” problems in the religious traditions of China, Japan, Vietnam, India, Europe and the New World.

Busy beavers, those Jews!

1) While “36″ does equal “two lives” in Kabalistic numerology, it refers to the entwining of two lives (and all the implications thereof).

2) NRG is right –“Lamed-av” is really “lamed-vav”. (Lamed-av would mean something like “learned father”).

3) The notion of the 36 is not Kabbalistic, but Talmudic. (Specifically TractateSanhedrin 97b and Tractate Sukkah 45b.)

4) Lamed-vavniks do not greet “Ayn Sof”. Ain Sof is that non-physical part of Divinity that humans cannot reach. What the Talmud says is that in every generation 36 holy people “greet the Shechinah” – the Divine Presence that interacts with Creation.

4a) It may be worth mentioning that the notion is poetic and mystical. It is not meant to be taken literally.

4b) The role of the 36 hidden righteous is to justify Humanity in the eyes of God. For the sake of these 36, God preserves the world (even if the rest of Humanity has sunk to the level of total barbarism).

The twin implications of this tradition are that 1) the existence of the Universe may just depend on your ethical conduct; and 2) all people have hidden depths you might not perceive and might never know about, so you should interact with every other person as if the Universe depends on them.

Well, what if they are?

Perhaps the opposites are not such opposites after all?

Or, pushed to their extremes, meet?

Perhaps it’s a mistake to categorize the admission of mystery as a “new age belief”?

Indeed, are we to characterize Wittgenstein as a “new age believer” for recognizing the limits of logic?

Meanwhile, I’m looking forward to Goldstein’s and Caron’s books, both.

The second shame, and great surprise for that matter, is that skeptical philosophy, according to this article, looks so similar to western new age mysticism or its eastern parent religions.

Is skeptical philosophy really akin to new age belief? The nothing seems akin to a higher plane or the divine; the answers found, or the key to reaching that place found, in the mind or within. Wow, what similarities.

The article debunks religious thinking using logic and then copies religious thinking towards “nothing” in order to find meaning. Seriously? Is this a surprise to anyone else? The two groups may believe they are coming from very different places, but they sure read like country cousins in this article; and both seek meaning.

It makes sense culturally that western new age beliefs have been influenced by western rational philosophy. But is it possible that the reverse is just as true? Or, are these two polar opposites of thinking really saying the same thing in different ways? Caron’s article reads like they are.

The 36 Righteous are not called “Lamed-av”, but rather “Lamed-Vav”. Lamed and Vav are both letters in the Hebrew alphabet (Aleph Beit, the first two letters); Lamed is the 12th, and Vav is the 6th. Regarding the first ten letters of the alphabet, their ordinal position equals their gematrial value, hence Vav = 6. The values for the 11th through 20th letters, however, increase by tens instead of units, hence the 11th letter Chaf = 20, and our 12th letter Lamed = 30. “Lamed-Vav”, therefore, equals 30+6=36.

From the 20th letter onwards, the increase is by hundreds. So between the 22 regular letters and the special end forms for five of them, we have values from 1 through 900. The name for the first letter Aleph, which equals 1, can also be read Eleph, which means 1,000, closing out the set of units, tens and hundreds by returning to the beginning. Works out nicely, doesn’t it?

So how does 36 symbolize “two lives”? Because the word in Hebrew for “life” is Chai, made up of the 8th and 10th letters Chet and Yood, totalling 18. And two lives equals 36. Charity is often given in multiples of 18, as a reminder that the money should improve our lives.

Now, to the Ayn Sof. I offer this explanation both admitting a lot of ignorance about the concepts, and without taking a position regarding their truth or falseness. For a long time, I did believe all of this to be true, but recently I’ve become skeptical (which brings me here!).

The “divine presence” is usually called the Shechinah, not Ayn Sof. Ayn Sof literally means “without end” – and implicitly, without beginning. In other words, the boundlessness and eternality of God. Shechinah, on the other hand, means “Indwelling (Presence)”.

According to my very limited understanding, Ayn Sof is unreachable by any created being, so the 36 Righteous wouldn’t “greet” the Ayn Sof, but rather a “closer” spiritual reality, God throughout remaining “One”. “Presence” implies being perceivable and accessible, which is not the case with Ayn Sof. At this level, God can only be described by what It is not (hence boundless, endless, etc.), not by what It is.

There is much wisdom in the Kabbalah. The question is, do we need a God for it to be so…

N.R.G.