They spent an hour talking about the center and the controversy surrounding it, but spent almost no time talking about what Kabalah is. I find this incredibly curious. From what I am able to gather this is how most of the media approaches the subject--talk about it, but don't explain it.
What you do get of the teachings from the show is that there are alot of books and prayer services and classes, and you wear a $20 red string around your wrist.
They brought on a Rabbi to say that he finds the idea of wearing a red string for protection as foolish and he went on to say that they are only getting a fraction of the true teachings of Kabalah without a thorough background in Jewish tradition, ritual, and the Talmud and Bible. It would not surprise me if this Rabbis Kabalistic knowledge is not that deep, as it is my understanding that it is not as prevalent among mainstream Judaism as it once was, and he was most definitely not Hassidic.
I'll defend the red string by saying there is a strong tradition in most religions of wearing fetishes (a magickal amulet, etc.) of protection, and I see no difference between paying a church $20 for a red string to wear, and buying a cross or star of david or other symbol. If nothing else, it's much easier to fashion your own red string bracelet. I find it humorous that a rabbi would be so offended by the idea of a fetish such as this.
From what I could gather things like the bracelet and Kabalah water and the t-shirts and pins and whatnot are the centers way of gathering funds in the absence of the traditional tithe.
But back to the Kabalah itself.
See, the funny thing about Kabalah itself is that, much like Buddhism, it's not really a religion at all at its core, it's a philosophy. Robert Anton Wilson called it the cosmic file-a-fax system, since it seeks to encompass everything possible.
But also there is a division of Kabalah that most don't talk about or even realize exists. Donald Michael Kraig describes the split in his book Modern Magick:
First there is what I call the Kosher Kabalah. This has come about as a result of the need for a Jewish spiritual rebirth.... The Kosher Kabalah, then has a particularly Jewish tone to it. It benefits all students of the mystical as we are obtaining more and more ancient Kabalistic works which are finally being translated into Western tongues. But, because it is so oriented toward one point of view, it is not our main concern.
The WASP Kabalah follows in the traditions of the Golden Dawn. This system of Kabalah universalizes the Kabalistic wisdom so that it may be accepted by all, no matter your particular faith or lack thereof... Because the Kabalah has been safeguarded for thousands of years by the Jewish culture, it is obvious that it will have, in many instances, a Jewish flavor....you do not have to be or become a Jew or Christian or Pagan or follow any particular religion or belief in order to study the philosophy and magickal techniques of the Kabalah and traditional ceremonial magick.
Further, Kraig explains, there are four further branches of Kabalah, which overlap to some degree:
1. The Dogmatic Kabalah--This concerns the literature of the Kabalah, such as the Talmud, Torah, Sepher Yetzirah and the main book of the Kabalah Center, and the only one mentioned in the E! special, the Zohar.
2. The Practical Kabalah--The making of talismans and amulets, such as the red bracelets of the Kabalah center, but primarily more advanced fetishes involving various rituals. A talisman is a magickal fetish created to bring certain things to the creator or bearer, while an amulet is in item designed to repel things.
3. The Literal Kabalah--This concerns the numerology practiced by Kabalists. Each letter of the Hebrew alphabet also represents a number, and through a process known as Gematria the values of different words and phrases are used to discover underlying meanings. Kraig uses the Hebrew words aheva and echod, which both have the numerical value of 13. Echod in Hebrew means one, and also God, while aheva is Hebrew for love. Therefore God=Love.
4. The Unwritten Kabalah--This concerns correspondences of the Tree of Life Glyph, which is largely an oral tradition, but is a focus of the WASP Kabalah moreso than the Dogmatic Kabalah.
From what I can gather the Kabalah center primarily is a teacher of the Kosher Kabalah, with an emphasis on the Dogmantic and Practical with little emphasis on the Practical or Literal.
The Rabbi enterviewed in E! is most likely acquainted with the Kosher Kabalah and may not realize the long existence of the WASP Kabalah.
Kabalah has a long tradition among Western Magickal practice, and was codified by the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, the European society which claimed such members as Dion Fortune, Aleister Crowley and MacGregor Mathers. They took what until then had been only passed down orally from Rabbi to Rabbi as the Kosher Kabalah and open sourced it. They took the philosophic basis of the system and centered less on the Dogma and more on the Literal, Practical and the Unwritten.
This is the area of Kabalah that is unknown and ignored when people just assume that it is only a new age fad and give it no second thought.
The true power of Kabalah does not come from the study of dusty tomes or even in the making of fetishes, but rather in the contemplation of interconnectivity inherent in reality.
That is what the tree of life truly shows, and what is missing from what I see of the teachings in the Kabalah Center (though I admit I only get the distortions of the media on them, and they are seriously lacking in telling of actual teachings, concentrating, rather on what they try to make ridiculous, like the wearing of red strings), is that all things are connected. It tries to show that there are similarities in the connections of all things. Each letter of the Hebrew alphabet corresponds with a path or sphere on the tree, and also with anything else. You can apply it to body parts or anything else, this is why Wilson referred to it as a file-o-fax system. He went so far in one book to apply characters from the Rocky Horror Picture Show. AMOD and I worked on a correspondence of Rock Stars to pass the time at work.
This is what the people who devised Kabalah were trying to get across, not a bunch of rituals and dogma, they wanted people to contemplate interconnectedness. This is how you achieve balance and harmony in your life and with nature, by discovering that everything has a role and living in harmony with that.
Yeah.
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