An introduction to the Zohar
at The Open Center
83 Spring Street
New York, NY
Today, Kabbalah is often depicted in terms of complicated charts, symbols, doctrines, and ideas. However, this is not how it is generally approached by the Kabbalists themselves. In this class, we will learn directly from the Zohar, the deeply textured masterpiece of Jewish mysticism and esoteric thought, to learn not only what the Kabbalah teaches, but how it teaches as well. By reading the symbols of the Zohar, and the Biblical passages it explores, we will experience how the Kabbalah invites us to read the symbols of our lives. By wrestling with the simultaneity of nondual existence, as emptiness and form, we will see how study of the Zohar is a form of mystical practice. And by understanding the Zohar’s symbolism of masculine and feminine, hidden and revealed, unity and multiplicity, we will deeply enrich the way our own consciousness interacts with the fundamental energies and structures of existence.
