In this week’s Jewish Journal, Rabbi David Wolpe reviews "Becoming God: Kabbalah and Our Ultimate Destiny" (Kabbalah Publishing, 2004), by Rabbi Michael Berg (director of The Kabbalah Centre).
He doesn’t like it.
I spent an infuriating hour reading [this book]. If I can succeed in persuading one person not to buy this confused, contradictory, intellectually disreputable and Jewishly perverse volume it will be well worth the exasperation.
And that’s just the first paragraph. Rabbi Wolpe concludes his review by describing the test devised by the Baal Shem Tov (the founder of Chasidism) for identifying a fraud.
According to the book jacket, Rabbi Berg "distilled Kabbalah’s 5,000 years of wisdom into two highly accessible books" before writing this one. In his new book (according to the jacket), he relates how "[f]or the first time in history, an incredible opportunity is available to humankind: the opportunity not simply to pray to God, obey God, fear God, or reject God, but in fact, to become like God."
Can Kabbalah’s wisdom be "distilled" into "highly accessible" books? Can we — for the first time in history — "become like God"?
Unlikely — Rabbi Wolpe would probably use a stronger word — particularly since "distillation" and "accessible" are not the words one associates with the Zohar, the classic text of Kabbalah. In his Introduction to the first book of a 12-volume annotated translation (The Zohar: Pritzker Edition) published last year, Daniel C. Matt advises readers "above all" not to "reduce everything you encounter in these pages":
Beware of trying to find "the essence" of a particular teaching. Although usually essence is the goal of mystical search, here essence is inadequate unless it stimulates you to explore ever deeper layers, to question your assumptions about tradition, God, and self.
Matt supports that advice with a parable from the Zohar itself (Zohar 2:176a-b):
There was a man who lived in the mountains. He knew nothing about those who lived in the city. He sowed wheat and ate the kernels raw.
One day he entered the city. They offered him good bread. The man asked, "What’s this for?"
They replied, "It’s bread, to eat!"
He ate, and it tasted very good. He asked, "What’s it made of?"
They answered, "Wheat."
Later they offered him thick loaves kneaded with oil. He tasted them, and asked, "And what are these made of?"
They answered, "Wheat."
Later they offered him royal pastry kneaded with honey and oil. He asked, "And what are these made of?"
They answered, "Wheat."
He said, "Surely I am the master of all of these, since I eat the essence of all of these: wheat!"
Because of that view, he knew nothing of the delights of the world, which were lost on him. So it is with one who grasps the principle but is unaware of all those delectable delights deriving, diverging from that principle.
The Zohar is a collection of writings and teachings that appeared in the 13th century (about 700 years ago). It has been described as a "mosaic of Bible, medieval homily, spiritual fantasy, and imaginative commentary, or midrash, on the Torah written in the form of a mystical novel."
In describing the difficulties of translating it — "perhaps the most difficult Jewish classic to translate" — a book "overflowing with multiple connotations . . . mysterious, elusive, and ineffable" — Matt writes:
All translation is inherently inadequate, a well-intentioned betrayal. In the words of the second-century sage Rabbi Yehudah, "One who translates a verse literally is a liar; one who adds to it is a blasphemer."
Imagine what the sages would call someone hawking a highly accessible distillation of how to become like God.