Hello, my name is Henry Abramson.
I'm really glad that you decided to watch this video which
is accompanying my newest book: The Kabbalah of Forgiveness.
The Kabbalah of Forgiveness is
a commentary on sixteenth-century
classic of Jewish spirituality known by the Hebrew title
Tomer Devorah (Palm Tree of Devorah) by Rabbi Moshe Cordovero
What I'd like to do in this introductory video is tell you a little bit about
the original book and a little bit about the original author
and then we'll wrap it up and in the next video will be able to actually get
into the text itself. So first of all
the Kabbalah of Forgiveness, that's my title
for the first chapter of this really remarkable book
which essentially deals with the
13 different levels of God's Mercy (Forgiveness)
and how those can be applied to
human relationships. Meaning, in traditional Jewish thought
God is merciful in 13 different ways,
in hebrew the Yud-Gimel Middos of Rachamim, and according to the thought
of Rabbi Moshe Cordovero, these thirteen ways can be
emulated by humans on the planet here in a very very effective way.
It's a dramatically powerful book, very original,
and highly influential, and it's had a great impact on my life
and even though I wouldn't say that really I've become such a tremendously
forgiving person but it really has helped me
in my relationships with my family my community
my coworkers and so on and I'm sure it's book that will
make a big difference to you as well. So what exactly is this book
it fits within two distinct
sort of categories of Jewish thought
the corpus of Jewish literature. First of all,
it is really a work of Kabbalah and secondly it is a work of Mussar.
Let's define what those two terms are. Kabbalah
is the esoteric mystical teachings of judaism
which are in enshrined in many books like the Zohar,
the sefer Bahir, many other books like that
and it deals with you know sort of the
structure the universe, the nature of creation,
you know really big fantastic
you know sort of mind-boggling thoughts and normally
in Jewish thought this kind of material is reserved for the elite
there's actually a ban that was put on the study of Kabbalah
that it was limited to anyone for example who was
over the age of 40 (which I've made it for a while now)
and they also had a tremendous background
in the traditional revealed Torah which means the
Chumash, the first five books of Moses, the Talmud, and so on
and for most of human history
only really the elite studied (you know really highly educated people)
study the Kabbalah. A lot of that changed for example in the 18th century
with the innovation of the Hasidic movement but that's outside the scope of
our discussion here.
Tomer Devorah, the book under discussion here,
actually is kind of an exception to the rule however and it has been so
recognized by luminaries such as Rebbe Yisroel Salanter,
and many others who have advocated the study of this specific book
even though it is really suffused with Kabbalistic information
they have highly recommended the study of this book particularly during
the penitential month of Ellul which immediately precedes the High Holidays
of Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur, and of course during those ten days
of repentance in particular. That's because that season of the year
is traditionally associated with forgiving others so that we may
ask God for God's forgiveness as well and so therefore
it's a book that has somehow you know evaded
the traditional ban. Well actually I shouldn't say somehow, there's a lot of really good reasons why
it is considered exempt but we're not going to get into this video.
The other genre that this particular book belongs to is that of Mussar,
which is a very old tradition in the
Jewish literary corpus and it deals with
strategies for ethical self development. Some of the older text include a passage
in the Bible itself,
the Classic Collection Pirkei Avot,
which is a second century collection of
the older teachings of rabbis.
It goes through books like Orkhot Tsadikim (Ways of the Righteous)
Mesilat Yesharim (Path of the Upright) ... many many very famous books.
what's really unusual about Tomer Devorah
is it takes a Kabbalistic approach to ethical development which is really
quite distinct from
any other text and it set a whole new direction
in Mussar literature from the sixteenth century onward.
The author is one up the most amazing figures
up the great Tzfat circle:
an amazing explosion of jewish creativity in spiritual activity that occurred
in the northern Israeli city of Safed or Tzfat
in hebrew in the 16th century.
He had a very short life but in that short life
he was extremely prolific, wrote a lot of tremendously influential works
of Kabbalah, like Pardes Rimonim, and so on, a commentary on the Zohar as well,
and in fact he attracted one of the greatest Kabbalists to come visit him
in Tzfat and be his student, the great Arizal,
or Rabbi Issac Luria (The Arizal)
who came specifically to be a student at the feet of Rabbi Moshe Cordovero
eventually went on to eclipse his own teacher in fame,
and it is a very highly influential Kabbalist, certainly the most influential Kabbalist
of the late medieval period.
In this book what he really wants to do
is he wants to try and describe the
concept of ViHalachta Bidrachav in Hebrew ("Walk in G-ds's Ways")
the "and you shall walk in His ways"
meaning you shall imitate God. There is actually a Latin theological term for this as well
"Imitateo Dei" or "the imitation of god" which has a very long tradition
in Jewish scholarship. Basically what the book
wants to address is specifically
the way in which G-d interacts with the universe from creation
and onward is through these
10, shall we call them, vessels, known as
Sefirot. I'm not going to go into great detail on what these
Sefirot are and how they work
partially because I have no idea, I'm only like just
a novice in this myself, but more importantly because we're going to try to
keep these lectures to the
Musser level of understanding how that applies to us in reality.
For example these 10 Sefirot deal with
Kindness, Severity, Beauty,
all kinds of things like that. How are we supposed to use these characteristics
in our relations with others? Don't worry as we go through
the videos, it will be much clearer for all of you.
I encourage you to go look at the website
which has been set up specifically to support
these videos and the text, and there you'll get actual samples of the text as well (www.henryabramson.com)
and it'd be great if you want to print them out or split your screen
look at them in Hebrew or in English while I'm talking.
So basically, the Kabbalah of Forgiveness, which is my title for the book, which is
really only the first chapter of Tomer Devorah
deals with these 13 levels of forgiveness
We're going to start with the first video in just a few moments: just click
on the next video in this playlist and I hope you find it
as moving as I do. Thank you very much for watching.