Seekers Study Kabbala’s Secrets

It’s an odd place to seek enlightenment. But, on a recent Thursday night, half a dozen people found their way to the second floor of an Encino shopping center.

There, above the Bagel Nosh restaurant, they studied kabbala, or traditional Jewish mysticism.

Later in the evening, 25 people would arrive for an introductory lesson in what practitioners say is a way of exploring the deepest meanings of Jewish Scripture and of reaching higher and higher levels of spirituality. There would be talk of reincarnation, angels and astrology, topics that are rarely given serious consideration in mainstream Judaism.

“New Age nonsense” is the way some critics see the modern kabbala movement, headed by New York City Rabbi Philip Berg. Some have called it a cult, others an attempt to cash in on a single aspect of Judaism that is easy to exploit in an age of credulity.

But for proponents, this updated approach to kabbala is a way to get closer to the divine light, finding personal peace and perhaps even world peace along the way.

Shirley Winger of Panorama City is one of about half a dozen students in Kabbalah II, a class for people who already know something about this ancient but controversial way of looking at the physical and spiritual world. Her tape recorder running, she sits in the front of the classroom, with friend Judy Kupersmith of Sepulveda.

Their teacher is Avraham Kelman, an animated man with an Israeli accent who speaks as matter-of-factly about positive and negative angels (“positive energies go to the right, negative energies to the left”) as he does about cause and effect.

Traditionally, only married men over 40 were permitted to study the secrets of kabbala, based on an ancient book of commentary called the Zohar. At the modern kabbala centers, the basic teachings are shared with anyone willing to pay $144 for an eight-week introductory course.

Women, most but not all of them Jewish, are among the most enthusiastic practitioners. Why? “Usually, in spiritual groups, there are more women than men, because women are more spiritual,” Kelman said.

Comic Sandra Bernhard, Madonna’s pal and a Valley resident, is a frequent visitor to the kabbala center on the Westside, as is actor Jeff Goldblum. Actress Diane Ladd (Laura Dern’s mother) is another regular. Dolly Parton is also said to be a student of kabbala.

However, Karen Berg, who runs the worldwide centers for her rabbi husband and would know, says she has never actually seen Parton at the L.A. facility. Berg estimates that the movement has about 150,000 followers worldwide.

Characteristically, the Valley operation has a lower profile than its glitzy counterpart on the other side of the hill. No famous faces are among those attending the Kabbalah II lesson in Encino.

Instead, the students appear to be ordinary seekers, people who hope to find strategies for living better lives in the teachings of the Zohar. Winger, for instance, says that she and Kupersmith have glommed onto the kabbalistic strategy of not responding negatively to other people, no matter what they say.

“We are taking this very seriously,” Winger emphasizes.

After the lesson, Winger recounts that she came to kabbala after her father died in 1988, which she blames on bad medical care. “My poor mother died trying to get relief and justice,” Winger said. Before her mother’s death last year, both women found solace and a way to deal with their anger through instruction in applied kabbala.

“It gave us hope and inspiration,” Winger says. “You try to do positive things in this world, no matter what happens to you.

“It gave me a way to deal with the chaos and anger in my life,” she continues. A substitute teacher in the Los Angeles Unified School District, she feels kabbala has also helped her through a recent bout with breast cancer. “Whatever problems I have, I deal with in a kabbalistic way,” she says.

As for some of the more outre claims of her teacher--reincarnation, for instance--she says they don’t bother her. They could be true, she believes, and her approach is simply to take from the class what she thinks will be helpful and positive.

Mainstream Judaism has not embraced the modern kabbala movement with open arms. “It has no place whatever in traditional Judaism,” Rabbi Aron Tendler says of the material taught at the center.

He argues that this is because kabbala is being taught there “as a technique,” a problem-solving methodology available to anyone.

“Kabbala has always been the highest form of traditional learning, reserved only for the most accomplished scholars,” says Tendler, of Congregation Shaarey Zedek in North Hollywood. “It was supposed to be the culmination of a lifetime of learning.”

In Tendler’s view, teaching kabbala in a context other than a lifetime of religious study and accumulated wisdom is like teaching a child to drive or to do brain surgery. “It’s dangerous,” he says. “It gives a false view of Torah, of Judaism.”

Kabbala is too profound to be understood by any but the greatest minds, with the surest grounding in the Torah, he says. “We refer to kabbala as mysticism, but it isn’t. It’s the true understanding of the interrelation of man, God and nature.”

Karen Berg dismisses such critics as people who have not yet seen the light. “When you don’t know, and when you don’t see and when you’re not part of it, you’re afraid of it,” she says.

“That people don’t like what we’re doing is a very good sign. They didn’t like Moses, either.”