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The Kabbalah Centre, 2003 – Zohar to the Palestinians
Read this post, if you want, as a belated tribute to the World Day of Prayer, observed last Thursday on the day better known as Patriot Day or simply 9/11. Or as a memorial to the late Philip Berg,...
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In Honor of Yom Kippur – Jews, Muslims, and a Zikr in Gaza
Chalk this post up to Saturday being Yom Kippur. Or to my having spent last Saturday evening at a Sufi-style zikr (religious dance) at a local Friends’ meeting house. Or to a certain nervousness over...
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Kabbalah, the Zohar, and the Rose (Part 1)
“Rabbi Hizkiah opened with the verse, ‘Like a rose among thorns’ [Song of Songs 2:2]. What is this ‘rose’? The Community of Israel …” That’s the way the Zohar starts off. The Zohar, which first began...
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Kabbalah, the Zohar, and the Rose (Part 2)
(This is a continuation of last week’s post.) How many petals has a rose? A thirteen-petalled rose; photo by Rod Borghese. Thirteen, according to the Zohar, the great Kabbalistic classic of the Middle...
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Bertrand Russell, Plotinus, and the Kabbalah
(This post is a follow-up to my two-part series on “Kabbalah, the Zohar, and the Rose.”) When you’re looking for enlightenment about Kabbalah, Bertrand Russell isn’t the first person you’d think of...
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A Girl Named Jessica – Shakespeare, the Talmud, and the “Merchant of Venice”
Are you a “Jessica”? If you are, your name says that you’re a woman so beautiful people can’t stop looking at you. You won’t find this in any dictionary or website, or even Wikipedia (which offers a...
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Sex, the Moravians, and Rabbi Jonathan Eibeschuetz
“I am, as you will quickly discover if you don’t know already, a raw newcomer to your field of expertise. I’m here because I believe I can shed some observations from my own field, Jewish mysticism...
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From Judaism to Islam – Margaret Marcus, Maryam Jameelah (Part 1)
Deborah Baker. The Convert: A Tale of Exile and Extremism. Minneapolis: Graywolf Press, 2011. How many years has it been since I first heard of Maryam Jameelah, the former Margaret (“Peggy”) Marcus? At...
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From Judaism to Islam – Margaret Marcus, Maryam Jameelah (Part 2)
(Continued from last week’s post.) “Now that I have settled myself here, I would like to explain how I came to be a part of the Mawlana Mawdudi’s family. It seems I have spent my entire life trying to...
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From Judaism to Islam – Margaret Marcus, Maryam Jameelah (Part 3)
(Continued from last week’s post.) Here’s what Deborah Baker writes in the afterword to her book The Convert, on Maryam Jameelah who was once Margaret Marcus–the Jewish girl from New York who converted...
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“I Came This Day …”– Journal of an Eibeschuetz Translator
Once upon a time, I’ve learned from reading the comic strips, schoolkids coming back from summer vacation were made to write essays on “What I Did Last Summer.” (Linus to Lucy: “What did I do last...
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God in His Mother’s Womb – Journal of an Eibeschuetz Translator
I intended to blog about UFOs this week. I really did. But my mind and spirit have been where they’ve dwelt for the past several weeks: in the eerie Kabbalistic world of Jonathan Eibeschuetz, the...
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UFOs, Louis Farrakhan, the “Mother Wheel,” and …“Independence Day”
The date: September 17, 1985. The place: Tepoztlan, Mexico. Louis Farrakhan, controversial leader of the Nation Of Islam–NOI, better known as “the Black Muslims”–is abducted into a UFO. Or is he? The...
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“Mystery of the Great Dragon”– Zohar, Kabbalah, and Evil
“Behold, I am against thee, Pharaoh king of Egypt, the great dragon that lieth in the midst of his rivers …” –Ezekiel 29:3 Ezekiel’s Hebrew word for “dragon” is tannim. It’s the same word that, in its...
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John Mack and Donna Bassett – UFO Abductions and Lawrence of Arabia
“I faked it,” said the woman named Donna Bassett. “Women have been doing it for centuries.” John Mack. From huffingtonpost.com. What Donna Bassett “faked” was her hypnotically evoked memory of having...
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Sabbatai Zevi, the “Holy Serpent,” and the Passover Plate
This is a post for Passover, the Jewish holiday celebrating the Exodus from Egypt, which starts tonight. It’s on a subject, though, that at first sight doesn’t seem to have much to do with the...
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Sifra di-Tzeniuta –“The Book of Concealment”
“The Book of Concealment. The book that weighs in the balance. For until there was the balance, they did not look at one another face to face, and the Ancient Kings died and their ornaments could not...
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From Judaism to Islam – Margaret Marcus, Maryam Jameelah (Part 1)
Deborah Baker. The Convert: A Tale of Exile and Extremism. Minneapolis: Graywolf Press, 2011. How many years has it been since I first heard of Maryam Jameelah, the former Margaret (“Peggy”) Marcus? At...
View ArticleClik here to view.
From Judaism to Islam – Margaret Marcus, Maryam Jameelah (Part 2)
(Continued from last week’s post.) “Now that I have settled myself here, I would like to explain how I came to be a part of the Mawlana Mawdudi’s family. It seems I have spent my entire life trying to...
View ArticleClik here to view.
From Judaism to Islam – Margaret Marcus, Maryam Jameelah (Part 3)
(Continued from last week’s post.) Here’s what Deborah Baker writes in the afterword to her book The Convert, on Maryam Jameelah who was once Margaret Marcus–the Jewish girl from New York who converted...
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