0.14 Religious perspectives on personality  (Page 2/14)

The Foundation of the Jewish Faith

Judaism is one of the oldest religions in the world, and today some 14 million people practice this faith. It is a monotheistic religion, thus believing that there is only one god: Yahweh . They believe that Yahweh called Abraham out of his homeland to establish a new home, in the general area of modern-day Israel. This occurred in approximately the year 1900 B.C. However, the formal foundation of Judaism involved the establishment of Yahweh’s laws, known as the Torah . The Torah is not merely a set of laws or cultural guidelines, but rather, they are a pattern for living that transforms the Jewish people into Yahweh’s people (Wilkins, 1967). The Torah is quite long, consisting of five books, which include many complex rules for both the people and the priesthood. However, the rules were greatly simplified in Yahweh’s special revelation to Moses on Mt. Sinai, around the year 1300 B.C., and these simplified guidelines for how to live one’s life are known as the Ten Commandments :

I am the Lord your God…You shall have no other gods before me.

You shall not make for yourself a graven image…you shall not bow down to them

or serve them…

You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain…

Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy.

Honor your father and your mother…

You shall not kill.

You shall not commit adultery.

You shall not steal.

You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor.

You shall not covet your neighbor’s house…your neighbor’s wife…or anything

that is your neighbor’s.

from Exodus, Chapter 20; Holy Bible

As simple as it might seem to follow these ten guidelines for living one’s life, it is just as easy to ignore them. Unfortunately, ignoring them has often been the case, even among some of the most famous people in Jewish history. Thus, the mystical practice of Kabbalah has arisen, to both help people live a righteous life, and to help them do so without having to guide their behavior by simple, yet strict, commandments. In other words, there was, and is, a need to transform people’s minds. In order to effect real change, we cannot simply expect people to follow the rules, we need to help them make the rules a part of their life. In this sense, Kabbalah, like Yoga, Buddhism, and as we shall see for Christian mysticism and Sufism, can be viewed as a sort of cognitive psychology, a redirection of one’s conscious personality development.

Discussion Question: If the Ten Commandments are simply rules, as opposed to being an inherent part of our lives, is anything missing? Are there things we would still be allowed to do that would harm other people, or harm ourselves? What can we do to make the Ten Commandments a way of life, how can we be mindful of them?

Kabbalah

Kabbalah is a path designed to teach people about their place in life and in the universe, particularly with regard to the divine. It emphasizes that one’s daily life should not be separated from one’s spiritual life. In more practical terms, Kabbalah deals with the everyday experience that we have unlimited desires, but only limited resources to satisfy them. Thus, there will always be some degree of suffering in our lives if we focus only on the material world. Kabbalah teaches a pathway toward experiencing something beyond simple materialism. And yet, that path remains obscured in a certain degree of secrecy. The principal books are available only in the Hebrew and Aramaic languages, and some believe that Kabbalists who are qualified to teach Kabbalah are all in the country of Israel (Besserman, 1997; Laitman, 2005). Accordingly, a distinct degree of difficulty in the study of Kabbalah is to be expected: