Kabbalah

I read this silly headline that Jennifer Aniston might be the next in a list of Hollywood types to take up the study of Kabbalah, Jewish Mysticism. Although I have had a lifelong commitment to all things Jewish, I know almost nothing about Kabbalah and have had only these three small brushes with it:

I once asked my father what Kabbalah was. "Oh" he replied "one cannot study Kabbalah unless one has studied the Torah, the Talmud, the Mishnah and all the Commentaries. One must have attained a high level of maturity, age and wisdom to even begin to grasp Kabbalah." Being a teenager at the time and having attained neither age, maturity nor wisdom, I quickly forgot all about Kabbalah.

A few years ago I was in a class with the Rabbi from my last Temple. The question of Kabbalah came up and he said that while he would not actually teach Kabbalah, he would attempt to explain the kind of study it entailed. He then proceeded to speak for an hour about the letter Aleph, the first letter of the Hebrew alphabet. Why was it the first letter? What did the other letters in the name "Aleph" mean?  What was the numerical value of all the letters in "Aleph"? What was its relationship to the Name of the Holy One? I got the idea that the study of Kaballah would be dry and boring.

One day I took out "Kabbalah for Dummies" from the library. I found it to be a simplified  explanation of Jewish rituals like lighting candles on Shabbos and holding a Seder. I learned nothing that might "transform my life" between its covers.

Even I am not so much of a Dummy to think I can dabble in Kabbalah and ferret out its mysteries...

;-)