Brother Nathanael - Episode 39: Secrets Of The Kabbalah
Aired: 2024-10-22
Duration: 05:40


=== Salaam Alaikum (05:13) ===

[00:00:00]  Thank you.
[00:00:29]  Thank you.
[00:00:43]  Salaam Alaikum.
[00:00:45]  Alaikum Salaam.
[00:00:47]  Okay, got to get this centered.
[00:00:49]  Oh!
[00:00:51]  I'm your number one.
[00:00:52]  I grew up in the synagogue, Shabbos school, Hebrew school.
[00:00:57]  When the Israelis wanted to make that shalom and all that gooky stuff.
[00:01:03]  Now they murder people.
[00:01:05]  ...with the Lubavitchers.
[00:01:08]  There was no Chabad house then.
[00:01:10]  ...means the pious ones.
[00:01:12]  That's the top level of Judaism.
[00:01:15]  And they're looked upon by all Jews as the Sanhedrin of all things Jewish.
[00:01:24]  I studied with Shalom Posner, who was a close friend of the Rebbe, Menachem Schneerson, who later was hailed as Moshiach.
[00:01:37]  But he kicked the bucket.
[00:01:39]  He died.
[00:01:40]  They waited him to rise from the dead.
[00:01:42]  He didn't.
[00:01:43]  Then they had to figure out who would be the Moshiach.
[00:01:47]  They said, well, maybe he'll rise from the dead in a year from now.
[00:01:50]  I think he died 12 years ago.
[00:01:54]  He hasn't gotten up.
[00:01:56]  He's rotting away.
[00:01:58]  All right, so let me talk about the secrets of Kabbalah.
[00:02:04]  We studied Kabbalah a little bit in Shabbos school.
[00:02:09]  It was mostly emphasized on Tanakh, which means the Old Testament, Torah, Nebim, Prophets, Ketuvim, the poetry.
[00:02:17]  But we did study a little bit of the Zohar, which is one of the books of Kabbalah.
[00:02:23]  I'll get into it more.
[00:02:25]  And the other one we studied was Portions of Talmud, but we had to read it in Aramaic.
[00:02:33]  Which is the language it was written in, in Babylon.
[00:02:37]  Then when I studied with the Lubavitchers, the main really Hasidic group today, there's three main ones.
[00:02:48]  The Lubavitchers, the Satmaras group out of Austria-Hungary.
[00:02:56]  The Lubavitchers are more Russian, Ukraine.
[00:03:01]  And the other one is Reslav.
[00:03:05]  Those are the three main chassidim.
[00:03:09]  And they're dynasties, where it's handed down from the first leader, Baal Shem Tov, Rabbi Nachman, the Lubavitchers, and it's handed down, hierarchical and as a dynasty.
[00:03:29]  Alright, so I did study Kabbalah with Shalom Posner, but I'll get into it more.
[00:03:38]  How you study Kabbalah and when you're considered ready to study Kabbalah.
[00:03:44]  The basic tenets, so to speak, of Kabbalah.
[00:03:49]  But to go into it deeply, I was really forbidden.
[00:03:55]  Not because of anything about me personally, but because you have to be an expert in Talmud first, okay?
[00:04:04]  Madonna, who popularized this thing, the chassi just laughed at it.
[00:04:09]  It was just a moneymaker by secular Jews, but it failed.
[00:04:13]  They went bankrupt.
[00:04:15]  All right, let me get to my notes here.
[00:04:18]  And I have Rockwell here to help me.
[00:04:24]  And there's some gefilte fish in there.
[00:04:27]  He doesn't eat gefilte fish.
[00:04:29]  Secrets of the Kabbalah.
[00:04:31]  I put this together within 15 minutes from what I was taught by the rabbis of the Lubavitchers.
[00:04:42]  And it's really the Kabbalah that fuels Judaism as we know it today.
[00:04:50]  Now, Kabbalah comes from the root word K-A-B-A-L, not C-A-B. K-A-B-A-L, which means to receive.

=== Rabbinic Authority Replaced (00:41) ===

[00:05:07]  So Kabbalah means that which is, more of a paraphrase, it means that which is received.
[00:05:16]  But only the Rebbis receive it, you see.
[00:05:18]  Only the Rebbis.
[00:05:20]  That is the top of the rabbinic Gepiltapish chain.
[00:05:25]  Now, the rabbinic authority, let me scroll down here, which replaced the Levitical priestly authority.
[00:05:33]  Okay, let me scroll down.
[00:05:35]  I've got to figure out how to do this.
[00:05:37]  The rabbinic authority which replaced the priestly authority.