Description
Highest Knowledge Ever – By Rabbi Pinchas Winston
I have written several books over the years about Kabbalah and using kabbalah. To some Kabbalah may “only” be Jewish mysticism, “dessert” after having satiated your mind with more fundamental Torah ideas. But that’s like saying that understanding how your digestive system works is only important after you have developed a good understanding of good eating etiquette.
In other words, both are essential. However, your digestive system functions in the background at all times and has an ongoing impact on your health. If you don’t take care of it from the get-go, it can weaken you even as you strengthen your knowledge base.
Likewise, Kabbalah is not simply mysticism. It is quite simply the inner workings of Creation. Revealed Torah tells you what God created and when. Kabbalah tells you how God created everything, and how things interact with one another based upon the directives of God and the actions of man.
Kabbalah is the most valuable and highest knowledge known to man. It is certainly the holiest, too holy, according to some kabbalists, to even be spoken. There are four levels of Torah learning, referred to by their acronym Pardes, and Kabbalah is the highest one.
The intellectual leap from Chumash to Mishnah is not that great, and from Mishnah to Gemora, greater. But the leap from Gemora to Kabbalah is massive, forcing some to decide that it is closed off to them, even though they are proficient at all other levels of Torah learning.
Not all aspects of Kabbalah are as abstract or as holy as others. Some parts of Kabbalah just provide a deeper, more mystical insight into something, like the parsha, for example. Others are so technical and other-worldly that they seem to have an intellectual language of their own. It makes inference a lot more difficult and tradition a lot more essential.
In any case, I have tried to explain what I have written about as clearly as possible within the context of each book. Usually, I have struggled between saying too much and saying too little, between spoon-feeding the reader and leaving it up to them to do their own follow-up research if necessary. Sometimes I have just cross-referenced other books that have already discussed an idea in more detail.
But recently it was suggested to me that I put together a dictionary of kabbalistic ideas. I liked the idea, but I began to consider that other such dictionaries already exist in book form or online, and thought I might just be reinventing another “wheel.” I also wondered how long such a project would keep my attention, since I really enjoying writing books.
Then it occurred to me even more recently (about an hour ago) that a good compromise might be to combine the two, dictionary and book. I’m still not completely sure at this point what that will look like, but what follows will speak for itself.
