Tag: Selichot

Zohar expert’s Selichot talks

Dr. Daniel Matt will speak in Vancouver at Or Shalom over Selichot, Sept. 20-21. (photo from Or Shalom)

Even one of the world’s leading authorities on kabbalah has felt lost in the study of Jewish mysticism.

Dr. Daniel Matt began studying the Zohar, the central text of kabbalah, on a one-year exchange at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. “Knowing that I had just one year there, I decided to take both Beginning Zohar and Advanced Zohar simultaneously,” he recalled. “I felt somewhat lost in Advanced Zohar, but that didn’t really matter, because I also felt somewhat lost in Beginning Zohar!”

His first book, his PhD dissertation, was a scholarly edition of the first translation of the Zohar: The Book of Mirrors by Rabbi David ben Yehudah he-Hasid, composed in the 14th century. He then taught at the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, Calif., for two decades and spent as many years translating the most authoritative English translation of the Zohar. Matt, who will be in Vancouver Sept. 19-21, has become a preeminent scholar of the text.

In the mid-1990s, Matt was approached by Margot Pritzker – of the family who owns the Hyatt hotel chain – to produce a comprehensive English translation of the 700-year-old Zohar from the original Aramaic manuscripts.

Knowing the importance of the project, Matt agreed. “The Zohar was the only Jewish classic that had never been adequately translated,” he said.

The Zohar: Pritzker Edition was published in its completion in 2018. The 12-volume set, of which Matt translated and annotated the first nine, took 18 years to complete. For the feat, he received the National Jewish Book Award and the Koret Jewish Book Award, the latter calling his translation “a monumental contribution to the history of Jewish thought.”

The honour “was thrilling,” Matt said. The actual process of completing the translation, however, was at times grueling. “I basically restructured my life so that I could stay focused on this immense project without burning out,” he explained. “I started each day with a walk in the Berkeley Hills, then worked for five hours, then went for a swim, then rested and did some prep for the next day’s adventure.”

A major challenge was that, over the centuries, scribes who copied out Zohar manuscripts made changes to the text, meaning that an accurate version of the original was hard to find. “They added explanations, simplified the unruly Aramaic, deleted erotic descriptions or difficult – or invented – words and phrases,” Matt said.

Previous English translations of the Zohar were based on printed versions that, in Matt’s view, did not reflect the original writings. But, early in his process, he came upon manuscripts from the 14th to 16th centuries that he considered superior to the printed ones. To produce a “more authentic and poetic version,” he first reconstructed an Aramaic text from those manuscripts so he could build his English translation with it and, ultimately, share that artistry with a new audience.

“It is a treasure not just of Jewish literature, but of world literature, hidden away in an Aramaic vault for 700 years,” he said.

For the past year, Matt has taught an online Zohar course and has had more than 500 students, both Jewish and otherwise, from all over the world. He has found it gratifying to see “how eager people are to find personal meaning within Judaism, to explore and challenge the traditional understanding of God and Torah.

“I find that many folks are amazed to see that what they believe most deeply has been expressed by the mystics hundreds of years ago, or what they have stumbled across in Buddhism or other spiritual teachings is right there in our own tradition, hidden for too long.”

What Matt impresses on his students, both beginner and advanced, about the Zohar is how it goes beyond the literal meaning of the Torah. “It challenges our normal ways of making sense and reveals a radically new conception of God,” he said. “God is not a bearded man up in heaven who runs the show. God is infinity. At the same time, God is equally female and male, and the feminine half of God (Shekhinah) is perhaps the greatest contribution of the Zohar.

“All of Western religion is dominated by the masculine description of God, which has influenced our culture tremendously and left us with an imbalanced view of our own human nature.” Shekhinah, he said, “helps us realize that God embraces both the feminine and the masculine realms, though ultimately God is beyond gender.”

Matt’s Vancouver visit will include a vegetarian potluck at Or Shalom on Sept. 20, after which he will talk on Shekhinah. On Sept. 21, he will present the talk How Kabbalah Can Stimulate Us to Renew Our Lives, which will include songs on the theme of yearning to join with the One and meditation led by the synagogue’s Rabbi Hannah Dresner. Program details and registration are available via orshalom.ca/selichot.

Shelley Stein-Wotten is a freelance journalist and comedy writer. She has won awards for her creative non-fiction and screenwriting and enjoys writing about the arts and environmental issues. She is based on Vancouver Island.

Forgiving but not forgetting

Robbie Waisman, left, and Chief Robert Joseph, will speak at Temple Sholom’s Selichot program Sept. 1. (photos from Temple Sholom)

Two men who have built bridges between Canada’s indigenous and Jewish communities will speak about reconciliation, forgiveness and resilience at Temple Sholom’s Selichot program.

Robbie Waisman, a survivor of the Holocaust who was liberated as a child from Buchenwald concentration camp, and Chief Robert Joseph, a survivor of Canada’s Indian residential schools system, will address congregants on the subject of Forgiving But Not Forgetting: Reconciliation in Moving Forward Through Trauma. The event is at the synagogue on Sept. 1, 8 p.m.

Waisman is one of 426 children who survived Buchenwald. At the age of 14, he discovered that almost his entire family had been murdered. He came to Canada as part of the Canadian War Orphans Project, which brought 1,123 Jewish children here under the auspices of Canadian Jewish Congress.

Joseph is a hereditary chief of the Gwawaenuk First Nation, located around Queen Charlotte Strait in northern British Columbia. He spent 10 years at St. Michael’s Indian Residential School at Alert Bay on the central coast of the province. He recalls being beaten for using his mother tongue and surviving other hardships and abuse. A leading voice in Canada’s dialogue around truth and reconciliation, the chief is currently the ambassador for Reconciliation Canada and a member of the National Assembly of First Nations Elders Council. He was formerly the executive director of the Indian Residential School Survivors Society and is an honourary witness to Canada’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission.

Waisman and Joseph have become close friends over years of discussing, publicly and privately, their respective histories and the challenges of building a life after trauma. Waisman has become a leading Jewish advocate for indigenous Canadians’ rights.

“I think we have a duty and obligation to give them a stand in the world,” Waisman said. “For many, many years, many people ignored them, and their story about truth and reconciliation was just in the background, they weren’t important. I think that now that we give them an importance – and it is important that they speak up and speak about their history and so on – [it is possible] to make this a better world for them.”

Waisman believes that the experiences of Holocaust survivors and the example that many survivors have set of assimilating their life’s tragedies and committing themselves to tikkun olam is a potential model for First Nations as they confront their past and struggle to address its contemporary impacts.

“We were 426 youngsters who survived Buchenwald and the experts thought that we were finished,” Waisman said of his cohort of survivors, who have been immortalized in The Boys of Buchenwald, a film by Vancouverites David Paperny and Audrey Mehler, and in a book by Sir Martin Gilbert. “We wouldn’t amount to anything because we’d seen so much and we’d suffered so much and lost so much. And look what we have accomplished. We have little Lulek [Rabbi Yisrael Meir Lau], who became the chief rabbi of Israel, Eli Wiesel, Nobel Peace Prize winner, and I can go on and on. When I speak to First Nations, I say, ‘look what we’ve done,’ and then I quote [Barack] Obama and say, ‘Yes, you can.’”

One of Waisman’s first experiences with Canadian indigenous communities was when he was invited to the Yukon. His presentation was broadcast on CBC radio and people called in from all over the territory, asking that Waisman wait for them so that they could come meet him.

“They kept phoning in and saying, ‘Don’t let Robbie leave, we are coming in to see him,’” Waisman recalled. “It was just amazing. I would sit on a chair and they would come and touch me and then form themselves in a circle and, for the first time, they were speaking about their horrors and how to move on with life.”

This was a moment when Waisman realized the power of his personal story to help others who have experienced trauma gain strength.

The Selichot program was envisioned by Shirley Cohn and the Temple Sholom Working Group on Indigenous Reconciliation and Community, which Cohn chairs.

“It’s the right thing to do given the political atmosphere, the increased awareness about indigenous issues and just the fact that, as Jews, I think we need to be more tolerant of others, and these are really the first people in Canada, and they’ve suffered discrimination, as we have, and I think it’s important,” she said.

The message is especially relevant at this time of penitence and self-reflection, she added. “It’s a time for thoughtfulness and looking inward,” said Cohn, who is a social worker.

Rabbi Carrie Brown said the Temple Sholom community sees the topic as fitting.

“We want to look at this further as a congregation,” said Brown. “Selichot is a time of year when we really start to think about ourselves as individuals and ourselves as a community and the conversation between Robbie Waisman and Chief Joseph really fits nicely into that, about trauma and reconciliation and forgiveness and all of these major themes of the season.”

This is “not just a one-off program,” the rabbi stressed, but the beginning of a process of education and conversation.