Rabbi Simon Jacobson on the Music of Judaism

What’s said in this shiur

The opening of this shiur, in 18Forty’s own words — taken from the captions, so names and Hebrew terms may be approximate.

Rabbi Simon Jacobson, it's such a pleasure and privilege to be with you here in Israel and to talk about Jewish mysticism. You wrote Toward a Meaningful Life and it sold so many copies and inspired so many, among the other books and the beautiful shiurim and ideas that you share all over the world. But what is Jewish mysticism? First of all, thank you for having me. It's an honor to be here, especially in the Holy Land, as you say. And maybe that's a good segue, because in the Bible it says when Jacob fell asleep on the Temple Mount, and then he realized where he was, he said, oh, he called it “zeh shaar hashamayim,” a gate to heaven. So in modern vernacular, you can say Israel is like a bridge, an interface between heaven and earth. And that's what Jewish mysticism is. You know, we live in a physical world with materialistic needs. We need to eat, to drink, to sleep, to make money, to provide for our families, to protect ourselves. But then there's another side to us, which is the transcendent side, what some would call the soul. And mysticism essentially is the study of the soul, the experience of the soul. The

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1. 0:01Rabbi Simon Jacobson, it's such a pleasure and privilege to be with you here in Israel…
2. 2:55mortgage documents." And he came over and gave me a slap. No, I was not traumatized.…
3. 6:50And I really was intrigued by the process. How do you remember hours and hours? And…
4. 9:35So what animates the soul is God. What is God? There you go. I was waiting…
5. 12:47words, basically instead of a narcissistic, self-interested life, a God-centric life. And that's basically all of…
6. 15:33mission that was given to Adam and Eve, which is to bring soulfulness into a material…
7. 18:49are two parts of one whole. They're both equal in that sense. They both need each…
8. 21:36the community I grew up in, so it's close to me, my heart. So he explains,…
9. 24:54has suspended His own so-called hashgacha, his providence and his oversight when it comes to that…
10. 27:32It's diversity without discord. I'll call it harmony within diversity. It's when you really see people…

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