Scholarly Perspectives on Sifra Detzniuta

Scholarly Perspectives on Sifra Detzniuta

A review of the Sifra Detzniuta may initially appear distant from modern clinical concerns. However, its sophisticated understanding of divine presence and absence offers profound insights for contemporary healing relationships. Both the ancient kabbalists and modern healthcare practitioners grapple with similar fundamental questions: How does one become genuinely present to another without overwhelming them? How can absence sometimes manifest as the highest form of presence? What facilitates transformation in the space between two beings? This addendum explores how the Sifra Detzniuta's theological framework—with its paradoxical understanding of divine withdrawal, intermediary realms, and balanced opposites—can enrich our conception of the healer-patient relationship.

Epistemology Versus Ontology in Therapeutic Practice

Epistemology Versus Ontology in Therapeutic Practice

This paper examines how the philosophical tension between epistemology and ontology shapes the discourse on pantheism versus transcendence in Jewish mystical thought. By analyzing the works of contemporary scholars including Elliot Wolfson, Jonathan Garb, Amos Funkenstein, Rachel Elior, Ada Rapoport- Albert, Immanuel Etkes, Moshe Idel, and Eli Rubin, this study positions their interpretations within broader philosophical frameworks established by Kant and Hegel. The paper argues that Jewish mystical approaches to divine immanence and transcendence represent a unique philosophical contribution that navigates between Kantian epistemological limitations and Hegelian dialectical ontology.

Overcoming Doubt

Overcoming Doubt

This article examines the struggle in surrendering to the divine when confronted with doubt, internal resistance, or overwhelming urges in Jewish religious and mystical traditions. Through a review of classical and contemporary Jewish theological sources—including Hasidic teachings—this paper identifies key frameworks for understanding the spiritual struggle a healthcare giver faces in the therapeutic space, confronting the anguish and suffering of his or her patient or client and practical methodologies for maintaining faith during periods of such religious doubt. This claims that Jewish approaches to spiritual surrender are neither passive resignation nor blind obedience, but rather transformative practices that integrate psychological insight with religious devotion.

The Dialectical Divine

The Dialectical Divine

This article explores how the concept of tzimtzum illuminates the struggle between these seemingly contradictory aspects of the divine—the objective, transcendental "Higher Power" versus the subjective, personal "My-Higher Power"—and how this tension manifests in contemporary religious experience and the implications for the 12 step program of recovery from addiction.

Questioning Divine Absence

Questioning Divine Absence

This article examines the theological implications of divine absence and human questioning in Exodus 17:7, focusing on the interpretive frameworks provided by Avivah Gottlieb Zornberg, Nahum Sarna, Shani Tzoref, and recent contributions to the theology of divine absence. The biblical episode at Massah and Meribah (Ex 17) represents a critical moment of theological crisis in Israel's wilderness experience, encapsulated in the question, "Is the Lord among us or not?"

Applying Hermeneutics to the Therapeutic Interaction

Applying Hermeneutics to the Therapeutic Interaction

This paper examines the fundamental tension between two paradigms of textual engagement: the incarnational model, where language itself embodies and is saturated with divine presence, and the referential model, where text functions as signifier pointing toward transcendent truths beyond itself. Drawing on Kabbalistic, Hasidic, psychoanalytic, and postmodern frameworks, we explore how these competing understandings shape religious experience and textual interpretation.

The Duality of Divine Presence

The Duality of Divine Presence

This paper examines the complex theological concept of the dark side of the Schechina (Divine Presence) as presented in contemporary Jewish mystical thought and its relationship to post-Holocaust theological discourse. Through close analysis of primary texts that explore the feminine divine in Jewish tradition—from rabbinic literature through medieval Kabbalah to Hasidic texts—and engaging with Christian and Jewish post-Holocaust theological perspectives, this study investigates how modern theological discourse has reimagined the relationship between human suffering and divine pathos.

Shekhinah Consciousness III

Shekhinah Consciousness III: Divine Feminine as Theological and Political Paradigm for Human Suffering

This follow up essay explores the concept of Shekhinah consciousness as a theological and political paradigm that has emerged in contemporary Jewish thought. Drawing on the mystico-political theology of Rabbi Menachem Froman, the neo-Hasidic interpretations of Shaul Magid, and the mystical hermeneutics of Eitan Fishbane, I argue that Shekhinah consciousness represents a radical reorientation of Jewish theology and practice toward receptivity, presence, and relationality.

Rashi as Theologian of Protest

Rashi as Theologian of Protest

This essay was written following my dvar torah at seudah shlishit Shushan Purim 2025 on the Yahrzeit of my father and father in law of blessed memories.
Both would not have approved of my thesis.

The Absent Father and Theology

The Absent Father and Theology

This paper moves to the psychological imagining of the Divine or the absent Father (la nom du Pere) and explores the absent father in the works of Sigmund Freud, Jacques Lacan, and contemporary philosopher Rav Shagar (Shimon Gershon Rosenberg).

It examines how these thinkers understand paternal absence and its implications for identity formation, desire, and the divine. By drawing on psychoanalytic theory and mystical interpretations, the paper highlights the psychological and theological dimensions of paternal absence, arguing that the interstices between these perspectives offer a profound framework for understanding human subjectivity and spiritual experience. The convergence of these approaches reveals how absence itself can function as a constitutive force in both psychological development and religious consciousness.

Mirrors and Veils

Mirrors and Veils

This paper explores the theological concept of divine concealment across diverse mystical traditions, examining how the metaphors of mirrors and veils articulate the paradoxical hiding and revealing of the divine. Drawing from Kabbalistic notions of tzimtzum, Rebbe Nachman's "double concealment," Meister Eckhart's hidden Godhead, Simone Weil's theology of absence, and Henry Corbin's imaginal realm, we argue that divine hiddenness functions not as abandonment but as a profound mode of relationship. The study demonstrates how these traditions converge in understanding concealment as the necessary condition for authentic spiritual encounter, where the experience of divine absence itself becomes revelatory.

The Personality of The Divine

The Personality of The Divine

AI and Spirituality: The Disturbing Implications

AI and Spirituality: The Disturbing Implications

In mystical traditions the sense of the immanent gives rise to religious experience even ecstasy whereas in orthodox faiths the infinite distance of the divine in its transcendence produces fear and awe. The total availability and ubiquity of AI on the one hand and the massive data bank that allows its reach everywhere electronic data is uploaded to the cloud, has this same ironic contrast seen in the struggle to reach the divine yet paradoxically never quite access it.

75th Birthday Blessings for My Children

75th Birthday Blessings for My Children

Eldad and Medad: What Did They Prophesy?

Eldad and Medad: What Did They Prophesy?

This most enigmatic pericope leaves open more questions than it answers. Who were these two prophets and what was their prophecy. Commentators seem unable to answer these two basic questions. In the following meditation I suggest a contextual solution that provides a spiritual roadmap to those (like them) with a questionable genetic (yichus) or ethical past.

By situating the story close to the parsha of the “inverted nuns”1 I believe the message might well provide support to the splitting between the murmurings.

Inverted Nun's: The Space Between Calamities

Inverted Nun’s

If the Aron was the repository of both the new luchos and the broken luchos, the shards then what is being offered is the shattered souls and lives as well as the hope for a wholesome future.

It was precisely these verses that speak of the travelling Aron that were placed between the calamities to split them, as if to intentionally share with us the deepest Torah, that our avodah MUST include the calamities the shattered broken souls we were as well as what we must endure in the future as part of our service.

The presence of these verses is a comfort that the Aron, the Schechinah is with us in troubled times as much as good times, and we offer both the good the bd and the ugly on the altar of service.

The interjection of these verses out of place is just the opposite and fits with our sense of being out of place in this world and in these times.

Eldad and Medad whose geneology was suspect and who were too shamed to show up in the Sandedrin lottery continue to prophesy and according to the midrash chaseros ve yeseidos their prophesy was precisely the healing presence of the Aron for future generations to realize all is never lost, that the calamities besetting our people and ourselves individually are narratives surrounding the center location of the Ark of the covenant the Aron Bris that centers the hope and longing, the healing within the pain.

Tzniut: A Re-Appraisal

Tzniut: A Re-Appraisal

A comprehensive look at a contentious topic relying on traditional sources alongside modern scholarship.

Shabbat Hagadol 2024

Shabbat Hagadol 2024

Insights from Edgar Alan Poe, Rashi, Sforno, and the Hasidic masters, this essay is preparation for Passover 2024.

Tzimtzum: A Review

Tzimtzum: A Review

Dedicated to the memory of my dear father Shlomo (Willy) ben Yehudah Ungar’s first yahrzeit.

Dad's Tombstone Setting and Siyum

Dad’s Tombstone Setting and Siyum