by Nathan Erez
“Kabbalistic literature is generally divided into three major streams. The first and most important one is the cosmological, mission-oriented one. Here we find a direct line between ourselves and the Master of the Universes, by way of His influence on all the intermediate worlds. Note the term, ‘Master of the Universes’ in the plural. In this view, there are mutual influences, going from the upper worlds to us, and from us to the upper worlds. All the commandments and all the proper intentions and all the prayers are ultimately aimed at mending those spheres, which were damaged at the time of the Creation. In the language of the Kabbalah, this means repairing those vessels which were broken.
“The second stream is Kabbalistic-prophetic. It is an attempt to attain what is known as cleaving to God and to achieve spiritual elevation. This can be accomplished by internal meditation, which includes reciting the Holy Names, internal and external purification, combining sacred letters and repeating them over and over, singing and moving the head, and breathing techniques. This can unite one with the higher worlds. One who does this properly can reach the level of prophecy. There are even books with detailed instructions on how to actually accomplish this and how to ascend to a higher spiritual level. I often hear of students who have embarked on such a course, and it is, indeed, a disease.”
“Don’t worry about me. And what about the third stream?”
“The third stream is the one which has elicited the most criticism. It is referred to as Practical Kabbalah. By that, we mean people who use the Kabbalah for their own personal purposes, as a way to exploit the secret knowledge to which they have access in order to control nature and man’s fate. Practical Kabbalah appeals directly to supernatural forces and sometimes even makes them solve the problems of the one calling upon them. These include attempts to foretell the future, to converse with the dead, to heal the sick, to banish evil spirits and the evil eye, and of course to acquire wealth, respect, and/or the love of a man or a woman. That, too, is a dangerous game to play.” Prof. Ashuri laughed, but Elijah could not tell whether or not she was serious.
When he walked on, the spell was broken, and he remembered what else he had wanted to ask her. He remembered something Norman told him before he set off on his travels that he claimed to have heard from his father: “You will bring the fountain!”
The Third Sphere
When the Israelis Conquered Jerusalem
In 1967, the nineteenth year of the State of Israel, the Israelis took the Old City of Jerusalem. After a number of battles, the Israel Defense Forces broke into the Old City via the Lions’ Gate. The original plan had been to conquer the walled Old City through the Dung Gate, which appeared to be less fortified. However, the senior paratroopers refused to enter the Old City via the Dung Gate and demanded that the entrance to the sacred city be through the Lions’ Gate. As they explained it, the very name Lions’ Gate was more in keeping with their own view of themselves. This choice received considerable criticism once the battle had been won, with claims that it would have been preferable militarily to attack the city through the Dung Gate. The officers in charge of the operation, who saw such carping as no more than hindsight, rejected this criticism angrily. Another factor, which was not considered at the time by those involved, was that there was a certain poetic justice in the choice of the Lions’ Gate. In Arabic, the gate is known not as the Lions’ Gate, but (more properly) the Leopards’ Gate, so named because of the stone animals engraved above it, but as “The Gate of the Tribe” (Ashibat), a word reserved for the “Tribe” of the Jewish people, whereas an Arabic tribe is referred to as a Kabilah. The name is an indication that - for reasons which are not clear - the Arabic tradition is that this is the gate through which the Jews will enter the city.
As a result of this war, the Hebrew University of Jerusalem underwent its third major transformation. Originally, when the university was founded in 1925, the dedication ceremony, attended by the British High Commissioner for Palestine, Sir Herbert Samuel, took place at the site where the original campus on Mount Scopus was later built. During Israel’s 1948 War of Independence, the Mount Scopus area was one territory in which battles were fought over. While the campus was ultimately retained by Israel, it became an enclave, entirely surrounded by Jordanian territory. Under the terms of the cease-fire reached between the two sides, Israel was granted limited access to the campus and was permitted to post a small contingent of people there. Only once a month, and this by means of an armed and armored convoy, were the contingent's provisions brought in for the following month. That, of course, rendered it valueless as an educational institution. To meet the needs of the university, a new campus was built in Givat Ram, in the western part of the city.
When the entire city of Jerusalem was liberated in June 1967, the government immediately decided to return the Hebrew University to its original site. As a result, a major concrete complex was built on Mount Scopus, planned by a top architect who had won numerous prizes for his distinctive work and exceptional talent. What no one had foreseen when viewing the blueprints in the abstract, but soon became apparent in reality, is that the layout was so complex that neither the students nor the lecturers could find their way around, and people who had been using the facilities for years would often find themselves lost.
As he drove to the university library in Givat Ram, Elijah kept mulling over what Prof. Ashuri had said. However, as usually happened when the logic in his mind was confronted by material that differed from it on the emotional level, there seemed to be a short circuit, and his mind went blank. Why the hell did one have to drive from one campus to the other just in order to access the library? On a rational level, he knew the answer, but that did not make it any more palatable. Life has a dynamic of its own. Thus, even though the campus on Mount Scopus was again accessible and in use, the campus at Givat Ram was still there. In the end, it had been decided that the university would function with two campuses, divided by faculty: the exact sciences would remain in Givat Ram, while the social and behavioral sciences would be located on Mount Scopus. The result was that students and lecturers whose program included elements of both would be forced to commute between Mount Scopus and Givat Ram.
Elijah loved his office on Mount Scopus. From his small window, he could see the Temple Mount and the Old City. However, the manuscript collections were kept in the Givat Ram library, and so it was that he, too, joined the numerous commuters between the two campuses.
Added to the time wasted in driving between the two, was the fact that there was a chronic shortage of parking spaces. He did eventually find a space, but it was a long way from the university entrance. Wearily, he walked from his car to the library, where Ziva, whom he had asked to find the article by Odel Weiss, was the librarian.
“Since when are you interested in the supernatural?” Ziva asked him in a stage whisper. A number of professors looked up, and Elijah felt very ill at ease. He had no idea how Ziva could have known about the conversation he had just had with Prof. Ashuri.
“What are you talking about?” he said, trying to appear indignant, but feeling guilty for doing so.
“Just take a look yourself,” said Ziva, pointing to a computer screen near her. Elijah sat down and looked at the screen. He had no idea from which database the information on the screen had come, but he understood that it must be from some journal entitled The Struggle for the Future. The display showed that the journal had been catalogued under four headings: Social Justice; the Radical Left; Interdisciplinary Studies, and Supernatural Phenomena. There was a note that this particular issue of the magazine was devoted entirely to the supernatural. There was also a note to the effect that the actual content of this issue was not available on the Internet, and that anyone who wished to read the articles in question should obtain the print version.
Elijah relaxed. One’s personal rights were still respected by the university, and Ziva’s comment had nothing to do with his conversation with Prof. Ashuri.
“I was sure this w
as an article about manuscripts. Where is the actual journal, so I can read the article?”
“It might seem rather strange to you,” said Ziva, “but that particular issue is missing. What’s even stranger about this whole business is that three months after we received that issue, the publishers contacted all the universities and asked that it be returned. The official reason they gave was that there were a number of editorial errors. The scuttlebutt, though, was that some of the authors were nonplussed by what they themselves were supposed to have written. They claimed that what they had submitted had been substantially modified by the editors without their permission, and accordingly they demanded that the issue be withdrawn. Our university, as all the others, returned its copy.”
Here Ziva grinned, a grin that spread over her entire face, and she told him conspiratorially, “However, we still have part of it.”
“How did you manage that?”
“Actually, you can thank a miscreant for that. Some man evidently tore out two pages from the journal, and after we had returned the journal itself, those pages were found lying around elsewhere in the library. Now, whenever we return anything for replacement or whenever we find something missing, we place a cardboard marker in its place, to remind us that we are waiting for the replacement. Here, we simply pasted the two pages to the cardboard marker. These pages are still here, and I’ve photocopied them. They consist of the editorial page with an advertisement on the other side, and two sides of an article by Ms. Weiss which you asked me to find for you.”
Elijah wanted to say something, but Ziva didn’t give him a chance. “Since I know how your mind works, I have already tried to find out if Ms. Weiss has any other publications to her name in any other magazine, but I lucked out. This is the only article she’s written. I tried to find out more about her, but again, got nowhere. There’s no address given for her, nor any other way to contact her. I figured you’d be interested in reaching her, so I sent an e-mail to the journal editor. He replied very politely, but told me he had only been editor for a year, and that this article was from before his time. Since that particular issue was published, there had been three different editors, and the entire format and content had changed. Now it is no longer called The Struggle for the Future, but Societal Justice. The new editor also told me that there were no any extra copies available of that particular issue.”
“That’s not what I wanted to say,” remarked Elijah defensively. “First of all, what makes you think that a man tore out the pages? Couldn’t it have been a woman? Be that as it may, my more basic question is: What would I do without you?”
“You’d probably do all the work on your own, or find someone else to butter up,” Ziva replied.
“No way! There is no one like you. You’re absolutely unique.” Elijah took the envelope containing the pages that Ziva had prepared for him, while she returned to the line of people waiting patiently for her assistance.
Elijah decided to check out the new issues of Societal Justice. On his way to the stacks, he noticed a magazine entitled A Different Existence. After his conversation with Prof. Ashuri, he thought this magazine might also be of interest. He leafed through it and was amazed at the plethora of treatments and workshops offered. He read the names to himself: aromatherapy, Reiki, and various names he had never encountered. On every page he was accosted by names: Feng Shui, Tao-Shiatzu, Anthroposophy, Yura Veda, I-Ching, Deepak Chopra, Magnetotherapy... he was quite relieved when he finally saw an ad for a familiar treatment: acupuncture.
“At least that’s one I’ve heard of,” he murmured to himself.
One of the ads he noticed, for a workshop, completely floored him. He read and reread it a few times to be sure he had not misunderstood what it said; the workshop was one which led its participants to learn the spiritual laws for achieving success.
Elijah was exhausted. He felt as if he had fallen out of the frying pan and into the fire. It seemed to him that there were far more professionals offering salvation and justice than there were takers of such services and decided it was time for him to get back to reality and the demands made of him by his daughters. He returned home and forgot about the envelope in his briefcase.
After three full hours of work the next day, he finally remembered the envelope and decided to read the pages of the mysterious - and missing - journal. Seating himself on a comfortable sofa, he began reading. The first page consisted of the editor’s declaration:
I am afraid that many of you have preconceived notions about supernatural phenomena. The source for this is probably the Marxist tendency to relate only to the material. Every hint at any phenomenon which they cannot understand is rejected scornfully, as if it was nothing but opium for the masses. This issue seeks to confront these views. All the authors are individuals who have had to deal with supernatural experiences in their own lives; not through any angel or other intermediary, but they themselves. All of them are partners in our quest for...
And that was where the page ended.
Elijah stretched out comfortably and began reading the article by Odel Weiss, a name probably chosen to add a further dimension of mysticism. Both the beginning and the end of the article were missing.
One must remember the era. It was at the end of the ‘60s and the place was the San Francisco area, which was full of all sorts of hippies. Bespectacled young men with long hair and young women with and without tight-fitting blouses indulged in long and wild conversations into the small hours of the night about what is above, what is beyond, and what is between the two. All types of weird hypotheses dealing with UFOs, death, religion, and politics wafted through the air. Economics majors held earnest debates on subsidizing marijuana and weed’s effect on the world economy. Plus, of course, we had the era of sexual liberation, unhampered by such problems as herpes or AIDS. Some of those involved knew the zodiacal and astrological signs of the night better than they knew the moldy apartments in which they lived. The air was dominated by scents of hashish and marijuana, and these were the spiritual guides of the more conservative students. In this atmosphere of total intellectual inebriation, every irrational idea was greeted enthusiastically, and the crazier a person was, the greater he appeared to be to those around him.
On one of the days when I was starving, I agreed to come to my parents for a meal. I brought along my new friend, John McDonald, a man in his late fifties, whose every sentence totally fascinated me. My parents did not ask who he was. It was not considered appropriate to ask visitors where they came from and where they were going; the turnover was too great. John was thin, tall, had thick lenses in his glasses and a strong desire not to stand out from the crowd.
My uncle, a real estate broker, who was regarded in our family as more tolerant and liberal toward young people such as us, was also at the meal. After the meal, rather than embarking upon the customary rave of his generation about the crisis the country faced with its youth, my uncle began to discuss with my parents the value of real estate in the area, and claimed that the large influx of hippies had brought down the value of real estate. John asked politely to add some comments of his own on the issue.
“That’s only a temporary decline. In the long run,” he claimed, “there’s no doubt that an investment in this area will offer an astronomical yield. I have no doubt that thirty years from now the entire area will be the creative center of the United States.”
John went to explain, in elegant English with an impeccable Oxford accent, why. I learned later that this was one of his remarkable talents: the ability to adopt whatever accent he wished, so that no one could guess his origins.
“Mark my words, thirty years from today all those restless souls out there will have realized at least a small part of their dreams. After all, by then, the person to be elected President of the United States will have been one of them. They will bring about changes in basic concepts and managerial techniques, will smash the prevailing hierarchies, will mock all the accepted traditions and sacred conventions, and
will come out on top.”
We listened to him bewitched. Years later, my uncle told me that as a result of that conversation, he had bought up a substantial amount of property in the area:
“It was the best advice I ever received. My only mistake was in not following his advice to the end. John spoke about thirty years, and I sold all my property after twenty years. I was simply afraid to wait any longer, but, believe me, I still made enough money. Who would have guessed that this area full of wild-haired youngsters would one day come to be known as Silicon Valley? Properties that were then going for a song are now worth millions. Believe me, that guy of yours was really something special.”
My uncle never forgot John, and he wasn’t the only one; no one who met John could ever forget him. There was a kind of massive “presence” or - in mystic terms, “karma” - about him. He had to make contact with you, but if he did, you fell into his trap and could never, ever get away from him.
After that meal, I remained glued to him for three solid weeks and I have a feeling that I learned more from him in those three weeks than I learned in all the rest of my life.
In the spirit of the time, we spoke about the future of the world. John explained to me in great detail the theory of Malthus, the English priest who had become a professor of economics. As early as the end of the 18th century, he foresaw a global crisis. Based on his analysis, the number of people in the world increases geometrically every few years. In contrast, the amount of food grown is limited to the amount of available arable land. As he saw it, there is no way for us to escape the total famine, which will bring about political and social chaos, and this, in turn, will bring about a drastic decline in the world’s population. John explained to me that this crisis will have to come eventually, but can be delayed by the development of new technologies to make the land more productive and by the destruction of many species of animals in the search for more cultivable land, but it is unavoidable. The resulting famine, along with the political and social chaos, can bring about the destruction of mankind. This, of course, is predicated on there not being a drastic revolutionary change in mankind and its needs. John sometimes would refer to this as “the Nash point of equilibrium”.
