Hugo Schwyzer

Though I don’t often blog about it, I’ve been studying Kabbalah since early 2004. Friends of ours invited my wife and me to come to a few lectures, and after a suitable period of suspicion, I became fascinated. My initial reservation about Kabbalah was the most common of all: wasn’t Kabbalah incompatible with Christianity? Like most folks, I was under the impression that Kabbalah was the “mystical aspect of Judaism”, with roots no earlier than the Middle Ages.

The Kabbalah Centre is quite controversial, particularly among Jews, for espousing the notion that Kabbalah is more of a “practice” than a faith — and that as a practice, it is universally applicable. While the study of Kabbalah was once reserved solely for married Jewish men over forty, the Centre makes the case that Kabbalah’s teachings can transform anyone’s life. The most famous practitioner of Kabbalah is Madonna, and she and other celebrities have given rise to the popular assumption that this ancient wisdom, at least as practiced by the Centre, is trendy, undemanding, and bastardized. (Let me note that Madonna’s commitment is profound and enduring rather than transitory and superficial.)

Doing internet research is a poor way to learn about the Kabbalah Centre. The one and only scholarly study of the Kabbalah Centre in print is Jody Myer’s recent monograph Kabbalah and the Spiritual Quest: The Kabbalah Centre in America (Praeger 2007). Myers, professor of Religious Studies at Cal State Northridge, spent years interviewing the Centre’s students, teachers — and detractors. Her work is fair, even-handed, and though not without some small criticisms of the Centre’s operations, ultimately quite laudatory of the work it does in the world. I recommend it strongly to anyone interested in learning more.

In any event, I’ve worked through my initial skepticism to discover that the Centre does offer helpful spiritual tools to those who have a strong faith in Jesus. When I first came to the Kabbalah Centre, I was told “Hugo, whatever Kabbalah does in your life will only make you a better Christian. We don’t want you to try and become Jewish. We want you to use whichever tools you find that are helpful to enhance your own understanding of God and your role in the universe.” I had my doubts. But to paraphrase William James, contempt prior to investigation is a sure bar against understanding, and so I gave Kabbalah my time and my effort.

I can’t enumerate in a single post all the tools I’ve found within the Centre that have proven so useful. I’ll name three here:

1. Kabbalah has radically changed how I view the Old Testament, particularly the Torah. In my religion courses in college, I learned to read the OT from both a Christian and a secular scholarly perspective; in the Centre, I get to understand it from a mystical, esoteric vantage point. As any literary scholar will tell you, a story can simultaneously work on multiple levels: literally, metaphorically, morally, anagogically, and so forth. Kabbalah has given me a radically different way of encountering what has been so familiar for so long.

2. The kabbalistic insistence on “cause and effect” has been very helpful to me. As an adult convert to Christianity, freely given grace is the Great Fact of my life. I make much of my sense that my sins are forgiven by a God whose love I cannot merit through my actions but whose love I receive merely through my being. But of course, the fact that I am forgiven by God does not mean that I don’t still get to cope with the consequences of my past (and present) mistakes. Though Christians don’t deny cause and effect (who does?), Kabbalah explains — on both an immediate and an eschatological level — how cause and effect work in our individual lives and globally.

3. Kabbalah emphasizes that we prepare for the Messiah by “embodying Messiah energy.” Now of course, there is considerable disagreement among those of us who practice Kabbalah as to whether or not the Messiah has already come. We who are Christians think the Messiah appeared in Jerusalem, on the expected white donkey, some two millenia ago. But we also eagerly await His promised return, just as our Jewish brothers and sisters await His coming for the first time. When you are “partners in waiting”, it matters somewhat less whether what you’re waiting for is making a first or second appearance. One way in which Christians are called to live out their faith while they wait is to “build the Kingdom”, and to go beyond worshipping Christ to becoming more and more like Him. (I blogged about this topic of “becoming like Christ” after the great John Stott, in his retirement sermon, challenged us all to do exactly that.). Studying Kabbalah has given me new insights into how to do the work Jesus is calling me to do.

As part of our work with the Centre, my wife and I went to Israel in September 2007 for the High Holy Days. Part religious pilgrimage, part convention, part historical tour, part celebration, it was a deeply exciting time. One particularly enjoyable feature of the trip was meeting fellow students of Kabbalah from all over the world: from Venezuala to Ghana, Australia to the Netherlands, folks who were fascinated by this ancient practice flew in to celebrate and worship together.

One particularly large contingent of students came from the Philippines. Indeed, no other country in all of Asia (outside of Israel itself, of course) has been as receptive to the work of the Kabbalah Centre as it has been; the Centre has more students from the Philippines than from all the other countries in the region combined. All in this group of mostly twenty, thirty, and forty-something Filipinos were raised in Catholic homes (though a few had moved to evangelical Protestantism as adults) — and they had all become enthusiastic students of Kabbalah. They had made a huge effort to come all the way to Israel, but many of them came with questions. As it turned out, the chief question most of them had was about the fundamental compatibility of kabbalistic practice with their own Catholic or Protestant faith. Most of the leaders of the Centre (though not all) come from Jewish backgrounds and were unable to answer all of their questions. A friend of mine, an expat Filipina and long-time Kabbalah student, asked me to sit and chat with her countrymen and women.

That “chat” took place outdoors, under a canopy, on a sparkling day in the hills of Galilee. (And here are two pictures of that “lunch lecture”.) As best I could, I answered questions about what it meant to be both a Kabbalah student and a Christian. Whatever I said made some sense, I suppose; before the lunch was up, several had asked me to come to the Philippines and talk at greater length to a larger group. “Many of us have families who are troubled by our study of Kabbalah”, one woman said; “perhaps you could come and allay some of their fears.”

Perhaps it was being in those same hills where Jesus walked, but I didn’t hesitate. Without knowing how or when, I agreed instantly. Some of the Filipino students may have thought I was just being polite, but when I told my wife about the suggestion that we visit the islands and give some lectures, she was instantly convinced we had to do it. In short order, tickets were booked and lectures were planned. And though my father-in-law’s death twelve days ago was a hard blow, my wife insisted that we stick to our plans and go to Manila and teach.

I’ll post soon about my impressions of the Philippines. For now, I’ll just mention that this short trip was a smashing success. We left Saturday night, landing in Manila early Monday morning. I gave the first lecture on Tuesday night, the second on Wednesday. In between, I had several one-on-one meetings with individual students of Kabbalah.

The first lecture talked about Jesus and the essential compatibility of His teachings with kabbalistic practice. The second night, I spoke on the ways in which the study of Kabbalah could enhance and enrich the spiritual journey of the faithful Christian. As best I could, I based what I was saying on the New Testament itself. Lots of folks who study Kabbalah are fascinated with the Gnostic gospels and other extra-canonical writings; I’m determined that the case for the fusing of Kabbalistic study with Christian doctrine can be made on the basis of the widely accepted texts alone.

I spoke in a large conference room on top of a high-rise in Makati, the heart of the business district for sprawling metro Manila. We had about 60 folks come the first night, about 70 the second.

I’ll eventually post some of the notes from these lectures online. Perhaps there will be a book to come of it, perhaps not. In any event, I’m happy that the lectures were very well-received. It was well worth the travel involved, and I am eager to return soon to that remarkable country.

More about this brief trip in my next post.