Breathe with me a sigh of relief--I have found my apartment here in Jerusalem. For the past month now (I arrived four weeks ago, a totally incomprehensible concept to me) I have had an amazing, albeit temporary, housing situation with a family I know who is also here for the year from San Francisco. We have all had fun and it's been so, so great to be with people I know and I am so glad I've had a chance to help them out at least a little bit I hope. And, all that said, it has not been very fun to spend so much time now that I am actually here running around town on the bus looking at various rooms for rent throughout the city.
So, last week when I received email from a woman named Aya in response to a post I had placed advertising my need for a furnished room to rent I was somewhat doubtful that this, like any other place I'd gone to see, would pan out...but her words were so charming: "I read that you are looking for a place to live for awhile. Perhaps you would like to come join our apartment?"...as if it were a mah-jong club or yoga class. Intrigued, I went to see it and could hardly believe what I had found. How did I know it was the one for me?
I met Hana, the landlord's niece and resident of the office, and Kenneth and Eva, the other two housemates who are partners and live in the actual bedroom, and also Artur who thanks to his departure has made the salon available for me to rent. I saw the fully-equipped kitchen, the warm common dining room, the vine-draped porch and the tiny yet lovely garden, and then we went on a tour of everyone's rooms.
We peeked into the first two but stepped all the way into the third, into the room where Artur was packing up and making things ready for the next renter and as I looked around I was intrgued by the moss green velvet sofa-slash-fold out bed and the upright piano in the corner. "It's really lovely," I began to say as I turned to Hana and Kenneth who were standing in the doorway, but the words left my mouth and I found myself standing agape at something I had not been able to see when just peeking in from the hall. Lining the wall was an entire floor-to-ceiling built-in bookcase full of, well, everything...and as if everything were not enough, right in front of me at eye level was the entire 23-volume set of the Zohar. "You have the Zohar, the whole thing," I stammered. "Ah, yes!" Hana exclaimed delighted, "unusual, no?"
I agreed to take the room right then and there.
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So, I find myself running to an internet search engine every post to learn more about a word or a phrase I have no knowledge of...this week it was "zohar". Are these the books that inform Kabbalahist thinking/practice?
Ah, thank you for this valuable feedback. I try to provide explanations and clarifications when I mention something I anticipate being potentially confusing but I did not do that in this case and since it was a central element to the post I can see how that would be confusing. My apologies.
Zohar (from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia):
The Zohar (Hebrew: זהר "Splendor, radiance") is widely considered the most important work of Kabbalah, Jewish mysticism. It is a mystical commentary on the Torah (the five books of Moses), written in medieval Aramaic and medieval Hebrew. It contains a mystical discussion of the nature of God, the origin and structure of the universe, the nature of souls, sin, redemption, good and evil, and related topics.
And, in my own words once again:
There is a series of beliefs or teachings from antiquity about the Zohar and specifically who should be allowed to learn from it. Married men over the age of forty are considered qualified and prepared to address and digest the messages found within it...many people, especially learned younger women, have in assertion of their own rights of access to this text begun to learn from it. Whether or not this explains the prevalance of red string bracelets and bottles of Kabbalah water in Los Angeles, where traditionalists commonly perceive the spiritual practice to have moved away from the teachings of the Zohar, I don't know :)
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