מכון גל עיני

Preface

In our modern day and age, new ideas on health and healing are being sparked—both with regard to applied techniques and to the theoretical basis of healing itself—not only by scientists and medical professionals, but also by educated and perceptive laymen.

The conventional methodology of diagnosis and treatment has traditionally focused on determining the immediate cause of an illness by empirical observation of its symptoms. However, interest in the psychological and spiritual origins of disease has begun to have a great impact on the way physicians practice modern medicine. Current physical diagnosis and treatment have begun to take into account the spiritual anatomy of the inner person. In addition, the growth and success of alternative medical therapy, as well as consumer education and sophistication in the Information Age, have challenged the very bases of health and healing.

Separation of the body and its physical systems from the inner person was once a medical axiom. However, this presumption has begun to change. Recent scientific research notes fundamental relationships between the mind and the body, connections that were known and described hundreds of years ago by scholars of the Torah and Kabbalah. In fact, a survey of modern research on “mind-body connections” suggests that these are attempts to describe, categorize, and understand the soul.

It seems most appropriate, therefore, to introduce the public to the long-standing tradition of healing and medical practice within Judaism in general, and Kabbalah in particular. This work has been written for the person who wishes to develop an understanding of this tradition and its wisdom regarding the nature of the body and its soul-roots.

In Kabbalah’s perception of spiritual physiology, the health and maintenance of the body is dependent upon that of the soul, a spiritual entity not traditionally recognized or related to in medicine. Kabbalah teaches us how to heal the spiritual afflictions of the soul together with the physical afflictions of the body; how to better understand the one from the other and thereby to bridge the soul to the body.

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In order to better appreciate the insights Kabbalah can offer in our understanding of physiology and medicine, and how we will see these insights unfold in the present work, we shall briefly consider a few introductory points regarding the nature of Kabbalah and its methodology.

The word “Kabbalah” derives from the Hebrew root whose original meaning in the Bible is “to parallel.” Kabbalah analyzes all of reality in “parallel” to basic spiritual/Divine models or frames of reference.

Together with the principle of parallelism, one of the most basic teachings of Kabbalah is that every well-defined set of objects appears as a hologram, where each element of the set reflects all of the others. This phenomenon is referred to as “inter-inclusion.”

The parallel principle and the inter-inclusion principle are interdependent, for when the proper parallels (one-to-one correspondences) are made between two sets, the inherent wealth of significance possessed by each member of the two sets is brought into relief. The property of inter-inclusion is thus better revealed within each set.

In order to apply these two inter-related principles of parallelism and inter-inclusion in any given context, we must possess a number of Kabbalah’s most basic sets of concepts. These fundamental conceptual sets will serve as models or frames of reference, which, through applying the principles of parallelism and inter-inclusion, will help us structure our understanding of the concepts discussed.

The three most basic models of Kabbalah, defined in detail in the first part of this book and employed throughout its remainder, are the four letters of God’s essential Name, the ten sefirot, and the twenty-two letters of the Hebrew alphabet. These will be seen to correspond to the properties of our souls and to the limbs and physiological systems of our bodies. During the course of our discussion, they will be helpful in our quest for understanding how to maintain good health and heal states of disease.

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The material presented here is divided into three parts:

Part I: Human Anatomy and Physiology through the Eyes of Kabbalah

Part II: Kabbalistic Understanding of Disease

Part III: Kabbalistic Understanding of Healing

As medical practice is generally seen as consisting of diagnosis and treatment, the first two parts of the book deal with diagnosis, while the third deals with treatment. When we speak of healing, we tend to think of an illness of the body that requires a remedy. However, as we have noted, in Kabbalah no physical illness is separate from a spiritual illness, and spiritual illness often (though not always) manifests itself as a physical ailment.

Rabbi Dov Ber, the Maggid of Mezritch,[1] once said that “a small hole in the body causes a large hole in the soul.”[2] Therefore,  we can sometimes understand the “small hole” in our bodies by examining its result, the corresponding “large hole” in our souls.

Thus, we begin this book with a look at the mystical perception of human anatomy/physiology.

Part I—a reference guide to body and soul interac­tion—presents a mystical map of the body as follows:

Chapter 1, “Soul and Body,” provides an overview of some of the most basic vocabulary in Kabbalah—the Divine channels of energy and the corresponding powers of the soul. Afterwards, this chapter moves on to draw associations between these spiritual powers and the physical structure of the body.

Chapter 2, “Mystical Anatomy,” begins a systematic (though not exhaustive) mystical examination of various parts of the body—such as the eyes, the fingers, and the procreative organ (brit).

Chapter 3, “Mystical Physiology,” continues the mystical examination of the body, focusing on systems such as the respiratory system, the circulatory system, and the immune system.

Part II focuses on disease and the Kabbalistic understanding of its causes, as follows:

Chapter 4, “Origins of Disease,” examines the phenomenon of the primal fear of death and its relationship to illness, in its three symbolic manifestations, the fear of the wolf, the fear of the lion, and the fear of the snake.

Chapter 5, “Understanding Illness,” considers the transformational power of illness and looks at illness as a spiritual lack and as spiritual estrangement. It focuses in particular on the immune system, which is shown to be central in understanding disease and developing the ability to fight it.

Chapter 6, “Lupus: A Case Study,” examines an example of an autoimmune disease, applying the above models to an understanding of a particular illness.

Part III discusses healing as follows:

Chapter 7, “Methods of Healing,” looks at the power of the physician and considers various forms of contemporary medical practice—including homeopathy, allopathy, osteopathy, and naturopathy—and their mystical correspondences.

Chapter 8, “The Healing Power of Prayer,” explains how healing power can be drawn down through various spiritual practices, and especially through the most potent healing tool of all—that of teshuvah (“return to God”).

If “understanding an illness is half its cure,”[3] then giving full expression to one’s existential longing to become one with the ultimate source of life, the Creator of the universe, through heartfelt prayer and teshuvah (return to God), is the other half. Would both halves be complete, one would have no need for external remedies. When external remedies are indeed required, with greater understanding of the illness comes the insight to discover new, better methods for its cure.

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In this book, Rabbi Ginsburgh has compiled material he originally presented in lectures on human physiology, medicine, and healing, in various cities in Israel and America, including Jerusalem, Shechem (at Yeshivat Od Yosef Chai), Rehovot, New York, and Los Angeles.

In addition to the main flow of ideas in the text, Body, Mind, and Soul contains a wealth of more advanced material intended for seasoned students of Kabbalah and Hassidism. These expositions are appended as supplementary essays and endnotes, and even the beginner will be enriched by perusing them.

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We have observed the following conventions in this book:

Several Names for God are used in the Bible and referred to here. Because of their holiness and spiritual power, it is forbidden to pronounce these Names other than in prayer or when reciting a complete Biblical verse. Therefore, we have deliberately altered the transliteration of these Names, in accordance with the time-honored practice of how observant Jews pronounce them in non-liturgical contexts.

The unique, four-letter Name of God is known generally as the Tetragrammaton and is referred to in Jewish writings (and in this book, as well) as “the Name Havayah.” We are forbidden to pronounce this Name altogether, and indeed, its correct pronunciation is not known nowadays. In liturgical concepts, the Name Adni is pronounced in its place; in non-liturgical contexts, the word Hashem (“the Name”) is substituted. Due to its special sanctity, it has been intentionally abbreviated (or hyphenated) when a verse is written in Hebrew. In English, we have spelled it with large and small capitals (“God”) in order to distinguish it from all the other Names of God except for Shakai, which we translate as “the Almighty.”

The term “Bible” (Tanach) comprises the Torah (the Five Books of Moses); the Prophets (consisting of eight books: Joshua, Judges, Samuel, Kings, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and the Twelve Prophets); and the Writings (consisting of eleven books: Psalms, Proverbs, Job, Ruth, the Song of Songs, Ecclesiastes, Lamentations, Esther, Daniel, Ezra-Nehemiah, and Chronicles).

The term “Torah” must be understood according to the context: in its narrowest sense, it refers to the Five Books of Moses, but more generally, it can refer to the entirety of God’s written and orally transmitted teachings to Israel and all of humanity.

The term “Kabbalah” is sometimes used in its specific sense, to refer to the classic texts of the ancient Jewish mystical tradition, and sometimes in its more general sense, to refer to the whole of the inner dimension of the Torah, including the teachings of Hassidism. Indeed, Hassidism is referred to in Hassidic texts as “the Kabbalah of the Ba’al Shem Tov,”[4] inasmuch as its revelation of the innermost core of faith and wisdom lies at the base of all the classic texts of Kabbalah.

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We wish to thank here a number of individuals for their contribution to this book:

Mr. Avichai Madmoni, for inspiring us to undertake this work.

Our medical advisor, Dr. Yosef Lev (Jeffry Lee) Kashuk M.D., F.A.C.S., for his professional comments and insights.[5]

Mr. Yechezkel Anis, Rabbi Asher and Mrs. Sara Esther Crispe, Rabbi Moshe Genuth, Mrs. Rachel Gordon, Mr. Uri Kaploun, Mrs. Uriela Sagiv, and Rabbi Moshe Wisnefsky, for their invaluable editorial assistance.

Our hope and prayer is to continue to shed light on the field of medicine from a traditional Jewish perspective, opening up the wellsprings of the Kabbalistic tradition for the benefit of all mankind.

Gal Einai Publications

Jerusalem

10 Shevat 5764