Sense of Soul - Kabbalah’s Path of the Sephiroth

Episode Date: March 31, 2025

Today on Sense of Soul we have Rabbi Matthew Ponak, he is a teacher of Jewish mysticism, a spiritual counselor, and the author of Embodied Kabbalah: Jewish Mysticism for All People. Ordained with honors at the neo-Hasidic Rabbinical School of Hebrew College, he also holds a Master’s degree in Contemplative Religions from the Buddhist-inspired Naropa University. Rabbi Matthew lives in Victoria, British Columbia and is certified as a Focusing Professional to guide others to deeper self-knowledge and healing through their bodies. Rabbi Matthew Ponak's new book, The Path of the Sephirot, comes out in April 2025. It is an experiential guide to counting the 49 days of the Omer, the period of time between the springtime holidays of Passover and Shavuot. In his latest offering, Rabbi Matthew combines traditional Kabbalah with practical everyday wisdom to help seekers of any background access the spiritual potential of this expansive time of year. https://a.co/d/3hqdNR5 To learn more about him, his offerings and speaking engagements, visit https://matthewponak.com Join the journey of The Path of the Sephiroth  https://www.eventbrite.ca/e/kabbalah-and-the-49-gates-counting-the-omer-for-spiritual-growth-tickets-1242543253319

Hey Soulseekers, it's Shanna. Journey with me to discover how people around the world awaken to their true sense of soul. Now go grab your coffee, open your mind, heart and soul. It's time to awaken. Today on Sense of Soul, back with me for the third time is Rabbi Matthew Ponak. He is a teacher of Jewish mysticism, a spiritual counselor. He's ordained with honors as a rabbi and he holds a master's degree in contemplative religions. He's certified as a focusing professional to guide others to deeper self-knowledge and healing. He's the author of Embodied Kabbalah and he's joining us today to share his new book, The Path of the Sephirot.

It's my absolute honor to have him on again. So please welcome Matthew Ponak. Hey, how's it going? Good. How are you doing, Shanna? I'm good. Good to see you. Yeah, you too. It's been a while. I'm good, good to see you. Yeah, you too.

It's been a while. I know, it's been a while. Yeah, I can't wait to hear what you're up to. Yeah, all kinds of things. It's been a couple of years, I think. So many, many things have happened, globally, personally, professionally. I am excited to drash with you again.

For sure, great. I'm glad you've still got that word in use. I do. And so I've done a little study on the Hebrew alphabet. We talked a lot about that. Yeah, we talked about this a couple of times before. You know, my name kind of led to that. But, you know, I was curious about the others. The other letters. The other 21. And I just was led to it. So I would take the letter and I wanted to know everything about it. And because there's so much to learn about each letter,

it's like really crazy. It's like this one letter means so many things. It's a number, it's a metaphor, it's an actual thing. It's so many different- It's an acronym. It represents a word or a whole universe. Yeah, it's very complex. It's not, and actually the symbol itself even,

so much, I was doing that. And actually I don't think I got past maybe like the, I didn't even get to the mob yet, because there was so much. You are not alone. Why? There's, in fact, my first kind of Jewish teacher in the sense of someone who was really transmitting that kind of deeper knowledge and wisdom.

When I was a teenager, I met this person and she used to say a lot, you could spend your whole life studying Aleph, which is the first letter in the Hebrew alphabet. And what she meant by that is that everything has incredibly deep meaning. So don't feel bad if you don't learn everything. To some degree, it's about the journey of how we're investing ourselves in everything we're doing. Yeah. I mean, that's how this journey has been with new eyes because prior to this, it was like, you know, I believed everything I was told, right, from every preacher or priest or wherever, you know, and now reading, say, any scripture without having somebody tell me what it means, which I do like to also get other people's...

It's not a bad thing to have teachers or other people who have, you know, journeyed these paths before. Yeah. It's not as, but it's, it's not the end all be all. Right. I know. Yeah, there's the teacher before. Yeah. But it's not the end all be all. Right. Yeah, there's the teacher within. Absolutely. And it's so complex, just like each letter.

And I love that you said she, your teacher. Many of my greatest teachers have been women. Well, amen or a woman to that. I'll tell you, I've been watching My Unorthodox Life. Have you heard of it? No, tell me about it. It's a Netflix series. It's like a reality show where this woman

is leaving her Jewish neighborhood. She still believes in the faith and everything. She just doesn't like the fundamentalism. Is she Hasidic? I might've heard about this one. Yes, yes. From Mansi or something like that. Yes, Mansi, New York.

Sure, I guess. I'm familiar with the city. I haven't been there, but it's well known. Matthew, come on. I'm watching this. I'm like. Well, have you seen Nobody Wants This? No, I haven't.

Oh, well. We'll have to trade shows. I'll watch Unorthodox, or My Unorthodox Life. So Nobody Wants This is about a podcast host who is not Jewish, who dates this LA rabbi guy, the same one who played the main character on the OC. It's the same actor, Adam Brody, is now playing a rabbi, a young kind of hip rabbi in LA.

And he falls in love with this podcast host who has a podcast called Nobody Wants This. Oh, wow. It's a dating podcast. Oh, that's interesting. So he is not in the Orthodox world. He is very much like a young, hip rabbi. And so it's a cool juxtaposition.

A lot of the popular shows about the Jewish world lately are more focusing on the Orthodox realm. But one of the reasons I like Nobody Wants This is because it's just about a guy who's sort of like a regular dude who also happens to be a rabbi and he's it, you know, it's a TV show. There are things I like and things I don't like about it, but you might want to check it out. It's pretty cool. I felt that way about you. I felt like you're a regular dude. So while I was watching the show with my wife, and it was like episode two, and here's this rabbi sort of sneaking

around behind everyone's back, and he's having this sort of pseudo-forbidden relationship and whatever. And my wife said, if you want to tell people about what kind of rabbi you are, you should point them to this show. And I said, what do you mean by that? And what she meant was that you're a normal person who's also a rabbi and you can kind

of tread these worlds. And that's a big part of not just who I am, but who I strive to be, if you know what I'm saying. I've in earlier phases of my life, especially when I first encountered spirituality and mysticism and all this kind of deep stuff when I was a teenager and in my early 20s, it was all about expansiveness and moving beyond and it was the real art of having a normal conversation was something I had to learn again, how to cultivate because my upbringing until that point, it was relatively conventional

sort of secular. Yeah, Jewish, but it was very much just sort of modern of this world. And when I encountered, let's say altered states of consciousness and whole traditions around that, it really brought me away from normalcy for a while. So having the capacity to both have that spiritual side, but be able to relate to people. Something I really not just believe in, but something that I strive for.

Because I guess there's different paths, but something that I strive for. Because I guess there's different paths, there's different ways of being, but I think there's a lot of value in not being a fundamentalist. Because one way of saying that is being someone who can, you know, accept others and just meet people where they're at and be open to being wrong. And yeah, being ordinary. And not above, right? Yeah. Because I think that, you know, growing up Catholic, I mean, you know, those those higher people in the church, right? They are untouchable, right? There was a separation right between a spiritual leader and just an everyday person. And now that's shifting. And these children, you have children, they're coming into this world.

They're less conditioned. They see the world differently, different experience, and people are going to have to meet them where they are or they're going to have empty churches. Have you ever, you probably have the book by Khalil Gibran, the prophet, I believe the author was an Eastern Orthodox Christian who was very universal. He was living in Lebanon. I think originally he might have moved, but it came out in the 1920s. But it's very timeless. And he's got, it's about a prophet who's leaving this village or this island. And right before he goes, everyone says, wait, tell us about this and tell us about that. And every chapter is this poetry on different topics. So someone says, tell us about children. And he says, your children are not your children. They're the sons and the daughters of life's longing

for itself. And he goes on, I haven't memorized the whole chapter, but it's something essentially that your children are going somewhere that you can never go. The future. And you can give them your love, but not your thoughts. They have their own thoughts. And it's this super empowering, very like love them, but know that you are like the bow and they are the arrow and God is the archer and you're just sending them off. And I think that attitude has really informed the way I try to view parenting.

And when you're talking about religious institutions and the next generation, I think it's a very good point. It's very important to realize. And things are moving forward. Tradition is really good at being traditional. Institutions are really good at tending the fires of these ancient insights. And there is a lot of wisdom there.

At the same time, if all we're doing is keeping ancient traditions alive and we're not interacting with what's new and what's fresh, it becomes a problem. And the same is true on the other side. If all we're doing is being new and fresh and we don't have connection with the wisdom of our ancestors, which there's a lot of wisdom there, we're also missing, we can become unmoored. I think a lot of it's really about balance. That's that whole saying, you know,

don't throw the baby out with the bath water. And I actually almost threw out the baby. But within my own study, my own experiences, I was able to read things for the first time, experience things for the first time with these new eyes and be more open minded, right? Kind of broadened, just didn't hold so tightly onto the belief systems that have, that's in my genetic, right? Right. That we amend the Constitution as we should, because we are not living in a place. There are some things that need to be amended, yeah. Yeah. We amend the constitution as we should because we are not living in a place. Things do change.

And if we're so stuck in our ways. And what you're describing a little bit too, and I don't know if this is quite what you were saying about the baby in the bathwater, but there are times when people naturally just need to sort of walk away from it all. There are times when things can become so oppressive or just we can get so stuck in it that there's a really, I think, natural human tendency or need to just kind of break the temple, to shatter the idols,

so whatever the metaphor you wanna use essentially and in those pieces, we can, you know, we can pick them up. But if we're thinking about picking them up while we're smashing them, that's actually not what we're needing in those pieces, we can pick them up, but if we're thinking about picking them up while we're smashing them, that's actually not what we're needing in those particular moments. Sometimes we just need to walk away from it all because it's really become very burdensome.

Now, I'm thankful not to be in a place like that in my life, right? I've walked away from things like that when I was younger and I needed to do that. It's more dramatic. It could be more fraught or difficult or even kind of dangerous in ways. But there's different kinds of transitions that are needed at different moments in our lives. I'm less angry than I think I was a few years ago when we did talk, because I think I really

was going through religious trauma syndrome. Yeah. You know, there was ink that was like this grieving process and came to this place where I also appreciate now that at least I had the spiritual foundation that I understood and I felt before that Holy Spirit. Like I know what it feels like now I'm feeling it in a different way and there's not all of these labels and ideas connected to it. I've like established my own truth. Yeah. Another one of my teachers, who is also a woman and a psychologist,

she has this book called Journey From Betrayal to Trust. And there's a second edition, I think it's got a slightly different title. My name is Beth Hedva. Every chapter is on a type of betrayal. Betrayal of the mother, betrayal of the father, betrayal of the beloved. And the whole path she lays out is that ultimately,

humans are gonna be humans. And when we're young or when we're at certain times in our life, we project on to people these archetypes, these divine qualities, and we see them in our eyes on a very deep level as more than human, as perfect as representations of the divine father, the divine mother, the divine beloved, and all of these things. And betrayal in that sense is inevitable, because humans are human. They are not the divine father. They're not the divine mother. Or, I mean, a lot of people experience this with spiritual teachers as well, where we have someone we really revere and they become superhuman. And then what do we do when we find them not living up to their own teachings or not living up to morality or those kinds of things? It can be this sense of crisis. And what she says in this book is, that's this betrayal moment that we're gonna experience. And the journey from betrayal to trust

is when we start to find that archetype within. We find the inner teacher, find the inner father, the inner mother, and it can happen in all of these beautiful, profound ways. And that experience you're describing of having this tradition and this structure, which is, you could say imposed, you could say taught, you could say given to you, passed on to you. However it is, this happens to many of us in our generation and it's not always such a good fit. For some people it is. I find myself sometimes feeling jealous

of the people that it totally works for, this thing they inherited. Oh, how wonderful. Right? That's not our paths. But the moment where we can realize the difference between this external teaching and the teacher within and we can find that inner voice, that's part of that journey from betrayal to trust is that this whole system, I can learn from this.

I know this now. I can learn from this great, you know, tens of thousands of Jewish laws, let's say, that I was learning about in my Orthodox phase when I was a teenager. And I can pick and choose. I can say, oh, that's interesting. I'm gonna try that on.

Oh, that's not really for me. You know, cause my inner teacher, my inner guidance knows the difference between something that's mine and something that isn't. So there's a way, right? There's different kind of phases and unfoldings, but I think in many ways, if we can make contact with that intuition, that inner guidance, the inner wellspring, that's about as valuable a spiritual ally and spiritual teacher we can ever have. Yeah. I found this to be my journey. And I never thought this before. I was never taught this.

So there was this also learning how to trust myself. Yeah, it's an important message, an important message to put out louder into the world. And you don't get there without questioning, without being curious, without this seeking phase. Yes. And I think for some people, we don't get there without first glomming on to an external guru and feeling disheartened in that process. I've had a couple teachers for whom

they were just larger than life. And it was great. I learned a ton. And there were points where I just realized these folks, they might not even be trying to, but they have created this mystique around them. And it's not healthy. Certainly not healthy for me.

And I don't wanna be a follower of something that ultimately can't serve me. Yeah, that's a cult. Yeah. Well, I mean, I think there's a spectrum there. Thankfully, they weren't getting me to donate all my money, isolate myself from my friends and family, and you know, become a slave. That is the extreme version. This was more really charismatic people who legitimately wanted to help and weren't necessarily always so good at empowering others. Yeah, yeah. That controlling of people, but you know, that's very scary. That's

what I was saying about that reality show that my orthodox life, I mean, I was like, Holy cow, there's so many rules, especially for women. Okay, so this is that's where I was really connecting. And last time we spoke, I was really getting into the divine feminine, really trying to figure out who Sophia was, and all that. And you know, over the past year, I've been connecting more with the divine masculine. I realized the importance. I was like, Oh, wait a second. I have like this total conditioned idea of a toxic masculine. And I learned this through some very interesting experiences, but that toxic masculine is that power person, you know, the power masculine that we were just saying,

like the disciplinary, the one that you need forgiveness from, you know, that one. For sure. And yes, and absolutely. I think part of being a good human, you know, being male or not, is knowing that we're not perfect in that part of growth, of being a good human, being male or not, is knowing that we're not perfect in that part of growth is learning from our mistakes. And the only way to learn from our mistakes is one,

is to make them and two, is to admit that we're doing them and to actually, it's okay to feel bad about messing up. This is something that I thankfully learned from my own father, right? He was not the kind of person who was afraid to make mistakes or to make amends or who is rather, he's still alive. But I remember as a child, it wasn't like my model of masculinity wasn't infallible. Certainly not when it came to, you know, errors and harming people by accident. Like this is just part of being in this physical plane. One of the great teachings, again,

I'll cite this book from my teacher, Beth Hedvig, this book, Journey from Betrayal to Trust, she talks about in the Wounding of the Father chapter, the way she distinguishes between mother archetype and father archetype. The mother, divine mother, is more about like, I love you just the way you are. Like, you're good how you are no matter what. It's really sense of self. Like you are loved regardless. And the father archetype is more about you have purpose here. There is something that you're here for, something that you're going to do. And it's not, it's not, it's a different energy. And again, this is her way of dividing it up. I find it very useful. And she says her way of understanding what it means to have a patriarchal tradition in the sense of like a masculine

father energy that's out of alignment, that's not healthy anymore, that's more in that betrayal realm. She says that's a tradition that tells you how to be spiritual and lays it out for you on behalf of, from others. And she says, this journey where we're finding the teacher within, the guide within, is we can find that inner father, if you will, that inner, instead of relying on the ancient traditions of Mount Sinai or Jesus and how that's been written down in the gospels, et cetera, it's about what is my

inner wisdom telling me about what I need to be doing right now, my calling, my direction. I can listen to tradition, but as one of the great sort of Jewish theologians of the 20th century says, tradition gets a vote, but not a veto. It gets maybe a say at the table of how we make our decisions, but it doesn't get the say, the only say. And so there's that transition where we can find, where we find that, again, that teacher within that sort of divine masculine that guides us,

that pushes us, that helps us attain what really is ours to do in the world, but it's coming from our heart. It's not coming from a legend of a mountain a thousand or five thousand years ago. Man, that book sounds really good. Is Beth still alive? Yes, yes, alive and teaching and she's also an astrologer and an intuitive. Yeah, yeah, you might have to take a look. Beth Hedva, yeah, sure, I'd be happy to make an introduction. Yeah, because that book sounds

amazing, sounds like I really relate to that. And sounds amazing. It sounds like I relate to that. And I think a lot of people can relate to that. And it was also thinking about the divine masculine and feminine. This is also a big thing with a lot of the words, a lot of the letters, a lot of the tree of life. You have one side that's more masculine, the other is feminine.

Yes, exactly. Yeah, and then they come together as it should. The place where it's not about masculine and feminine anymore, it's beyond gender, beyond concept, and beyond form, the oneness, yeah. But let's talk about that. And I did get the Zohar finally. Oh, cool.

I've read it. And yeah, and your book is up here as well over at Eat, Probably Cance. Great, In Body, Kabbalah. So there it is. Yep, right there. Great. InBody Kabbalah. There it is. Yep, right there. Wonderful. Oh, see, these are all my holy books.

Oh, cool. And then the rest of it's all called coordinated. So yes, the Zohar didn't actually become known as in text wise, right? Until way later. Was it like the 1500s, 1400s, somewhere around there? People have been talking a lot. I mean, I don't know if you've seen, there's been so much with a Christian apologist and like Billy Carson and like different people are talking about text right now. There's all these debates going on on YouTube in my algorithm. In your feed, in your algorithm. Yeah.

And a lot of the talk is about like, oh, well, you know, this wasn't even around until the third century or the second century or this and that. And like, yeah, wasn't the whole New Testament like that? Like, how are we going to throw away these other ones? But Paul didn't even know anybody. So it was all word of mouth, right? It was stories that were told, legends and ideas. I mean, they didn't write everything down. So let's look at the Zohar. That's because that's that is the magnum opus, the main kind of huge offering of medieval Kabbalah. And I, I don't know what version or edition of the Zohar you have? I have this one. Oh, Gershom Sholem is a major scholar of Jewish mysticism. And what that is is selections from the Zohar. It says basic reading. Yeah, yeah, no, it's selections from the Zohar. No, Gershom Sholem is a very important academic

in studying and understanding the history of the Zohar. So that's cool you have something by him. I needed like the easiest version of the Zohar. Maybe I should start there. Gershom Sholem, so he's got selections there. Now, if you can see on my screen, I don't know if you're, this is probably not going to be a video, but for listeners at home, I'm showing you see here, these yellow books on the bottom shelf here. There are 13 volumes. That is a translation of the whole Zohar with certain segments moved out of it still. So there's 13 big thick texts and that is one version of the full Zohar.

So just so you're aware, it's this massive thing, but I haven't read the whole Zohar yet. Can you imagine? I'm a rabbi who teaches Kabbalah and even I haven't. Yeah, because I mean, I can't get the alphabet. Exactly. I haven't even right? Because I mean, I can't get the alphabet. So yes, I can't write it. Exactly, I haven't even finished studying the first letter yet, right? This is okay, right? We don't have to all be,

haven't memorized everything yet. So the Zohar, when it first comes out, it is put out there from this man named Moshe de Leon, and that's Moshe of Leon in Northern Spain. Oh, in Spain, okay. And so Moses is how you say his name in English, Moses de Leon. Like Moshe is the, right, it's a Jewish name, right? Moshe and Moses were named after the great prophet. So Moses de Leon lives in northern Spain, and he releases these books, and he says, these are manuscripts that I found in a cave somewhere. Oh.

So this is the Zohar. This is what becomes the Zohar. Now, already from the beginning, people have skepticism. Even in the 13th century, there's another Kabbalist at the time named Isaac of Akko. And he lives in Akre, which is in today in modern day Israel. And it's the Northwest portion, it's a coastal city. It comes by different names depending on who you're asking. Acre, Acre, there's a way of saying it in Arabic, I can't pronounce. But Isaac of Acre journeys to Northern Spain

and he knocks on Moses de Leon's door. Moses de Leon had recently died, like very recently. His wife answers. And according to Isaac Avakos' account, he says to her, so who wrote this book anyways? And she says, oh, my late husband wrote it. He just said it was from someone else, but he wrote it. So already at the very beginnings,

now Isaac Avakos, a Kabbalist, he was a different kind of Kabbalist than a Zoharic Kabbalist. He wasn't doing the same work with the Sefirot in the same way as Moses de Leon was. So, the Zohar is written as though it is a conversation between second century sages who were living in Palestine, i.e. the land of Israel, the Romans were calling it Palestine. We don't need to get into all that, but just to say Shimon bar Yochai is the main teacher in the Zohar and his students.

And these are real people who lived, but until the Zohar, they never said anything about Kabbalah. They never said anything certainly written down. And so there's this phenomenon, which Gershom Sholem talks about, this author you've been reading. Gershom Sholem talks about in some of his historical writings, and he didn't invent the term, but it's a great term to know. It's called pseudepigraphy. And pseudepigraphy is when people write something and they attribute it to a past or a false author. Now, there's a joke.

What's the difference between an academic and a rabbi? First of all, I have to say, this phenomenon doesn't just exist in Judaism, but I know it best from these. It's in all traditions you can find this in different ways. You have Tibetan Buddhist monks who will say, I found a scroll. This scroll tells us the answer to a problem

we've been having on this issue today. It's a new scroll in the world, but they say they found it. It's a discovered text. The joke is with a professor, an academic and a rabbi, an academic takes an old idea and makes it sound new. And a rabbi takes a new idea and makes it sound old. And this is true of many clergy,

many great minds in history is they have this new thing, but actually it turns out in a lot of past societies, you can't just say this is my idea. Because people will maybe if it's a radical idea, accuse you of heresy or some version of that excommunication, or maybe they won't take it seriously, or maybe it's actually dangerous to have new ideas because you're living under political oppression. Or perhaps you have a dream in which you are a past hero in your tradition, or you have some mystical experience, or even something bordering on a psychotic episode and you imagine you're someone else, and you come back

and you really think it's from that time, or that person, or you channel it and the angels tell you it's from this past, whatever the case, whether it's intentional or unintentional, pseudepigraphy is that moment when you write something and you say it's from someone else. And there's a real power in that. So the Zohar is in so many ways a radical text. It's a departure from everything out of its time. It's essentially taking the Sefirot, the tree of life, and it's blending it with Torah study and with other rabbinic teachings from prior eras and all of that. But when we really look at it, we look at the Zohar, this beautiful, profound, philosophical, expansive, mystical text, you start to see if you're looking at it from that critical eye, oh, wait a minute, this is a book written in Aramaic

claiming it's from the second century by these second century rabbis. Why are there Spanish words in the Zohar? You can find actual Spanish transliterated into Aramaic in the Zohar. Well, isn't that odd? If it was this ancient, ancient text that this man found in a cave, why is there Spanish in it?

Right, like the word for guardian in Hebrew or Arabic would be something like Shomer or Shamra, something like that. But if it was in the Zohar, sometimes the word is written guardian, how you say guardian in Spanish. And that's one of many examples. It also happened also in the Torah and the Bible, right? Where there's Greek and Hebrew kind of doing that too. Yeah. Yeah. This is, I this is, I wanted to focus in on the Zohar. Yes, you can find this in many texts, in many eras in different ways. We also have the second century rabbis in the Zohar

quoting teachings that didn't exist at their time. They came later. So they're quoting rabbinic teachings called midrashim that were later teachings. But here they are, it comes out in the 13th century, they're quoting teachings from the 9th century in the name of 2nd century teachers. Basically there's a good amount of evidence that is telling us this text was a new text. It was couched in this ancient way for a variety of reasons. And I, as much as when I first learned this stuff,

first of all, I found it very compelling. I believe this historical research on the Zohar. And there was a part of me that felt kind of deflated. Oh, it's not from these ancient rabbis. And more than that, it's not from Moses on Mount Sinai or something. And you know what I mean? There's like traditions of that in Kabbalah

that this comes from the very source. And what I've come to over time, and this happens with all kinds of teachings, not just Kabbalah, all sorts of things. The stories about them turn out not to be true or a little different. For me, it's really about what is the quality of these teachings.

Are these teachings deep and helpful? Are they illuminating? Or was the reason I was imbibing in them because they had a great story. And if the story was the whole thing, then well, maybe I need to be a bit more careful about which roads I'm going down and who I'm trusting and all of that.

So that's like a brief history of the origins of the Zohar. And it's probably Moshe de Leon had his whole circle of fellow Kabbalists and they were meditating. Or maybe it was a few generations. There's obviously stuff that comes before him, but the actual printing, it didn't seem to be nearly as old as they're saying. But it doesn't mean that there weren't amazing mystics in the Middle Ages channeling these incredible teachings. I mean, like, why do we think there was only wise people like in early civilizations? Or like God only spoke to us then? Yeah, exactly.

We each can be authors. We each can be mystics, channelers, dreamers, intuitives. That's our birthright as humans. It doesn't have to just be this ancient thing. We need to recreate and recreate and recreate, you know? Yeah, but I get it. They were trying to find credibility by saying it was older or making it more sacred or- Or maybe protecting themselves, right? Whatever the case is. I don't know why they did it. I have compassion for people in past eras who didn't have freedom of religion. They were living in democracies. They were oppressed, all those kinds

of things. And in today's world, I hope we can do better. I hope that when we are riffing off of another tradition, we can say that. I hope that when we have some insight, even if the angels tell us this is ancient, we can say, but there's no record of it ever existing before right now. There's an intellectual honesty in our era that I really, really believe in. Ooh, gosh, that is so important that we're talking about this.

I've never, ever talked about this before. I see it all the time and I see people at war because of it. Right, they're always fight right now. I was telling you all the debates going on. It is about just that. And when it comes down to it, like my dear friend, Morgue, who I love to watch, it's Morgue official. I love to watch him.

He studies the Gnostics. And he always says, it's not about any of that. Who cares when it was made? It's about the story itself and what it's teaching. That's the importance and how you're receiving it. All this other stuff is just distraction. Yeah, and sometimes it's distraction and sometimes it's actually harmful too. I think that everyone should always be aware of anything if someone's saying, this is actually the right way and there is no other way and all those other people are corrupt and they're wrong.

That's scary. Is what that is. Because... Yeah. Oh, that's fundamentalism. It doesn't matter if it's coming from a neo-pagan place or from wherever. It's are we able to not know? Can we like, I've heard this very good question a long time ago, like what's more dangerous, absolute certainty or absolute doubt? And I think it's a tough one. It's a good question. And we often think about absolute doubt as very, oh, you're not going to be able to make decisions. But if you're so certain about something that everyone else must be wrong and you have to explain why they're wrong instead of admitting they might have something legitimate. That mentality, that is the essence of a lot of

religious extremism and it can pop up in all kinds of contexts that aren't traditional religious contexts. Oh my gosh, Matthew, I've learned to not even hold on tightly to any theory or anything that I have any- Great, because you're droshing, Shanna, you're droshing. That's perfect. That's good mind training you're describing there. Well, I'm a student for life. I know this. I never will say I have it all figured out. If I do, I must be dead.

I wonder if our afterlife forms really know everything or maybe they're just extra good at not knowing, extra good at being curious. I mean, look at something like the Gnostic Gospels, untouched by hierarchy. And I know a lot of people aren't familiar with them. They're hard to read because they're so raw. I'm super glad that we're at a time where we could read these. Even 20 years ago, I don't think they would have been excessive.

Well, many of them have been recently discovered, haven't they? 1950, the libraries, right? I mean, it's amazing. You know, like Pista Sofia was not found in the 1950s. That one was found in the 1700s. And they also find different fragments from different books. Like they found Mary Magdalene's book in several different places, which shows that it was circulating.

That gives it some credibility, not to say that she actually wrote it, but that this was something that they were reading and that they were learning from. Yeah. And there's a difference also between who wrote it and when was it written and who was reading it and why. It's just because something isn't written by a person that it's like pseudepigraphically attributed to, right? Sometimes it's okay just to not know. I ask myself, did Moses exist? I don't know. Maybe he did. That'd be great. But maybe he was a figure that was a combination of

all these other figures that someone attributed these Torah teachings to, okay, does it matter? I think for me, at least, I like to, again, what does this text say? And not in the case of the Torah. It's like, what did the commentaries say? What's the wisdom tradition around it? You're missing the whole thing. There's the wisdom in there. And the love of study itself. I mean, it's really enjoyable. It's fun. It's deep. It's meaningful to just encounter a text. And if we have always a teacher telling us what it's supposed to say, then there's already, we're already one step removed from that encounter. And this is not a teaching I invented. This is coming from Hasidic mysticism, that the world is a text. That in the same way we can encounter a teaching in a book from antiquity and be wowed by it and see the depth and layers underneath it.

And it might not mean the same thing on the surface as it does beneath it. And we can also have people telling us what it's supposed to be, but we can find something different. That's how we can view our whole life. If the world is a sacred text, if life has the potential of scripture, then any conversation, any tree, our own bodies, all of that has this wisdom, both when we meet it on the very surface, but also when we inquire to its depths. This world is Torah in essence. I think a lot of the lessons of how to learn to read a scripture, read a sacred text in a meaningful way,

can also very easily apply to how to encounter and relate with our lives. We can drosh our lives. There's that moment, sometimes we're reading texts and it's like, wow, I don't like that. And one way of saying it is like, we? There's that moment, sometimes we're reading texts and it's like, wow, that's, I don't like that, you know? And one way of saying it is like, ah, we don't need that. Another way of approaching it is, no, what's deeper here?

What was the author really saying? Or how was their context leading to this? Or is there a secret meaning here that's just not obvious on the surface? And if we can cultivate that sense of inquiry and curiosity with text, we can, in that same way, we can start to drosh our dreams and our relationships and our mistakes and our bodies and all of that, that there's, it's an invitation that our world is not what it appears necessarily on the surface,

though that surface level is valid and important. And it's also an invitation, all of it. Everything that happens to us invites us into conversation. I'm starting to get into the mind of a rabbi right now, because I'm thinking of myself. I mean, you always have such great wisdom, but it's like taking that alphabet and looking at like one scripture, right?

One sentence even, right? It's the same as looking at one letter in the alphabet, because there's so many things. There's an actual meaning maybe, there's a esoteric meaning, there's, you know, a deeper maybe and I've even heard like with Jesus text, the Gnostic text, they were secret teachings of Jesus. Right? So these were for everybody. These were for people who wanted to go deeper.

Yeah. In fact, from the Zohar and from the early Kabbalists, we have a model of interpretation that talks about four different layers. Well, there you go. I'm going to write them down. Sure. So I'll say them in Hebrew. You don't need to write down the Hebrew, but so pshat means the obvious or the literal reading. So Abraham journeyed to the land of Canaan. Okay. Land of Canaan. All right. That's the Peshach, that's the literal.

Okay, this is about a guy walking to Canaan. And then there's something called Drash, which is actually one of the levels. And it means interpretation or the rabbinic teachings around this. And they might say, well, yeah, he wandered there. He wandered there after he smashed the idols in his father's shop,

because his father was an idol maker. Now that didn't actually, it doesn't actually say that in the Bible, but this is sort of the fan fiction that they add to it or those kinds of things that the laws that can be derived from this that's called. So the literal, the interpretive, the third is called remes and that means allegorical. And that's, oh, Abraham actually symbolizes wisdom and the land of Canaan symbolizes the earth. And this is how our wisdom comes to bear on the earthly plane. Something like that. I'm making this up. And the fourth level is what's called

Sud or secret. And this is, oh, Abraham is actually represents the divine quality of loving kindness. I almost said that. I just thought like I was those Jewish genes in me. I was like, I wish those Jewish genes in me would come out again. Intuit it. This is a mini moment of prophecy. And so the secret level, right? Sod, and that's where Abraham actually is representing this divine quality, let's say.

There's many, many ways of doing each of these, but Abraham is loving kindness, is chesed. And Kanaan, I don't know what it actually represents in Kabbalah, but let's just say Kanaan represents Tiferet, this middle axis of harmony. So this is when there was a convergence between loving-kindness and harmony in order to create a greater peace or harmony. Yeah, something like that. And so these are four ways that we can interpret any text. And so it's like, it's got all these layers. Wow, I'm psychic.

Like, it's like a toolkit. Having a feature is a part of your... Yes, exactly. Another moment where you were predicting my next words. Maybe we just think similarly on some of these topics. Just telepathically have a conversation. Exactly. Yeah. I've been reading the foundation series by Isaac Asimov and there's a bunch of that. He talks about this group called the Second Foundation that has like hours of conversation just with facial gestures because they're all psychics. Oh my God, that's hilarious. I can't believe I did that.

It's really cool stuff. Yeah. I like that, right? That's how I feel like even especially with the Kabbalah. There's so much meaning and so much depth that I mean to do it on your own, try to figure it out that it would be hard. Oh, and that's partly because that's written intentionally as a code to obscure. Also, I mean, the Zohar is not, I mean, also what most people are reading today is translations,

first of all, right? Like the Zohar is written in a very unique form of Aramaic. It's not the Aramaic you'll read in older forms of Jewish teachings. It's a very Spanish inflected medieval kind of Aramaic. And so one, the language, right? I mean, what they call the tree of life in Zohar, they don't call it the tree of life usually,

they call it Raza de Mahaymanuta, which means the mystery of faith. And unless you know that code word, even so, let's say you translate it in English, the mystery of faith, the mystery of trust, the mystery of belief, however you want to translate that, Raza de Mahaymenuta. Okay. So what does that mean? And they're not going to refer to the Shekhinah or Tamalchut, the lowest sefirah. They're going to say Metronita. Oh, who's Metronita?

Well, she's this princess character that appears in the castle. And it's this really in-depth metaphor. And so it's basically what they're doing is they're reading the Torah or this earlier Jewish writings and the Bible, and they're describing what's going on there in the Sephirotic realm.

Okay, that's step two, but they're not saying the name of the Sephirot. They're saying it a code name for it. And so they're taking the Torah or whatever text and they're reading it as a code pointing to the divine realm, but they're not saying it explicitly. They're using a code name for the divine realm elements. And then let's say you understand all that, like what does it mean experientially? Or what does that mean in like in any kind of tangible practical sense? It's all of those layers.

So the notion that anybody can read the Zohar without training and truly even begin to glimpse what these original teachers were trying to say if we could even know that truly, right? Everyone needs guidance on that. It's like learning calculus on your own after you learn one plus two. That's exactly how I felt about the Gnostic Gospels. I mean, I could read it. I had experiences. I was connecting things, but it wasn't until I got real super close with a Gnostic scholar who was like, yes, this is what you're experiencing. This is this is it. But this is what this means. And this is, you know, the meaning of this. So can you connect it now? Which made it an even deeper understanding and real wisdom, actually. So, yeah. deeper understanding and real wisdom, actually. So yeah.

Yeah. And it's also not to denigrate the experience of simply opening something up, like Beginner's Mind, like we talk about in Buddhism. Because if we learn all of the code names for anything, but we lose our capacity to simply have an experience with the text, we're missing out. And so sometimes people who are opening up a book,

like the Zohar, and don't actually, so to speak, know what it's saying, but have a transmission from it. Sometimes they're doing it better than people who've studied it. You know, now that I think about it, the true meaning of it, everything is just simply having that, that connection and that intimacy with the text. But there's also something really great about all the scholarship involved too. Like both of those, they're just, I think if I had to choose, right, it's like, you know, there's some quote from Einstein, I think it's his quote. Maybe it's pseudepigraphically attributed to him, I don't know, but it's something like our brains, our minds have, we have the servant and the master and the servant is sort of the logical rational part of the master is the intuition. And in our generation,

we've confused the student, the slave to the master, the student to the master, and that we're making the rational part dominant and making the intuition the slave. That's the piece we need to hang on to. The capacity just to simply let ourselves witness and be in relationship with what we encounter. And all of the scholarly layers, that's just bonus, but it's not as essential as the intimacy

we can have with the text. Do you know how many times I've thought to myself, well, I'm almost 50, is it too late for me to go to school? Just to learn on an academic level, some of the stuff that I've become so close to. I think about this with both sides of my family. You know, I feel like, you know, that I, so many stories and traditions were lost because of fear of who they were, you know, and this is why they hid their race. And also for my dad's side with religion, right? And that Jewish tradition didn't get passed down or known. And there was time I was angry about that too, right?

Yeah. But now I wouldn't be receiving it as I am. You know, like that, I do have that innocence, that rawness into it. I'm not conditioned, I don't know. And so for me to learn, it really is just more authentic for me. Oh, I think that's great. And I really admire your...

I want to say steadfastness, but it's more than that. It's like the integrity with which you're approaching this. Like you really want to know and you're digging deep. And it's not like you're not sticking to the surface. No. Right? Not by any means. Like you're open to being challenged. And I just even feel like since our last conversation,

like your capacity for rolling with the punches, so to speak, of academic discourse and stuff. I don't know. I don't want to put labels on you that you're not seeing there necessarily, but there's a way in which it's like your approach to study is something that most religious study students can't learn in a classroom, right?

It's like that right there. And if you ever wanted to, you of course could do it. It's just a question of like, is it aligning? Is it what you really want? I know you'd benefit from it, but it's, you know what I mean? Yeah, I'm scared I'm be questioning my professors. If you have a good professor, they'll be okay with that. Yeah. You know what I mean?

Like there's, that's a sign of a good teacher is someone who can take feedback and challenge and not take it to heart. But you know, like be a part of that discourse because good students teach teachers as well. You know, there's not a box for everybody anymore. No. Well, when you were growing up,

did anyone say that podcast host? No. Was a profession? No, or any of the things that I'm doing is not in my line. I was told again and again and again, when I was even as an adult, when I was applying to rabbinical school, it was like, well, how are you,

if you have all these out of the box ideas, how are you going to serve a congregation? How are you going to even serve a university Hillel? You know, and I, all I could say was, I don't know what I'm, I know I'm supposed to be doing this. And here I am. I'm freelance. I have an author, a teacher, and that worked out. But we have to, I think actually, if we could teach our kids anything, sometimes I think it's entrepreneurial skills. Because if you can learn how to sell something that you really believe in, you can make it happen. And sometimes when our institutions are failing and not just failing, I don't mean economically necessarily, but maybe that too, but failing in the sense of they're not leaving room for our souls. that we are too big or too

us shaped to fit inside the boxes of our institutions. Let's be creative. Let's go out of the box. And so some entrepreneurial skills, because, you know, not everyone is meant to be part of the institution. Also, not everyone's meant to be an entrepreneur either. I feel like everything I learned in school growing up, whether or not I saw it as valid or whether or not I ever thought to use it, it always comes through. I think there's ways, again, there are tools

for understanding or gematria, which is Hebrew letter numerology. I mean, it's usually basic addition, but it's really useful to know how to add numbers in order to be able to do this. Like the word for sud, the secret level, if you add up the numerical values of the letters, you get to the number 70. And if you take the word for wine, yain in Hebrew, you also get the number 70. And so a secret and wine, there's an ancient saying that goes, in goes wine, out comes the secret. Oh my God, that's hilarious. It's just in a playful way. Like you want to know what someone's thinking after a few drinks, you might get to hear

it. And also in certain, to this day, Hasidic communities, wine is used as part of ritual, as part of teaching, as an altered state inducing substance. And for some people it works. You just totally gave me the answer that I was looking for this morning. So in the Nativity of Mary, it tells Mother Mary's story. Also in the Infancy of James, it's a apocryphal text. And in the Quran, all three stories, different perspective of mother Mary story when she grows up. There's this one part where Joseph's like, I didn't get her pregnant. He went to Zachariah and he said, I didn't get her pregnant.

I don't know who did, but this is wrong. I'm not going to marry her. I'm I already told you I'm too old for the chick. And he gives them a truth serum and sends them into the wilderness. And I bet you that truth serum might've just been wine. Yeah. Well, I mean, spies use this apparently. I wouldn't know because I'm not a spy nor have I ever met one to my knowledge.

But apparently if that's part of a strategy you might use if you're in the CIA or something. That's MKUltra. Yeah, right. And it's actually, you can hear more truth from people. And yeah, it could be a truth serum. Because the solid level, the secret level is also just a secret. It's what's within us that can come out. Oh, I cry every time I drink anything. And that's why I don't drink anything. Coming out.

I also don't drink. But yeah, some substances aren't meant for some people. Yeah, for sure. One other piece, so I learned about permutations and combinations in what we call here grade 12, what you would call senior year in America. Permutations and combinations, I didn't think I would use much, but this new book that's of mine that's coming out in April, The Path of the Sefirot, uses permutations. That's essentially, so you have, it's a seven week period, 49 days between the holiday of

Passover and the holiday of Shavuot. And every day has a mystical theme, a Kabbalistic theme. And the way you know what the theme is, so the first week, the first seven days is chesed. It's the divine quality of loving kindness. And the first day of any week is also chesed. So like day one of the counting is chesed of chesed, loving kindness of loving kindness. And when you get to like the second week, it'll be loving kindness within givura, within boundaries. And so one, two,

three, four, five, six, seven weeks and every day. So essentially you take every sefirah and you permute it seven times. So you get to these 49 days and it's 49 combinations of sacred intentions. So this is a very practical book. It's every day has a page. Every day tells you the Sephirotic alignment for the day, Chesed of Chesed, Gevora of Chesed, Shekhinah of Chesed, Gevora of Malchut, all these kinds of things. And then every day has the Sephirotic alignment, a little phrase of intention, and then there's a contemplative practice for every day, a reflection, questions, actions to take that day. And it's this 49 day journey through the Sefi Raut to inspire and embody our deepest selves.

Oh my gosh, that is freaking awesome. When is it coming out? So it's coming out in April, just a few days before Passover, which this year, so Passover gets a lunar holiday, lunar festival, so it always happens on a new, on a full moon rather, but this year it comes out April 12th, we're in 2025. So the book is going to come out maybe a week before or so, so people can get it and prepare and then the journey begins on Passover and then right around April 12th, April 13th, and then we go all the way into June, I believe this year, which is when the

next holiday of Shavuot occurs. So it's this 49 day counting. And I'm hoping to be able to do some videos so we can kind of do it online together. But the book itself is a step by step, day by day practice of this Kabbalah of transformation. So you'll actually be experiencing the Kabbalah and you'll be learning at the same time. Yes, you learn about the... Yes, every Sefirah has a big description. You can learn about it. And then every day, it's like there's seven days of Chesed, and then there's seven days of Gevurah, and there's seven days of Tiferet, these different divine qualities, these dimensions, and they're meant to be brought into our lives. Very cool. Oh my gosh, okay, I'm definitely gonna get that. And I definitely wanna participate this year.

So I'll be ordering that, but what's the name of it? The path of the sefirot. Can you just briefly explain what a sefirot is? So a sefirah is a dimension of being which has a sacred quality. So in Kabbalah, the Tree of Life are 10 Sefirot, they're 10 divine qualities. There are different layers within those realms, and for this counting, the Sefirot are the seven lower ones in this process in Kabbalah, and they're the most tangible. So you could call them archetypes, you could

call them energies and they both exist in the spiritual realm, but they also exist inside of each of us. And this intention with this book is to help people understand these different dimensions and also embody them in our lives through this contemplation, through essentially walking through the Sefi route for 49 days on this path. The qualities briefly in English are loving kindness, boundaries, harmony, action, yielding, connection and integration. That's how I'm teaching about, I mean,

truly every Sefirot has so many ways of understanding them, but in this book, those are the seven pathways that we walk one day and one week at a time. That's exciting. Are you starting from the top down? In this counting? That's how this works. One of the ways of understanding it in the, you could call it the mythology of Kabbalah, is this all goes back to the story of the Israelites' exodus, the redemption from Egypt, that on the night when they left, it was what they say, the Kabbalists say that this was the infinite one

gifting them with blessings and bounty and abundance and bringing them up to the level of Bina, which is the 50th level, the 50th gate it's called. And so Bina, the divine mother, divine feminine has within herself 50 gates. So from that first night, that first moment, the actual act of these 49 days, the original intention in Kabbalah is we're actually purifying the divine realms because not everything is in alignment. So we have 49 days essentially of taking this bounty, this light, this wisdom, and bringing it into our world slowly, slowly. It's a path of integration from this illumination that begins and the redemptive moment until we walk all the way,

so to speak, to Sheva-Wot, this next holiday, which is the commemoration of the giving of the Torah on Mount Sinai. And so there's like this journey, and then the last moment is about receiving. So what an interesting time for us to do this. And not only will you learn about it, but you're gonna be actually transforming

through it spiritually. Yes. That's huge. Yeah. It's like healing the cosmos, healing ourselves, and it's growth, it's learning, it's fun. There's intentions in there every day. Like, is there someone in your life that you value, that you're feeling distanced from? Is there a way that you could reach out, even in a small way, and say something nice to them or offer them a gift, anything, just as a way of building a little bit of a connection with someone that you value, that you're feeling disconnected from? And then your other book, Embodied Kabbalah. Nice pronunciation. I know, I've been trying. Yeah, that came out two years ago. Yes, embodied Kabbalah Jewish mysticism for all people.

And that is a somatic, grounded, and universal approach to Kabbalah that is meant, it takes original teachings from the Kabbalistic tradition, translates them into English, and pairs them with commentary to help people connect to the Kabbalistic and Jewish mystical lineage. I want to also point out that you don't just work with people who are Jewish. Yeah, and so I really value that because I've learned from all kinds of places. Yes, I'm a rabbi, but if I had been called to be some other kind of teacher, I could have done that too. This is my ancestral tradition, but I've learned from so many places and I want to be the kind of teacher, healer,

rabbi who shares with people, regardless of what their ethnic or religious or spiritual background is. It's really about, is this a good fit? Is the wisdom tradition that I'm drawing from gonna be helpful? And if that's the case, then yeah, let's learn together. Beautiful.

Thank you again so much. I've really enjoyed talking to you. I could talk to you for hours upon end, but I appreciate you coming on. I'm excited about your new book. Thank you for having me. Tell everybody your website really quick too. Matthewponach.com, M-A-T-T-H-E-W-P-O-N-A-K.com.

I'm also on Facebook and Instagram as Rabbi Matthew Ponak. I post about daily there. Yeah, come check it out. All right. Thank you so much. We'll keep in touch. Thank you so much, Shanna. All right.

Have a good day. Yeah, you too. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Thanks, I just saw that. Hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey,

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