This season of Turn it & Turn it is on the topic of: "Chassidut"
These three sessions explore the endless search for God as a key theme in medieval and early-modern Judaism, with a particular emphasis on Hasidism and Jewish mysticism. The sources with which we engage portray religious life as an unceasing quest toward the Divine, an endless journey in which exegesis, self-discovery and sacred community are braided and richly intertwined. They present a thrilling religious sensibility in which the intellectual, spiritual and existential journey toward God is far more than a means to an end.
Hasidic sources put stock in the quest itself as both personally transformative and cosmically significant. Rather than religious uprush being born only in the successful devekut, or communion with the Divine, for the Hasidic masters God may be revealed with potency and majesty along the path itself.
Session 1 explores the idea of the spiritual quest in the Zohar and the writings of Maimonides, finishing up with a brief but powerful teachings preserved in the name of the Baal Shem Tov. We will consider how each of these works describe the journey to know God as infinite and unattainable, and yet, worth undertaking because the spiritual richness is found in the process rather than in some imagined goal.
Click here to view the accompanying source sheet.
This audio was originally captured from Zoom on 08/27/2020
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