Parashat Bo! With Melilah
Parashat Bo! With Melila
Saturday Feb 1 at 4:30pm – 6:30pm
Bo! Come feed your second Shabbat soul by gathering together to spend the last few hours of this special Shabbat, partaking in the kind of social / spiritual / textual study that animates our lineage, Go Deeper with beloved friend of Chochmat and leading teacher-explorer of our mystical texts, Dr. Melila Hellner Eshed.
Your soul will appreciate this opportunity to intimately explore this week’s Torah portion, Parashat Bo. The Hebrew word bo can be understood to mean “come” as in Moses comes before Pharoah (or well-raised Hebrew-speaking canines “come” to their humans). It can also mean “to enter into,” as in Moses entering into Pharoah’s presence or our Second Soul ‘enters into” (and then departs ) each of us every Shabbat.
In the Zohar, a foundational work of Kabbalistic literature, the Rabbis often signal a new discourse with the words: “Rabbi Shim’on opens.” A continually renewed invitation to re-open ourselves to a text by “turning” it, “seeking from” it, subjecting it to the collaborative consideration of those sitting next to you. Share in the splendor of Jewish mystical study as Dr. Eshed opens for us this part of the familiar Exodus story and explores the spiritual nature of evil.
Stay for Havdalah with the whole community – the embodied ritual will flow seamlessly from the deep learning. Havdalah, the Jewish ceremony that marks the end of Shabbat and the start of a new week, is Hebrew word for “separation”. Separating from the sacred time of Shabbat as we relinquish the “second soul” offered to each of us by The Holy One on Friday night and reorient to the 6 generative days ahead. Braided candle, spice box, wine, blessings, singing and more.
Dr. Melila Hellner-Eshed is a teacher of Jewish spirituality and one of the world’s leading authorities on Jewish mysticism and the Zohar. She has been a professor in the Department of Jewish Studies at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem for over two decades. She is a Research Fellow of the Kogod Research Center at Shalom Hartman Institute and serves on the faculty of the Institute of Jewish Spirituality. Her publications include A River Flows from Eden: The Language of Mystical Experience in the Zohar; Seekers of the Face: From the Secrets of the Idra Rabba in the Zohar; and On the Path of the Tree of Life. She is active in Sulha, a reconciliation project that brings together Israelis and Palestinians.
