[Unedited] Lawrence Kushner with Krista Tippett

On Being with Krista Tippett

On Being Studios

Sociology, Spirituality, Religion & Spirituality, Krista Tippett, Arts, Culture, On Being, Society, Society & Culture, Science, Social Sciences

4.7 • 10.2K Ratings

🗓️ 21 March 2019

⏱️ 86 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Rabbi Lawrence Kushner is a long-time student and articulator of the mysteries and messages of Kabbalah, the Jewish mystical tradition. Kushner says mysticism tends to appear when religion — whatever the tradition — becomes too formal and logical. “The minute mysticism becomes permissible, acceptable, possible, it’s an immediate threat to organized religious structures,” he says. “Because what mysticism does is it gives everybody direct unmediated personal access to God.” He is influenced by the Jewish historian Gershom Scholem, who resurrected Kabbalah from obscurity in the 20th century and made it accessible to modern people. Lawrence Kushner is the Emanu-El Scholar at Congregation Emanu-El in San Francisco. He served for 28 years as the rabbi of Congregation Beth El in Sudbury, Massachusetts. He has been an adjunct faculty member at Hebrew Union College in Los Angeles and also a commentator for NPR’s All Things Considered. His many books include God Was in This Place & I, i Did Not Know, Kabbalah: A Love Story, and I’m God; You’re Not: Observations on Organized Religion & Other Disguises of the Ego. This interview is edited and produced with music and other features in the On Being episode “Lawrence Kushner — Kabbalah and Everyday Mysticism.” Find more at onbeing.org.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Support for On Being with Christa Tippett comes from the Fetzer Institute, helping build the spiritual foundation for a loving world.
0:07.0	Fetzer envisions a world that embraces love as a guiding principle and animating force for our lives,
0:13.0	a powerful love that helps us live in sacred relationship with ourselves, others, and the natural world.
0:19.0	Learn more by visiting Fetzer.org.
0:22.0	I'm Christa Tippett and this is On Being's Unheard Cut.
0:26.0	Up next, my unedited conversation with Rabbi Lawrence Kushner.
0:31.0	There is a shorter, produced version of this wherever you get your podcasts.
0:36.0	It was a very long time ago when I interviewed you before, early, early days of the show, and very interesting,
0:45.0	because our show is on all over the country, but it's not on KQED.
0:50.0	We've got a lot of podcasters in San Francisco, but you may not know that back then,
0:57.0	the program was called Speaking of Faith for the first seven years.
1:01.0	That's what we talked about that.
1:03.0	In 2010, I changed the name to On Being, and I felt as I steeped in your thinking and writing,
1:14.0	and thinking about this subject in particular of mystical tradition,
1:19.0	that's a lovely evolution.
1:22.0	Spiritually, it's very compatible with what we're going to talk about today.
1:26.0	Yeah.
1:27.0	Very.
1:28.0	I like that a lot.
1:29.0	I noticed that.
1:30.0	Yeah, that was fun for me to see.
1:32.0	Tell me, how do you say Kabbalah?
	...

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