Kabbalah Talk with Rav Yaakov Shepherd

Kabbalah Talk: Noach

Why do we wait until it hurts? Eric opens with a question most of us know from our own lives: the thing we keep putting off until it hurts. In this episode of Kabbalah Ta

Kabbalah Talk: Tohu and Bohu, the Building Blocks of Creation

What does tohu va'vohu actually mean? Most of us grew up hearing it as a word for chaos, the thing your mother said when she opened the door of your room. In this episode

Are We Infinite?

A forum thread asks three words: "Are we infinite?" Nearly everyone answers yes. Rav Yaakov Shepherd and Eric look at what an old kabbalah book, Shomer Emunim by Rabbi Yo

The Second Seal: The Night That Is Still Open

Eric's neighbor isn't going to bed on the night of Hoshana Rabba. Eric thought the sealing was Yom Kippur. He fasted for it, he stood for Ne'ilah, he heard

The Four Species and the Magid’s Meditation: What Even Moshe Didn’t Know

The Midrash names three things that stayed a wonder: Pesach, Matzah, and Maror. A fourth thing it says we never fully grasped: the four species of the lulav. Not the grea

Zochrenu LeChaim: The Line in Brackets

EREV YOM KIPPUR The pidyon kaparot comes first, at dawn, following the Arizal. On Erev Yom Kippur in the afternoon the Rav performs the pidyon nefesh at King David's

One Hundred Voices: The Hidden Architecture of the Shofar

Some years the shofar is not blown at all, and this is one of them. The first day of Rosh Hashanah falls on Shabbat. Rav Yaakov Shepherd and Eric work through four quest

Give the Day Back: The Jewish Way to Fall Asleep

  You lie down exhausted and your mind picks that exact moment to review everything. The   conversation that went sideways, the email you didn't send, tomorrow'

Modeh Ani: The First Breath of the Day

Last night, before bed, Eric put his phone across the room so he'd have to get up to shut off the alarm. This morning he got up, shut it off, and climbed right back

Held in the Storm — the Jewish Answer to Anxiety

When your mind races and your chest tightens, everyone tells you to calm down, but nobody tells you how. Rav Yaakov Shepherd offers a different path than fighting the sto

A Call to Be Human — Why I Use AI So Much

 A confession: this podcast — the research, the editing, the production — is made with AI. Rav Yaakov Shepherd explains why that doesn't trouble him, and what he hea

The Muscle of the Mind — Why a Wandering Mind Isn’t Failure

Your mind wanders two seconds into meditation — did you fail? Rav Yaakov Shepherd says: nothing went wrong. That is exactly how a mind works. In this episode: the engravi

Ep. 1 — The Ten Sefirot and the Ten Fingers

Look at your hands — ten fingers, five and five. The oldest book of Kabbalah says they are a map of the ten forces through which the Infinite becomes a world. In this ope