“Who am I?” “What is my purpose in life?”
People constantly ask these questions but most do not know how to find the answers. Over the past 13 years, more than 1,100 people from diverse backgrounds have sought answers at Denver’s Kabbalah Experience.
Kabbalah Experience, founded by Dr. David Sanders, is a school for adult spiritual learning using the tools of Kabbalah — the body of ancient Jewish mystical teachings — as the springboard for personal awareness and transformation, according to Melanie Gruenwald, the new executive director.
Sanders has been teaching Kabbalah in Denver since 2003 and founded the Kabbalah Experience in 2006. The school first met at Kohelet House, south of Hilltop, then moved to the HEA’s Goldberger Youth Center in 2010. For the past four years Kabbalah Experience has made its home in an office building at 2305 S. Syracuse Way in southeast Denver.
As Sanders wanted to redefine his role at the organization he founded, he asked Gruenwald to step in as executive director, July 1. Sanders continues as spiritual director, focusing on curriculum development, and is a primary faculty person alongside Gruenwald and Rabbi Jamie Arnold, spiritual leader of Beth Evergreen.
Gruenwald brings to the job a 25-year background in nonprofit leadership, primarily in Jewish education and community organizing. In Denver, she has worked at Ramah in the Rockies, JCC, Moving Traditions and the Colorado Jewish early childhood education intiative.
“I’ve always focused on community organizing and connecting people with one another,” she tells the IJN.
Gruenwald started taking classes at Kabbalah Experience in the summer of 2017 with her son Koby, who passed away in January, 2018, at the age of 13. Koby was battling a brain tumor and was unable to attend school, but he was able to learn and contribute at Kabbalah Experience.
“It was something that we could do together that wasn’t related to therapies and treatments,” Gruenwald says.
Even though Koby’s speech was affected by his brain tumor, “he was totally engaged and he shared such wisdom. He really caught on to our teaching about finding light and darkness, and that became his mantra,” his mother says. “After he passed, I continued taking classes and finding a sense of space and connection for myself here.”
Sanders asked Gruenwald to start teaching last fall.
“I really love it. I love the energy and the people here,” she says. “And there’s so much of Koby’s presence here. He is so much a part of my teaching. It gives me a place of permission to talk about him and share about his presence.”
Kabbalah, which literally means “receiving,” is the discipline and thought of the mystical aspects of Judaism.
Sanders developed a four-year core curriculum for Kabbalah Experience which begins with three foundation classes: “Soul,” “Space” and ‘Time.”
“Soul” is an introduction to Kabbalah, the history of gematria, or numerology. “Students begin to see the parallels between seen and unseen realities,” explains Gruenwald.
“As we move into ‘Space,’ we study the sefirot, a structure of energy flow that can be used to inform the manifestations of the things in our lives — from something as simple as the creation of physical objects.
“When we teach, we often use sefirot as a model for the understanding of architecture, but it can also help shape a process of life change or a relationship change. We see it as a flow of something that comes from the keter, super-conscience that flows out into malchut, something that manifests. Or, you can look at it as something that manifests in your life, and flow it back up and say, ‘How did I get here? What happened?’”
“In ‘Time,’” Gruenwald continues, “we look at living in the present, and how the past informs our present, and how we have a sense of agency in our futures.”
Kabbalah, through the centuries, has gone through various degrees of secrecy, openness or acceptance.
Gruenwald explains:
“With the destruction of the Temple, around 70 CE, at the same time was the beginning of Christianity. In the Jewish tradition, there were two streams: rabbinic Judaism and mystical Judaism, trying to create a spiritual connection when we no longer had our physical space where people went to pray to G-d. This was also the beginning of the Diaspora and people creating yeshivas.
“It all comes from the same source, but if we think of Kabbalah as parallels, there’s always physical and spiritual. When we had the Temple, it was a very physical connection, bringing our ritual objects and sacrifices. With the destruction of the Temple, the rabbis were saying, ‘How do we connect to G-d if we don’t have our physical center of our world?’
“Kabbalah was very mainstream for a very long time, but then it went underground around the time of Shabtai Tzvi in the 17th century, when it became seen as dangerous because people thought he was the messiah. So, Kabbalah was mainstream, then it went underground for a long time, then in 1960s and 1970s there were a lot of Jews starting to study eastern religions like Buddhism. Kabbalah teachers were saying these are lessons that are prevalent in our history and our tradition, so people like Shlomo Carlebach and Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi started using Kabbalistic texts and traditions to help attract Jewish people back to Judaism.
“That’s when texts started being translated to English and it just became more accessible.”
Kabbalah Experience students are spiritual seekers from many faiths and backgrounds, and many are affiliated and unaffiliated Jews. All ages are also represented. Sanders cites the example of a recently retired Jewish attorney who is looking to figure out the hows and whys of the path that his life has taken thus far, and where he should go from here.
On the other end of the spectrum are millennials, who may not have plans in place for marriage and children, and who may change careers several times, and therefore are also seeking answers about their purpose in life.
A recent course included a young musician, a pastor, a Holocaust survivor’s daughter, a student of inter-spirituality, an older accountant, an entrepreneur and a teacher of English as a second language, who participated via teleconference from India.
Kabbalah Experience even attracts scientists and doctors who believe science can explain everything. “A lot of the things we are delving into and discussing are mysterious,” Sanders says. “Even science doesn’t know the answers to a lot of things. Scientists are convinced that they will be able to know, but we also have to leave open that there may be some things that are beyond our knowing. This is a kabbalistic teaching; we can know them on some intuitive level.
“Einstein had an intuitive sense of things, and then he found the science with which to prove his intuitive feeling.”
Kabbalah Experience’s office suite includes two classrooms off a light and airy spacious lobby. Each classroom contains a round table. “In the state of greater consciousness,” Sanders explains, “the tzadikim are seated in a circle. The circle represents that everyone is equal. As Moses says, ‘Wouldn’t it be wonderful if all the children of Israel were prophets? Are you jealous of my prophesy?’
“Everyone sitting around this table is a teacher. The teacher is a student and the students are teachers.”
Each classroom includes a video monitor for students who participate remotely via teleconferencing. Kabbalah Experience is also adding the option of online learning, which will begin with the coming semester.
Kabbalah Experience’s fall semester begins Sept. 9, and will offer the core curriculum of Soul, Space, and Time, and some more advanced classes that will spiral off that. Adjunct faculty will teach a Tree of Life yoga class and a four-week High Holidays series.
Information: 303-337-0959 or kabbalahexperience.com.
Copyright © 2019 by the Intermountain Jewish News