Kabbalah Talk with Rav Yaakov Shepherd

Rav Yakov Shepherd
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Ancient Jewish wisdom for the world you actually live in. Each week, Rav Yaakov Shepherd takes one concept of Kabbalah — or the deeper meaning of the moment in the Jewish calendar — and explores it in plain, livable language.

  1. 1d ago

    Kabbalah Talk: What Is Kabbalah? The First Lesson

    What is Kabbalah, and what is the very first lesson? Pablo on our team asks, and Eric puts it to Rabbi Yaakov Avraham Shepherd (Rav Yakov Shepherd).Kabbalah Talk from King David Kabbalah, on what Kabbalah is, the infinite light, the Tzimtzum and Jewish meditation. Kabbalah as the structure of the spiritual worlds, and what the word itself means. Why there is no clear source for waiting until forty, and where that rule came from. Why an ordinary person should learn it, and how to tell a real teacher. Then the first lesson: Hashem's light fills everything, why Hashem created the world, the Tzimtzum, the contraction that made room for us, and the thin thread of light measured to what each of us can hold. Have a question for the Rav? Send it in, or request a private session:https://kabbalah-talk-feed.pages.dev/ask/ The Rav's weekly Parasha magazine goes through every parasha, a few verses every week: Rashi, the Ramban, the Meirat Einayim, and the Rav's own commentary. Join here:https://join.mekobalim.org We are looking for a sponsor for this project. If you can help, you will receive a special blessing from the Rav. Support Yeshivat HaMekubalim Nefesh HaChaim, so we can keep creating this content and publishing it to the world. Whoever gives their tithes to the yeshiva merits that we pray for them on an ongoing basis, at holy places in the Land of Israel. Our emissaries go out all year, each time to a different place, and they always mention the names of our supporters. Give your tithes here:https://www.jgive.com/new/en/usd/collect/donation-targets/171964/amount Learn with us on Telegram:https://t.me/kabbalahNhalacha More Kabbalah books and Jewish meditation at http://KingDavidKabbalah.com Watch on YouTube:https://youtu.be/5o-C2Eaxb0Q

  2. 3d ago

    Kabbalah Talk: Shema Yisrael, What to Say and What to Think

    What is the first verse a Jew should know and say? Eric puts the question to Rabbi Yaakov Avraham Shepherd (Rav Yakov Shepherd), and the Rav answers: Shema Yisrael, every morning and every evening, thinking about the meaning of the words each time.Kabbalah Talk from King David Kabbalah, on the Shema, the unity of Hashem and Jewish meditation. Why the prayer opens with the word Shema, hear, understand and awaken. How mercy and judgment are joined as One in a single sentence, and what to do on the nights when it does not feel like love. Why we say the Shema in the morning and in the evening, and why we say it again before sleep, when the soul ascends. And how to think about the meaning while saying it: longing, not concentration. The episode ends with the story of Yaakov and his sons. Have a question for the Rav? Send it in, or request a private session:https://kabbalah-talk-feed.pages.dev/ask/ The Rav's weekly Parasha magazine goes through every parasha, a few verses every week: Rashi, the Ramban, the Meirat Einayim, and the Rav's own commentary. Join here:https://join.mekobalim.org We are looking for a sponsor for this project. If you can help, you will receive a special blessing from the Rav. Support Yeshivat HaMekubalim Nefesh HaChaim, so we can keep creating this content and publishing it to the world. Whoever gives their tithes to the yeshiva merits that we pray for them on an ongoing basis, at holy places in the Land of Israel. Our emissaries go out all year, each time to a different place, and they always mention the names of our supporters. Give your tithes here:https://www.jgive.com/new/en/usd/collect/donation-targets/171964/amount Learn with us on Telegram:https://t.me/kabbalahNhalacha More Kabbalah books and Jewish meditation at http://KingDavidKabbalah.com Watch on YouTube:https://youtu.be/xalSho6y5ik

  3. Oct 29

    Kabbalah Talk: Washing the Hands

    Where should someone start if he wants a real connection with Hashem? Pablo on our team sent the question, and Eric puts it to Rabbi Yaakov Avraham Shepherd (Rav Yakov Shepherd). The Rav answered in two words: wash your hands.Kabbalah Talk from King David Kabbalah, on netilat yadayim, the morning washing of the hands, the thirteen words of the bracha and Jewish meditation. Why start with the hands, of all places? The Rav explains that washing the hands is the first purification available to everybody, and tells of the man taken to a Roman prison whose one worry was water for his hands. Then the Kabbalistic side: during sleep a spirit of impurity, ruach ra'ah, rests on the hands, the body's main tools of action. The Rav explains what that means, and how water used with the meditation of mercy takes the judgments away. He walks through the practice step by step: a covered vessel of water at the side of the bed, three pours on the right hand and three on the left, rubbing the hands together, lifting them and saying the bracha. The right and left hand are Chesed and Gevurah, the rubbing is Tiferet, the middle line. The thirteen words of the bracha bring in the thirteen attributes of mercy. These ten minutes set your consciousness for the entire day, and they are the first step of the climb that reaches the Amidah. Have a question for the Rav? Send it in, or request a private session:https://kabbalah-talk-feed.pages.dev/ask/ The Rav's weekly Parasha magazine goes through every parasha, a few verses every week: Rashi, the Ramban, the Meirat Einayim, and the Rav's own commentary. Join here:https://join.mekobalim.org We are looking for a sponsor for this project. If you can help, you will receive a special blessing from the Rav. Support Yeshivat HaMekubalim Nefesh HaChaim, so we can keep creating this content and publishing it to the world. Whoever gives their tithes to the yeshiva merits that we pray for them on an ongoing basis, at holy places in the Land of Israel. Our emissaries go out all year, each time to a different place, and they always mention the names of our supporters. Give your tithes here:https://www.jgive.com/new/en/usd/collect/donation-targets/171964/amount Learn with us on Telegram:https://t.me/kabbalahNhalacha More Kabbalah books and Jewish meditation at http://KingDavidKabbalah.com Watch on YouTube:https://youtu.be/300tWxpyTIM

  4. Oct 28

    Kabbalah Talk: What Do People See When They Look at You?

    Parashat Vayeira 5787 with Rabbi Yaakov Avraham Shepherd (Rav Yakov Shepherd): what do people see when they look at you, and what does your soul wear?Kabbalah Talk from King David Kabbalah, reading the Ramban and the Meirat Einayim on the angels at Avraham's tent, the garments of the soul and Jewish meditation. At his cousin's wedding Eric wore a white shirt and a black vest, and for forty minutes everybody took him for a waiter. A woman handed him her plate, then the whole table did, and the caterer gave him a tray of salmon. His own uncle asked him for more ice. Only the bride's grandmother looked at his face. So what does anybody see when they look at a person? Rav Yakov Shepherd opens Parashat Vayeira at the entrance of Avraham's tent, where three men stand who are not men. The Ramban calls what Avraham saw a created glory, which those who know call a garment. To come down to this world an angel takes a body. Then Eric asks what shape he is under the vest, the shirt and the body, and the Rav answers that the shape of a man was there before the body: the ten sefiros in three pillars, the stamp Hashem created the world with. We gain the garments of the soul by our actions, speech, thought, intention and desire. The good ones remain, the negative ones dissolve, and Hashem in His mercy lends a simple garment even to the naked. Chanoch the shoemaker blessed Hashem each time he pierced the leather, and the blessing reached the angel Matat'. Eric pushes back (forty thousand blessings, and he can't see one of them going anywhere), and the Rav answers with the donor and the poor man who meet one day and celebrate together. When we do good things, we acquire good garments for our soul. The Hebrew verses and the Rav's full commentary on Vayeira:https://kingdavidkabbalah.com/ramban-yada/vayeira/ The Rav's weekly Parasha magazine goes through every parasha, a few verses every week: Rashi, the Ramban, the Meirat Einayim, and the Rav's own commentary. Join here:https://join.mekobalim.org We are looking for a sponsor for this project. If you can help, you will receive a special blessing from the Rav. Support Yeshivat HaMekubalim Nefesh HaChaim, so we can keep creating this content and publishing it to the world. Whoever gives their tithes to the yeshiva merits that we pray for them on an ongoing basis, at holy places in the Land of Israel. Our emissaries go out all year, each time to a different place, and they always mention the names of our supporters. Give your tithes here:https://www.jgive.com/new/en/usd/collect/donation-targets/171964/amount Learn with us on Telegram:https://t.me/kabbalahNhalacha More Kabbalah books and Jewish meditation at http://KingDavidKabbalah.com Watch on YouTube:https://youtu.be/Dt8Y94PvvmI

  5. Oct 27

    Kabbalah Talk: What Does It Mean to Be Jewish?

    What does it mean to be Jewish? Pablo on our team sent the question, and Eric puts it to Rabbi Yaakov Avraham Shepherd. The Rav begins with the purpose of Am Yisrael, to pray for the whole creation, and goes on to the essence inside every Jew that is one with Hashem, the Torah as a way to connect and not a history book, and the responsibility that comes with a greater potential. He also speaks about teaching people who are not Jewish, about the convert as a full part of the story, and about the souls drawn together in Egypt like a magnet. Have a question for the Rav? Send it in, or request a private session:https://kabbalah-talk-feed.pages.dev/ask/ The Rav's weekly Parasha magazine goes through every parasha, a few verses every week: Rashi, the Ramban, the Meirat Einayim, and the Rav's own commentary. Join here:https://join.mekobalim.org We are looking for a sponsor for this project. If you can help, you will receive a special blessing from the Rav. Support Yeshivat HaMekubalim Nefesh HaChaim, so we can keep creating this content and publishing it to the world. Whoever gives their tithes to the yeshiva merits that we pray for them on an ongoing basis, at holy places in the Land of Israel. Our emissaries go out all year, each time to a different place, and they always mention the names of our supporters. Give your tithes here:https://www.jgive.com/new/en/usd/collect/donation-targets/171964/amount Learn with us on Telegram:https://t.me/kabbalahNhalacha More Kabbalah books and Jewish meditation at http://KingDavidKabbalah.com Watch on YouTube:https://youtu.be/xdjzNgIdam0

  6. Oct 22

    Kabbalah Talk: Do You Want Hashem to Speak to You?

    Do you want Hashem to speak to you? Eric asked for a sign at a red light, and then spent a week reading signs into everything: a license plate with his birthday on it, a song in a cafe his father used to sing, a dream he forgot by breakfast. Rav Yakov Shepherd opens Parashat Lech Lecha and shows how it started for Avraham Avinu, because it did not start the way people imagine. We read the verses with the Ramban and Meirat Einayim by Rabbi Yitzchak of Acco. "Go forth from your land" came to Avraham in a dream of the night. Then Hashem appeared to him in the land, and he built an altar of thanks. Then the word of Hashem came to him in a vision by day. Where prophecy comes from: the Malchus, the Atarah, the Shechinah. Why spiritual sight is a present from the mercy of Hashem, something we may ask for humbly but can never demand. Three levels: prophecy, Ruach HaKodesh and the heavenly voice. And why Avraham saw no angel ruling over Eretz Yisrael, and what it means to face Eretz Yisrael before the Amidah. If nothing comes, you keep serving. And you can keep asking, humbly. The rest is a present. The Hebrew verses and the Rav's full commentary on Lech Lecha:https://kingdavidkabbalah.com/ramban-yada/lech-lecha/ The Rav's weekly Parasha magazine goes through every parasha, a few verses every week: Rashi, the Ramban, the Meirat Einayim, and the Rav's own commentary. Join here:https://join.mekobalim.org We are looking for a sponsor for this project. If you can help, you will receive a special blessing from the Rav. Support Yeshivat HaMekubalim Nefesh HaChaim, so we can keep creating this content and publishing it to the world. Whoever gives their tithes to the yeshiva merits that we pray for them on an ongoing basis, at holy places in the Land of Israel. Our emissaries go out all year, each time to a different place, and they always mention the names of our supporters. Give your tithes here:https://www.jgive.com/new/en/usd/collect/donation-targets/171964/amount Learn with us on Telegram:https://t.me/kabbalahNhalacha More Kabbalah books and Jewish meditation at http://KingDavidKabbalah.com Watch on YouTube:https://youtu.be/A17IVP8tCKg

  7. Oct 15

    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 Talk, Eric and Rav Yakov Shepherd read Parashat Noach through that question. We talk about Noach, about the Shechinah, about the teivah that each of us needs to build for himself, and about the tzaddikim. The episode draws on this week's Ramban Yad'a newsletter. Whoever gives their tithes to the yeshiva merits that we pray for them on an ongoing basis, at holy places in the Land of Israel. Our emissaries go out all year, each time to a different place, and they always mention the names of our supporters. Give your tithes here:https://www.jgive.com/new/en/usd/collect/donation-targets/171964/amount Learn with us on Telegram:https://t.me/kabbalahNhalacha More Kabbalah books and Jewish meditation at http://KingDavidKabbalah.com

  8. Oct 9

    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 of Kabbalah Talk, Eric asks Rav Yakov Shepherd what tohu and bohu mean, and the answer turns out to be a building site, not a mess. We read the Ramban on Bereishit together with Meirat Einayim by Rabbi Yitzchak of Acco. The Ramban says the raw matter the Greeks called hyle is called tohu in the Holy Tongue: material with no shape yet, ready to receive form. Bohu is the forms built out of it. Yeshayahu speaks of the line of tohu and the stones of bohu, the string a builder stretches across an empty lot to mark the plan before any stone goes in. If there is something in your life that has no shape yet, maybe it isn't a mess. Maybe it is tohu waiting for its bohu. The full study, verse by verse, is in this week's Ramban Yad'a newsletter (PDF):https://kingdavidkabbalah.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/10/Ramban-Yada-Bereishit-5787.pdf Whoever gives their tithes to the yeshiva merits that we pray for them on an ongoing basis, at holy places in the Land of Israel. Our emissaries go out all year, each time to a different place, and they always mention the names of our supporters. Give your tithes here:https://www.jgive.com/new/en/usd/collect/donation-targets/171964/amount Learn with us on Telegram:https://t.me/kabbalahNhalacha More Kabbalah books and Jewish meditation at http://KingDavidKabbalah.com

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Ancient Jewish wisdom for the world you actually live in. Each week, Rav Yaakov Shepherd takes one concept of Kabbalah — or the deeper meaning of the moment in the Jewish calendar — and explores it in plain, livable language.

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