God's Therapists

Rabbi Meir was a famous 2nd-century sage who studied Torah under Elisha ben Abuya. Elisha was known as an extraordinary scholar and accomplished mystic, a colleague of Rabbi Akiva who, like him, entered the pardes (mystical orchard), but unlike him did not emerge unscathed. 

According to the Talmud, Elisha ben Abuya "cut the plantings" and "went out to a bad culture." This deep transformation of one of the 2nd-century Jewish world's leaders led his contemporaries to refrain from calling him by name. Instead, he became known by the epithet "Acher" - “The Other." Despite all this, Rabbi Meir continued his studies with Elisha. The Talmud tells that Acher would ride his horse on Shabbat (which is Shabbat desecration, according to the Torah, which commands giving even beasts of burden a day of rest on Shabbat), while Rabbi Meir would walk after him, asking him questions in the laws of Shabbat.

To explain Rabbi Meir's way, the Sages say: "Rabbi Meir found a pomegranate, ate its flesh, threw away its peel."

But this view, which we might call quite mature and nuanced, is not the only view brought in the Talmud regarding Rabbi Meir's strange behavior.

The Talmud grapples with an opposing view that disqualifies all of Rabbi Meir's teachings simply because he studied with Elisha ben Abuya. Surprisingly, the Sages attribute this less mature view to God himself, while the more complex view they attribute to a 4th-century sage named Rabbah bar Shila.

And thus the Talmud tells in tractate Chagigah 15b:

Rabbah bar Shila encountered Elijah the Prophet. He asked him: What is the Holy One Blessed Be He doing?

Elijah answered: Reviewing the words of Torah from the mouths of all the sages, but not from the mouth of Rabbi Meir.

Rabbah bar Shila asked: And why?

Elijah answers: Because he learned Torah from the mouth of Acher.

Rabbah bar Shila cried out and said: And why? Didn't Rabbi Meir find a pomegranate, eat its flesh, and throw away its peel?

Elijah said: Now the Holy One Blessed Be He says: "Meir my son says: When a person suffers, what does the Shekhinah say? 'My head is heavy, my arm is heavy'..."

Rabbah bar Shila, a Babylonian Jewish sage who lived in the fourth century, argues with God. While he experiences what would later be called "the revelation of Elijah," he does not tremble in ecstatic submission, but rather finds it appropriate to use the mediation of Elijah to argue with the Creator about His views, which seem too narrow.

Pay attention: Elijah the Prophet himself delivers to Rabbah bar Shila information from heaven, that the Holy One Blessed Be He is boycotting Rabbi Meir and his teachings, but Rabbah bar Shila does not accept this as unquestionable truth. Like Abraham, who heard that the Creator intends to destroy Sodom and Gomorrah and could not accept it, but rather argued with God, saying "Shall the Judge of all the earth not do justice?" — so too Rabbah bar Shila argues with God regarding the boycott He imposed on Rabbi Meir.

Excommunications and Ostracisms

While among other nations, when someone "strayed from the path,” they would simply be killed, the Jews, who had no legal power to execute (thank God) adopted another deadly weapon — the weapon of excommunication (Cherem). Amongst the Jews, whoever strayed from the path was excommunicated. His books were burned, and all his social and economic ties were severed. An excommunicated person cannot make a living, and his life is effectively destroyed. Excommunication is a deadly weapon in every respect, usually employed by minority groups that do not hold the reins of government and have no power or authority to imprison or execute the accused.

In our time, the weapons of excommunication are no longer limited to the religious Jewish world. Through cancel culture and social media, anyone suspected of deviating from social norms faces excommunication. Groups that might not hold judicial or governmental power but definitely control the public narrative through the media see fit to cancel those who do not act according to the moral rules they demand us all to adhere to. Elisha ben Abuya, called Acher, was suspected in his time not only of heresy but also of forbidden sexuality. As told in the Talmud, he was seen asking a prostitute for her services. Imagine what would have befallen him if he lived in the age of social media.

But Rabbah bar Shila does not accept God's approach. He responds to it with surprise and wonder, as if it just doesn’t make any sense. A God who thinks like cancel culture people seems obviously unreasonable to him. Rabbah bar Shila presents a more mature alternative to God, an alternative capable of distinguishing nuances, and says the key sentence: "Rabbi Meir found a pomegranate, ate its flesh, threw away its peel."

God’s states of consciousness

According to what is told in the Talmudic legend, God immediately accepts Rabbah bar Shila's argument and reverses His position: "Elijah said: Now the Holy One Blessed Be He says: Meir my son says..."

In my humble opinion, it's important to understand what Rabbah bar Shila did here from a Kabbalistic perspective:

In the language of Lurianic Kabbalah, what Rabbah bar Shila did was that he "drew down mochin d'gadlut to the partzuf of Ze'ir Anpin d'Atzilut." These are, of course, concealed kabbalistic codes, so I’ll explain them briefly:

Following the words of the Sages in the Midrash books and the Zoharic literature, Lurianic Kabbalah claims that the human mind cannot be in direct contact with the infinite light of the Ein Sof (Infinite) itself, because in the Infinite, by virtue of being infinite, there is nothing that can be grasped, like language for example, which is built on finite definitions and boundaries between self and other, between subject and object, and between one concept to another. Therefore, the God to whom we relate is considered in Kabbalah to be the light of the Infinite clothed in various divine forms, called "partzufim of Atzilut" (emanation-faces). These partzufim are what might be called in Jungian terms "divine archetypes."

The totality of these partzufim is the "Kabbalistic pantheon," in which the Infinite dresses in different forms. Sometimes it appears as a wise elder, and sometimes as a young and warlike god. Sometimes it is revealed in male form and sometimes in female form. These ideas are not new. They are actually well-anchored in ancient rabbinic literature, like the following passage taken from Yalkut Shimoni, in which the word "Anokhi" (I) is explained as a unifying claim for all the divine forms that the people of Israel experienced throughout history:

"Because the Holy One Blessed Be He appeared to them at the Red-Sea, as a Warrior making war, and appeared to them at Sinai like a Scribe teaching Torah, and appeared to them in the days of Daniel, as an Elder full of mercy, the Holy One Blessed Be He said to them, ‘It is not as you see me, in many forms. But I am the one at the sea, I am the one at Sinai — I am the LORD your God'" (Yalkut Shimoni, 286)

Kabbalah claims that the divine form to which believers relate as the one who governs the world is the figure of "Ze'ir Anpin," or in English, "the Young Face” (of the divine), who is the one governing the world. This young male god is revealed to the believers in their psyche as “The King of Kings, the Holy One Blessed Be He."

The great innovation that Kabbalah adds to the picture is that Ze'ir Anpin, the one who is ruling the universe, has changing states of consciousness. These states of consciousness are called in Kabbalah "mochin": "mochin d'katnut" is a state of narrow consciousness, while "mochin d'gadlut" symbolizes a state of broad and mature consciousness.

Contrary to what is customary in conventional religious thinking, where the person is perceived as an obedient servant, the role of the Kabbalist is to help Ze'ir Anpin to mature and grow, from a state of mochin d'katnut to a state of mochin d'gadlut. Drawing down mochin d'gadlut to the divine is considered in Kabbalah as the secret interpretation of the verse "Give strength to God" (Psalms 68). As the Lurianic scribe wrote: "For the upper ones need the actions of the lower ones, in the secret of 'give strength to God'" (R. Hayyim Vital, Sha’ar HaMitzvot, Behar). Although this action is considered in classical Kabbalah as part of repairing  (Tikun) divinity, I want to claim that, actually, this is the repair of humanity, through rectifying (Tikun) the image of God that we feel is worthy of our devotion. 

Never worship an image of God that is less evolved than the one you deeply feel is worthy of your devotion. And if you meet this narrow-minded God on the path — heal him. This is the Kabbalistic message. 

The way God appears within us directly affects our personal lives. The way the divine appears in the collective consciousness directly affects the collective life. An ethnic group that believes in a bloodthirsty, vengeful god will be cruel and bloodthirsty, while a group that believes in a compassionate divinity with a good-hearted laugh in its eyes will form a society that advocates wisdom and compassion. Therefore, repairing the divine partzufim is actually repairing the human soul, both individually and collectively.

God's Therapists

In the psychological literature, there are quite a few articles that speak of God as the therapist and the believer as the patient. In my opinion, Kabbalah marks a deeper direction: God as the patient, while the mystics serve as therapists.

The way we perceive God constitutes an organizing factor in our lives, and in the ethical standards we uphold in our society and community.

A society that disqualifies Rabbi Meir's teachings because they contain the teachings of Acher is a cancel-culture society, and its God operates from mochin d'katnut. Our role is not to surrender to the divine figure when it appears in our minds like a high school girl who ostracizes those she doesn’t like, but to "show God" the beautiful complexity of reality, which contains many shades and nuances: "Rabbi Meir found a pomegranate, ate its flesh, and threw away its peel." Thus, we humans give strength (Oz) to God, from the Sacred Audacity ("azut d’kedusha") of our authentic soul, the audacity that is not willing to submit to the dictates of society, or religion, or “the word of God” when these operate from smallness of mind (katnut mochin) which we can not be inspired by.

This therapy God is happy to receive; therefore, God willing, we shall soon see general culture wake up from the narrow-mindedness of cancel culture and live in a culture capable of holding complexity, with a divine consciousness that has "mochin d'gadlut."

Ohad Pele Ezrahi. 2026

[This article was published in its first version in "Chaim Acherim" magazine in 1998. It can be found online at https://share.google/db2rR232LFFRxjdhX. Another version was published as part of my joint book with my dear friend, the Jungian psychologist Dr. Micha Ankori in our book "B'Sod Leviathan" (In the Secret of the Leviathan), Modan Publishing, 2005. This article is a renewed and expanded edition of the ideas already expressed in the first version from the previous millennium.]