From the Forward
On a recent Monday afternoon in the Boro Park section of Brooklyn, eight women and two men sat patiently in the back room of Neuman’s Optical, tapping their feet, chatting in Russian, reading psalms and occasionally letting out an aggravated sigh. Appropriately, a broken clock hung over the windowless waiting area, where some said they had been sitting for as long as six hours.
These customers were not in line to have their eyes examined. They were looking forward to improved vision of a very different sort, with an Israeli psychic named Rabbi Chaim Yosef Sharabi. Lately, Sharabi has been giving his readings in a space at the back of the store. His unpredictable schedule, changing venues and sometimes hazy advice keep patrons on their toes and returning for his unusual services.
One of several Israelis said to work in Brooklyn as a clairvoyant, Rabbi Chaim, as his patrons affectionately call him, claims to be the scion of a famous Yemeni family of Jewish mystics. But even as a steady stream of business flows through his door, experts in Jewish law continue to debate the religious status of clairvoyants. And some Brooklyn Jewish community leaders staunchly oppose the practice......Rabbi Chaim traces his ancestry to Rabbi Shalom Sharabi, an 18th-century mystic from Yemen. Rabbi Chaim said he was trained in Kabbalah by a great-uncle who ran a seminary in Jerusalem. His family had always told him he would become a mystic, the rabbi recalled. “I was born circumcised on Yom Kippur,” he said when asked about his credentials, indicating that this was an early sign of his calling.
The rabbi told me that the book he uses for bibliomancy is 800 years old and was passed down to him by family members. “It doesn’t have a name,” he said, lifting the red facsimile of the manuscript, whose original he says is hidden in a secret location in Israel. “Not everyone can touch a book like that,” his wife added. “This is not fortune telling. It’s between him and God.”......But not everyone is ready to attribute supernatural powers to rabbis. Shelomo Alfassa, a Sephardic community activist in Brooklyn, has been outspoken against local rabbis who practice fortune telling. “Judaism expressly prohibits palm readers, fortune tellers and other soothsayers,” Alfassa wrote in an e-mail. “A person calling himself a rabbi, whether he is an actual rabbi or not — does not entitle him to act in any fashion which will allow him to fool people into making donations — all the while providing the eager recipient with junk information about their future.”
Alfassa cited a line from Deuteronomy 18 — “For these nations which you inherit, they listen to fortune tellers and diviners; but as for you, not so has Hashem your God given” — that, he said, made divination a violation of Jewish law, or Halacha.....
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Comment:
We need to return to the standards of the past, when only Torah knolwedge or personal piety PLUS familial background provided protection against charlatans. Yichus, with all its disadvantages, offers another level of protection. I am reading the 1967 biography of Chasam Sofer by Rabbi Dr. Moses Burack and he has a chapter on Chasam Sofer's position on the issue of inheriting rabbinic positions. He says that Chasam Sofer favored sons of previous rabbis, not only as a matter of halacha, but also to deny Reform an opening into new communities, since it would be unusual for a son to drastically change his father's religious approach. Only for the Chief Rabbi's position did he accept the argument that it should be based on merit, since the Chief Rabbi of a province must be the greatest scholar in the area.
I would add that someone who achieves this level of scholarship has been watched and observed for many years, in his yeshiva or place of study. He is a known entity. These Kabbalists arrive without a record. The ones who can act, earn sizable amounts. They disgrace true Kabbalists who sit and study and look not for publicity and material success.
Thus it says in Devorim 1:13:
Provide yourselves men, wise and understanding and renowned to your tribes, and I will designate them your leaders."
Rashi says: "those that are known to you, for if he would come before me enwrapped in his talis, I would not know who he is, and from which tribe he comes, and if he is qualified; but you know him, for you have raised him. Therefore it is said, "And renowned to your tribes."
In my opinion, the proliferation of self-made and self-announced Kabbalists is a very dangerous and deplorable development. Some really bad things have happened, see here. This Israeli import we can do without.
The premature Tarot imagery was intensely rooted in Renaissance Europe and Medieval, but over the centuries it has developed to integrate the whole lot from Astrology & Kabbalah to Runes and the I Ching. Tarot psychic reading is often used for spiritual, occult, psychological, esoteric and divinatory predictions. Or, it can be that an existing relationship is healed through forgiveness. Every must choose for himself what he implied by divine beings. Psychic ability can be enhanced or developed by means of learning and understanding what you read in the Tarot cards. However, the chances greatly increase when you do heed them as with any other set of guidelines.
Posted by: Free tarot Reading | November 15, 2013 at 01:31 PM