בדף זה תוכלו למצוא מידע לגבי הרצאות, שיעורים וסדרות.
המידע מתעדכן מעת לעת, כדאי לעקוב!
◆ About ◆
I was born in 1953 in Cheyenne, Wyoming in the USA. My father, Rabbi Max Leader, peace upon him, was a congregational rabbi, and our family followed him from Cheyenne to Albuquerque, New Mexico, and then to Los Angeles, California, so that my younger sister and I could receive a Jewish education. It was there that I was privileged to meet my teacher, Rabbi Elazar Simha Wasserman, peace upon him, the son of Rabbi Elhanan Wasserman, an outstanding disciple of the Hafetz Hayyim. My formal studies with Reb Simha, as we called him, included Talmud and Maimonides, but beyond that, as he would often say, his job was to teach us how to learn, a gift that has served me well to this very day.
However, the study of the Talmud did not seem to satisfy me. Although my yeshiva attempted to instill a feeling in us that it was a protected island in the midst of a sea of idol worshipers, I was affected by the cultural ferment characteristic of the 1960s. I was interested in meditation, Buddhism, altered states of consciousness, and more. I wondered if there was anyone in the Jewish tradition who spoke in a way that touched my soul, and I was fortunate to discover the Baal Shem Tov. I often think that it is to a great degree in his merit that I am still Jewish today. I was nurtured mainly by books and by stories, because at that time, there was no Hasidic community in Los Angeles that lived according to the Baal Shem Tov's teachings, at least not in the way I imagined.
In 1971, when I was 17, I immigrated to Israel, with the intention of studying Kabbalah and spending time with my uncle, Reb Yaakov Leader, peace upon him, a very special person who lived in the Beit Yisrael neighborhood of Jerusalem, where my family comes from. If Reb Simha was the teacher of my mind, Reb Yaakov was the guide for my heart. I was accepted to the Tomchei Temimim Yeshiva in Kfar Habad, where I hoped to study Kabbalah, but my lack of desire to become a Habad follower led to the end of that experiment.
As a result of reading Professor Gershom Scholem's great masterpiece "Major Tends in Jewish Mysticism", I discovered Rabbi Avraham Abulafia, and I wanted to study his teachings. I moved to Jerusalem and got a job as a guard at the Israel National Library, where I spent almost all of my time reading the Collected Works of Carl Jung and in an attempt to fathom Abulafia's writings, which at that time were available only in manuscript form at the National Library. I would copy the manuscripts into a notebook, go out to a small garden next to the library, and read what I had written, but I could barely understand a sentence here and there. About fifty years later, I am still reading and rereading Abulafia's writings, still in the process of discovering and deciphering the many insights and profound wisdom they contain.
In 1976, together with a number of friends, I joined Moshav Mevo Modi'im, a community of the followers of Rabbi Shlomo Carlebach, of blessed memory. I was one of the founders of the moshav and headed the administrative committee during the community's formative years. It was there that my two sons were born. Around 1989, when I moved back to Jerusalem after living in a number of different places in Israel, I founded what is known as "The Leader Minyan" together with family and friends. The original idea was to create a place for prayer on the High Holidays whose holy spirit would sometimes be reminiscent of what I imagined to be the atmosphere in the prayer groups of the early Hasidim. This group eventually evolved into one of the first "partnership minyans". At the present time, we meet for the High Holidays and once a month, on the Shabbat before the new moon.
Over the past couple decades, I have been teaching various schools of Kabbalah – Sefer Yetzira, the holy Zohar, Tiqunei Zohar, Rabbi Avraham Abulafia's teachings, the Lurianic writings, and more, in Israel and abroad. About four years ago, I realized a dream of many years when I founded "Matzref – The Academy for the Study of the Prophetic Consciousness Teachings of Rabbi Avraham Abulafia, peace upon him" (a short, catchy name), a center whose goal is to make Abulafia's teachings and method for training human consciousness and preparing it for divine-prophetic consciousness accessible to a wider public.
As of 2017, I serve as the chairperson of "Wuste Tzega – The Center for Culturally Adapted Psychotherapy", which was founded by my friend and student, Yeshitu Shmuel.
Today I live in Jerusalem with my partner, a father to my two boys and a grandfather to four.
I would like to invite you to meander around my website, see the classes I'm offering or have offered in the past, and to enjoy something I wrote or a video clip. My primary intention is to make the inspirational and beautiful texts of the Kabbalah available for serious students of both heart and mind, whether they are beginners or advanced. In that sense, I think I'm mainly a melamed, a teacher, of Kabbalah texts.
It would be my greatest joy if you were to join me in one or a number of the journeys available on this portal.
Enjoy your visit and all blessings,
Avraham