The Whole Point

…after a while it started to dawn on me: the whole point and moral of kabbalist religious teaching was that you were supposed to become a religious Jew! Before you could get to all the higher realms enumerated, you had to become religious here on earth according to sixty volumes of Jewish Law, and follow every jot and tittle of the 613 commandments.  So that was a fairly heavy asterisk attached to all these goodies. That was a fairly big hook to swallow….There were all the holidays, there were big and little fasts, there were a thousand rules you had to live by, not to mention praying, morning, noon, and night. And whereas the religion was so beautiful in its visions, to practice it was like digesting the entire telephone book!

Allegra Goodman
Paradise Park, p. 217