This is a collection of notes by students [who?] of Rabbi Hoffman. This was done back in the '90s.

Psychodrama and the Art of Torah Interpretation

• Psychodrama and Torah
• The Torah's "Mistake heroes and heroines” versus the "solitary mystic model” of spirituality
• In the language of dreams
• Learning to interpret your life as Torah
• Torah as "the water of life.”
• Gematria and symbolic numbers
• "White letters on blue fire”: Reading the space between the letters

• Dialectics in Hebrew words and letters
• Dialectics to open the heart

• Teshuva: finding the Divine sparks in our mistakes

Blocks and Flow

Blocks:

• Emotional  trauma, pain and fear, the conserve, depression (unconscious pain)
• Addiction: klippot as an alarm clock
• Desires, habits, instincts
• A sense of entitlement, the limits of  a contemporary, competitive, culture focused on external achievement
• When don't get what we want or when bad times come, how will we respond to the universal human complaint, "Why me?”
• Why is Hashem hidden?

• The narrow bridge: "Look up Chaim, look up.”
• Seeing blocks as "the seeds of transformation,”  moving blocks (unconscious pain) into awareness, creating the longing to receive Hashem's life force
• David's "crazy dancing”: becoming a grateful receiver
• "Spirals in an echo chamber”:  listening for your soul's blueprint in your most frequent mistakes
• The 10 plagues seen as the 10 negative behaviors and the 10 commandments. The Ten Sefirot.
• The Torah and karma: perceiving karmic consequences as compassionate
• The names of Hashem: our perceptions of G-d. The Y-K-V-K. Expansion and contraction in Creation. Why create a world?
• Mystical Judaism and reincarnation: lessons from the soul journey of Havel, Noah and Moshe
• Towards the open heart and the good eye: The greatest miracle is a new perception
• The art of Simcha and Le Chi am: plowing the narrow furrow

• Eating and the model of Shabbat and the seders: stepping out of habit and instinct to eat with an awareness of  Hashem's life force in the food
• Do we take the fish from the bones, or the bones from the fish?
• The lessons of challah and salt
• Barukah
• " Torah study for its own sake.”
• Davenen
• Niggun
• Meditation
• The Bal Shem Tov's separation, sweetening and unity
• Transforming anger and resentment

• Hashem's menorah and our menorah: the 10 Sefirot  of the Kabbalah
• The 4 worlds
• Davennen and the 4 worlds: Why is the Amidah higher than the Shema?
• Lessons from the Pardes (humility, not splitting self into good and bad, not embarrassing others or self,  not seeing one's mistakes as beyond redemption)
• Tehora he (the pure soul): the ground of  teshuva
• Meshiah consciousness: the world of coming. The lesson of Yehuda and Tamar.
• Traversing the worlds: lessons from the 3^rd meal of Shabbat

Meshiah Torah spirals in time

Spirals in this world

• Lunar awareness and solar awareness
• Tumah and taharah: Misunderstood words

• Ritual as the synthesis of lovingkindness, intuition and the law
• Lessons from the Temple
• Bris : the three circumcisions in life
• Kashrut
• Laws can make the psychic space to receive
• Shabbat and the week
• The festivals seen as different manifestations of Hashem's energies (with links to teachings on each festival) (For Yom Kippur: The shofar blasts and the heart's journey
• The ties between the 3 pilgrimage festivals and learning to receive
• Finding Hashem in the hidden: The unique role of Purim in Jewish mysticism

• What does it mean to be chosen? Finding the sparks hidden in our full humanity. Providing a model of hope and joy in difficult times to the world
• Collateral
• "The Wandering  Jew”:  Persecution and anti-Semitism.
• "What Makes Sammy Run?”
• Moving from humiliation to humility

THE TREE OF LIFE THE FOUR WORLDS

Sources and Inspiration

(Rabbi Hoffman's reflections on his inspirations)