The Live Kabbalah Podcast- Daily Wisdom, Deep Conversations, Inner Transformation

The letter Tzaddik stands upright like a tree, rooted and still reaching. In this class, taught between Yom Kippur and Sukkot, Rabbi Amichai Cohen opens the Kabbalah of the Tzaddik through the etrog, the fruit that stays on its tree through every season. We look at the bent Tzaddik, who knows how to choose his battles and sometimes be smart rather than right, and the straight Tzaddik, the foundati...

The final two letters of the Hebrew year 5787, peh and zayin, spell paz: fine gold. Rabbi Amichai Cohen explores this image as an invitation to discover the treasures within us. What are we communicating through our words? How can the seven sefirot help us bring inner growth into everyday life? And how do we use the tools around us with greater presence? A teaching on Hebrew letters, Malchut, and...

As we enter the two days of Rosh Hashanah, the head and mind of the entire year, Rabbi Amichai Cohen opens the inner work of these days: how to stand in awe (yirah) while holding a deep, internal joy (gila). In this episode: - Why Rosh Hashanah is called the mind and brain of the year, and the elevated consciousness it asks of us - "Ivdu et Hashem b'yirah, v'gilu bir'adah" - serving God with awe,...

A short teaching from Rabbi Amichai Cohen for the 25th of Elul—the day associated with the beginning of Creation. As Rosh Hashanah approaches, pause to reconnect with the purpose, possibility, and Divine intention woven into the world and into your own life.

The Hebrew letter Peh means mouth, yet it also reveals the relationship between our face, our inner life, and the words we bring into the world. Rabbi Amichai explores Peh through Elul, Moshe’s calling, the King in the field, the shofar, and the blessing of the Kohanim. This class offers a grounded way to understand teshuvah as closing the distance between what is within us and what we show.

What prepares a people to carry Torah into ordinary life? As Moshe transfers leadership to Yehoshua, the Jewish people are leaving the miraculous life of the desert and entering the Land of Israel. They will need courageous leadership, the guidance of Torah, and the strength of community. In this short teaching on Parashat Vayelech, Rabbi Amichai explores the mitzvah of Hakhel: once every seven ye...

Choose Life: What Are You Here to Give? The Torah tells us: “I have placed life and death before you, blessing and curse. Choose life, so that you and your descendants may live.”
Devarim 30:19 Choosing life is more than wanting to live. It means choosing goodness, purpose, growth, and what we are here to give. In this short reflection on Nitzavim–Vayelech, I share a powerful teaching for preparing...

Rabbi Amichai continues the teaching of the letter Ayin through the two unities of the Shema. Higher unity reveals that nothing exists outside G-d. Lower unity asks us to live faithfully within the apparent separateness of creation, bringing oneness into the body, the animal soul, our choices, and the ordinary details of life. The class also explores garments of skin and light, Chai Elul, the Baal...

The Hebrew letter Ayin means both eye and wellspring. Its numerical value is 70, the number of many facets returning to one source. Rabbi Amichai explores ayin tovah, the good eye, the difference between discernment and judgment, the 70 facets of Torah, and Yosef's ability to remain rooted in G-d while living visibly in the world. The teaching closes with a simple question: What am I looking a...

In this teaching from our weekly Tanya class, Miriam continues into Chapter 13 and the Benoni, the in-between person that each one of us can be. She looks at the two impulses within us as internal judges, one that speaks in fear and one that speaks in love, and the tender teaching that G-d Himself is the third judge who helps the good in us. All of this in the light of Elul, when the King is in th...

The name of this week's portion is Re'eh, which means "See." From its very first word, the Torah is teaching us how to look. Life sets a blessing and a curse before us, and so much of our work is learning to see the blessing that is hidden inside the challenge. In this reflection we explore the nisyonot, the tests we each move through, and how they are not obstacles on the path but the very doorwa...

Just six days after the breaking of Tisha B'Av, the calendar turns to its very opposite. Tu B'Av, the fifteenth of Av, is named by our sages as one of the most joyful days of the entire year. The moon that went dark at the start of the month now stands full again. The mourning of the Temple gives way to love, to reunion, and to the quiet promise that what was broken can be mended. Our sages descri...

Mem is the mother letter, the first sound a child makes, and it carries us back to the waters we were formed in. In this Exploring Oneness class we delve into the letter Mem: water and maim as life force, the higher and lower waters, Mem as Binah and the patience of gestation, the open Mem and the closed final Mem, the mikvah and the four Yuds hidden within, and the sacred silence where something...

As we enter Tisha B'Av, the day of the destruction of both Temples, this reflection is an invitation not to run from the pain but to sit with it, face to face, and to meet Hashem in the very place of the breaking. This year we have been cracked open, by war, by turmoil, by watching the old structures fall. Tisha B'Av asks us not to reach for the quick distractions, but to go inward and become pres...

There is a sight deeper than the eyes. This teaching is about the power of vision, the ability to see with your soul the fullness you are truly seeking, even when everything around you looks broken. We explore a remarkable teaching of Rabbi Levi Yitzchak of Berditchev, that each of us is being shown something we cannot yet see with our physical eyes, and that what we are being shown is real. Where...

Rabbi Amichai Cohen, live class, July 12, 2026. This is the opening teaching portion of the Light Warrior Path Week 4 class. There is the true I, which is a portion of the Creator and whose nature is to give. And there is the fragmented I, the animal self, whose nature is to receive for itself. Before the sin, Adam and Eve lived in constant connection to the Source, with no ego blocking the flow....

Greetings and blessings for the new month of Av, which literally means father, and carries the energy of Leo, the lion. The Midrash says a lion came on the month of the lion and destroyed the lion, so that the Lion, G-d, can come back and build the lion. Nebuchadnezzar, the great lion, destroys the Beit HaMikdash, called Ariel, the crouching lion, so that Hashem, "Ariel sha'ag, mi lo yira," will r...

A short teaching for the Hillula of the Ramak, Rabbi Moshe Cordovero, one of the great masters of Tzfat. We look at his life, the Pardes Rimonim and the Tomer Devorah, his teaching that the secret of enlightenment lives in one word, Shema, and the meaning of his passing on the 23rd of Tammuz, during these Three Weeks. Read more: https://www.livekabbalah.com/blog/The-Ramak

The letter Kaf is the vessel that curves inward to make room. In this teaching from our Exploring Oneness and Meditation series, Rabbi Amichai Cohen follows the Kaf from Binah, the understanding that builds, down into the palm of the hand that receives in order to give. This is EOM 105 in the Mystery of the Hebrew Letters. Join the community: The Live Kabbalah Community Walk through the letters on...

Why did God create the world? In this episode, Miriam teaches three profound answers from Kabbalistic tradition, each one a different window into the mystery of existence. Drawing from the Alter Rebbe, the AriZal, and the Tanya, she explores: 1. The nature of good is to do good. God's very essence is boundless goodness, and goodness must give. Creation is the ultimate act of generosity. 2. To...

A portion of this week's Live Kabbalah class with Rabbi Amichai Cohen on the letter Yud — the smallest letter of the Hebrew alphabet, and yet the single point from which every other letter begins. We explore the Yud as the place where the infinite first touches the finite, the scribe's first stroke and the white parchment beneath the black letters, the flash of Chochmah that arrives from nothingne...

This is a portion of Miriam's weekly Own Your Light class. The full class continues inside Live Kabbalah. In this teaching we begin Tanya Chapter 10 and enter the idea of the tzaddik, the truly righteous individual. We explore how fear can become trust and reactivity can become passion, the difference between the incomplete and the complete tzaddik, and the reminder that each of us carries a point...

This is a portion of our weekly Live Kabbalah class, continuing our journey through the Hebrew letters with the letter Tet (ט) — the gate of gestation, of trust, and of becoming. Tet is the letter of tov, of goodness, and it carries the hidden light (the ohr haganuz): the reminder that what is good is often quietly ripening, concealed, before it is ever revealed. We explore the shape and meaning o...

This is a portion of Miriam's weekly Own Your Light class — the opening teaching from our continued study of Chapter 9 of the Tanya. The full class continues inside Live Kabbalah. In this teaching, Miriam explores the two forces within each of us — the divine soul and the animal soul — and the two honest ways the Tanya gives us to work with our shadow side: iscafia, a healthy kind of subduing, and...

This teaching is a portion of our weekly Light Warrior Circle class at Live Kabbalah, part of the ongoing series on the Mystery of the Hebrew Letters. Here we open the eighth gate of the Hebrew alphabet, the letter Chet. Its name carries cheit, to miss the mark, and yet the very same letter begins chaim, life. We explore the polarity built into each of us, the shape of the Chet as both an opening...