PRAYING FOR SUSTENANCE IN THE NAME OF A FOREIGN GOD
Please beware of a frightening custom that has crept into “Orthodox” practice , and spread to nearly every ethnic community of the Jewish People I am aware of: the ‘tefillah la-parnasah’ (prayer for sustenance) before the open ark, in the “merit” of a secret name, whose meaning I will soon reveal. Being the name is not remotely Hebrew, but clearly Spanish, this custom clearly crept into Jewish practice in pre-Inquisition Spain, during the well-documented partnership between pseudo -mequbalim (pseudo-Kabbalists) and the Christian church. (The following sources are taken from those quoted in Prof. Rabbi Jose Faur’s work, “A Crisis of Categories: Kabbalah and the Rise of Apostasy in Spain.” pp.31 While I do not identify with all the views of the author, some of which I find extreme and unbalanced, the sources he quotes from are greatly important. Namely, I do not share Rabbi Faur’s blanket attack on mystical kabbalah. I believe that bot...
