playnext.fm

Rabbi Shaul Youdkevitch – Zohar & Kabbalah Study

Ekev 5785 (2025)

·1 hr 4 min·5 clips
Rabbi Shaul Youdkevitch explains why World War III is a spiritual war most people don't understand.
The opening is blunt. The host starts with parashat Ekev in Deuteronomy 7:12 and says the world is unstable, confused, and already in a wider war. Politics is only the surface. Russia-Ukraine, Israel's wars, economic danger in America and China, and social imbalance all point, in his reading, to a deeper problem. So what is the story underneath? For the host, Kabbalah says the visible world is never the whole event. Physical conflict shows spiritual disorder. He names one ruling religion: materialism, the belief that people and society are only molecules, strength, survival, evolution, and competition. Then he names another. A God who rewards followers and punishes infidels, he says, still belongs to the same idol-like pattern of domination. The Zohar pushes back. Humanity is here to draw bliss from the upper world, not bow to false religion or brute force. The world has two layers: the physical realm of bodies, atoms, and molecules, and the divine realm beyond ordinary senses and logic. The human being is split the same way. A body follows physical law, but the teaching keeps turning toward receiving light. That becomes practical fast. If people cheat each other and answer only to human authority, the host says justice and a balanced economy cannot last. Honesty has a root above. Integrity, productivity, and restraint train the brain and bring a person closer to God's light. The warning lands plainly: be careful, stay awake, and do not lose the war.

As heard by us

A grave Ekev study that treats upheaval as a sign of deeper spiritual disorder and presses toward integrity.

The Ekev study opens from Deuteronomy 7:12 and turns quickly toward a larger reading of instability in public life. Its guiding Kabbalistic idea is that war, economic danger, and other visible pressures are not the root condition but outward signs of a deeper spiritual reality.

Read the full review in PlayNext →

Why you'd press play

When the world feels unstable, you get a Kabbalistic map from visible conflict to spiritual responsibility.

Read the full recommendation in PlayNext →
Listen to the show on
Apple PodcastsSpotify
Play clips from this episodeMore from Rabbi Shaul Youdkevitch – Zohar & Kabbalah Study