Spiritual Awakening Bridging Cultures – Panel
Sunday, June 8, 2025 – 12:30 PM EDT
IsraelSpiritual Experience in the Jewish Tradition. This presentation presents insights into the nature of spiritual experience from the Jewish mystical tradition. It will explore the different facets of spiritual experience and the different stages of its unfolding from the initial experience to its realization as full unitive experience. We will also learn how the tradition sees the study of spiritual wisdom, meditation, and contemplative prayer as spiritual tools that will catapult the seeker into the greater reality behind the names and forms of our physical plane of existence.
Rabbi Yoel Glick is a teacher of Jewish mysticism, one of the pioneers of modern Jewish meditation, and a spiritual mentor who has been guiding seekers on the path for over thirty years. He is the director of Daat Elyon, an online Academy and in-person Center in Jerusalem, Israel that focuses on spiritual awakening and personal transformation through meditation, the study of mysticism, and contemplative prayer.
Rabbi Yoel teaches in synagogues, ashrams, monasteries, seminaries, and interfaith institutions to students from a multitude of backgrounds in locations across the globe. He is the author of Living the Life of Jewish Meditation: A Comprehensive Guide to Practice and Experience (Jewish Lights), Walking the Path of the Jewish Mystic: How to Expand Your Awareness and Transform Your Life (Jewish Lights) and Seeking the Divine Presence: The Three Pillars of a Jewish Spiritual Life (Trafford).
USA 
South AfricaDeath: Final Destination or New Address? Very few of us would go to a totally unknown destination without the right preparation, yet we neglect to educate ourselves about the most important journey we will ever take. The crucial factors to consider include preparation, passing over, the afterlife realms, reconciling with our karma, and reincarnation or becoming a spirit guide. Find out how dysfunctions may be visited on living people because of an unhappy or unfulfilled spirit, and explore the factors determining how successfully we traverse the spiritual plane.
David Cumes, M.D. was born in South Africa and received his medical and surgical training in Johannesburg. Specializing in urology, he later taught at Stanford Medical Center and currently has a private practice in Santa Barbara, CA. He is a Western trained surgeon steeped in the allopathic paradigm of medicine but he is also a sangoma (African shaman,) being initiated in Swaziland in 2002. Dr. Cumes is also the author of seven books; Inner Passages Outer Journeys, The Spirit of Healing, Africa in my Bones, Healing Trees and Plants of the Lowveld, Messages from the Ancestors, Mpofu’s Grandmothers Loving Lessons and The Source (about establishing an indigenous healing center in remote South Africa.) He is a bridge between Western medicine and indigenous healing wisdom, continuing with his surgical practice but also practicing sangoma medicine out of his home. His roots are in Africa, and he is also convinced that since humanity began there, so too did the first healing techniques.
