Journal of Psychology and Neuroscience
August 6, 2026
Julian Ungar-Sargon
Deveykut cannot be defended descriptively. Moshe Idel’s correction of Gershom Scholem established that genuinely unitive and absorptive strands are well attested across Jewish mysticism, which means that any account of deveykut as communion-without-annihilation cannot be presented as a simple report of what Jewish mystics sought or attained. This essay accepts Idel’s finding and draws the...
Clinical Reviews & Cases
March 31, 2026
Julian Ungar-Sargon
This essay articulates a distinction between my formal theological work—which engages the scholarly apparatus of Elliot Wolfson's phenomenology, Jonathan Eybeschütz's radical mysticism, and the Lubavitcher Rebbe's teachings on divine concealment—and my personal, experiential understanding of 'higher power' as it functions in spiritual practice. While my academic writing explores the objective...
Journal of Psychology and Neuroscience
February 23, 2026
Julian Ungar-Sargon
Shel Silverstein’s The Giving Tree (1964) has long been read as a simple parable of unconditional giving and human desire. This comprehensive analysis proposes a far deeper reading: the tree as an embodiment of the Shekhinah, the feminine aspect of divine immanence in Kabbalistic theology, whose boundless generosity mirrors the mystical dynamics between God and creation. By juxtaposing this...
New Advances in Brain & Critical Care
January 16, 2026
Julian Ungar-Sargon
There is a strange mercy in the way the mind forgets a mercy that medicine has rarely understood. In our age of biomedical triumphalism, where pharmaceutical companies spend billions on Alzheimer's therapies promising to rewind the unrewindable, we speak of memory loss exclusively as catastrophe, as the progressive erasure of selfhood requiring aggressive intervention. This article proposes a...
Journal of Traditional Medicine & Applications
January 15, 2026
Julian Ungar-Sargon
The struggle with compulsive behavior has been addressed by human communities throughout history, though the frameworks for understanding and treating such struggles have varied dramatically across cultures and eras. In contemporary Western society, twelve-step programs-particularly Sex Addicts Anonymous (SA) and Sex and Love Addicts Anonymous (SLAA)-have emerged as primary resources for those...
American Journal of Medical and Clinical Research & Reviews
2026
Julian Ungar-Sargon
Jewish theology sustains a persistent tension between two spiritual grammars: personal encounter with God as an addressable "Thou," and mystical union in which the self is attenuated or absorbed into an impersonal infinite. This essay argues that while rational Orthodoxy protects divine personalism through transcendence and restraint, and Kabbalah often radicalizes transcendence into...
2026
Julian Ungar-Sargon
A previous study argued that the spiritual trajectory of the Twelve Steps, read alongside the Hasidic recovery of relational address, resolves the ancient quarrel between a personal God who is addressed as Thou and an impersonal Infinite into which the self is absorbed; it proposed that Hasidism reorients mystical depth toward relational responsibility rather than dissolution.¹ The present...
American Journal of Medical and Clinical Research & Reviews
2026
Julian Ungar-Sargon
This article examines the concept of Shabbat as “beyond time” (le-ma’alah min ha-zeman) through a sustained engagement with Zoharic Kabbalah and Hasidic thought, followed by a carefully delimited bridge to Richard Feynman’s physics of time. Beginning with the Zohar’s architecture of “two Shabbatot” and its association of the upper Shabbat with the sefirah of Binah, the analysis traces how...
Journal of Pharmaceutical Research & Reports
November 14, 2025
Julian Ungar-Sargon
This essay examines one of the most enduring theological paradoxes in biblical literature-the hardening of Pharaoh’s heart-through the interpretive lens of the Me’or Einayim of Chernobyl (R. Menachem Nachum Twersky, 1730-1797), a foundational text in early Hasidic thought. The biblical narrative presents a profound dilemma: if God hardens Pharaoh’s heart, how can Pharaoh be held morally...
AMERICAN JOURNAL OF NEUROLOGY RESEARCH
September 30, 2025
Julian Ungar-Sargon
This essay explores the metaphysical and therapeutic dimensions of human suffering, proposing a reframe in which patients are not passive recipients of misfortune but active bearers of sacred messages. Drawing on theological, mystical, psychological, and literary traditions, the paper suggests that in the absence of traditional prophets and healers, the modern patient becomes a vessel of divine...
Journal of Religion and Theology
September 2, 2025
Julian Ungar-Sargon
This study provides a comprehensive critical analysis of Brother Gilbert (Athol) Bloomer's 2013 theological corpus, examining his ambitious attempt to synthesize Jewish mystical traditions with Catholic sacramental theology through what he terms "heretical kabbalah."Drawing on contemporary scholarship in Jewish mysticism, religious studies methodology, postcolonial criticism, and interfaith...
Journal of Religion and Theology
August 5, 2025
Julian Ungar-Sargon
1 citation
The motif of Or HaGanuz-the "Hidden Light"-represents one of the most enduring esoteric themes in Jewish theology.Emerging from the first verses of Genesis and developed through Midrashic imagination, Talmudic tradition, Kabbalistic speculation, and Hasidic reimagining, Or HaGanuz serves as a bridge between the primordial and the eschatological, the concealed and the revealed.This article...
Journal of Religion and Theology
July 21, 2025
Julian Ungar-Sargon
2 citations
This essay explores the profound implications of recognizing the sacred theological origins of Cartesian mind-body dualism for contemporary healthcare transformation.Drawing from the thesis that Descartes' supposedly secular philosophy emerged from Neoplatonic, Augustinian, and mystical Christian traditions, this work proposes a revolutionary healthcare model that reclaims medicine's sacred...
Journal of Traditional Medicine & Applications
July 1, 2025
Julian Ungar-Sargon
Building upon previous analyses of medical heresy as secularized religious orthodoxy enforcement, this study examines how Jewish mystical traditions particularly Kabbalistic antinomianism and Sabbatian theology illuminate deeper dimensions of the heresy-orthodoxy dialectic in contemporary medical practice. Through analysis of figures like Sabbatai Zevi, Jacob Frank, and their theological...
Journal of Behavioral Health and Psychology
June 30, 2025
Julian Ungar-Sargon
1 citation
In his seminal work, Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism (1941) [6], Scholem presents the Sifra Detzniuta as one of the earliest sections of the Zohar, which he attributed primarily to Moses de Leon in late 13th-century Spain.Scholem describes it as "a brief outline of the symbolism of the universe as a revelation of the Divine in the form of primordial man," emphasizing its concise yet profound...
Trends in Internal Medicine
June 30, 2025
Julian Ungar-Sargon
WThis paper extends the concept of literary tzimtzum from Hasidic mystical pedagogy to medical hermeneutics, proposing that the patient-physician encounter can be understood through the lens of parabolic interpretation. Drawing on the Alter Rebbe's theory of meshalim as forms of divine contraction that make infinite meaning accessible to finite consciousness [1], this study argues that patients...
Journal of Religion and Theology
May 29, 2025
Julian Ungar-Sargon
1 citation
This article examines the complex interplay between language, meaning, and divine revelation in Jewish textual traditions through comparative analysis of diverse interpretative frameworks: the intellectual approach of Rabbi Chaim of Volozhin, the hermeneutics of religious passion and restraint developed by the Netziv (Rabbi Naftali Zvi Yehuda Berlin), the contemporary philosophical perspectives...
Journal of Behavioral Health and Psychology
April 30, 2025
Julian Ungar-Sargon
This paper examines the complex theological concept of the dark side of the Schechina (Divine Presence) as presented in contemporary Jewish mystical thought and its relationship to post-Holocaust theological discourse. Through close analysis of primary texts that explore the feminine divine in Jewish tradition from rabbinic literature through medieval Kabbalah to Hasidic texts and engaging with...
Neurology
March 30, 2025
Julian Ungar-Sargon
This article examines the question of whether living beings possess an innate, unchangeable nature or have the capacity for fundamental transformation a question with profound implications for treating addiction-related physical illness. By integrating diverse perspectives from religious and philosophical traditions, mystical thought, modern neuroscience, genetics, and clinical approaches to...
American Journal of Medical and Clinical Research & Reviews
2025
Julian Ungar-Sargon
4 citations
This paper explores the application of Or HaGanuz (Hidden Light), a foundational concept in Jewish mystical tradition, to contemporary therapeutic practice. Drawing on the evolution of this concept from Midrashic origins through Zoharic development to Chassidic psychology, particularly as articulated in the Me'or Einayim of Rabbi Menachem Nachum of Chernobyl, this analysis proposes a framework...
American Journal of Medical and Clinical Research & Reviews
2025
Julian Ungar-Sargon
This article examines the question of whether living beings possess an innate, unchangeable nature or have the capacity for fundamental transformation—a question with profound implications for treating addiction-related physical illness. By integrating diverse perspectives from religious and philosophical traditions, mystical thought, modern neuroscience, genetics, and clinical approaches to...