I chuckled a little when I first saw this, because it is a charming bit of wit to play the contrasts here, but almost immediately I also noticed the titles of the book of book on the Kabbalist’s lap. They don’t reference any specific Kabbalistic texts, they are just an assortment of the sefirot names, which sort of misses the point, almost as badly as the trend-chasing fauxballah student parodied in the strip. While the fauxballist’s ideas are transparently silly, as is their ignorance of the roots of the practice, the way in which the cartoon frames the contrast diminishes Kabbalism proper, too.
(Yes, I know, it is just a cartoon. And this is just a blog post using it as a jumping off point to make some basic points.)
