15 of 17 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Mysticism from a Jewish Renewal perspective, January 16, 2006
This review is from: Ehyeh: A Kabbalah for Tomorrow (Paperback)
Rabbi Green, has written this book as a exposition of his personal Jewish mystical theology. The book is intended for the Jewish mystical seeker, who is dissatisfied with traditional normative Judaism. It is a liberal perspective, although to be fair, Green is definately on the right wing of the Jewish Renewal movement.
The book lays out the system of sfirot, olamot, and shemot in basic terms, provides some guided meditations, provides a negative critique of Lurianic kabbalah (too complicated to be useful), provides a fairly useful summary of the modern day issues for mysticism and halacha to solve (some would say fads).
He is providing a Jewish mystical framework divorced from tradition in order to attract Jews who would otherwise be studying Buddhism or other Eastern religious traditions. The purpose is to address the mystical experience within a post-modern context. He rejects a traditional normative understanding of God and Torah. Instead, he uses mysticism to develop an alternative.
The book is definately rooted in the Age of Aquarius. Green was one of the founders of the Havurah movement back in 1968. It attempts to graft modern (post-modern?) counter-culture onto Judaism. Even down to a wise-crack about Republican Jews.
The book very much fits with the goals of the Jewish Renewal movement. Although, in his chapter on sources for further study, he is much more respectful of traditional sources than many of the leaders of Jewish Renewal after the passing of Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi, the hassidic Rabbi who founded the movement.
Rabbi Green is also the author of the companion introduction to the translation of the Zohar being prepared by Daniel Matt at Stanford University. That introduction is an excellent one to the system of kabbalah in the Zohar.
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59 of 81 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
"Ehyeh Asher Ehyeh: I will be what I will be", January 5, 2003
When I first came across this text, the latest work by writer/Professor Arthur Green, I thought, "Eureka! Finally a unified field theory of Kabbalah from a liberal point of view!" Alas, not quite; Mr. Green makes many brilliant points, including the word chosen for the title, which is God saying to Moses at the Burning Bush: "I will be or I am that!" This for Green, is both Man and God saying the same thing: "I am was and will be that I am was will be"
But stating God and man are one is not only Kabbalah, it is all mysticism, and a high level of generality, if not touchy feely syncretism pervades much of this work, which would initially seem more destined more for the advanced than general reader. Green does an excellent job, laying out the history of the Kabbalah's development, the sephirot or Ten potencies of divine power, the relationship between the Torah, the Bible and Kabbalah, and the directions the Kabbalah may take in the future for liberal Jews.
However, he does all of this as a modern Jew who explicitly states that he has no faith and not even concern with, the efficacy of Jewish prayer and practice, or their ability to deliver to the worshipper what it is he or she prays for. Further, Green seems to down play Jewish uniqueness in the work in favor of a "toned down" mysticism, that leaves neither God nor Torah at it's center, but concepts more like "Eco-kashrut" and other spiritual forms of political correctness.
This particular point, "Eco-kashrut" is originally the brainchild of Arthur Waskow, but Green has adopted it as part of his program. Initially meant to signify vegetarianism, this term now indicates an "environmentally aware" life, where the Jewish person avoids all products and items which are made from exploitation of human or animal labor, or that pollute the environment. Needless to say, while this may be an idea implicit in Torah, it is not and never has been a focus of Jewish tradition, and this and other innovations proposed by Green, Waskow and others, leave this writer quite uncomfortable.
Ultimately, the Kabbalah proposed in this book, is weakened by it's very willingness to bow to contemporary fashion, and ignore so much Jewish tradition and history. History in particular, which is one of Judaism's great strengths, is hardly mentioned as an influencing factor in this book, yet without it's history, Judaism would be a shriveled tree indeed. For more traditional Jews, or liberally traditional Jews such as myself, Jewish history is the source of Jewish faith, as I prove in my book, " Jewish History and Divine Providence" available here on Amazon.
As a born and raised Reform Jew, I often felt let down by that denominations absence of systematic theology; now there may be too much of it, but done in the wrong sensibility. Grounded in both the Kabbalah and Jewish history, but with a profoundly ethical sense of Jewish law, "Jewish History" counterbalances the excessive trendiness found in Ehyeh, and read together with it, will give the practicing Jewish liberal, a complete model of 21st century(or 58th century) Judaism.
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