God in Your Body: Kabbalah, Mindfulness and Embodied Spiritual Practice [Paperback]

Jay Michaelson (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 2006

Your body is the place where heaven and earth meet.

The greatest spiritual achievement is not transcending the body but joining body and spirit together. But to do this, you must break through assumptions that draw boundaries around the Infinite and wake up to the body as the site of holiness itself.

This groundbreaking book is the first comprehensive treatment of the body in Jewish spiritual practice and an essential guide to the sacred. With meditation practices, physical exercises, visualizations, and sacred text, you will learn how to experience the presence of the Divine in, and through, your body. And by cultivating an embodied spiritual practice, you will transform everyday activities--eating, walking, breathing, washing--into moments of deep spiritual realization, uniting sacred and sensual, mystical and mundane.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

With the gentle authority of a good yoga master, Michaelson, chief editor of Zeek: A Jewish Journal of Thought and Culture, offers not so much a mind/body lesson in Kabbalah as a map to a mindful, spiritually rich lifestyle. Having "chosen to emphasize those aspects of the Jewish and world wisdom that treat the body as a sacred site for contemplative practice," he uses a combination of simple meditations, prayers, Talmudic excerpts and wisdom from historic rabbis to guide those seeking to embrace the "God in your body." While most journeys begin with a single step, this one begins with a single breath. Throughout, he reminds us that "a practice is done 'no matter what' not for strictness's sake, but so it can be a prism which casts light upon the mind"—whether that practice be one of breathing, eating, walking or even using the bathroom. Yet, the calls to practice are balanced with a fascinating cache of tidbits. For example, the Amidah, or Standing Prayer, is sometimes called "The Eighteen," referring to the 18 blessings within it that are believed to correspond to the body's 18 vertebrae. This book belongs as much on a shelf with other meditative, mind/body titles as it does among Judaica. (Dec.)
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Review

"Thoughtful, contemplative, and insightful. You will be intellectually stimulated and emotionally awakened." -- Rabbi Dovber Pinson, author, Meditation and Judaism: Exploring the Jewish Meditative Paths

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Product Details

• Paperback: 247 pages
• Publisher: Jewish Lights Publishing (November 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 158023304X
• ISBN-13: 978-1580233040
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 6 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #54,178 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #8 in Books > Religion & Spirituality > Bible & Other Sacred Texts > Jewish Texts > Kabbalah
  • #26 in Books > Religion & Spirituality > Judaism > Jewish Life

More About the Author

Jay Michaelson is the author of three books and two hundred articles on the intersections of religion, sexuality, and law. Jay is a contributing editor to Religion Dispatches, the Forward, and Tikkun, and a regular contributor to the Huffington Post. His work has been featured in the New York Times and NPR. Jay is the author of God vs. Gay? The Religious Case for Equality (2011), God in Your Body: Kabbalah, Mindfulness, and Embodied Spiritual Practice (2006), Another Word for Sky: Poems (2007), and Everything is God: The Radical Path of Nondual Judaism (2009). In 2009, he was included on the "Forward 50" list of the fifty most influential American Jews.

Jay is a longtime advocate for gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender (GLBT) people, particularly in religious communities. He has taught for the Human Rights Campaign, Empire State Pride Agenda, and many other organizations, and founded Nehirim, the largest national provider of community programming for GLBT Jews, partners, and allies. His work on this subject has been published in anthologies including Righteous Indignation: A Jewish Call for Justice (2007), The Passionate Torah (2008), and Queer Religion (2011).

Jay holds a J.D. from Yale, an M.A. in Religious Studies from Hebrew University, and an M.F.A. from Sarah Lawrence College. He is currently completing his Ph.D in Jewish Thought at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Jay teaches across the country, and has held teaching positions at Boston University Law School, City College of New York, and Yale University.

A practicing Buddhist in the Theravadan tradition as well as a student and teacher of Kabbalah for fifteen years, Jay lived in Jerusalem for three years, and in 2008-09 spent five months on silent meditation retreat, mostly in Nepal. In 2011-2012, he is crisscrossing the country and appearing on national media to combat the devastating and false dichotomy of "God vs. Gay."

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

19 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Wherever We Let Him In, June 6, 2007

By 

Jill Baker Shames (Rehovot, Israel) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: God in Your Body: Kabbalah, Mindfulness and Embodied Spiritual Practice (Paperback)

A beautifully-written perspective on the holiness of whole-ness. As a martial artist and teacher of the arts, as well as a Torah-committed Jew, I am inspired by the author's call to see beyond the body-mind schism and embrace a view that transcends East vs. West. Since there is One Creator, it stands to reason and faith that each of us, body-mind-soul, should be testament to His Oneness. I read this book joyfully and often pick it up and open to random sections to read and reexperience that joy. A treasure.

23 of 25 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Body and Mind in Judaism, December 27, 2006

By 

Shalom Spencer "Shalom S." (Berkeley, CA USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: God in Your Body: Kabbalah, Mindfulness and Embodied Spiritual Practice (Paperback)

For years I have been involved in physical things, tai chi, jogging, basketball, baseball, and then as I got into more "spiritual things" the dichotomy emerged; mind and body are two oppossing forces. Try as we may many taught, we must overcome the body to reach the spiritual. My interest in Judaism as I matured caused me to explore that in fact there are many physical pathways to Jewish spiritual practices. Yet I never could find an explanantion that satisfied me. Well this book does so. First off the author is a very wise and thoughtful writer. There is brilliance here and throughout the author writes from experience both in learning (which many Jewish books in my opinion lack nowdays) and also his own life learning from meditation and body work (he appears to have done yoga nd much more). What I learned from this book is that the physical mitzvot and commandments are deep spiritual teachings and they compliment the theory which many readers may have read or learned about. There is a humility here as well as he asks the reader to experience for themselves doing, learning and then knowing when one eats, prays, breaths, loves and walks (and after all Jewish law, Halacha is a way of walking to and with G-d). I do not agree w/ everything the author writes but so what. I learned an incredible amount and he opened my eys to new ways of being and experiencing the Jewish pathway. If a book does that then it surely is a valuable friend. I am thankful for this book and Jay Michaelson hopefully will share some more of his wisdom in the future.

10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars I've never reviewed anything before, January 24, 2008

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wrentzu (Minnesota) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: God in Your Body: Kabbalah, Mindfulness and Embodied Spiritual Practice (Paperback)

I have never reviewed anything before, but for this book I will. I found this book to be extremely helpful. My therapist and I are using it to deal with some difficult issues, and each chapter makes the discussion so much easier. I'm looking at my life, my body and my health with new eyes.