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The Kabbalah Reader: A Sourcebook of Visionary Judaism

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The Kabbalah Reader: A Sourcebook of Visionary Judaism. Foreword by Arthur Kurzweil . By Edward Hoffman. Paperback original. $17.95. Trumpeter . 266 pages .
ISBN 978-1-59030-656-7.

This comprehensive and accessible entrée into the world of Kabbalah covers 1,600 years of Jewish mystical thought and features a variety of thinkers--from the renowned to the obscure--unavailable in any other volume. It's a fresh take on an ancient tradition compiled by Edward Hoffman, a psychologist and respected scholar of Judaism, who reveals how this supposedly esoteric material is relevant to a host of contemporary concerns, such as ethics, emotional health, intuition and creativity, meditation, social relations and leadership, and higher states of consciousness.

Contributors include: Moses Chaim Luzzatto, Moses Cordovero, Abraham Abulafia, Maimonides, Nachmanides, The Maharal, Nachman of Breslov, The Baal Shem Tov, The Gaon of Vilna, The Netziv, The Ben Ish Chai, Yehudah Ashlag, Kalonymus Shapira, Baba Sali, Abraham Joshua Heschel, Menachem Mendel Schneersohn, Adin Steinsaltz, Zalman M. Schachter-Shalomi, Jonathan Sacks, and many others, along with excerpts from the Sefer Yetzirah, Sefer HaBahir, and Sefer HaZohar.

This is the most comprehensive and accessible anthology of Kabbalah writings in existence. A remarkable collection of several millennia of visionary writers. Highly recommended.

Edward Hoffman is the author of numerous books on Judaism, Kabbalah, and psychology. He is a psychologist and adjunct professor at Yeshiva University in New York City. He writes extensively for leading Jewish newspapers and magazines, including the National Jewish Post & Opinion, and the Jewish Week, and his articles have appeared in New York Newsday, and Yoga Journal.

Dov Peretz Elkins
DPE@JewishGrowth.org

Anyone interested in a sophisticated introduction or continuation in learning about the Kabbalah will find a great treasure in this unique anthology. Dr. Hoffman presents a significant array of pivotal original primary sources impacting subsequent generations and written by the leading Kabbalistic thinkers throughout the centuries including our own. His remarkably lucid introductions to each source illuminate its contextual meaning making it quite accessible to the modern reader.

Rabbi Neal Kaunfer, graduate of the Jewish Theological Seminary of America; former Director of Congregational High School Education, Board of Jewish Education of Greater New York