The Seventh Telling: The Kabbalah of Moeshe Katan [Hardcover]

Mitchell Chefitz (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 15, 2001

The Seventh Telling is a journey into the Kabbalah, a spiritual discipline hidden within the folds of Jewish history. Stephanie and Sidney have been studying with Moshe Katan, a kabbalist who shared his learning only when he perceived that a kabbalistic intervention might be necessary to save the life of Rivkah, his wife. What has happened to Moshe and Rivkah we do not know, only that their house is now being used for an extraordinary storytelling, a spiritual discipline to share with those willing to risk examining the very core of their beliefs.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

The spiritual evolution of two menDa rabbinical scholar with a knack for business and a businessman with rabbinical leaningsDand their wives is presented as a series of parables in this ambitious attempt to capture Kabbalah study in fiction. In group storytelling sessions at their house in the hills outside San Francisco, Sidney and Stephanie Lee relate the inspirational history of their mentors, Moshe and Rivkah Katan. Taking turns, they trace Moshe's progress from his childhood as Michael Kayten, through MIT, Vietnam, Israel and suburbia to become a legendary kabbalist. As part of the story, they tell how Moshe deepened his ties to Sidney and Stephanie when Rivkah, having devoted her life to helping cancer patients, faced the dreaded disease herself. In her sessions, Stephanie also recalls her own parents, both Holocaust survivors: a father who disowned her for marrying Sidney, a mother who never answered but secretly saved her letters. As gradually becomes evident, the two couples have more in common than their spiritual missionDtheirs is a personal connection, too. A teacher at institutes and rabbinic conferences, Chefitz knows his subject well, blending reverence for religious traditions with acceptance of new variations. His storytelling shows a lecturer's patience for getting to the point, a rabbi's tolerance for human frailty and a scholar's sense of detail, but his literary abilities are less well developed, his stories too inexpertly bound together to add up to a novel. The book will be of most interest to the creatively devout, and particularly to women forging their own traditions within Judaism, as Chefitz pays special attention to their situation. Agent, Natasha Kern. (Jan.)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist

This ambitious and engaging book, like the Kabbalah itself, has many layers, plumbs to unexpected depths, and will leave the reader tempered, if not transformed, by the reading. Sidney and Stephanie, unhappily married, are telling the stories of Moshe Katan to a small group of students. Moshe, an ordained rabbi and a commodities trader, is also proficient in the dissemination of the Jewish mystical tradition. When he notices, with his trend-spotter's eye, that his wife's cancer may be returning, Moshe asks her to help at a Kabbalah seminar he's teaching, hoping that what she learns will make it easier for her to deal with her fate. There are many stories being told here. Each of Moshe's rich, sometimes enigmatic tales unfurl and touch many. The overstory belongs to Stephanie, who is trying to untangle family relationships and find her own place as a disseminator of Kabbalah. Although integral to the book, Stephanie's story seems a distraction to Moshe's more universal tales. Complete as a work of fiction, this is especially recommended for those who've read about Kabbalah with varying degrees of understanding. Here, the teachings come to life. Ilene Cooper
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 400 pages
• Publisher: St. Martin's Press; 1st edition (January 15, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0312266456
• ISBN-13: 978-0312266455
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.2 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (25 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,123,628 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Captivating message of healing and life changing, April 14, 2001

By 

Lynn Adler - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Seventh Telling: The Kabbalah of Moeshe Katan (Hardcover)

What is Kabbalah? What is the purpose of doing it? How is it different from other spiritual disciplines? How is it similar to psychotherapy, yet different? These are complex questions that cannot be answered simply. However, this book has tried a new and not so new approach - storytelling. Inspired by Talmudic tradition, the Bible, ancient Jewish Kabbalistic texts, and modern spiritualist Rabbis such as Shlomo Carlebach and and Zalman Schachter, we get an introduction to Kabbalah, Jewish mysticism, through the retelling of the life of the fictional Moshe Katan. The retelling, which is also very much about Moshe's wife Rivkah, is carried out to a select group of students by a couple who are friends of Moshe and Rivkah, Stephanie and Sidney. In the process of the retelling, we get a direct example of how learning comes through storytelling by watching Stephanie and Sidney's lives transformed, and the lives of other characters as well.

We follow Moshe from his days as Michael Kaytan, wayward and bored young student, who gets accepted into MIT on a fluke, his talent to detect the pattern in an otherwise random field, who winds up in the U.S. Army in Vietnam, studies in a Yeshivah in Israel, and finally becomes an ordained rabbi in the U.S., a commodities trader, spiritual counselor, and teacher.

The first half of the book is mostly narrative, while the second half, although continuing the narrative and the storytelling, is also a beginner's guide into Kabbalistic philosophy, terminology, and meditation techniques.

A point not to be overlooked, is that Moshe's mystical pursuit is not done in isolation and that the spiritual community that he creates around him and the people with whom he prays and celebrates Jewish life, first as an official Rabbi, then small 'r" rabbi, then just Moshe, alternately referred to as Havurah or Minyan, is very much a part of it. As Moshe reminds people, we individuals are not the center of the universe, we are a part of the continuum. Moshe also makes the point that one does not have to be Jewish or know Hebrew to practice Kabbalah. There is a detailed glossary of terms (Kabbalistic, Jewish ritual, and Hebrew) at the end of the book, which is quite useful, and also keeps the flow of the story from being interrupted.

I truly commend the author for the painstaking work of this book. It is an act of humility and love. It never becomes preachy or dictatorial, rather seeks to suggest, to inspire, and provide guideposts for further study to anyone who is interested in a deeper and truer connection with the creator, the mysteries of creation, and doing some very real healing in the here and now.

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A transformative experience, April 8, 2002

By 

Sally Horwatt "sshphd" (Reston, VA USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Seventh Telling: The Kabbalah of Moeshe Katan (Hardcover)

I don't know why this book called my name as I chanced upon it at a bookstore. But, it did. I picked it up, began reading, read at every opportunity, ordered the sequel before I was finished, moved right on to the sequel, and am now re-reading the first book. I even e-mailed Mitchell Chefitz (he answered my e-mail, by the way). I hardly recognize myself.

This book is transformative. It took this hard-headed realist into the nature of mysticism, slowly, evenly and intelligently. (I think the ancient kabbalists were on to quantum mechanics well before the 20th century physicists were.) It can be read on so many levels that there is something in it for everybody.

It changed my view of death. Read it.

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Seventh Telling works on many levels, February 22, 2001

By 

Ruth B. Goldston "enthusiastic reader" (Princeton, NJ USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Seventh Telling: The Kabbalah of Moeshe Katan (Hardcover)

The Seventh Telling is a remarkable book that "works" on many levels. It introduces and explains kabbalistic thought in a very accessible way, and demonstrates how the theory can be put into practice by modern people. However, unlike other guides, this one is also a gripping story, in several layers, whose characters are compellingly human and complex. As we engage in the multiple narratives, we experience the power of the "telling" to open our consciousness to new insights. We are invited to accompany Moshe Katan, the protagonist, as he explores the relationship among the worlds of action, feeling, thought, and pure emanation in his daily life, as well as through the practice of kabbalistic meditation. For those who, for whatever reason, will never directly experience the power of this practice to change oneself and the world, reading The Seventh Telling the next best thing.

Ruth Goldston