This comprehensive and wonderfully 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 and contemporary take on an ancient tradition compiled by a clinical psychologist who is also a respected scholar of Judaism, and who, by his selection, reveals how this supposedly esoteric material is completely relevant to a host of contemporary concerns, such as ethics, emotional health, and inner growth. The selections, arranged chronologically and including voices from the Muslim world, cover such concerns as dreams, meditation, intuition, emotional development, and the movement to higher states of consciousness.

Contributors include: Rabbi Moses Chaim Luzzatto, Rabbi Moses Cordovero, Rabbi Abraham Abulafia, and contemporary voices such as Abraham Joshua Heschel, Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz, Rabbi Zalman M. Schachter-Shalomi, and Jonathan Sacks, the head rabbi of Britain, among many others.

Biography

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.