On April 1 I received the first suggestion from a website visitor for a book to be included in this site. Joe Markel  recommended The Key to Chassidus. The author was listed as Bitzalel Malamud. I tried to find out more about the book, but it was not listed on Amazon and searching for the author’s name Google gave me only 8 hits. One of those though led to lulu.com, where anyone can self-publish a book. The book’s page there  includes this description:

An explanation and translation of  “The Gate of Unification” by the Mittler Rebbe. This book explains how the physical and spiritual worlds are emanated and created through the contractions of the G-dly, infinite light of the “Chain of Descent” from cause to effect.

Besides purchasing it at lulu.com one can download the entire book as a series PDF files from here. The first of these not just include an introduction, but also a detailed table of contents. Under each chapter headin there is a third/half page explanation of what the chapter is about. That should navigating the book for those who are ready to dive into it

Eliahu Klein’s “A Mystical Haggadah: Passover Meditations, Teaching, and Tales” was published just in time for this year’s Passover. Here is the book description that appears on every site that lists it:

In a generation that has seen an explosion in popularity of books about mystical and meditative traditions, very little has been published about the rich and fascinating mystical traditions of the Jewish holy days. Passover, the first religious holiday of the Jewish people, particularly rewards a re-viewing from a mystical perspective. A Mystical Haggadah takes readers through the Passover ritual with Kabbalistic meditations and affirmations in a friendly, accessible format. This Haggadah also includes many Hassidic teachings and stories that have never been presented to the English reading audience. The book is especially valuable for its transliterations of all the major prayers and rituals, and is refreshing in its creative and spiritually-based adaptation and translation of the primary Haggadah text.

Klein’s three previous books are already on this site, so I am happy to add this latest one.

• Meetings With Remarkable Souls: Legends of the Baal Shem Tov
• Kabbalah of Creation: The Mysticism of Isaac Luria, Founder of Modern Kabbalah
• Kabbalah of Creation: Isaac Luria’s Earlier Mysticism

On the top of the pages of this site up till now you could see ads served up by Google. These text based advertisements were based on the words found on my website. However the spirit a lot of them represented was not exactly in alignment with the spirit of the site itself. This morning I changed this situation. I replaced the Google ad bar, with my own little creation. I wrote a script to select random books from the database behind the site that it had the cover image stored locally and was sold on Amazon.com. So from now on every time you load a page on the site you will see six different book covers on the top. Clicking on them will take you to the book’s Amazon page, from where you can order them. I know that the covers are small and sometimes hard to read the title. But if your mouse lingers over them it, along with the author’s name should show up.

Yesterday I visited the central branch of the local library for the first time. (In the past I usually went to the local branch.) They have about 30-40 books on or related to Jewish Kabbalah. I picked up a gem I haven’t seen or knew about before. It is an 1877 edition of Sefer Yezirah. The spelling was not a typo, although the modern transliteration is Yetzirah. The book is bilingual English and Hebrew. (The latter is pointed, i.e. the vowels are filled in for the reader.) I scanned in the cover and the title page, see below, click the images for larger version; it is worth it. The book also has six pages of notes and four pages of “Glossary of rabbinical words”, which looks like a basic Hebrew-English dictionary. The book was published and donated to the library by The Rosicrucian Order (of San Jose) and has an explanatory afterword describing them.

Rabbi Jonathan M. Case self-published a book titled, Journey to the Soul: Kabbalah’s Pathway for Your Present and Future through Outskirts Press. The publisher put up a webpage through which the book can be ordered and even issued a press release. The author has a blog and a website  and the book is available even at Amazon.com. One the blog he gives weekly drashot. On the website meditations are posted and a few nice images. One would think that through all these channels I could get a fuller picture what the book is about. But at every one of these places only these few lines I repeated. So I repeat them here too. Maybe it is helpful enough for some. I feel that I only got a vague teaser. That means nothing though about the quality of the book.

A hunger grips the world. It yearns to be filled by the answer to the ultimate question: Why am I alive? The voice is incessant. If it is ignored there will be consequences.

Sometimes climaxing as a “mid-life crisis” which can have dramatic implications; other times surfacing as an “existential crisis” at any age, this unspoken and unanswered question can form the core of wrenching sadness, deep angst and some awful choices. There is an answer. Through sources that span millennia and using examples from real lives, here is a richly woven tapestry using stories, lore, aphorisms and the mystic tradition of Kabbalah. Here are the answers you have been seeking.

Come, drink deeply and walk into life…

Magdelene, a blog dedicated to “Prayers and Reflections: Spiritual Inspirations from many traditions” posted introduction and two very short stories (related to the Golem/Maharal) from Howard Schwartz’s   collection of Gabriel’s Palace: Jewish Mystical Tales. The publisher’s (Oxford University Press) page lists the dozens of sources, eras and areas Schwartz collected the 150 stories for this book. Reading either the blog entry or the four and half stories available at Amazon I have to say that the style is delightful. It shows that Schwartz, who also wrote 8 children’s books, is a master of both language and content. This is a fun and deep collection.

The Ranger (from Texas) had an interview with James Dunn, the author of a new book titled Window of the Soul: The Kabbalah of Rabbi Isaac Luria. “Author” may not be the most correct term in this case, because most of the book are direct translations from the Hebrew, written by Luria and translated by Nathan Snyder. The interview is using only a few lines from what the author had to say and mostly repeating pop trivia about Kabbalah. The book is more. According to the publisher’s webpage it is “the first and only comprehensive selection of Isaac Luria’s.” “Comprehensive selection” is an interesting concept. In my book something is either comprehensive or a selection. I guess what they refer to is, that each major concept or section of Luria’s writing was covered in this book. According to the Amazon.com reviews because it is a direct translation it would need a lot of footnotes to make it decipherable to the modern people. Once I get my hands on a copy I will tell you my personal opinion. (A final note: The listing currently is incorrect on Amazon, because the foreword was written by Rabbi Ernesto Yattah, and not by Chayyim Vital.)

A few weeks ago Jay Michaelson wrote a double book review for Forward on two Mussar related books: Everyday Holiness: The Jewish Spiritual Path of Mussar by Alan Morinis and A Responsible Life: The Spiritual Path of Mussar by Ira Stone. Michaelson summarizes Mussar as “the moralistic movement within Eastern European Judaism … focuses on rectifying the middot, or character traits, from within. The general contours of Mussar practice are straightforward: introspection and self-accounting.” The reviewer clearly refers Morinis’ more accessible book with its attention to the individual. While holding Stone accountable for not offering enough advice how to find the community that is needed to cultivate the technologies Mussar developed for self-betterment. The answer to the question in the title of the review and this post is no, because “it may be not spiritual enough for spiritual aficionados.”

An interesting debate is going on at Zeek magazine. Last December Boaz Huss argued in an article  that the word “mysticism” should not be used in relation to Kabbalah and it being a theological category should not be the subject of academic research. In the March issue of Zeek Shaul Magid posted  a detailed opposing opinion and Boaz Huss replied to that. It is worthwhile reading all four webpages (four because Magid’s is broken to two) to learn of the possible critical perspectives of this debate.

A few weeks ago the “Kabbbalah to Go” podcast restarted posting Harav Yitzchak Ginsburgh’s lectures as podcasts. Last March the site posted 3 lectures in four parts. Then there was a big break and now, since early Feburary, a new podcast appears approximately every week. In the most recent one he explains “the prohibition to eat the blood and certain choice fats of a kosher animal.” The site can be reached both via http://kabbalahtogo.podbean.com/ and at http://kabbalahtogo.com/ Yes, I know that a podcats is not a book. But this Lubavitcher rabbi has been a long term teacher of Kabbalah and wrote a dozen books on the topic as well, so this deserved an entry here. His most recent book in English was The Art of Education: Internalizing Ever-New Horizons.