Today at 5 PM PST Howard Smith will present a free, 90 minute webinar titled “Modern Cosmology and Kabbalah Religion in the Age of Science An Introduction“. It is free of charge, but one needs to register in advance. And it comes with a similarly titled 68 page ebook titled. Howard A. Smith, PhD, is a senior astrophysicist at the Harvard- Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. He also studied Judaism and Kabbalah from Rabbi Baruch Bokser z”l, Rabbi Saul Berman, Rabbi Herman Pollack z”l, Rabbi Shlomo Carlebach z”l, and Rabbi Dr. Zalman Schachter-Shalomi. He is the author of Let There Be Light: Modern Cosmology and Kabbalah: A New Conversation Between Science and Religion, published in 2006. Let me quote the book’s preface.

This is a book for people wondering about modern science and religion, and what each has to say to the other, if anything. It is also for people curious about the discoveries of modern cosmology and physics, or about the insights of Kabbalah and Jewish mysticism, but who know little about them.

Nextbook published an interview yesterday with Yitzhak Buxbaum. He talks about his atheist phase in college and he shifted towards religion and mysticism, his relation to Judaism and how his gigantic book on “Jewish Spiritual Practices” was born. The interview is a good combination of details about his background, life story and inner development.

Buxbaum’s website is jewishspirit.com . He is the author of many books, all available there. Here is a short list of them (with links to Amazon.com)

• Jewish Spiritual Practices
• Jewish Tales of Holy Women
• Jewish Tales of Mystic Joy
• The Life and Teachings of Hillel
• The Light and Fire of the Baal Shem Tov
• A Person is Like a Tree
• Storytelling & Spirituality in Judaism

And two booklets:

• An Open Heart: The Mystic Path of Loving People
• Real Davvening: Jewish Prayer as a Spiritual Practice and a Form of Meditation for Beginning and Experienced Davveners

This blog and site is about books published in English. Yesterday, however, I got into a little research that led me to some French books, I found worthy mentioning here. An online friend of mine asked me about Paul Vulliaud. I found a French Wikipedia page, but my knowledge of that language is not good enough to understand everything. It is clear that he was a French Catholic theologian, (Lyon, 1875-1950), who wrote a two volume book on Kabbalah in 1923 titled La Kabbale Juive: Histoire et Doctrine. (First volume is 516 pages, second 453.) According to a 1925 review of the book (published in the The American Journal of Semitic Languages and Literatures) it is too full of jargon, difficult to read and decipher, but the author’s knowledge is vast. Here is an excerpt from the review, which might get us closer to the book:

M. Vulliaud undertakes to “defend” the Cabala. His “defense” consists in an astonishingly painstaking effort to prove: (1) that the Cabala is indigenous to Judaism or at least orthodox within Judaism; (2) that the Cabala is ancient and not of comparatively recent medieval origin as various Jewish writers claim; (3) that persons with an aversion toward the Cabala as well as those who negate its antiquity or its orthodoxy (he calls them “rationalists,” enemies of the Cabala,” etc.) are malicious and misguided.

The reviewer has his own negative perspective and the language in the above segment reflects that. But I think he is probably right on target about Vulliaud’s intentions. Another review (from a 1930 issue of The Jewish Quarterly Review) is trashing the book even more, calling it a “two volume causerie.’ …The first chapters contain an amusing florilegium of early writers’ profound ignorance.” As there is no English translation of the book I will not be able to study it myself, so I will leave it there.

The wikipedia article mentions Vulliaud’s work on another Kabbalah related book: “Les Textes fondamentaux de la Kabbale.” This page mentions the book by Jean de Pauly
title “Etudes et correspondance relatives au Sepher Ha-Zohar” which was annotated by Paul Vulliaud. And this is all the time I had to find out about him.

Last night I accidentally found a bookshop in Novato, CA on my way to dinner that was in the process of closing down for good. The Odyssey bookshop was selling everything for 80% off. Even thought I only had 10 minutes to look around I managed to pick up seven books for 15 dollars. Two of them should be mentioned here.

In Praise of the Baal Shem Tov is a version of the “earliest collection of legends about the founder of Hasidism” from 1814, edited and translated by by Dan Ben-Amos and Jerome R. Mintz. I was only familiar with Buber’s collection so I am looking forward diving into this one. After I read it I can decide whether it belongs into this collection on Kabbalah books or not. Read more »

On a Hungarian forum on Kabbalah somebody posted a slightly ambiguous message indicating that there is a book written together by Micheal Laitman and Ervin Laszlo. I deeply respect Ervin for his work in the Club of Budapest. My father who worked together with Laszlo in various projects introduced the man and his body of work to me that I found noble and inspiring, although a bit too abstract for me. I was surprised to hear that he worked together with Laitman, the driving force behind Bnei Baruch. This is an organization with many branches and endeavors that is popularizing Kabbalah (or at least their understanding of it) through many channels.

I wanted to find out what book these people have written together. I did not succeed in my attempt. I learned that Laszlo gave two lectures in 2006 at a Bnei Baruch conference. (The audio, video and transcript is available from the bottom of this page. ) I also saw that at the bottom of the list of authors at KabbalaBooks.Info (a Bnei Baruch site) Laszlo is mentioned as someone who wrote “to one of Dr. Laitman’s publications Kabbalah Science and the Meaning of Life.” At the English description of the book itself I did not find Laszlo’s name mentioned. At the Hebrew edition, however, there are a few lines of praise from Ervin on Laitman’s work.

I would still like to find out whether they worked together more extensively, whether they actually produced a book or an article jointly. Any pointers appreciated.

This is old news, but I like the image so much that wanted to share it. John Coulhart designed a variation on the classic depiction of the ten Sephirot. It is using the look and feel of the well-known map of the London underground system. He made the design available on CafePress, a company which prints your design on mugs, t-shirts, sweaters and other objects. However CafePress pulled his item, because the “Transport for London provided [them] with a notice stating that the use of the London Underground Roundel infringes upon their intellectual property rights.” So the artist reworked the piece. I still think it looks fun. But if Kabbalah is esotericism, i.e. a hidden art, then isn’t it a bit counterproductive to ware it outside?

I recently learned about Rabbi Yechiel Avraham Bar-Lev, a hassid rabbi in Israel and his Yedid Nefesh institute. At the website of the latter I found one English language book “Song of the Soul: Introduction to Kaballa.” The full title, inside the books also includes this segment: “Based on Rabbi Chaim Moshe Luzzatto’s Kalach Pitchei Chochma.” The whole book is posted online as a series of images. Right now at Amazon only one used copy is available, for over $70. Let me post here its shortened table of contents to generate interest. Read more »

Last week a short interview with Joseph Dan was posted at the Oxford University Press’ blog. Dan is the author of many scholarly books on Kabbalah and is the Gershom Scholem Professor of Kabbalah at the The Hebrew University of Jerusalem. The interviewer asks him about the difference between Christian and Jewish Kabbalists, Kabbalah’s relation to magic, Hasidism’s influence, celebrity fad, and recommendations for further resources, beyond his “Kabbalah: A Very Short Introduction“, which was published last May by the OUP.

Stanford University Press started a grand project in 2003 to publish the Zohar in 12 volumes. Daniel Matt is translating the text and writing the extensive commentary. The fourth volume was published last fall. The Stanford Report wrote an article about it last week. Most of the piece are segments of an interview with Matt, on such topics as the difficulty of translating the text and the history of the various translations. In short it gives the context of the work.

TheStar.com from Canada had a descriptive article about Tzfat and the tourism industry aimed to study to Kabbalah there. Most of the article follows Rabbi Eyal Reiss, the director of The International Center for Tzfat Kabbalah. Their website is a well of resources about Tzfat and how it is immersed into Kabbalah. Plus they have nice pictures of local sites and art pieces too. There Kabbalah is more of an experiential  than a book/reading based practice,.