The Oxford University Press just published Pinchas Giller’s third book titled Shalom Shar’abi and the Kabbalists of Beit El. Giller  is a popular professor at the American Jewish University (formerly University of Judaism). (I base my assumption on his popularity at the ratings and comments on his Rate My Professor page. ) Here is the book’s description from the publisher,

The Jerusalem kabbalists of the Beit El Yeshivah are the most influential school of kabbalah in modernity. The school is associated with the writings and personality of a charismatic eighteenth-century Yemenite Rabbi, Shalom Shar’abi, considered by his acolytes to be divinely inspired by the prophet Elijah. Shar’abi initiated what is still the most active school of mysticism in contemporary Middle Eastern Jewry. Today, this meditative tradition is rising in popularity not only in Jerusalem, but throughout the Jewish World.

Pinchas Giller examines the characteristic mystical practices of the Beit El School. The dominant practice is that of ritual prayer with mystical “intentions,” or kavvanot . The kavvanot themselves are the product of thousands of years of development and incorporate many traditions and bodies of lore. Giller examines the archaeology of the kavvanot literature, the principle aspect of which is the meditation on God’s sacred names while reciting prayers, the development of particular rituals, and the innovative mystical and devotional practices of the Beit El kabbalists.

In the short segment from the History Channel’s program on Shabbati Tzvi we learn a bit about why the restrictions on who should study Kabbalah was created.

Cherub Press  just published its 22nd volume in their “Sources and Studies in the Literature of Jewish Mysticism” series titled, “Lurianic Kabbalah: Collected Studies by Gershom Scholem, edited by Daniel Abrams” (440 pages, ISBN 1-933379-09-X). Unfortunately (for the purposes of this site/blog) it is all Hebrew. Below is the official blurb.

This volume celebrates the groundbreaking work of Gershom Scholem on Kabbalistic literary and mystical activity from the end of the fifteenth century, just prior to the Expulsion from Spain and until the rise of Sabbateanism. At the heart of this collection are all of Gershom Scholem’s detailed studies on R. Isaac Luria, his teachers, students and the works that emerged from Safed, including numerous texts which he introduced and explained. All sixteen studies are reproduced here, re-typeset, along with a Hebrew translation of the chapter on Isaac Luria and his School, from his Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism – all updated with Scholem’s post-publication hand notes from his personal library and annotated with full bibliographic references, manuscript identifications and followed by a complete bibliography in all languages of all studies about Kabbalah from the periods treated in this volume. The volume is introduced with a typology of the various methods and scholarship that emerged from Scholem’s foundational work. This volume is an essential research tool for the serious study of Jewish mysticism.

In 2005 Stanley Schneider and Joseph H. Berke published an article in Midstream, titled Discovering Oneself: Kabbalah and Psychoanalysis. Its summary at Amazon reads,

Is this desire [or "burgeoning interest in mystical self introspection"] and even obsession to discover oneself a new phenomenon? Or, has this silently and unobtrusively been a part of our lives–we just never realized it or were unaware of the underlying pull and attraction.

The notes for the article stated that the two authors are “completing their study of psychoanalysis and Kabbalah to be published in two volumes as The Way of the Great Dragon and as Centers of Power. The latter was published by Jason Aronson (now part of Rowman and Littlefield) a few weeks ago in January with the subtitle, “The Convergence of Psychoanalysis and Kabbalah“. There are a few review blurbs there for further information and an official description. This reads,

Kabbalah and psychoanalysis are conceptions about the nature of reality. The former is over two thousand years old. The latter has been formalized less than a hundred years ago. Nonetheless they are parallel journeys of discovery that have forever altered not only what we see, but the very nature of seeing itself. The domain of Kabbalah is the spiritual and material macrocosm. In contrast the concern of psychoanalysis is the microcosm, the innermost recesses of the human mind. However, both are convergent and complementary theories. Kabbalah asserts ‘as above so below,’ meaning, the Godhead, the source of everything, is reflected in the smallest details of existence. Similarly, psychoanalysis traces the evolution from ‘inner objects’ to family feuds and social fields.

More than theories, however, Kabbalah and psychoanalysis test the limits of direct experience. They are contemplative, meditative and introspective methods for restoring shattered worlds and fragmented lives. These are material as well as spiritual entities which have been separated from their source, on one hand ‘the Godhead’ and on the other, ‘personal praxis.’ The purpose of this study is to explore how Kabbalah and psychoanalysis converge and diverge, complement and conflict with each other, in order to amplify their impact and enable mankind to gain a greater understanding of reality.

Warning: The book’s page at Amazon did not mention Berke as a co-author and placed the publication date a month earlier too.

Let me show you how I stumbled upon to “Apples from the Orchard.” Sunday Bat Aliya posted an entry on “Books to Inspire You To Make Aliyah and Bring Geula.” One of her recommendations was “Mashiach: Who? What? Why? How? Where? and When?” by Chaim Kramer. The link in her post pointed to the book’s page  at Judaism.com. That book is not specifically about Kabbalah, so I will not include here in the listing. But there are plenty of others at that site which does fit the profile here. So I picked one that looked interesting to introduce.

This two year old book is a selection of Arizal’s (Rabbi Yitzchak Luria) rabbinic interpretation of the Torah, unfolding “before us a hidden dimension of the stories and laws of the Torah, showing how they reflect the inner dynamics of reality and how our knowledge and observance of the Torah is crucial to the proper functioning of creation.” At the Judaism link you can read the Table of Contents and the Preface by the translator, Rabbi Moshe Wisnefsky. At the book’s own website you can learn even more about it.

According to Amazon this book was published in December. According to the Devorah, the publisher’s website it came out last October. But the announcing email ended up in my email box only last week. Here it is:

Inward Bound: A Guide to Understanding Kabbalah

New Book Avoids Pop publicity Surrounding Jewish Mysticism

Madonna practices it. Celebrities are studying it. While is seems that Kabbalah is everywhere these days, the information often available about Kabbalah is more hype than fact.

Finally there is a book that provides an explanation of Kabbalah based on scholarship while remaining accessible to the lay reader.

For many Jews today, Judaism is an ethnic, family oriented experience revolving around food and holidays. The typical synagogue service is often lacking true soul or meaning and thus it is no surprise that many young Jews are searching for spiritual answers elsewhere. Read more »

Over the weekend I imported 43 old entries related to Kabbalah books from my old blog. This note is just a reminder that the entries you see here from before 2008 were originally elsewhere. But I wanted to collect all of my related entries under one umbrella. Some of them were date sensitive, so I did not change their original post date at this new place. This is the reason for the discrepancy between the fact, that this blog started in 2008, but you seen entries as early as 2004 from here. I hope it is not too confusing.

Today is the Day of Kabbalah in Manhattan. It is an all day conference, hosted by Rabbi Naftali Citron, who used to be the Chabad rabbi in Santa Cruz, CA, where I met him a few times. It is co-sponsored by The Carlebach Shul, the JCC in Manhattan (where the event takes place) and SinaiLive.com, a “nonprofit initiative committed to assisting high quality Jewish organizations fully realize their multi-media potential.”) Here is the list of all the lectures/workshops,

• Prof. Lawrence Fine: Scholar, Mystic, Saintly Teacher: The Life of the Ari as Perceived and Experienced by His Closest Disciples
• Avraham Sutton: Reincarnation: The Collective Drama of Souls: The Ari’s Teachings on Gilgul
• Prof. Shaul Magid: Redemption and Identity: Can Gentiles be Prophets? The Case of Balaam in the Eyes of the Ari
• Rabbi DovBer Pinson: Intention and Prayer: The System and Practice of Using Kavanot in Prayer in Lurianic Kabbalah
• Miriam Shulamit Ribner: Kabbalah of Healing: A Meditative Workshop Inspired by Teachings of the Ari
• Nathaniel Berman: Zohar: The Faces of God: The Zohar as the Source for the Ari’s Mystical System
• David Solomon: Vessels and Sparks: Tzimtzum: An Idea Explored in Context and Evolution
• Rabbi DovBer Pinson: Soul and Purpose: The Idea of Divine Inspiration /Ruach HaKodesh for the AriZal
• Prof. Larry Fine: Love and Spiritual Friendship: Rabbi Isaac Luria’s Mystical Fellowship and the Repair of the Cosmos
• David Solomon: Redeeming the World: Mystical Errors of the Righteous: The Concept of Ta’ut in Lurianic Kabbalah
• Avraham Sutton: Faces of the Divine: Partzufim : A Central Idea in the Ari’s Cosmology
• Rabbi Naftali Citron: Come Let Us Greet the Bride: The Kabbalistic Origins of Kabbalat Shabbat

For more information go to these pages:

• The Carlebach Shul
• JCC
• Sinai Live

SUNY (State University of New York Press) published a new volume in January titled “Like Angels on Jacob’s Ladder” It was written by Harvey J. Hames a Senior Lecturer of Medieval History at Ben-Gurion University, whose previous book was “The Art of Conversion: Christianity and Kabbalah in the Thirteenth Century.” The subtitle of the new book tells us more about its topic, “Abraham Abulafia, the Franciscans, and Joachimism.” For those of us who were not familiar with last term, according Irving Hexham’s “Concise Dictionary of Religion” it is “a medieval apocalyptic movement which developed a forward looking eschatology anticipating the Age of the Spirit based on the works of Joachim of Fiore.” Without going into that topic here, let me just share the official description of Hames’ book,

“This book explores the career of Abraham Abulafia (ca. 1240–1291), self-proclaimed Messiah and founder of the school of ecstatic Kabbalah. Active in southern Italy and Sicily where Franciscans had adopted the apocalyptic teachings of Joachim of Fiore, Abulafia believed the end of days was approaching and saw himself as chosen by God to reveal the Divine truth. He appropriated Joachite ideas, fusing them with his own revelations, to create an apocalyptic and messianic scenario that he was certain would attract his Jewish contemporaries and hoped would also convince Christians. From his focus on the centrality of the Tetragrammaton (the four letter ineffable Divine name) to the date of the expected redemption in 1290 and the coming together of Jews and Gentiles in the inclusiveness of the new age, Abulafia’s engagement with the apocalyptic teachings of some of his Franciscan contemporaries enriched his own worldview. Though his messianic claims were a result of his revelatory experiences and hermeneutical reading of the Torah, they were, to no small extent, dependent on his historical circumstances and acculturation.”

The Baal Shem Tov foundation published what they call the first authorized edition of stories of Besht. “Baal Shem Tov: Faith Love Joy” was written by the Clevelenad, Ohio based foundation’s director Howard Cohn. Their webpage lists dozens of earlier books of stories, a CD and even a series of six audio tapes. I did nto find enough information about the 158 page bok to give an opinion. But the foundation’s homepage is rich in links and content about the Besht. They certainly have a good start in collecting everything related to their subject.