For each book present in this site’s catalog I add a link to the book’s page on Amazon.com, LibraryThing.com, Books.Google.com and WorldCat.org. These site keep growing and they continue to add more books to their listings. Thus they now may have a book they didn’t have when I added them to my site. Therefore I now checked my listings against them and sure enough there were plenty of missing links. Specifically I added 17, 36, 69 and 14 new links to the sites listed above respectively. This makes the number of books linked to those sites 620, 594, 489 and 568 respectively. (Out of the 620 books we currently list.)

NYU Press, the publisher of The Passionate Torah: Sex and Judaism has this to say about its offering

In this unique collection of essays, some of today’s smartest Jewish thinkers explore a broad range of fundamental questions in an effort to balance ancient tradition and modern sexuality. In the last few decades a number of factors—post-modernism, feminism, queer liberation, and more—have brought discussion of sexuality to the fore, and with it a whole new set of questions that challenge time-honored traditions and ways of thinking. For Jews of all backgrounds, this has often led to an unhappy standoff between tradition and sexual empowerment….

Rachel Barenblat in her review of the book in Forward goes a bit beyond and picks on a few of the 18 individual essays edited by Danya Ruttenberg into a single volume. Here is the section that prompted me to mention the tome in this blog.

Forward columnist Jay Michaelson’s essay “On the Religious Significance of Homosexuality” explores kabbalistic understandings of masculinity, femininity and the divine. If you already enjoy stretching your brain into the acrobatics of classical Kabbalah, this essay is for you. If you don’t, you may find yourself skimming until you reach his closing assertions about why sexuality matters.

You can read on lots of sites the standard description of Rachel Elior’s book from last year: Dybbuks and Jewish Women in Social History, Mysticism, and Folklore, and I will share it at the end too. But first I would like to point your attention to a resources that goes beyond that short paragraph. It is an interview with the author from last September in Tablet Magazine, Here is a sound bite from the longer piece:

In your book, you argue that dybbuks provided women a means of escape from the expectations and demands of society. Are there contemporary parallels to dybbuks?

Today we would say an unhappy bride is depressed, or under great stress. Saying that the bride was possessed by a dead spirit—meaning she lost control of her body and soul—is not so different.

And now the obligatory introduction of what the book is about:

How and why a person comes to be possessed by a dybbuk (the possession of a living body by the soul of a deceased person), and what consequences ensue from such possession, form the subject of this book. While possession by a dybbuk may have been understood as punishment for a terrible sin, it may also be seen as a mechanism used by desperate individuals – often women – who had no other means of escape from the demands and expectations of an all-encompassing patriarchal social order. Dybbuks and Jewish Women examines these and other aspects of dybbuk possession from historical and phenomenological perspectives, with particular attention to the gender significance of the subject.

A few weeks ago Jewish Lights Publishing sent out an email about Rebbe Nachman and the seven books they published by/of related to him. The introduction of the email page reads:

“Timeless wisdom and illuminating tales from one of the most quoted Hasidic masters, Rebbe Nachman of Breslov. Even after two centuries, his teachings are potent and meaningful. Through captivating stories and collections of his aphorisms, Rebbe Nachman provides vital words of inspiration for life today.”

It is a nice enough collection to share it with the wider audience. The books in question are:

• The Empty Chair: Finding Hope and Joy—Timeless Wisdom from a Hasidic Master, Rebbe Nachman of Breslov
• The Gentle Weapon: Prayers for Everyday and Not-So-Everyday Moments—Timeless Wisdom from the Teachings of the Hasidic Master, Rebbe Nachman of Breslov
• The Lost Princess & Other Kabbalistic Tales of Rebbe Nachman of Breslov
• The Seven Beggars & Other Kabbalistic Tales of Rebbe Nachman of Breslov
• 7th Heaven: Celebrating Shabbat with Rebbe Nachman of Breslov
• The Flame of the Heart: Prayers of a Chasidic Mystic
• Tormented Master: The Life and Spiritual Quest of Rabbi Nahman of Bratslav

Read more about them and/or purchase the books at the publisher’s site.

Michael Arditti’s novel titled The Enemy of the Good was published in the UK in April and is coming it in the US next February. Based on the description of the book at the author’s site  I believe Kabbalah is not a major theme as it seem to influence only one of the characters. Not having read the book itself I cannot judge yet, neither can judge what colors the discipline is painted in this novel. Nevertheless here is the aforementioned summary

The Glanvilles are an extraordinary family. Edwin is a retired bishop who has lost his faith. Marta, a child of the Warsaw Ghetto, is a controversial anthropologist. Their son, Clement, is a celebrated gay painter traumatized by the death of his twin. Their daughter, Susannah, is a music publicist recovering from an affair with a convicted murderer.
Over three remarkable years, the family goes through a sequence of events that causes it to reassess its deepest values and closest relationships. Clement’s work and reputation are violently attacked and his private life exposed. Susannah’s exploration of the Kabbalah takes her into the closed world of Chassidic Jews and a seemingly impossible love. Edwin’s illness forces Marta to confront the horrors of her past. Each must find a way to escape the abyss.

P.s. I first read about the book in The Oxford Times.

Hava Vottera wrote and directed a documentary titled, The Tree of Life, about her journey to discover his family tree.Her search yields great results as she could trace back her family on both of her parents’ side to several centuries. The documentary shows how history touched her family. Forward has a detailed review of the movie.

One of her forefathers was the Ramhal, Rabbi Moshe Haim Luzzatto, a well-known 18th century Kabbalist. His most known work probably is Way of G-d: Derech Hashem.

In 1992 Hebrew University’s Magnes Press produced a limited edition Zohar. It was a facsimile edition containing Gershom Scholem’s annotations. The publisher describes the artifact with these words:

[…] at the end of each volume, follow notes which were found in the books, on loose slips of paper. Scholem deals with expressions which are singular to the Zohar. He points to their origin in the Midrashim or in medieval literature or in foreign languages. Scholem’s comments are not confined to pointing our parallels. Sometimes Scholem himself interprets a statement of the Zohar, occasionally he continues the logic of the Zohar, deriving from it theological conclusions. Other times he relies in the work of others, referring to the scholarly literature.

A couple of weeks ago The Iconic Books Blog reviewed this book and found it a Pseudo Relic. What disturbed them was the fact that Scholem’s handwritten notes were reproduced in their handwritten form, making the “book pretending to be a relic by way of mass reproduction.”

1. Arditti, Michael: The Enemy of the Good
2. Deutsch, Nathaniel: The Maiden of Ludmir: A Jewish Holy Woman and Her World
3. Elior, Rachel: Dybbuks and Jewish Women in Social History, Mysticism and Folklore
4. Elior, Rachel: Jewish Mysticism: The Infinite Expression of Freedom
5. Elior, Rachel: The Mystical Origins of Hasidism
6. Elior, Rachel: The Paradoxical Ascent to God: The Kabbalistic Theosophy of Habad Hasidism
7. Elior, Rachel: The Three Temples: On the Emergence of Jewish Mysticism
8. Elior, Rachel (ed), Peter Schafer (ed): Creation & Re-creation in Jewish Thought: Festschrift in Honor of Joseph Dan
9. Firestone, Tirzah: The Receiving: Reclaiming Jewish Women’s Wisdom
10. Kook, Abraham Isaac: The Essential Writings of Abraham Isaac Kook
11. Kripal, Jeffrey John: The Unknown, Remembered Gate: Religious Experience and Hermeneutical Reflection
12. Mendel, Heather: Dancing in the Footsteps of Eve: Retrieving the Healing Gift of the Sacred Feminine for the Human Family through Myth and Mysticism
13. Schachter-Shalomi, Zalman: Ahron’s Heart: The Prayers, Teachings and Letters of Ahrele Roth, a Hasidic Reformer
14. Wolfson, Elliot R.: Circle in the Square: Studies in the Use of Gender in Kabbalistic Symbolism
15. Wolfson, Elliot R.: Language, Eros, Being: Kabbalistic Hermeneutics and Poetic Imagination
16. Wolfson, Elliot R.: Luminal Darkness: Imaginal Gleanings from Zoharic Literature
17. Wolfson, Elliot R.: Pathwings: Philosphic and Poetic Reflections on the Hermeneutics of Time and Language
18. Wolfson, Elliot R.: The Book Of The Pomegranate: Moses De Leon’s Sefer Ha-rimmon
19. Wolfson, Elliot R., Paul Mendes-Flohr: Studies in Jewish Mysticism, Esotericism,and Hasidism
20. Yanover, Yori: The Cabalist’s Daughter: A Novel of Practical Messianic Redemption

Last summer the Rorschach Theatre produced a show in NewYork titled “This Storm Is What We Call Progress.” It was written by Jason Grote. The plot on the theatre’s page reads:

A young man stumbles into a dusty old recording studio run by an enigmatic old woman and her beautiful assistant. Here he is drawn into an ancient and powerful world of Jewish mysticism and Kabbalistic ritual and discovers that he may be something more than he had ever imagined.

The script doesn’t seem to be available in any format, although Grote links some of his works for purchase at his blog. Here is a teaser though of the play:

P.s. I learned about the play from its Washington Post review.

Hot Indie News‘ review of Heather Mendel’s new book, “Dancing in the Footsteps of Eve: Retrieving the Healing Gift of the Sacred Feminine for the Human Family through Myth and Mysticism”, devotes one paragraph to the description of the book after the intorudction and three contains the review itself. The majority of the entry is made up of the six endorsements; from Thomas Moore, Riane Eisler, Lawrence Kushner, Rami Shapior, Alice O. Howell and Bettina Aptheker. This is the description section:

There are four sections in the book that represent the Four Worlds of Kabbalah— Intuition, Thought, Emotion, and Action. The interaction of the archetypes that correspond to each of these levels reveal that the Sacred Feminine is present in the Jewish texts, moving elusively in and out of our awareness, both revealing and concealing clues to the mysteries of our past and future and our understanding of God.

More details abut the book is at its own site: dancinginthefootstepsofeve.com