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.

I just read a review of Lamentations of Youth in the New York Sun. . The subtitle of the work tells you whay I am mentioning this book on this blog, it contains “The Diaries of Gershom Scholem, 1913-1919“. These yeas cover the period of ages between 16 and 22. The reviewer laments that the editor, Anthony David Skinner, edited out too much in his focus to show Scholem’s personal life. Nevertheless we still learn from this very private diaries how he felt about his father, the Zionist movement, women, friends (including his closest with Walter Benjamin), anti-Semitism, art, mathematics, Kabbalah … The review touches upon lots of his topics, but only reading the whole book could give a full picture of the young budding mind and body.

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.

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

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.