Edward Hoffman‘s intentions with his box containing “The Kabbalah Deck: Pathway to the Soul” were evinced on page 4 of 160 page booklet:

“I’ve increasingly felt the need for an entirely new resource – one that would make the Kabbalah more dynamically personal and interactive. This format would certainly not replace the classic study of the Kabbalah, but significantly complement it by providing a more experiential pathway into the proverbial “garden” of Jewish mystical guidance. To this end, I’ve created the Kabbalah Deck. It’s been designed for two specific and unrelated purposes. The first is for contemplation and sacred study, and the second is for divination.”

As you can conclude from the above the Deck consists of cards, 35 by number and a booklet in a nice blue box. The back of the cards al gold colored, with black print on them using Middle eastern motifs, a Magen David (six pointed star) with an eye at its center and two fish at the shorter end of the cards. The fronts of the cards fall into one of three categories, but all of them are mostly white with minimal golden prints on them. The cards corresponding to the 22 letters of the Hebrew Alephbet have the letter’s English version on top in all lower case, the Hebrew version as you’d see them in the Torah scroll with their crowns in the center of the card. At the bottom of these and the three “Jolly joker” cards there is a line of barely visible six pointed stars as watermarks. The function of the three cards that simply have hamsa on them is to be used as any letter the user wants them to be, when spelling out something. This might be necessary if a word has a specific letter more than once in it. There are also ten cards, for each of the sephirot in the Tree of life. Each of these cards have the whole traditional chart of the Tree with one highlighted. Below the tree you will find the Hebrew and English name of the specific sephira.

The accompanying booklet has three major and several minor sections. After the acknowledgements and the introduction you find a seven page mini-essay on the wisdom of the Hebrew alephbet. About half of this is devoted to explaining how Abraham Abulafia’s repurposed it, but it also covers such roots of the topic as Ezra the Scribe, the Sefer Yetzirah and the Zohar. Then each of the letters get a two page treatment with 4-5 paragraphs each. These paragraphs explain the significance of the letter in Kabbalah. It is a great overview of the topic, although it never sites its sources fully. Often it talks about Kabbalah in general and sometimes he mentions that this particular explanation or that comes from the Zohar or from a Hassidic master. This kind of writing is in alignment with the intention I quoted above, but is not with my scientific or religious interest as both of these would want me to follow the sources and find out the original writings Hoffman incorporated. Nevertheless the content is truly remarkable. The last paragraph of each of these mini-chapters is about the purpose and method on how to meditate on that particular letter.

The second major section is about the Ten Sephirot. It follows the same patter of an opening 5-page mini-essay on their history and then two page of each of them. The last major section is titled “exercises for meditation and divination.” None of the twenty five exercises is longer than 14 lines. Some of them fall along the lines of team, family or trust building, but most of them are for introspection. As Hoffman is a clinical psychologist I am sure he harvested his knowledge of that field to combine it with Jewish mysticism to create something new. The exercises often include shuffling the cards and picking one. Then the deeper meaning of that card is the answer for the question you were supposed to focus on. It presumes of course that you are fully familiar with the meanings of the cards, the letters and the sephirot. The booklet will give you a good start to acquire the knowledge but it will not fulfill all the needs.

Hoffman’s book is full tiny nuggets of knowledge that are valuable I themselves for people interested in the connection of Kabbalah, psychology and (I am afraid I have to add) divination. He exposed the connection between the first two in one of his dozen books titled, “The Way of Splendor: Jewish mysticism and modern psychology.” The Kabbalah Deck is a splendid package for those who want to follow the divination path. Meanwhile I will go back and read his book instead.

The book at the publisher’s site (Chronicle Books)

The book @ Amazon.com

As traditional Judaism is against divination I was hesitant to read the 133 page book(let) accompanying the deck of cars in the box labeled “Ask the Kabala Oracle Cards.” The cards themselves are nicely designed. The front has one of the 22 Hebrew letters, along with English transliteration on how to pronounce them. Each has an image, often nonfigurative or with simple symbols, never more than with 8-9 colors, which give the whole seta simplistic feeling. The back of all the cards has the same drawing: a tree with a bird at its center surround by a reddish, wavy edge.

The last page of the booklet gives information about the three authors, but doesn’t indicate who drew the cards. I think that’s a shame because it made it look like that half of the package’s content was disregarded, while some people might spend much more time with the visually pleasing cards than with the text. My guess is that the design was created either Charles McStravick, who is listed as responsible for “design” on the inside page of the book, or maybe Tracy Walker, who made the “interior illustrations”.

The headliner of the three authors is Deepak Chopra. He is much better known than the other two authors, so I suspect that’s why we have his name on top and bigger letters. I wonder thought how much of the book he has written and to what extent he just gave his name to the project. The only piece identified as written by him was the 11 page long introduction, mind you this is a small format book, so 11 pages aren’t that long. The second author mentioned on the cover is Michael “Zappy” Zapolin, the person behind the kabala.com website and a “lecturer to celebrities.” I never heard of him, but maybe his association of celebrities was a good enough selling point to include him. Finally, listed as “with,” we have Alys R. Yablon, an editor and ghostwriter according to her website. She might have done the majority of the writing.

Chopra’s introduction starts of with a comparison of his own, Vedic tradition and Kabbalah. After finding similarities he briefly characterizes the domains of the physical/mental/spiritual world, then he goes off to dive into the third that he calls the Theosphere’s domains: personal/collective/universal. That’s were he connects to the Kabablistic concepts of Atzilut/Beriya/Teyzira/Assiya and the sephirot again. He attempts to tie it a together with suggesting that you can ask Kabala a question and get an answer with the help of the cards, but you need to do the interpretation itself. He makes references to lots of people, concepts and theories in the attempt to show that they are all connected and how knowledgeable he is. He might, be but for me this section felt like a mixing good pieces of content with each other in lieu of putting attention and original thought to it.

Next there are two pages on how to use the booklet: shuffle the cards, focus on question/problem, pick one, meditate on the letter, read the story, listen to your intuition and find the answer. Then the impossible task of introducing the history of Kabala on 6 pages with a heavy focus on the Zohar is accomplished. Before we get into the stories themselves we get a surprisingly good and comprehensive ten page treatise on the mysteries of the aleph-bet.

The majority of the booklet is made up by the text corresponding to the 22 letters and the 22 cards. Each has 4-5 pages to itself, including a smaller, black and white replica of the appropriate card, a quote from the Torah (with citation) and an explanation of the quote and the story behind it along with a focus on a human issue, question, problem or moral dilemma. These chapters have nothing objectionable in them, they often follow traditional rabbinic discourse no a topic, always ending with a lesson we can all relate to and learn. But then each chapter ends with a clearly separated paragraph or two, that connects the letter to the lesson or feature, which doesn’t always connect to traditional interpretation. E.g.

Aleph – begin again
Bet – conflict
Gimmel –judgment
Dalet – paradox in relationship
Heh – transition
Vav – accept responsibility
Zayin – stillness
Chet – let go
Tet – appreciation
Yud – forgiveness
and so on

Depending on your stance, persuasion and interest, you may want to look at or not, use or not the pretty cards. Similarly you can read the whole booklet if you wish or just focus on the 22 Torah stories as that could be kosher for almost anybody.

Since Geert Kimpen‘s De Kabbalist (The Kabbalist) was published in 2007 in Dutc it has been translated to several languages including German and Spanish. According to the author’s website it “will” be published in English in 2009 in South East Asia, but the publisher’s website is too barebone to find it and I couldn’t locate any other information about the English edition. So I accepted my mother’s offer to get me a copy. I read it the first chance I had, which happened to be sitting on the tarmac of Heathrow airport in London for four hours.

The book is a fictionalized biography of Hayyim Vital, a 16th century kabbalist. He was the student of Isaac Luria another Kabbalist luminary. The book’s major theme is Vital’s struggle for independence, from stepping out of the shadow of his master. His ambition was to be known as the most famous re-founder of Kabbalah, but the book suggests, that he was destined to be known only as the disciple of Luria, who would be known throughout the ages. Vital’s biggest, recurring decision in the book had to be made between the greatness he longed for via Kabbalah and the love he felt for his master’s daughter. We follow several years of his tormented life, until the pressure of making this decision cease to exist for a number of reasons, I won’t spoil.

It was a three to one mixed experience to read the book. The positive aspects were the story, the style, and lessons. I kept finding myself surprised about the twists of Vital’s life. I thought there is nothing more that can happen to him, but in the next chapter something unexpected popped up and gave him a new direction. I also kept wondering how much of it was made up by the author, and how much is historical fact. Based on m limited factchecking a surprisingly large portion of the events seem to be real. The second aspect I enjoyed was the author’s and the translator’s style. I cannot judge the original, but I think Tamas Balogh did a great job with the translation. There were only a few places, where I felt that the flow of the language wasn’t the smoothest or where an expression seemed awkward. However the whole of the book was very much an enjoyable biography. The last positive aspect I want to mention was the integration of the novel with Kabbalistic teachings and principles. There weren’t too many of the latter to overwhelm the reader, but there were enough of them to teach them some of the basics. Just right proportions for me.

I have one grievance: I didn’t like the main character. I kept hoping that this is one of those character development stories, where the hero starts out being slightly on the bad side and through his tribulations learns to be good. I hoped for this, because it would have been corresponding to the book’s major theme of humility and putting God and the greater good ahead of your own fame and interest. But the Vital of this book never seemed to have reached that phase of evolution. He kept fighting the same demon: how can I be bigger than my master. One, ok I, would have thought that he can learn the lesson. I was mistaken. I would love to learn more about the characteristics of the historical figure.