Path of the Jewish Mystic

Path of the Kabbalah by David Sheinkin
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This man has definitely sat on the shoulder of giants and seen far into the distance . Not a bad piece of work for a medical doctor who is not a rabbi. No less the way he writes makes sense and he relays some pretty heavy concepts down to layman terms.

Starting off it is mentioned that Jewish mysticism and the path of Torah are just one of many paths one can traverse upon to reach the pinnacle of Godhead. Systems can even be developed much like they are in New Age movement but these systems which are hodge podge of things taken from different spiritual paths. This could limit their effectiveness as they lack a proper system of checks and balances.

Judaism itself is rather deep. Most are familiar with the written Torah which consists of the five Books of Moses, Prophets and the Writings. There is more further explanation was contained in the Oral Torah. Kabbalah not mentioned in the Torah is the inner working of the Universe.

Much of Kabbalist knowledge is not contained in the Torah. FOr example take the word for God, he is called the ain sof, that without end. This epithet is not mentioned once in the Bible. The other name for god like Elokim, Adoni, Jehovah are not names of god but rather names of his attributes he created in order to work with the physical world. The top three are too holy for us humans so we only deal with the lower seven. These attributes are called the Sefirote. They are what god uses to interface with us. Ain Sof or god is beyond male and female or even the spiritual. It is unchanging. THe sefirote interact with us, change us and are in turn changed by us. Gods power is too strong for us to be near to so there has to be distance like the Earth from the sun. To get his power for our benefit we need step down stations so it is not too strong for us.

Most of existence is fillled by the Ain Sof or the light of Ain Sof. To make room for creation God had to constrict himself. It left a small dot which would fill our realm, the spiritual realm and five different universes. It gets complicated. Needless to say we are in the realm action Assiyut. Too dwell in other realms would put us too close to God which would be bad for us. Then fifth universe is Adam Kadmon or primordial man. That is in charge of everything .

In the beginning the Sephirote broke apart because the light was too intense .They were reformed as five partzufin. THe sephirote exist forever on the spiritual realm. They interact in combinations. Every Sephora contains all the other sephirote.

This short book chock full of information is only 192 pages. This book is excellent for those wishing to get their feet wet in Mysrtical Judaism.It is also. Excellent for intermediate learners. Great explanation of concepts and some cool mediation’s at the end.

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