Still the finest scholar's introduction to the Kabbalah

books:

	• Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism Gershom Scholem Schocken, 1995 - 496 pages average customer review:based on 18 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Mysticism Without Obfuscation

What I love best about Scholem is that he wrote eloquently about spiritual enlightenment without presenting himself as being a mystical master or guru. He will guide you through the history of Jewish esoteric thought, after which you can sample some source texts (many of which now are available in English translation). No preaching here - just good scholarly thought and clear, eloquent writing. It's also amazing how a 60-year old volume remains the standard introduction while still being regarded as controversial in fundamentalist quarters. An awesome achievement!

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Excellent introduction to Kabbalah

Gershom Scholem was a pioneer in the academic study of Jewish mysticism. Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism is an excellent introduction to the kabbalah. The book covers the main historical movements and personalities. It explains the basic doctrines, rituals, and texts. The footnotes and referenced authors and texts become an excellent source of further study for both the academician and the spiritual seeker.

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Still the finest scholar's introduction to the Kabbalah

When reading Scholem I often feel like I am reading an old testament prophet; his writing and words seem to convey a great dignity and authority and power beyond their age.

Major Trends is basically a set of lectures Scholem gave on Jewish mysticism. Scholem was one of the first scholars to apply scientific methods of criticism to Jewish mystical texts and traditions and their sources, which had been neglected to a large extent in favour of the rational Jews like Moses Maimonides. The age of Reason had little time for religion, myth and mysticism and it was really only in the latter part of the 20th century people began to return to their mystical traditions.

Scholem made many important discoveries, including showing the author of the Zohar (which supposedly came from the 2nd century) was written by Moses de Leon, a 11th century Spanish Jew. Also in this collection are some valuable studies of the relationship between Kabbalah and Christian Gnosticism, and on Isaac Luria's bizarre theosophic ideas, and of chariot mysticism which influenced early Christianity and many apocryphal biblical books such as the Books of Enoch.

Scholem's study remains the most important 20th century study of Jewish mysticism.

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Informative

Do you want to study and understand kabbalah in details? Are you trapped or met blinds in your studies into mysticism? Are you intrested to know who and who are the true author/authors of the great and renowned book in kabbalah The Zohar? You have met blinds in your kabbalah studies? Here is the one amongst other books that would shead light on your path to the true wisdom of the Ages. You would definately get more than your moneys worth.

The Work of the Chariot and Dreams of Exile

Though some of its conclusions have been questioned or corrected by later scholars like Moshe Idel, this is still the best overall guide for the general reader. It began as a series of lectures, so the presentation is on the dry side, but the contents more than compensate.

It's ironic that Gershom Scholem became famous as a scholar of mysticism, because he embodied old-fashioned Jewish suspicion of anything mystical, Romantic or high-flown. This points to the puzzle we face here: that Judaism, a religion of the practical and actual, emphasising the distance and disparity between God and man, should even have produced mysticism. Jews extracted their mysticism from the Torah and the Prophets as arduously as Marie Curie extracted radium from pitchblende.

This helps to explain the diversity and near-surrealist strangeness of Jewish mystical spirituality. Shiur Komah mystics visualised the Physical body of God: His arms so many billion miles long, and so on. Hekhaloth visionaries ascended to graduated Celestial Palaces (a practice St. Paul must have been familiar with.) Merkavah mystics concentrated on the vision of the Divine Throne/Chariot in Ezekiel Chapter 1, with its inconceivable Living Creatures and Wheels within Wheels.

The proto-Kabbalah of the Book "Bahir" with its clumsy dream-like myth-making. The full-blown Kabbalah of the vast, untellably strange "Zohar" or "Book of Splendour", a whole universe reverently explored by generations of pious Jews. Then the new Kabbalah of Isaac Luria, with its (astonishingly) far from omnipotent God who bungles crucial stages of the process of Creation, and (still more astonishingly) needs Jews to help repair His gaffes.

Mystics were always a minority. Most literate Jews were preoccupied with Talmud, ever-more refined discussions of the Sacred Law governing practical conduct. But just as someone's dreams may tell you more about them than they are prepared to admit out loud, this book is a window on the hidden life of Jews during their centuries of dispersal, expulsions and persecution.

You may be familiar with "magical" pseudo-Kabbalah, the Sephiroth and the Tree of Life torn up from their roots in Torah; or with New Age Kabbalah. Forget all that, read this book, step through the gateway into reality.

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reviews: page 1, 2, 3, 4

A collection of lectures on the features of the movement of mysticism that began in antiquity and continues in Hasidism today.

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