Kabbalah: A Love Story

I read this book while sick with the flu, so there is nothing mixing Jewish mysticism and fever dreams. This short book combines the tale of a 14th century manuscript's effect on it's new owner, and an explanation of kabbalah (pronounced ka-ba-lah). This Jewish studies is based the concept that are different levels of reality, and man's goal to reach a higher level. Kabbalah is usually the domain the Hassidim, but aspects of it included the Kabbalah Shabbat service in Reform and Conservative Judaism. It seems esoteric until you have experienced a traumatic event which changes your doors of perception, like Alice in Wonderland.

Rabbi Lawrence Kushner's Kabbalah: A Love Story is the best Kabbalah book I read for a long time. It just is a great combination of teachings embedded in a simple, yet attractive story line. OK, the story line is not simple. There are vignettes from most the last ten centuries, each with its specific characters and geographic locations. Sometimes these segments are just a paragraph long, so you have to work your mind to connect it to the rest fo the book. But they all worked out, that's one magic of the book. (And by magic I don't mean ritualistic magick.) Then, even the events in the life of the main character, Kalman Stern a divorced scholar in New York, are presented in chronological order and an event is written up multiple, times show more Rashomon style. Except that in Rashomon we get different perspectives of the same events, while here we get different understanding of the same event from the same perspective. Yes, there is a classical love story in it as well, along with a love story that only existed in the jealous husband's mind.

The beauty of this book is the simplicity of the complexity, just like Kabbalah's itself. Every element of the book is simple and complex at the same time. You can read it, just on the top level and get a straightforward romantic story of two intellectuals. Or you can dig deeper and excavate layers of meanings. This goes well with the tradition of the four layers of textual analysis in Jewish tradition: PaRDeS.

Asfar as I know this was the first original fiction written by Rabbi Kushner. He wrote plenty of books on Kabbalah and spirituality. (See his list of publications.) Being an expert and master of the topic he had no difficulties to infuse his first novel with lessons from this discipline. If his intenion was to teach Kabbalah to w ide range of people he found the best way to do so. From my perspective he is one of the mist authentic teachers of our times, who is driven by motives that I have more sympathy for than the Bergs' or Laitman's. show less

This little book is one that frequently makes me pause and smile as I peruse my bookshelves. A quiet snowy day had me reaching out to read it again and I was not disappointed. When you feel the need for a little hope, a change of perspective, or a dose of adventure this is the book to reach for, time and again.

I loved this book. I needed something hopeful.

A wonderful, wonderful book.

A quote about a story in which Reb Zusya says he has never suffered (even though, objectively, he has):
"People get what they get; it's not about what they deserve, but about how they receive it." [p. 128]