Kabbalah: The Way of the Jewish Mystic (Shambhala Pocket Library)

i highly recommend this book along with meditation and, as a means toheal and uplift perhaps the entire world, the entire soul, and yeah...this book is where i would start, before even the torah, or the bible and really even as a substitute for those booksbecause it contains the essence of the teachings with what seems like an honest atttempt at the minimumamount of ego manipulation and maybe it really is completely selfless, its effect is pure though the names are there, its apparent that its from something beyond all thattruly a sacred textpeace and love

Simple wording, profound meanings. A very good introduction to Kabbalah. Enjoyable reading, paused to think and breathe, ‘to take it all in’.

I love this book. I refer to it over and over again. Many life changing messages.

Epstein's slim volume offers a history of mystical Judaism, touching on its most noted personages, and offers an account of their various beliefs. This is NOT a guidebook to Jewish mystical thinking or meditation in itself. The prose is a bit dry, but it offers a good overview and possibly an introduction for those who'd want to learn more.

I am very pleased with this purchase.

Endorsed by issac b singer and inspired by her work with arlah Kaplan the author focus is on Hasidic Kabbalah. She glossed over the Shabbatai epoch and the other historical Merkabah ascents. She highlights nachman if Breslov and the lubatvitch break from Hasidism who thought lubavitch were too Kabbalist (they would thwart the sefirot and focus only on the ones Zohar tells us not to think about)! .The truth is the Tanya watered down Kabbalah streaming the importance of charity over the marvelous mystical works of the Zohar. Indeed Hasids are not allowed to read the Zohar. They are stuck with a script from which they cannot deviate. Much like alternate religions. Therefore to spend more than 60 percent of the book on hassidic thought will teach us nothing of Kabbalah.I have the original copy. It’s a watered down version of Kabbalah A good start with the first half but the rest makes no sense without the catastrophic messianic episodes that are not mentioned. The hasids cleave onto the messiah perhaps remembering the hope shabbatai brought to Jewry but this concept has brought us much miseryGd hod the burial of Moshe : will he now reveal the end of day? . Better to focus on Torah and cleave to the Name than to push GDs creation (the messiah) to the fore and give him undo prominence. gd is a jealous Gd

This book was first written back in the '60's and published in the early 70's, when so many Jews were going to Eastern religions in search of the spirituality that (they thought) was not in Judaism. At that point in time, there was -- hard as it is to believe now -- very little material available about Jewish mysticism for the popular-level English reader. Seekers either had to struggle through the post-Ph.D.-level heaviness of Gershom Scholem's academic style, or learn Hebrew and read the source texts. Either was a daunting task for the casual seeker who just wanted some authentic info about kabbalah and how the Jewish mystics practiced its forms of meditation, etc.. Enter Perle Epstein (now Perle Besserman). She was already doing a series on the various forms of mysticism, and had already covered Buddhism, Zen, etc., so she decided her next project would be on the mysticism of her own Jewish background. (As an interesting aside: Like so many assimilated Jews of that era, Epstein came to mysticism and meditation through yoga and Hinduism first, and was not a religious Jew when she began the "Kabbalah" project. So, she had a two-fold struggle: (1) to find the teachings, and (2) to confront her own issues and stereotypes about the Orthodox Jews she was interviewing. The personal story of these struggles and how she collected the material for "Kabbalah" is told in "Pilgrimage: Adventures of a Wandering Jew" which, as far as I know, is out of print but well worth tracking down a copy.) The influence of her Eastern studies and practical experience with Hindu gurus and Zen masters can be seen in "Kabbalah," such as the way she describes the 16th-century Safed community of Rabbi Isaac Luria as a "Jewish Shangri-la" and a sort of ashram community, -- which, in a sense, it was. This made the teachings very understandable people who were already familiar with the Eastern forms of meditation. In fact, it was the first popular book I know of that clearly identified some of the practices as forms of visualization, use of mantras, etc. In my opinion, these types of cross-cultural comparisons are very helpful to Jews (and others) who want an introduction to how Jewish mysticism has been practiced down through the centuries. The book is not an academic tome, but is written in a clear popular, almost poetic style that I found a delight to read the first time around, and have returned to again and again. For many years during the 70's and 80's, this book was my #2 recommendation to Jewish beginners in kabbalah, as well as non-Jews wanting to know something about our spirituality. (my #1 recommendation was "9 1/2 Mystics" by Herbert Weiner).I am delighted to see that Epstein's book is available again, so I can recommend it on my website.

Perle Epstein presents a fairly complete picture of Jewish mysticism in Kabbalah: The Way of the Jewish Mystic.She moves about from Abraham Abulafia’s system of breathing and visualization, to the Merkavah mystics of the first century, to the German Chassidim, or Pietists, who fasted and rolled naked in the snow. She is especially enamored of the Safed group of mystics who surrounded the Holy Ari in the fifteenth century, seeing it as a high water mark of Jewish mysticism never to be repeated.Espstein is especially harsh on modern Hasidism. She has good things to say about the early years of the movement, but not much else for the last two-hundred years. The book ends on this sour note. Written in 1978, she despairs of how little Kabbalistic material there is for modern Jews to consume. Of course, this has changed dramatically in the last 30 years. She laments the paucity of materials, centers, movements in 1978; now she may not like the crass commercialization of Jewish mysticism. It is hard to say.Perhaps Judaism needs as much mysticism as it can muster.

Just Okay. Some parts not well understood others just okay.