The Mystic Heart of Judaism

Pages: 614From the JacketThe cover background is a facsimile of a page from a fifteenth-century Zohar, the primary work of the Kabbalah. The large stylized letter Aleph, the first letter of the Hebrew alphabet, also signifies the number ‘I’ and is symbolic of the one Lord, origin of all, creator of all. The flames within the letter signify the primal spiritual light. The menorah (seven-branched candelabra) represents the qualities of the divine light and the seven stages or levels of creation. It is the oldest symbol associated with Judaism. PrefaceThe Search for Spiritual Inspiration and understanding is universal. Although there have been periods in history when the idea of the divine has become externalized, grounded in the material and the secular, there have always been those people whose direct experience of the mystical reality proved otherwise. Most recently in Europe, the eighteenth, nineteenth, and early twentieth centuries saw a rejection of the mystical in favor of social, material, intellectual, and scientific progress. In Judaism this tendency gained great strength under the name of the Enlightenment, the Haskalah, which promised release from the insularity of the Jewish community vis-a-vis the dominant Christian society.Yet at the same time, the explosion of Hasidism as an expression of the belief in the mystical and the essential importance of the spiritual master, the tsadik, in attaining soul liberation, counterbalanced this materialistic tendency. Indeed, personal direct experience of the divine through the intervention or inspiration of a spiritual master has always been accepted by devotional groups within Judaism. Perhaps because of the waves of persecutions the Jews had exper