Book

Meditation and Kabbalah

Aryeh Kaplan's classic made a claim that reshaped the English-language study of Jewish mysticism: that Kabbalah has three branches, theoretical, practical and meditative, and that the meditative tradition, the actual techniques of the mystics, had been almost entirely lost to the popular view. The book restores it from the sources. Opening chapters define the schools and the vocabulary, then move through the Talmudic mystics and the Hekhalot literature with its heavenly palaces, to Rabbi Abraham Abulafia, whose letter-permutation methods get a full biographical and technical treatment. Further chapters recover the Gate of Kavanah, the Gates of Light, Rabbi Isaac of Acco and the magic squares, the school of Safed with Moses Cordovero and Chaim Vital, and the system of the Ari with its kavanot and yichudim, before closing among the Hasidim, the Baal Shem Tov, states of consciousness, and Rabbi Nachman's way. Kaplan writes as an orthodox scholar with an ear for practice, citing manuscripts across Jerusalem, Oxford and the Vatican Library. For practitioners and scholars alike, it remains the standard map of Jewish meditation.

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