Jewish Mystical Tradition
A fine place to start your journey through the landscape of Jewish mysticism is a general reader on Jewish history. To understand the context of Jewish history in general, the 50th anniversary updated revision of Jews, God, and History (2012) remains a valuable historical resource. Dimont’s writing is colorful, engaging, and insightful. Dimont is an uncommon public intellectual. The public marketplace recognizes his love of knowledge from the vantage point of various social science and humanities disciplines. His love of history, culture, and society jumps off the pages of scholarship. What are some of the other useful texts in the Jewish mystical tradition? Let’s take a look.
The Forbidden Mysteries of Enoch (1984) reveals the untold story of angels and humanity. This volume includes the Book of Enoch and its parallels in the Bible. It also records concealed or hidden references to the angelic Watchers, their offspring the Nephilim, and names of embodied angels. Here we find the Book of the Secrets of Enoch, specific details on Enoch from the forgotten Book of Jubilees, the Testaments of the twelve (12) Patriarchs, the Law and the Prophets as later quoted by Jesus, and mystical and apocalyptic revelations of Essenes John the Baptist and Jesus. These were no mainstream Jewish Establishment rabbis (teachers). They were Jewish mystics or Kabbalists who not only meditated and contemplated words of the wise but additionally took direct action.
Recent archeological finds documented throughout volumes of Biblical Archaeology over the last twenty (20) years (1995–2015) moreover reveal material evidence the mystic Essenes at Qumran were stockpiling weapons and ammunition to stage yet another of its many rebellions against the Roman Empire. The Essenes were preaching the end of the world was nigh. These were Apocalyptic preachers, teachers, and healers calling for repentance and redemption at Armageddon and they recorded and stored the tradition of hidden or secret knowledge in their desert monastery. The mystics had a mission.
Reform Rabbi Michael Wise’s The Dead Sea Scrolls: A New Translation (1996) provides foundation stones for the study of Jewish mysticism. These foundation stones, the Dead Sea Scrolls, along with the Old and New Testaments, remain essential primary sources for the study of early Jewish mysticism. These Dead Sea Scrolls include the words of Moses the Levite, the Book of Secrets, material on the Psalms and Last Days, as well as divination prayers and songs to disperse demons many of which date back to King Solomon. We often forget the power of song to inspire and heal, but the Dead Sea Scrolls demonstrate the vibrational power of sounds, repeating or chanting sacred words, reciting rhythmic and allegorical poetry, and singing and playing musical instruments.
The Readers Digest Bible through the Ages (1996) is an outstanding and easy to read general resource with colorful illustrations detailing the role of the oral tradition, the written word, and printed word for Judaism and its offspring Christianity. Articles collected and contained in this volume deal with the sociological and administrative history of Jewish Talmudic law and commentary as well as the role of ancient Jewish storytelling and prophecy. We are reminded of the traditional wisdom of the Jewish spoken word and of the power of touch to heal the sick and poor. We do have as a prime directive in Jewish Renewal the responsibility to ease the pain of the afflicted and help raise the injured.
James R. Lewis’ and Evelyn Dorothy Oliver’s Angels A to Z (1996), edited by Kelle S. Sisung, intrigues readers as a modern treasure trove and encyclopedia of celestial lore. Angels A to Z provides the spirit(s) behind the letter of the law. Topics such as the Book of Enoch, the Dead Sea Scrolls, and the Archangels are summarized concisely and colorfully with rare glimpses into hidden sacred knowledge. Its thematic focus on the relationship of angels to Jungian symbolism is deep enough to attract scholarly and lay lovers of esoteric wisdom.
A.E Waite’s The Holy Kabbalah: A Mystical Interpretation of the Scriptures (1995) delivers a comprehensive historical account of the Jewish esoteric philosophy of Kabbalah through the ages. The influences of Kabbalah have reached into monastic Christianity and Sufi Islam. Jewish yeshivas, Waite notes, not only actually preceded European universities but probably inspired their establishment. Kabbalah is the mystical path for universal consciousness and its divisions and resources are aptly detailed. This is a technically advanced and highly detailed academic reference work. The quality of scholarly research and writing is outstanding.
Aryeh Kaplan’s Meditation and Kabbalah (1982) provides a useful introduction to various schools of meditation in Jewish mysticism as well as specific methods and techniques for meditation. This is a practical guide. It deals with among other topics the techniques of the Talmudic mystics such as Rabbi Akiva, the medieval-era Rabbi Abulafia and Mediterranean or Sephardic scholars of Muslim Spain and Italy, as well as the Ari Rabbi Isaac Luria of Safed, Israel and the Eastern European or Ashkenazi Chasidim. This useful work provides a taste of Jewish mystical practices from across the world’s ages and across so many people of diverse shades of color and culture reside.
Z’ev ben Shimon Halevi’s Kabbalah: The Divine Plan (1996) is a brief and concise narrative of Kabballah. It deals with the traditional history, and images of divinity. It also deals with angels, demons, and the humanistic aspects of meditation and hidden wisdom passed from Judaism to the Christian Gnostics, the Rosicrucians, Freemasons, and the Western Occult traditions.
Rav P.S. Berg’s The Essential Zohar (2002) and Yehuda Liebes’ Studies in the Zohar (1993) provide in-depth structure for studying medieval texts and teachings of spiritual transformation using the secret liturgy of the Zohar. The author of the Zohar was Moses de Leon. Published about 1290, it remains the central work of medieval Kabbalah. Known in English as the Book of Splendor. It states angels live in seven (7) heavenly halls, the Heikhalot. The Zohar states we are born with a good angel and bad angel and when we die, we are met by either the angels of peace or destruction depending upon our actions.
For a scholarly guide to practices that can be implemented every day, consult the eminently readable Toward a Meaningful Life (2002) by Chabad Lubavitcher Rabbi Simon Jacobson. When this author met Rabbi Simon Jacobson in Brooklyn in 2003, ominous thunder and lightning with heavy rain appeared outside the window as we debated at the Crown Heights Chabad House and Meaningful Life Center. The moment could not have been more dramatic. It was the kind of the thunderstorm that earned American Revolutionary evangelical Patrick Henry the name the “Son of Thunder.” Synchronicity may be to blame for “Thunderhorse” becoming this author’s Native American name five (5) years earlier since the “thunderbird” remains the Native American symbol of transformation. Coincidence or prophecy? There are no mistakes only synchronicity for seemingly random but related events.
Michael Lerner’s Jewish Renewal (1994) charts a path for alienated and progressive Jews to return to liberal equality thru healing and transformation. Its psychoanalytic message for social justice and compassion in political activism is especially noteworthy and needed for our time of economic inequality, hunger, disease, and homelessness. Inspired by the founder of modern Jewish Renewal, Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi, Lerner posits that the Jews have always been “the people of the book” Christians and Muslims admire and emulate or fear and hate. Martin Buber’s “Renewal of Judaism” calls it the “immense return and transformation.” Jewish Renewal is a return to the deeply mystical tradition of Judaism.
