Product Description

This book is a smart, contemplative introduction to the greatest books of the Jewish mystical tradition. The Kabbalah is the foundation of all modern Jewish philosophic and metaphysical thought. Its lessons and rituals are derived from the texts of The Zohar, which was compiled by Moses de Leon around 1280 from writings by ancient scholars such as Isaac Luria, Abraham Isaac Kook, and Moses Cordovero.

In The Essential Kabbalah, Daniel C. Matt has collected the vital excerpts, meditations, and poems from these classic texts to highlight its salient aspects and illuminate the general themes. Each item is centered on its own page in order to provoke the reader to ponder its meaning and its relations to the text as a whole. Matt includes biographies of each of the writers referenced and an essay detailing the Kabbalah`s mysterious history. His translations are considered definitive among modern Kabbalah scholars, and general readers will certainly benefit from his poetic translations and impressive knowledge.