Meditation and Kabbalah

by Aryeh Kaplan

Overview

A lucid in-depth presentation of the meditative techniques and practices used by the ancient Kabbalists.
 
The Kabbalah is divided into three branches—the theoretical, the meditative, and the magical. While many books, both in Hebrew and English, have explored the theoretical Kabbalah, very little has been published regarding the meditative methods of the various schools of Kabbalah. Aryeh Kaplan’s landmark work, reveals the methodology of the ancient Kabbalists and stresses the meditative techniques that were essential to their discipline, including:

• the use of pictures or letter designs as objects of meditation
• the repetition of specific words or phrases, such as the divine names, to produce profound meditative state

In addition, Meditation and Kabbalah presents relevant portions of such meditative texts as:

• The Grellier Hekhalot, Textbook of the Merkava School 
• The works of Abraham Abulafia
• Joseph Gikatalia's Gales of Light
• The Glltes of Holiness
• Gale of The Holy Spirit, Textbook of the Lurianic School

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780877286165
Publisher:	Red Wheel/Weiser
Publication date:	05/01/1989
Series:	Pbk
Edition description:	Reissue
Pages:	368
Product dimensions:	8.75(w) x 5.75(h) x (d)

About the Author

Rabbi Aryeh Kaplan was born in New York City and was educated in The Torah Voda'as and Mir Yeshivot in Brooklyn. After years of study at Jerusalem's Mir Yeshiva, he was ordained by some of Israel's foremost rabbinic authorities. He also earned a master's degree in physics and was listed in Who's Who in Physics in the United States. In the course of a writing career spanning only twelve years, Rabbi Kaplan earned a reputation as one of the most effective, persuasive, scholarly, and prolific exponents of Judaism in the English language. He died on January 28, 1983, at the age of 48.